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in a faraway heaven. His prayers were to the God and the spirits that were around him in everything he touched and did, at every moment of each day.
    When his prayers of thanks were finished, Papí swung his incense bucket for a long time in silence,and then he prayed and asked God for things that perhaps no god could grant.
    Dear God,
I ask for peace.
I call to the highest mountain,
And to the smallest mountain.
I call to the owner of the rivers,
And to the owner of the heavens,
Grant us peace.
I pray to all of the volcanoes,
Please bless us with peace.
All of my life,
I have come to these caves
To offer my thanks.
But I know you are everywhere,
In Cobán,
At Lake Izabal,
And in all the rivers of our ancestors.
Always I have thanked you,
For the rain and the sun,
For health and for family.
In days past,
I have asked for good fortune.
And always you have heard me.
Now forgive me,
When I ask also for peace.
Without peace,
All else means nothing.
All that we are blessed with
Is lost.
Please grant us peace.
    Papí stood, tears bleeding from his eyes. He held his hands upward with his palms lifted to the sky, and with short halting breaths, he prayed.
    To the God and to the Spirits
That make all that is.
To the One who gives,
And also removes.
Please take the sickness
From my wife.
She is weak.
Also I pray,
For my son, Jorge.
Please return him to his family.
His mistakes were the foolish
Mistakes of youth.
Please do not punish him so
Greatly for this.
    Small rivers of tears flowed down Papí’s cheeks, as I, too, wept that day, wiping away large tears with my huipil.
    It was dark when we arrived back at the cantón, but even in the dark, I could see Mamí sweating from fever. “Do you want me to stay home from school tomorrow?” I asked her.
    She shook her head. “Go and change the world, Gabi.”
    The weeks following our visit to the caves were difficult. The cantón remained busy because our hunger and our need to survive would not wait for war. Still we needed the rain and the sun. Still we needed to plantour crops, collect firewood, grind corn for tortillas, and care for the animals. Each day I attended school, and each afternoon Manuel and I walked farther into the countryside seeking information about Jorge. Papí also searched, but each passing day seemed to hammer another nail into the coffin we denied existed. We began to fear the worst.
    I tried to ignore the coming and going of the soldiers and guerrillas, and the sounds of distant gunfire that drifted with the wind, but each week the soldiers’ harassment worsened.
    On a day in December when dark skies brought heavy rain, a column of nearly twenty soldiers marched into our cantón. They caught everyone by surprise, spreading through the cantón, pushing open doors with their rifles. The one who pushed open our door shouted, “Show us the titles that prove you own this land.”
    Papí pleaded with the young soldier. “We don’t have the paper titles that you ask for,” he said. “We’re visitors like our ancestors, visitors using this land for one short lifetime. This land belongs to no one. Itcame to us from our ancestors without any title and it must be passed on to our children without this paper title you ask for.”
    “You’re violating the law. You have thirty days to move from this property or you’ll be forced off,” the soldier threatened.
    “Don’t you see?” Papí pleaded. “Already the Latinos have driven our ancestors from the fertile valleys to these mountainsides. We have no place else to go.”
    “That’s your problem,” said the Latino soldier. “Thirty days, no more.”
    After the soldiers left, everybody in the cantón gathered in turmoil and disagreement. “We must leave,” some insisted.
    “To go where?” asked Señora Alvarez. “If we move to the middle of the forests, soon the Latinos will come there and say we must move again.”
    “I agree,” said Papí. “Because the Latinos suddenly decide we need some piece of