The Neighborhood Council Files ~ The Man Behind the Curtain

Another day, another drama. This time, it’s the case of the Immature Man and his inability to behave like an adult. First, based on what I have come to know about this person, none of his actions surprises me. Second, learning recently about his history, I am less empathetic to his lack of maturity regarding the situation. Thirdly, not sure what kind of reaction he was expecting, but I am sure it wasn’t the one he got.

Turns out, the security committee president finally resigned, three months too late, and in typical fashion, via WhatsApp chat instead of with actual accountability. But to understand why an entire neighborhood had to petition for his removal, you need to know how we got here.

A few nights ago, we had a meeting. A sort of formal sit-down with the existing Security Committee. This has always been a subcommittee to the council, but in recent years, it has been operating as if it were a council all its own. The current council was voted in a month after the elections were held for the security committee, which, in my opinion, made no sense. Why would a potentially outbound group hold elections for a subcommittee knowing they would not be around a month later, after the council elections were held, unless their intention was to create discord and unrest in the neighborhood?

The Security committee that was voted in a year ago had the right amount of people, but was filled with problematic members who didn’t know how to cooperate or compromise. As a result, some people stopped showing up to the meetings, and eventually they either were asked to resign or chose to resign on their own. So the committee quickly whittled down to 3 members. At that point, had the council not had its head up its ass, it should have asked for a special election to repopulate the committee. The loss happened so quickly after the election, and with 8 months left in the term, leaving it to 3 people was negligent. Especially when 1 of those people doesn’t even live in the Colonia.

Somehow, among themselves, in this vacuum of opinion, they redistributed posts, and one individual who had not held one of the cabinet positions, either self-appointed or chosen by the other two, was to be the president. Or at least act as president. None of this was officially documented. Mostly due to general incompetence and neglect from the last council members. (I still can’t get over how many people we saw that had been on the council emerged from the woodworks on the day of the election, but you couldn’t find hide nor hair of any of these people on any of the previous 5 general assemblies I have myself attended in the last 8 months that I have been here.)

In any case, things seemed to be fine for a time. Mind you, I got here in late October. There was a gate to come in and out of the neighborhood. We had a hanging tag on our car that the guard at the gate would see and then open the gate to let us in. If you had a visitor, they had to give their info at the gate, and state which address they were going to. Etc, it was fine. I don’t know how long they had that system in place before I got there, but it seemed to be working fine. I had no issues.

Next thing I know, like two weeks later, we were lining up at the gate house, giving our extra fee to pay for a chip for our cars because the manual gate was being converted to an automatic gate for residents. They were adding an extra lane to the entrance. Ok, again, whatever.

Except, it wasn’t whatever for most people. Some people balked at having to pay this extra fee for each one of their vehicles. Some homes had multiple cars and motorcycles. And they refused to pay. Not my problem. There was some issue with what seemed like many people who didn’t actually live here, but had family or friends who lived in the Colonia, would park their cars here. Probably because it was safe. But it led to a lot of congestion. So that was an issue that this system would address, supposedly. For example, my downstairs neighbor officially has the driveway in his lease agreement, but he chooses to park his brother’s car in the street. 🙄 Key word being brother. He doesn’t live here in the Colonia. I don’t know where his brother is. If that even is his brother’s car.

This new process supposedly was to curb some of that activity, it was to upgrade the security, blah blah blah. The only thing I know for a fact is that this was not discussed with the neighbors at large, unless it was done so before I arrived. But considering the number of complaints, I don’t think transparency was the way of working for this committee.

Then there was an incident at the end of November where the now “acting” president of the security committee was attacked. The exact details are, to this day, unclear. All we know is that some unknown assailants attacked him, managed to get his weapon off of him, and then shot him with his own gun. Allegedly. We don’t know what happened for sure. Because none of us were there, and he’s not talking about it. He was in the hospital, and then I think at home convalescing.

We don’t know for sure how they got into the Colonia. Only that it was possible they lied to get in here, or they entered using the footpath, which wasn’t being monitored by the security guards at the gate. There was instead a push button that unlocked it that the guards had to activate, but notoriously left open because residents thought they were being “helpful” by leaving the gate ajar for others for convenience’s sake. What the fuck is the point of having the gate there? This I would get annoyed by, and if I were coming into the Colonia through that path, it would piss me off to find it ajar.

In any case, without warning, one day I was coming back from the mercado, and what do I see? But new construction on the front gate. Interesting. There was no announcement made, no signs. So I put the question to the one chat* I was a part of. And they let me know that there was a new system being installed that would require our fingerprints to get in and out that way.

