Topic 1: Introduction: : The Beauty That Hurts September 8

Topic 1: Introduction: The Beauty That Hurts

1.The Beauty of Guatemala • Geography • People

2.The "Hurts" of Guatemala • The colonial legacy: servitude and slavery o Indigenas o Ladinos o Colonialist • The “Finca” legacy: Life in a “Banana Republic” • A Brief reign of democracy and social justice: The Arbenz Regime • A long reign of terror and injustice: The 30 year civil war • The continued reign of poverty: second poorest country in Latin America

3. The Emergent "Help" for Guatemala • The Peace Accords • Favored Nation among Liberals and Human Rights Advocates: o Rigoberta Menchu biography and Nobel Peace prize, 1982 o NGO’s flock to Guatemala § Examples: Doctor’s without Borders, Habitat for Humanity, Heifer Foundation, • 4. The "International Service Learning" Program in Guatemala • How ISL “helps” to revive this beautiful country • The ISL program: beyond tourism, becoming an informed world citizen. o Cultural immersion in a developing country § Live with families § Do volunteer work § Learn problems of poverty first hand • Student work in Guatemala: building a house, working with children, building stoves, running a medical clinics. • Agencies that work with ISL: § ConstruCasa: Housing § Pop Wuj: Social Work and Medical Clinic § La Montana: Ex-Finca Community

References and Readings for Further Investigation

1. ISL NGO affiliates: • ConstruCasa, Antigua www.construcasa.org • Pop-Wuj, Spanish Language School and Social Action, Xela [Quetzltenango] www.pop- wuj.org • La Montana: Language School:PLQE. www.hermandad.com/mschool.html 2. An excellent Guide Book, with good historical commentary. • Argueta. Guatemala: Moon Handbooks. History: 362-388 LECTURE TOPIC 1: INTRODUCTION; GUATEMALA: THE BEAUTY THAT HURTS

1. Introduction

Guatemala is a beautiful country: its land, its people, its heritage as an ancient civilization. It is also a country that hurts because of the pain. There is suffering that exists beneath this deceptive façade of beauty . It hurts from wounds of the conquistadors, from the demise of its ancient civilization. from centuries of colonialism, from decades of corrupt and oppressive dictatorships.

Most recently Guatemala suffered the loss of a brief rise of a humane democracy in the 1940’s and 1950’s. In the 1960’s this democracy was snuffed out by a 30 year civil war.

It wasn’t until 1996 that Peace came to Guatemala, a peace mediated by the united nations and concerned nations of the world.

This peace has seen the arrival of hundreds if not thousands of volunteer aid organizations providing essential help in an effort to revive this beautiful country…………attending to everything from housing to health to human rights. Amidst this new influx there is much hope. This is the essence of what this course is about: the beauty, the hurts, the help and the hope.

GUATEMALA FACTS:

Guatemala (pronounced /ˌɡwɑːtəˈmɑːlə/ ( listen); Spanish: República de Guatemala, Spanish pronunciation: [reˈpuβlika ðe ɣwateˈmala]) is

Is a country in bordered by to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, to the northeast, the to the east, and and to the southeast.

Its area is 108,890 km² (42,043 mi²) with an estimated population of 13,276,517. (Nebraska: 77,000 sq. miles)

According to the CIA World Factbook, Guatemala's GDP (PPP) per capita is US$5,000; however, this developing country still faces many social problems and is among the 10 poorest countries in Latin America.[36] The distribution of income remains highly unequal with more than half of the population below the national poverty line[37] and just over 400,000 (3.2%) unemployed. The CIA World Fact Book considers 56.2% of the population of Guatemala to be living in poverty.[38] Ref: Wikipedia: Guatemala

Guatemala

Xela\ \\\ Antigua

1.The Beauty of Guatemala: Photographic Essay [file: GuatemalaBeauty.ppt]

2. The "Hurts" of Guatemala

The story of the hurts of Guatemala begins with the invasion by the Spanish “conquistadors” in the early 1500’s. Hernán Cortés, who had led the Spanish conquest of Mexico, granted a permit to Captains Gonzalo de Alvarado and his brother, Pedro de Alvarado, to conquer this land in 1521.

