( The author is a junior in Jordan K. This is the second part of a three-part feature. )

Notes from My Journal

Sunday, July 25: My hotel is directly opposite the National Police Center. How handy, I won't have far to move my luggage. It is night, and raining ferociously. As I walk outside, one of the guards sees me, laughs out loud and waves. I wave back, grinning not so broadly. The Center is a huge dark building four stories high and as big as a city block.... I ask a newsboy who sells me a paper with a guerrilla story on the cover-"Who are these guerrillas?" He says that they are "Bandits that kill people."

July 27: I have moved to another hotel, which is also cheaper.... But when I got back yesterday there was a young mustachioed and shiny-booted policeman, sunglasses and apparently sleeping, waiting in the lobby. I was terrified that my room would be searched and my books found, so I hid them in a hole in the wall and composed a dramatic letter to my friends in Boston telling them not to worry, but if they didn't get another letter in a week, call the American Embassy. I still don't know anyone here. As it turns out, he just sleeps there every afternoon....

There are so many police and soldiers. Every other street corner, literally. The worst are the Special Forces trained Rangers, with their bush hats and their spanking silver grease guns. I've only seen American soldiers twice-at the American Embassy and once whipping around the corner in a jeep.

I have also seen some of the cultural benefits of the American presence. There is a $2 a hamburger "EL TEJANO" (The Texan), for example. It is frequented by bell-bottomed American students-the children of business and government people. They are very surprised when I take a picture of them. These girls seem to be from the South.

A Conversation Overheard. Girl: "I just hate it here; I can't wait to get back. Really, I was so disappointed in this place."

Boy: "Well, have you been to Antigua?"

Girl: "Yes, we went to all those places."

The rest of the crowd is Guatemalan students, and some local businessmen, who are quite openly checking out the girls.

Contradictions: In one display window there is a huge pop poster of a long-haired North American Indian looking fierce and brandishing a rifle. Every so often, a passing Indian in the street stops and looks in complete astonishment. In the other window there is a display of some pistols and a plaque commemorating Texan "independence," which Mexicans have another word for. Here the dictates of youth culture and imperial culture collide, but these youngsters don't seem to be bothered. There is also an opulent bedroom display in a store window, in which one of the white mannequins sports a peace-sign belt. There are two or three slot machine parlors. The sign above the machines reads "These machines take American money only."

Aug? White Racism: Galleano (in Guatemala: Occupied Country ) says that most of the guerrillas are Indian. I'd like to think so but it's probably not true. Alfonso Bauer Paiz says 30 per cent. About 60 per cent of the population is Indian, and almost all the peasants are Indian. I am sorry to find that most Guatemalan students (who are all white) are quite racist-even some of the big anti-imperialists. Even though two of the three guerrilla leaders were Indians (the late Yon Sosa and Turicos).

The students still say-"The Indian will never fight, only work." "The Indian is basically happy because he knows nothing better." "Races bred in cold places are more volatile than those bred in low hot places. Coupled with chronic malnutrition, this produces in the Indian an almost complete acceptance and passivity." This deep racism is almost totally unconscious, probably because the whites are somewhat schizophrenic about it, telling you of their Indian blood and erecting statues to legendary Mayan heroes. If the guerrillas have not totally eradicated this racism, it will make forming a rural base almost impossible.

July 30: I have been far too paranoid, it's very easy to move about here. Still, it is almost impossible to start up a conversation about politics with anyone outside the university, and hard enough there. Yet you still find a few.... Best of all was the old lady who runs a little bookstore. The best thing in her politics and history section was about an Indian revolt in 1847. I asked if there was not something "more recent." She caught my meaning. "All the current stuff that isn't pure propaganda is illegal. If I had it here, the police would come and arrest me, maybe even kill me! The Committee for the Defense of the Revolution! " She almost spat. "But if you are in Mexico you can get good books-Bauer Paiz and Galleano." "That is one of the most combatitive books!" she said stridently. I bought seven dollars worth of books there, mostly poetry.

Aug. 10: City Poor, the slums of La Limonada