*A quick aside about the chat. The ways of communicating in the Colonia and in Guatemala in general are not what I am used to. There is no centralized way of getting information to people. Things cost money. There is no central mail. So there is no neighborhood newsletter, there are no flyers – unless someone eats the cost of printing them out. So instead, in the Colonia, they use chats. And it is unknown how many WhatsApp chats there are. Or who administers them, or how to join them. So many people living here are disconnected from the information. I was one of those people, and that, too, pissed me off.

I was not pleased to hear that there would be yet one more thing that I was going to be late hearing about. Especially since the one person I knew really well in the Colonia was one of the disconnected residents. Once the announcement was made that fingerprints would be required for the front gate, there was a lot of hubbub. Not to be ageist, but boomers aren’t for newfangled technology. And oopsy – that is like 75% of the residents in this Colonia. Most mistrust the government (with good reason) and are afraid of being extorted (also reasonable), so having their personal data out there is already going to feel iffy for some.

Between the implementation and the day of the fingerprint enrollment, I managed to get myself into one of these “secret” chats. Which I later came to find out was administered by the security committee president. And he made a point to exclude anyone who wasn’t paying for the security. This is another point of contention with the residents. Because around the time that the automatic gates were installed, they also raised the monthly fee, which technically was supposed to be a donation for legal reasons.

I have come to find out that there are many technicalities when it comes to the handling of funds in Guatemala that they take pretty seriously.

Now, I had yet to meet this mysterious security committee president. I’d only had dealings with the person who did their accounting and one other committee member. I didn’t know much about how things were being run at the time. I also didn’t know who to ask, because the one person I did ask – who I would later find out was the previous council president – was unreliable. I couldn’t trust him to pee on himself if he were on fire.

But what I did hear were the complaints. I must have the kind of face that gives people the impression I give a shit. And for the most part, that is usually untrue. But regardless, I get regaled with information I don’t usually want or need, especially if I am with my neighbor, because as much as she claims not to like anyone in the neighborhood, she is very nosy and will ask all kinds of intrusive questions of anyone if she so pleases. Wonderful.

People were pissed off about the monthly fee, they were angry about the cost of the chips for vehicles (because they were charging the same amount for motorcycles), and then now this fingerprinting business, which was not well organized, so it was VERY unclear how one was supposed to get it done, or who to contact if there was an issue.

The whole process was mismanaged from day one. But since he got attacked, this committee man was not budging on anything. He was also acting weird. He showed up to one general assembly, and all he did was talk about how people needed to cough up funds. His other two lackeys just parroted what he said. Especially the one I mentioned previously, who resigned during the meeting the other night, who made it a special point to mention the few times I saw him at these assemblies, that he did not live here, and where he lived, they charged him a lot more for security for the condo where he lived. Well, so fucking what? Why are you here? That mess is a story for another post.

Back to this other guy. So the president was quickly losing any of the sympathy that his attack had rendered. People who had been silent before (or at least seemed to be silent) had concerns and complaints, and they were voicing them loudly. But it was for naught, because he wasn’t listening. He would throw tantrums in the chats, and he would threaten people. That if they didn’t pay their fees, they would have their access to the neighborhood they fucking lived in revoked. What the fuck? Who does he think he is?

To the point that the one chat he controlled specifically to disseminate information from the security committee, he eventually removed everyone’s ability to reply or comment. Only he could post since he was the only admin. And to join his chat, you had to be invited. The whole thing was not inclusive and high-handed. He clearly was butthurt with everyone’s reactions to these sudden changes.

The problem wasn’t so much the changes that were made. I am sure it was well-intended. The problem was that he was acting as though he were a one-man army being funded by those of us who were contributing the security fee. So no, even I was not pleased to be funding this one man’s personal vendetta against the neighborhood, the residents, and who knows who else. Because again, we don’t know exactly what has happened.

And now, many months later, no one is sympathetic about his incident, and some have voiced that perhaps he deserved it, or that it was personal, and not a random attack at all. Or maybe it didn’t even happen, and it has become the 9/11 to fund his Guatemalan Patriot Act against the Colonia. Either way, the people had had enough.

In April of this year, they had the elections for the security committee. For good reason, these people only hold their posts for 1 year. However, the previous council, in all its glorious incompetence, gave almost no prior warning of this assembly. Gave no heads up, no agenda, for what the meeting was about. So almost no one showed up. The ones of us who did show up, we were generally confused about what the meeting was about. Turns out, it was to elect the new security committee. And due to everyone’s confusion, and no one’s interest in suddenly getting involved in something they knew nothing about, the last council president just said, “We should just re-elect these guys.”

Unbelievable. And sure enough, due to a lack of overall participation, and I am finding out months later, stacking of the attendants with their friends and allies, the security committee was re-elected.

Once the rest of the Colonia found out what had transpired at the meeting they had opted not to attend, people were, no surprise, pissed off. So for the last month, it has been an uphill battle of wills between the people and the security committee president and his two lackeys.

