The Neighborhood Council Files

Since I’ve taken over the secretarial duties for this neighborhood council, as I go back and read through the existing minutes, I have come to realize something that I don’t know if it is unique to Guatemala or a quirk of all Latin American countries. The language used when writing is overly flowery and performative. There are a lot of platitudes used, and frankly, it just gets on my nerves. I don’t think any of that has any purpose in official meeting minutes and wastes a lot of time and documents nothing.

That is actually one of the complaints that has come about since taking over the historical records and the new duties of the neighborhood council – that the previous council did almost nothing and spent a lot of their time just pretending to be involved. To the point that when they turned up to the election, I had never seen some of the people who were supposedly holding positions in the council at any of the previous general assemblies.

It is no wonder there is so much discord and mistrust among all the neighbors. We had a meeting today with the security committee, and it went as I expected. It was basically a shit show. I let the others talk, mostly because I was busy taking the minutes, which meant I was using my handy dandy translate app, and then trying to write neatly while partly paying attention to what was going on.

Something happened towards the end that I thought would have taken place at the beginning, and that was the resignation of two members of the security committee. One of them who resigned, I was actually glad to see them go. He was a pompous ass who had no business being involved, especially since he doesn’t even live here in the Colonia. His involvement, if you ask me, was a conflict of interest, seeing as how he could have an actual objective opinion about the Colonia and security in the Colonia, when he spent so much of his time looking down on everyone who lives here. It begs the question, why did he get involved in the first place? His rights as a property owner are dubious at best, and for someone who spent more time bragging about the fact that he lived elsewhere, it was time for him to go. We gladly accept your resignation, douchebag.

He, at one point, was trying to look me in the eye, thinking I was going to, what? Cower in fear because he was trying to intimidate me or make me feel bad about what had happened two weeks ago? Dude, you’ll have to get in line. You and every other idiot man I’ve had to deal with in my life have tried to intimidate me.

You, little man, are a pimple on the butt of society. I don’t have a poker face, and I am pretty sure all the contempt I felt for him was clear to see, to the point that eventually he gave up trying. I don’t give a fuck about him or his supposed concerns. Trying to act like I don’t have the right to question him. I wasn’t raised to defer to any man. And I was so tired before the meeting began that I really didn’t have any fucks to give.

I did predict, however, that they would tender their resignation. That was pretty much what I expected. I am pretty sure he was expecting us, had I not brought it up as a point during our council meeting yesterday, to beg him to stay. Ha! We needed him to go. Incompetence is what has gotten us into this pickle we are in. And I think the neighbors in general are just tired of the few trying to lord it over the many.

I am having an interesting time with all of this. It’s hard to believe this has just begun, but so far, it’s been a hell of a ride.