Thoughts on Guatemala

I had thought that as soon as we got home I would write up a summary of my thoughts on Guatemala. But then, as often happens, life interfered with my plans.

We were home for a few days, spent a little time with a few of our friends in Costa Rica, and then took off for Florida, where one of our favorite people, Gene’s Uncle Nello, was having spinal surgery. As it turned out, he didn’t need us. A young 93 years old, he was up and about the day after surgery, planning the projects he’s going to do around the house with the new power tools he bought before the surgery. Anyhow, it was a good excuse to visit with him and the Fabulous Aunt Kay – not that we need one! They are our favorite people. By the time we got home again and started settling in, I had lost my momentum. So now I’m trying to remember everything that I desperately wanted to say about Guatemala at the end of our trip.Where to begin? We both fell in love with so many things about Guatemala! We plan to go back again next year for Semana Santa. We hope to visit many of our new friends again. People, and making new friends, are after all the best part of traveling and discovering new places. See my separate write up about people below.The country is indescribably beautiful. From the majesty of beautiful Lake Atitlan surrounded by volcanoes to the architectural wonders of the old colonial capital of Antigua, we seemed always to be in the midst of fabulous things to see. During our first days there, I decided that I want to live in Antigua. By the time we left, I was saying that perhaps I would like to live at Lake Atitlan. But alongside that beauty is grinding poverty. Little children selling trinkets in the street at night and asking for the leftovers off your plate in the restaurants. Barefoot old ladies selling rice drinks in the park. Poverty that can make you feel damned guilty for eating more than tortillas and beans. The injustice of it all is always there. Always in your face.I've never lived anywhere with such obvious police presence. The first thing we saw the night we arrived in the country was a large group of very military looking police at the airport. I don't know what they were looking for, but they certainly made an impression. Everywhere we went, there were police. There were the army guys in olive green, the national civil police dressed in black, security guys dressed in various uniforms, and then there were the tourist police, dressed in grey, who, I was told, were supposed to make me feel safe as a tourist in their country. I used to joke about trying to figure out which ones were dangerous, and wanting to take photos of every type of police, there was nothing funny about it. It is well known that the army was responsible for most of the 200,000 deaths during and after the recent 40 year war. These guys strike terror in the hearts of most people who lived through it.In a country where over half of the children suffer from chronic malnutrition, they have some fabulous highways, and even the roads in the towns are generally very good, way better than any roads we've seen in comparatively wealthy Costa Rica. I was told that in a country where tourism is the number 2 source of income (remittances from residents in the US are number 1), good roads must be a priority. OK, I understand the concept, but it's still hard to see how the money can exist for those beautiful new roads while children are starving.The existence of over 20 languages in one small country is part of the fascination of the country. The varying cultures from village to village are quickly obvious and are a huge part of the mystique for the visitor. One soon learns that there is no such thing as a "Mayan culture." The culture changes, not just from language to language but from village to village. 35% of the population speak no Spanish. How then can the poorest of the people, illiterate and unable to communicate with each other or with the government, fight for basic human rights? My teacher tells me that culture is on a village and family level and that it is unlikely that the indigenous people will ever be able to work together because of this.There are vast numbers of volunteers from many different countries. There are projects to provide clean water to remote villages where the only source of water is unsafe. A major source of illness, if not the major source, is contaminated water. There are groups helping to build "safe stoves" thus lengthening women's lives by reducing the amount of fumes they breath on a daily basis. There is a great group helping to provide family planning services and cervical cancer screening to women. There is an incredible group of people in Guatemala City providing schooling and other services for the children of the people who live and work in the massive city dump. It seems like for every need, there are groups of people trying to help. But the need is so great that no matter how much is done, the problems still seem to be insurmountable.So yes, we will go back. We love the country and the people. But the awesome beauty of the country and the graciousness of the people only make the overwhelming problems of this country even more obvious.Following are a few last articles on Guatemala. For those of you who can’t read Spanish, I apologize. I promised my teachers that all of my writing would not be in English. For those of you who can read Spanish, I apologize for my limited Spanish writing skills and beg your forgiveness for my mistakes. Some of the articles were things that I wrote for my classes and thus have been looked over by my teachers, resulting in, I hope, better grammar. I’ve also included below a list of books that I believe are worth reading. There are many more. I’ll never get through all of them. The statistics section is from notes I had made along the way from various sources. The statistics are startling. The reality of everyday life up close is much more so.