My initial response to this reading echos Rachel's in that I imagine our trip to Guatemala to look something like the way the author describes and I will be sure to pack lightly in case my host family lives "a short distance from town". The impact the Pan American Highway has on Nahuala is undeniable. Many of you have already commented on the power of change driven by the highway. It passes through many diverse climates and ecological types, from dense jungles to cold mountain passes. It overcomes the physical barrier of location that long kept villages like Nahuala out of connection. According to Chairman Mao, "The people and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history." He is referring to the power of the masses and to link oneself with the masses one must act in accordance with the needs and wishes of the masses. Mao felt that those who controlled the thoughts of the Chinese people thereby determined their destiny. Power therefore was linked to knowledge, particularly information about social conditions and about policies which public opinion could be cultivated to support. Therefore, power flowed from control over the processes of communication. Although the Highway is an inanimate object that is not running for political office, it in itself is powerful because of its ability to catalyze communication between masses of people. We see it most in the seismic changes from the days of Javier's father to the days of his son. He is stuck in the middle in an internal conflict of reviewing the past while facing the future.

This conflict stems out to his brother, Lazaro, with the upending of the old Mayan religion into a twisted mix of Catholicism. "One of the life decisions that for Javier may have been the most important and the most difficult...was that of choosing between mutually exclusive, bitterly opposed religious factions whose origins were neither entirely Nahualense nor entirely foreign (86)." This struggle is only compacted by the environment of Javier's upbringing because it placed value in the "outward appearance of consensus and harmonization."