A little more than fifteen years ago I went to the Feast of Tabernacles in the small border town of Esquipulas, Guatemala with my mother and stepfather and some friends from my local congregation. Having never been to Latin America before, we were amused by the driving patterns of the bus drivers, concerned by the sullen looking gun-toting military people along the way (more on that later), and pleased by the general friendliness of the people.

However, there was a bit of a surprise when we arrived in the town of Esquipulas. About halfway through our trip there we needed to exchange some American Express travelers checks, and knowing there were some banks in town we did not think this would be much of an adventure. We were wrong. I wrote up the following story and sent it to Visa’s webpage when they were looking for ideas for their “It’s Everywhere You Want To Be” series of commercials, but they didn’t choose to film it. Pity. The story goes something like this:

[My stepfather, mother and I walk into a nearly empty bank where there are no customers. I’m the one speaking because I’m the only one who can speak good enough Spanish, even though I was 15 at the time.]

Me: Tomas American Express? [Do you take American Express?]

Teller: No Tomamos American Express! [We don’t take American Express!]

Me: Qual banco toma American Express? [Which bank takes American Express?]

[Teller points at a bank down the street]

Teller: Ese banco toma American Express. [That bank takes American Express.]

[We walk down the street and get to the second bank, which likewise is not crowded with customers at all.]

Me: Tomas American Express? [Do you take American Express?]

Teller: No tomamos American Express! [We don’t take American Express!]

Me: Qual banco toma American Express? [Which bank takes American Express?]

[The teller points at a street next to the Cathedral of the Black Christ.]

Teller: Ese banco toma American Express. [That bank takes American Express.]

[We walk down the street next to the Cathedral of the Black Christ, go down the stairs into a subterranean bank while an extremely well armed solder paces back and forth in front of the bank, which is called the Banco Ejercito, or Military Bank.]

Me: [somewhat hesitantly]: Tomas American Express? [Do you take American Express?]

Teller: [with a wide crocadile grin]: Si, tomamos American Express [Yes, we take American Express.]

[M16-toting soldier continues pacing outside.]

As it happened wandering around Esquipulas proved to be noteworthy in a variety of ways. I accidentally crossed the border into Honduras while completely lost and aimlessly wandering for hours, and one evening while wandering around my mother and I saw a rusty well in a bad part of town where a truck from our hotel was filling up our bottles of “bottled” water. We promptly stopped drinking said bottled water. About a month or so after the trip, while watching the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour on PBS, my family saw a brief comment from one of the newscasters that a ceasefire had been declared in the Guatemalan Civil War (that I found out later had been going on for 30 years, and which explained the gunfire in the hills along the border near where we were staying).

It can be deeply dangerous to be ignorant. When I went to Guatemala in 1996 as a fifteen year old, I was ignorant of many things about the part of Guatemala that we went to, including the way that hotels filled up their water with fairly nasty tap water while claiming it to be bottled, the civil war that had been going on in the country for twice as long as I had been alive, or the fact that it was nearly impossible to exchange American Express travelers checks because they preferred Visa. As it happened, the civil war explained both the well-armed nature of the soldier walking in front of the military bank as well as the fact that the military bank accepted American Express, presumably because the Guatemalan military received a great deal of military aid to oppress their own people.

Ignorance can be deeply dangerous, but knowledge can be deeply dangerous as well sometimes. How much knowledge would have made it so that we never went to Guatemala? I don’t know that it would have deterred our journey, given that my family and I are pretty adventuresome travelers who don’t mind taking serious risks to visit new places. But knowing too much about the situation in Guatemala would have been dangerous, given that I come from a line of stern and just people who are very leery about military dictatorships and also fairly bluntspoken about our beliefs, including political ones. Such honesty is very dangerous in many parts of the world where the habit of freedom of speech that Americans can take for granted becomes highly dangerous.

So, where is the threshold of knowledge that is safe, and how does one remain true to one’s self while recognizing that one’s personality and inclinations and political beliefs can be highly dangerous in other countries even if they are officially allies of the United States, simply because we may disagree vehemently with military oppression of common people, may wish to respect the election even of unfriendly local governments in other countries (even if we don’t agree with their politics, simply because we respect the rights of others to govern themselves as we govern ourselves), and because we make these beliefs a little too plain in our speech and in our behavior.

It is hard to say for sure. To know nothing is to be a clueless tourist, which I find deeply uncomfortable, because one lacks the situational awareness to recognize that one is in danger. If one deliberately takes risks, at least one can steel himself against the potential risks, knowing that if he gets a bullet in the back of his head or gets a stern telling-off from a policeman or soldier or finds himself in jail or thrown out of a country, at least he was warned. To not know and then be thrown into situations of peril is deeply unnevering. I’m fairly courageous and bold but I like to know what I’m getting into; I don’t like to be surprised.

It’s not coincidental that I changed the way I researched the countries I was visiting after my 1996 trip to Guatemala. Never again have I gone to a country without knowing something about its political situation. Nonetheless, I have found that this knowledge is not necessarily sufficient to make one feel safer. That’s in large part because it’s hard to know just how safe it is to speak freely. Even though I am not a rebellious or seditious person by nature, at the same time I am a highly critical person, especially of corrupt elites wherever I may find them (and I find them pretty much everywhere except in the mirror), and that can be highly dangerous. I’m not sure if someone like myself can ever be safe except in a just and free land, and there are few lands in this world that are just and fair and free. That just means one has to live with a lot of risks, and hope to be delivered from our own folly and the wickedness of others in a world that is not worthy of us.