For me, Don Max is greater than the sum of his parts, more than the average character that you will find lurking in the open fields and hidden banana groves of a cheated country. With his sweat-scrunched NASCAR cap, oversized palooka nose, and generous Santa Claus paunch, Don Max makes an irresistible impression on everyone he meets, and has a particular fondness for the cadre of foreign volunteers who, in his words, “are here to help us and our children.” Don Max drives a battered but charming Land Cruiser that is caked with rust and smeared with pride. He carries a lock of the past administrator’s hair in his wallet, which he clings to as if it were a saintly relic. Don Max, like most Hondurans it seems, has multiple revenue generating activities: he directs a construction crew that builds houses for wannabe expat gringos, owns a modest finca that produces different types of bananas, coffee, cinnamon, and other crops, and helps run the family pulperia with his loyal wife Juana. Don Max claims to be a Honduran Republican because having a strong national defense is important to him, but then in the next breath, he will castigate Jorge Doble-Urse Bush for waging an illegal war to seize oil resources in Iraq. He likes to eat yucca with chicarron, bought at unassuming roadside puestos where a woman labors over a hot pot of food for ten hours a day, every day. Don Max fights with close relatives over petty issues hand brags about the number of icy cold Barrenas he can down in a single sitting. He will never forget the day at his sister’s finca when I drank some tamarind juice and my stomach suddenly decided to impersonate a roller coaster. Don Max is the essence of unconditional generosity (at least towards the gringo volunteer team in Cofradia) and wants to buy the volunteers a washing machine because doing laundry by hand is algo pesado, in his earnest words. In sum, Don Max just might be the best friend we could have in a strange new land where few things work like we have been spoiled enough to expect in our own native United States.
