The Calmo Brothers

This is not a story I can easily tell...I don't know where to start, but I will say this: the Calmo brothers are bad, bad people. I know, I know: in a Buddhist/Hindu/Eastern religion sense, none of us are bad people. But the Calmo brothers, well, they've got nothing to do with the Buddha.

I should have known better than to confront Margarito, the younger Calmo brother, in the street that day, but I couldn't help myself...and I wanted him to know. He should know that we all know. So when he stopped me in the street to try and get me to study at his spanish school in Todos Santos I thought for a second and then went for it,

"Tourists I've talked to tell me your school isn't a cooperative like you say it is. They tell me you and your brother Jose are the owners, and take all the money for yourselves, and that's how you had enough money to build your own hotel. They tell me you claim to support development projects in town, but that, in reality, you don't give any money."

...and what did I expect him to say: "Yes, what you have heard is true. Oh god, please forgive me!" No, Margarito just denied everything, and then countered for 10 minutes telling me the teachers at my school are racists. I'd only been in town for a few weeks at that point, and hadn't thought I'd spend more than a few months here tops.

I tell you what: I´m more careful now: I smile and nod like locals do when they talk to the Calmos because I´m afraid.

My first experience of the long, bumpy road to Todos Santos was back in March. I got on the bus, sat down, and as our bus left the terminal, started a conversation with an Australian named Mark who was sitting in front of me. I mentioned I was thinking about studying spanish in Todos Santos. Turned out Mark was an ex-coordinator of Margarito and Jose Calmo´s Spanish school, Proyecto Linguistico.

"If you want to study spanish in Todos Santos, go to one of the two other schools, Hispanomaya or Nuevo Amanecer, but don´t study at Proyecto," Mark warned me. He´d worked there for three weeks: that was all it took for him to figure out what was going on. Over the next two and half hours of the ride to Todos Santos, Mark told me everything he knew about Proyecto: the corruption, the non-existent social projects, the mistreatment of their female teachers and about Julie.

A few years back, Julie came to study spanish at Proyecto from the U.S. and ended up falling in love with Todos Santos, the mountains, and the poor family she lived with during her stay. After three weeks in town, Julie left money with the Calmo Brothers to pay for the school of one of her host-sisters and said goodbye.

Back in the U.S., Julie started getting letters from her host-sister, telling her how she was and thanking her for the money that was allowing her to go to school. After a year of being away, Julie came back to Todos Santos. But when she arrived, her host-sister told her she´d dropped out of school. When Julie asked what she was doing with the money she´d left, the girl asked, "What money?". Nor had she written any letters. Coincidentally, the Calmo´s were out of town that week.

Listen folks: that´s not even the worst of it. I´ve heard rumors that some families in town are so desperate for money they give into Jose and Margarito´s demands. In order to be a host-family, and in order to get the additional income that being a host-family entails, a woman from the family has to sleep with one of the Calmos. I´m not saying this is true. I´m just saying this is the kind of rumor I hear about the brothers all the time. No one in town has anything good to say about them. And neither do I.

Margarito´s hotel is right across the street from Hispanomaya, the school I work at. Every coupla days, tourists come in asking for information on hikes, what there is to do in town and where to stay. If they ask, I used to tell them there are two hotels in town I recommend. If they ask why I don´t recommend the one across the street, I would tell them the owners are corrupt and have a bad reputation with locals. But I´m more careful now.

A few months ago Margarito came to my door proposing that "We all work together and get along." I had no idea what he was talking about until he mentioned that a tourist, after deciding he didn´t like the other hotels in town, had checked in at Margarito´s place. Margarito and the tourist started talking and the tourist related what I´d said about his hotel. I´ve never lived in a small town before and had no idea how qucickly things get around. I had no idea that just by talking shit about the Calmo Brothers I was potentially placing myself in danger. But I didn´t know about the danger thing until I went to Xela.

Late in April I took a six day trip to Xela, Guatemala´s second largest city, to have some shirts made for Hispanomaya. Before I left, one of Hispanomaya´s teachers asked me to look into setting up a working business relationship with the Proyecto Linguistico in Xela. (This might be a little confusing so I´ll explain. See, 13 years ago the Projecto in Todos Santos was started as a satellite of the Proyecto Linguistico in Xela. After a three year relationship, the Proyecto in Xela found out what was going on at their satellite and cut all relations.)

So there I was, at the Xela Proyecto, talking to Carlos, the school´s director. When I mentioned the possibility of working out a business relationship between our two schools, Carlos looked down at the ground for a few seconds, then stared me in the eye and told me what I never expected to hear: "Ten years ago, when we broke relations with the Calmo´s school, Margarito told us that if we formed a relationship with any other school in Todos Santos 'sangre va a correr'." Blood will run.

Look, I wish this story had a happy ending and I guess in way it does. As part of the efforts of myself, the coordinator of the other spanish school in town, and a universal force known as Karma, Proyecto Linguistico in Todos Santos hasn´t had a student for six months. That said, the Calmos aren´t doing too bad. Margarito´s hotel, the one across the street, is doing well, and construction will be finished on Jose´s hotel ina few months, right next door to his brothers.