A month later, when the new neighborhood council was voted in, it was shocking to discover the disarray we had been handed, and just how badly the last council had done of working together with the security committee. The last council president said: I know he is bad and hard to manage, but in the end, I felt it was easier not to argue with him.

What the hell? Really?

And the rest of the council was just as spineless. Not to mention, I had never seen 5 of the other people on the council, and there were 7 of them. I had no idea they were even involved. This was how out of touch, disconnected, and incompetent they were as a council.

The Colonia has been so deeply interested in change that once we were voted in, they were within moments signing a petition asking for the security committee to be brought to heel and that they be reminded of the proper way of doing things. Specifically, when it came to handling the security of the people, and not with this totalitarian attitude and exclusive behavior.

I have been watching and listening, since I joined this group, and have expected his irrational behavior. He is not unlike any other immature man I have had the misfortune to deal with. He can’t handle criticism, constructive or otherwise. Every comment is a personal affront. He is unable to view things objectively, and everything is very personal to him. He also behaves as if what he does is so specialized that we simple folk couldn’t possibly understand. What this son of a bitch doesn’t understand is that he has never met anyone like me. So sit back down, asshole.

The other night’s meeting was going as expected. After the (not unexpected) resignations of the first two security committee members at that night’s meeting, I was fully expecting to see his letter of resignation. But I should have known it wouldn’t have been that simple.

First, during the meeting, we asked him, as a council, if he would agree to sign a confidentiality agreement to assuage the people that their personal data — all the information he had collected for the fingerprint signup— was being handled securely. He refused. He whined that he shouldn’t have to sign anything, that they didn’t even understand what it was he did, and if they did understand, they’d know he didn’t have their fingerprints saved anywhere. OMG. What a child. He whined (seriously whined) that he shouldn’t have to explain himself after he worked so hard to get this program going. Go fuck yourself, you immature bastard.

Then, we were like, forming an association of neighbors is an urgent requirement. The city of Guatemala requires that this association be formed if there is going to be funds handled. And he’s like, but why? And then his lackeys pipe up with their fake news and misinformation because they have literally done NO RESEARCH despite the municipality making it known this was required over a year ago. OMG. And so round and round that went. And he wouldn’t listen to reason. Just parroted whatever nonsense the lackeys (mostly just the pompous asshole) said.

Lastly, we asked him if he was aware that the security committee was not an independent group and had to work with and through the Council. He was like, I don’t understand. How am I supposed to call a meeting if only the council can call a general assembly? We were like, it’s simple. You tell the council you need a meeting, then we call the meeting. It’s that simple. He was like, I can’t work that way. What in the hell?

At this point, his two lackeys piped up that they would be resigning. I didn’t know much about one of the guys; I was like, whatever. He seemed more interested in leaving early because god forbid he miss the soccer match about to start on TV. Good riddance.

The second guy I loathed, because his pompous ass was apparently butthurt by the petition. Good. Get the fuck out. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Idiot. I was tired of hearing from him and his overblown opinions on what the Colonia supposedly needs. He doesn’t even fucking live here. OMG, I can’t get over that. We need better regulations.

So I was like, is the last guy standing about to cave too? Because their financial guy was like, I want to resign too. But he didn’t have a letter on him. He wasn’t the concern, however. The president was.

And when he started going on about the database, and the systems, and this and that. I knew that he was definitely going to resign. He just needed to do it his way, and not the proper way. Because that’s his brand. It’s his way or the highway. And I’m like fuck that. I’ll walk.

So, to the lack of surprise of anyone who has a brain, he chose to submit his resignation via his security committee chat. After he sent some long-ass message where he attempted to blow smoke up people’s ass about how what he did was complicated, and we will never be able to deal with our security without him.

OMG. It is FC1 Snow all over again. I had the unfortunate experience of being stationed with this one individual at a command who acted like he was the only one capable of working the supply system. He told me one day, because again, somehow I am routinely underestimated, that it was his form of job security. They couldn’t ask him to do anything else because only he knew how to order supplies and hazmat. OMG, it wasn’t even that hard. I had to figure it out when he was on vacation one time, and I couldn’t wait. So joke’s on you, sucker. This guy is no different. Same song, different key.

It’s too soon to tell how the rest of the month will play out, or what the fallout will be. But I can already tell that some on the council are a little more spineless than the rest of us and intimidated by the idea of (god forbid) having to deal with people’s opinions.

Once again, my unique experience of having the worst parent and sibling in the world who did nothing but judge me for false reasons, being constantly underestimated and judged by the world for more false reasons, and having to deal with way too many toxic people who were all filled with their false opinions and only too happy to share them with me – has placed me in the special position of being able to handle this shit. Just another day in the circus.