The people’s conquered were the Mayans. This conquest marked the end of the Mayan civilization and its culture. To the Mayans, firearms and metal swords were signs of a superior culture and a superior Deity. The Mayans were psychologically overwhelmed. They not only gave into the Spaniards, they lost faith in their own culture. They became submissive and compliant. This passivity and subservience has persisted for centuries through today.

Three groups emerged from the Spanish colonization: the colonialists, the “ladinos” and the “indigenas,” Mayans. Interbreeding between Mayan and Colonialist, created a group known as “ladinos” a Spanish speaking mestizo minority. Ladinos functioned for decades as the intermediaries between colonists and Mayan, doing the colonialists bidding. Because of the deceptions fomented upon the indigenas, tensions still run high between Ladinos and Mayan to this day.

“Ladinos” and the Spanish were distained by “indigenas”, the Mayan. The Mayans did not adopt Spanish, speaking their native dialects instead, well into the twentieth century. There are 22 Mayan dialects. It is only recently that younger Mayans have begun to learn and speak “Spanish”. Mayans constitute 60% of the Guatemalan population.

The primary benefit of the Mayans to the colonialists was as a source of cheap labor. Landowners and the catholic church were given the right to force Mayans to cultivate their fields and dig their mines as near slaves. By the late nineteenth century with the rise of coffee plantations, whole communities of Mayans were settled on the estates as laborers. They owned no land and could be ordered on or off the Finca, as plantations are known locally, at the whim of the “padron”. This unequal relationship between land, landowner, and landless indigenas still exists.

The circumstances of the Mayan majority of Guatemala are that they have been kept impoverished throughout Guatemala’s history. Lack of land, food, and citizenship standing has made for a “hurtful” life. Guatemala is the second poorest country of Latin America, just ahead of Haiti.

A glimmer of hope occurred in the 1940’s and 1950’s with the emergence of a humanitarian and democratic government. This brief reform peaked in 1954 with the election of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. Arbenz proposed a Land Reform program requiring Finca owners to grant property ownership to all indiginas families living on their land. This effort was met with great resistance not only by the landowners but by the U.S. government.

This occurred during the emergence of the cold war where fear existed among the capitalist nations, including the U.S., that a communist conspiracy was seeking to subvert nations around the world to a new sphere of influence. Arbenz’s actions were perceived not only as socialist but as part of the growing “communist menace”. The United Fruit Company, exporters of millions of tons of bananas and other fruits, had deep roots in the U.S. business sector and in the U.S. government. With the aid of the Central Intelligence Agency. a coup was staged to oust Arbenz and to facilitate a return to military dictatorship.

However, encouraged by these recent developments and by the success of Fidel Castro and Che Cuevara in Cuba a civil war broke out that lasted for 30 years, 1960 – 1996.

The U.S. was a major participant behind the scenes supporting the military. The brutality and genocide was as foul as any that we have heard of recently in Africa. These events “hurt” Guatemala, yet again. Hundreds of thousands of people had their lives and livelihood taken from them. The brutality and impunity with which the government metted out its vengeance prompted the attention of nations from around the world. The UN was brought in to lead peace negotiations which finally brought an end to the war in 1996….thirty years of violence and disruption.

With peace restored an outpouring of aid surged into the country, NGO’s sprang up in every corner of Guatemala doing badly needed work to restore the country and to address the still persistent problems of poverty and human rights.

