The Land of Milk and Money

Utopia is here!

Not the Utopia we read about in public school, where things went wrong and worlds crumbled. This is the Utopia promised to the idle rich where somebody else cheers for the chance to wipe your butt with silk toilet cloth.

“care for a spritz too, sir?”

That’s right, Utopia is here!

Well, not necessarily here, unless your “here” is 11 miles south of Guatemala City, Guatemala. But if you’re “here” is there, you’re in Utopia—or the city of Cayala, to be more precise.

Map not to scale. Texas is a little fuller in the butt.

What, still having trouble figuring out where to find Guatemala, my public school classmates? No worries, I’m with ya. I had to look it up too. If you start at the beer-hefting mitt of Michigan, you’ll travel south, past the belly bulge coast of California, and down through the pants of Mexico.  Once you reach the bulging inner calf, you’re in Guatemala. If you’re looking for the specific location of Cayala, look down from the festering wound to the mole shaped like a dollar sign. It’s there.

See, the thing that makes Cayala a Utopian paradise is all the greenery. At least the greenery you spend, because Cayala is not just exclusive, they’re elitist too. And they’ll expect you to be too, if you plan on entering their master planned community. A community of natural and material beauty only the rich can afford, and they don’t take American Express.

Well they might. They probably take anything that looks like big money, but why shouldn’t they? They’ve created Utopia. Cayala has no crime, no poor, and not even a police force to corrupt. If the “local” police want to get in, they need to get permission from the gate guard.

He may be corrupt, but it’ll probably take more than the local police make in a lifetime to buy him. He knows where the greener grass grows, and that’s inside Cayala. 

Cayala residents are the affluent who no longer wish to consort with life’s riff-raff, unless they’re getting their riches from the riff-raff, but even then, even a crime lord needs to step away and smell the roses. And in Cayala, the roses smell oh-so-sweet.

And how can Cayala residents be sure to not be bothered by beggars and street urchins?

“Please sir…”

Armed guards at the only city entrance are one deterrent.  Want another? The cheapest apartment costs over 70 times what most Guatemalans make in one year, so they won’t be Utopian squatters either. Most Guatemalans are very poor. 

They might not have recognized that without the Emerald city of pretention looming 11 miles away. Now they’re not just poor, they’re an attraction.

“Look kids, see the strife?”

But at least it’s a caste of local superiority: everybody hates a tourist. And that’s probably why you won’t visit Cayala. It’s only for locals only. Locals with money, which pretty much means tyrants, drug lords, and corrupt politicians.  Maybe the world would be a richer place if they locked the gates when the last house sold, and never let anybody out. Guatemala City residents could stop by and sell meat and produce for exorbitant prices, or just call Cayala an anthropological zoo, and charge visitors to look.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m as big of an elitist as the next guy, but there’s something wrong about rubbing my elite juices in people’s faces.  I think that’s why, in a few years, people will find that this is same type of Utopia they warned us about in school.

Sorry idle rich.