Law and Order Segment

We were sitting around talking over lunch today at clinic, and Gaspar, our health promoter told us of some trouble brewing in his town.

Background info:

The town of Xepocol gets its water source from a spring in the town of Tzanixnam in the Department of Totonicopan about 22 Km away.

We live in a rural area, so country taxi's (old Toyota pickups driven by teenagers/young adults) service the surrounding towns, bringing people to market in Chichi. They have special parking sections in market according to the town they service (eg., Xepocol or Tzanixnam or Paxot II), and no one is supposed to park there but the taxis.

Here's the scoop:

Supposedly, a few days ago, the taxi drivers from Xepocol arrived at their parking spot in Chichi to find a truck parked there already. They got mad and jimmied the door, started the truck and pulled it into a nearby parking lot so they could fit their trucks in. The owner came back and couldn't find his (new) truck for quite sometime. Finally after some investigation he found it, and found out who moved it. This man lives in Tzanixnam and owns the land where the tubing for the Xepocol water project passes. He was so mad that yesterday he cut the tubing and demanded that the town of Xepocol pay him Q45, 000 (roughly $5500) in damages and stated that they would not be allowed onto his land to fix it for 6 months as punishment for the deed.

The town elders went to talk with him and didn't get anywhere other than if they didn't pay the fine by the end of today, he would double it. Well, the town of Xepocol rounded up the 4 taxi drivers and meted out corporal punishment consisting of kneeling on gravel with 100-pound grain sacks on their backs for one hour, followed by a sound flogging, and they are responsible for paying the fine themselves. Everyone is hot under the collar today trying to figure out how they are going to get water to their homes for the next 6 months. One man in town has a spring on his property and is not going to charge for the water, but it is down in a ravine and will probably need a 5 HP pump to get it up to town.
I'm sure this story will only get worse. We'll keep you informed. Can you imagine how mad all the women are in Xepocol?