Hurt Hidden by Outward Beauty

The “beauty” of Guatemala hides its underlying poverty and hurt. To the passing tourist it is easy to assume the population is healthy and happy. Were it not for the civil war, this country could have easily been passed over for decades before world charity agencies payed it serious attention. Here is a recent article about the “hidden” hunger of Guatemala:

Guatemala's green hunger Article By: Deborah Bonello Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:44

They call it the "green hunger." Here in the mountains of central Guatemala, one of the world's top exporters of sugar and bananas, vegetation is everywhere and yet the people are starving.

Guatemala, which has a population of 14 million, has the highest rate of child malnutrition in Latin America. Half of all children under five are malnourished.

In rural areas such as Jalapa, about 100 kilometres or a three-hour drive from , where many families scrape by on less than a dollar a day, that figure can rise shockingly to as high as 90 percent.

Luis Alexander is nine months old and suffers from acute malnutrition. He appears weak and tiny in his mother's arms in front of their mudbrick house.

Ronald Estuardo Navas, a hunger monitor at the international non-profit Action Against Hunger, measures Luis's arm with a tape that evaluates the nutritional health of a child via the size of the upper arm.

"He has a perimetre of 9.9 centimetres — there's a high risk he could die," he said.

His mother, Herlinda Rodriguez, who has two other children to care for, is also undernourished. "He's underweight because I don't have enough breast milk to give him. That's why he's so thin," she said.

Looking around the green and mountainous land surrounding the Rodriguez family's humble home, it's hard to understand why they are slowly starving.

Guatemala is the world's fifth largest exporter of sugar, coffee and bananas, and when subsistence crops fail thousands of families simply cannot afford to buy enough food.

Many families have had to resort to buying their basic staples of corn and beans and rice from local markets because their modest subsistence crops have been seriously reduced by droughts and floods over the last few years — the creeping effect of change across this region.

But the purchasing power of the little money these communities have has been battered by both international food price fluctuations and local prices, which have been pumped up by domestic scarcity. Three quarters of the food produced here is exported to the international market.

Farmer blames 'political will'

Willem van Milink Paz, World Food Program Representative Guatemala, says: "What we are seeing in Guatemala is that the price, the local price of food, is even higher proportionally than what we've seen at international levels."

That has hit families hard.

Benjamin Lopez Ramirez, a subsistence farmer in Jalapa, says: "The truth is that there is no work here, or the chance to have a salary, the fact that (maize) is so expensive makes it very difficult for us."

More than 6500 people died from hunger related issues last year, 2175 of whom were under five years, according to Luis Enrique Monterroso, who oversees the right to food at the Guatemala Human Rights Office.

Although there are schemes and money to help, he says, there's a lack of political will.

"The state doesn't exist for the most vulnerable families in this country."

Malnutrition doesn't stunt just physical, but also mental, development in children, which does not bode well for Guatemala's future economic development.

Guatemala's income from taxes is one of the lowest in the region at just 10 percent, and although the private sector could play a bigger role in reducing the levels of malnutrition and poverty in the country, the key factor is state involvement.

Van Milink Paz said: "To be clear and honest about this, there is not going to be a real solution to the problem if the government of Guatemala doesn't take a major part in the solution.

"The problem is too big for anybody — you know private companies or even a UN agency like the World Food Program or other NGOs working in this area to solve. We are only really nibbling at this problem and not really solving it."

There have long been programs purportedly aimed at targeting child hunger.

The latest, overseen by outgoing President Alvaro Colom, is called "My Family Progresses," and is a conditional cash transfer scheme that gives poor mothers a stipend provided their children go to school and get regular health checkups.

But the program has been mired in criticism, and accused of a lack of transparency. Monterroso says this scheme and others like it are more directed at winning political popularity than producing real social change.

Billy Estrada, sub secretary of food security for the Guatemala government, said the problem is not a lack of schemes, but a lack of consistency.

"What I think is lacking, and will be lacking, in this government and those that will be, are continuous policies that can extend their mandate.

"It wouldn't matter if the political parties alternated if there was a continuation of activities started by one government and worth the effort continuing."

Unless the state can find the political will to implement schemes effectively to tackle the structural causes of malnutrition, children like Luis Alexander will continue to suffer.

3. The Emergent "Help"

But because there was a Civil War, Guatemala did get badly needed attention from the world, especially among liberals and human rights advocates. A poster “child” for this movement was Rigoberta Menchu. Rigoberta Menchu is a Mayan woman who joined the guerilla movement during the civil war. With the help of a French Antrholpologist she wrote “her autobiography, a moving story of the plight faced by the “indigenas” peoples struggling to make a living in the FINCAS and in mountain villages, struggling to secure land and rights against the corrupt Ladinos and the wealthy landowners. Her autobiography: “I, Rigoberta Menchu” won for her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. B

Flood of Help

Before the close of peace negotiations in 1996, international foundations and charities began to arrive in Guatemala by the hundreds. You will recognize the names of many of them:

Habitat for Humanity: Guatemala

Heiffer International: World Ark

Guatemala: Squelching an Educational Drought Changing age-old traditions is difficult, but the results can make it all worthwhile. Just ask the residents of eastern Guatemala, who've found that switching from one kind of animal to another has made a huge difference in their lives

Doctors Without Borders:

FIELD NEWS | OCTOBER 14, 2005 MSF Operations in Tropical Storm Stan-Affected Areas of Guatemala MSF has dispatched more than 60 international and national staff to assist affected by the flooding and landslides caused by Tropical Storm Stan. MSF is now providing relief in the most- affected areas of the country and has made donations of first-aid kits and potable water. Teams are working in the Retaluhleu, Escuintla, San Marcos, Santa Rosa, and Solola departments, and Coatepeque city.

4. The "International Service Learning" Program

These helping agencies are almost household names to many of us. There are many more less well known organizations. I have had the opportunity to work with several of them through a program I initiated at UNL three years ago, the “International Service Learning” program. This program takes university students to Guatemala where they are immersed in its culture by living with families and by doing community service projects. The mission of this program is to educate students to become world citizens; to educate them about the problems faced by the developing world.

Students take a background seminar before entering this program to prepare them for their experience. Upon completion of the program they write a “reflection” essay about their experiences. You will hear a lot about this program and the experiences these students while taking this course. Their experience is part of the story about reviving Guatemala. Between their words and my photographs there is a lot to tell.

Today I will share with you stories about the agencies these students and the program works with.

The following text describes the International Service Learning Program in a little more detail. This is followed by a description of three Guatemalan organizations we work with.

The International Service Learning Program of Study at UNL

OVERVIEW

A new program of study on International Service Learning is being introduced at UNL. This program provides an international experience for UNL students that focuses on volunteer work. The program courses help the ISL student to PREPARE for their ISL experience, to manage their onsite EXPERIENCE, and to REFLECT on the implications of their experience for further academic study and careers planning. Academic units in the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Architecture, and the Office of International Affairs are supporting this initiative. A cross campus interdisciplinary steering committee has been formed to promote the program.

RATIONALE:

With its “volunteer” orientation, this program differs from most “travel abroad” programs in that it focuses on service to people in need in developing countries. This will be the first organized, campus wide program that serves this objective. While students can pursue this type of experience on their own with the aid of the International Affairs Office, it can be a hit or miss experience. There are many pseudo emersion and service programs for profit that don’t truly serve the service mission. Finding the right match requires careful research and screening among volunteer/service oriented agencies and organizations.

Many programs on campus encourage or require international and/or service experiences for their students. These include international studies, ethnic studies [Latino, African, Native American, and Asian], anthropology/geography, modern languages, and architecture/design. This program provides an important alternative for students seeking an international experience.

There are also compelling moral reasons for such a program. When it is realized that the wealthy ¼ of the world’s populations consumes ¾ of the worlds resources, the challenge of impoverished coping with what is left becomes more pressing.. [Willie Brandt, North vs South; Jeffrie Sachs, End of Poverty].

The solutions to the challenges of the developing world requires the cooperation and support of the developed world. Understanding of the issues facing the developing world is critical to achieving this support.. Participation in an international service program provides students with insights to the reality of the lives lead in the rest of the world and the challenges that its citizens face in seeking to escape from poverty. It provides them with the opportunity to be part of the solution by providing service. Upon return as ‘world citizens’ they can share what they have learned with peers. And if they choose to continue in a career that provides service abroad, they can make more meaningful choices in selection of courses and training from the experiences they have had.

COURSE GOALS AND OBJECTIVES:

The overall goal for this program is to prepare students for an International Service Learning Experience, to manage the experience for the students, and to facilitate reflection on their experience as it affects further academic study and career development.

By the end of this program a student should be able to:

o To understand the differences between developed and developing nations, between economies of surplus and economies of need. o To understand the political, technological, economic and geographic factors which can challenge the advancement of a developing nation. o To understand current strategies for alleviating poverty and the relative advantages and disadvantages of each o To understand the role and motivations of providers of economic and social aid to developing nations, and their cost and benefits to recipient populations o To be able to research and understand the political/economic/cultural context of a particular nation or peoples the student is interested in serving. o To identify and choose an appropriate organization or agency to work for in a students chosen nation and to make arrangements for service with that organization. o To participate in an international service program in a developing nation and to make a meaningful contribution. o To reflect on their international service learning experience for future academic study and career development. o To share their experience and reflections with other students interested in international service learning.

THE INSTRUCTIONAL FORMAT: CORE COURSES

The core of the international service learning program are two courses:

498A: International Service Learning: Preparation 498B: International Service Learning: Experience and Reflection

These two courses will PREPARE [498A] students for their pending service work, will provide coordination of their EXPERIENCE [498B] with a sponsoring international group or association, and promote REFLECTION on what they have learned from this experience. The later course can be under an independent study number from the students home department.

ConstruCasa.org

The first program I want to share with you is ConstruCasa. Constru Casa is a service group (NGO) that builds housing for Guatemalan villagers in and around Antigua, Guatemala. Started by Carolein van Heerde, a Dutch civil engineer, ConstruCasa builds 75-80 houses per year. ConstruCasa depends on international volunteers for financial aid and labor.

The core experience of this program is to assist in building a house. Construction takes two weeks. This housing is provided in the context of social work programs that address all aspects of a family’s needs: health care, education of children and adults, domestic violence counseling, employment. ConstruCasa works through social work agencies to provide this housing, letting the social work agency choose which families would best benefit. Because of this community support approach volunteers become aware of the broader needs and context of the families they serve. Volunteers work side by side with the families in building the house and eating meals.

Pop Wuj

The second program I want to share with you is Pop Wuj. Pop Wuj is both a language school and a social service agency [NGO]. It has been present in Xela for over 17 years. It was founded by a group of language teachers disenchanted by the “for profit” language schools they originally worked for. All “profits” from Pop Wuj go to the social service activities they support in six nearby Mayan villages: schools, medical clinics, social work, and cooking stove construction. All students at the school participate in these programs as volunteers.

The core experience of this program is assisting one or more of the social service activities of the school: health care, social work, education, or stove building. The program begins with four weeks of language training and cultural immersion. Speaking the clients language and understanding their cultural background is essential to a responsible and sensitive provision of volunteer services. Opportunities for volunteer work begin during the first week. Specific assignment will be given during the third week and continue beyond the language training for another two weeks. The social services of Pop Wuj are provided in a holistic context of social work programs that address all aspects of a families needs: health care, education of children and adults, domestic violence counseling, employment. Pop Wuj works in only six communities so as to build an ongoing personal relationship with their clients, a relationship that has existed as long as 17 years. Because of this community approach volunteers become aware of the broader needs and context of the families they serve. Volunteers will often work side by side with families and share meals with them.

Because language is essential to social experience, language proficiency is an important aspect of the program. While it is preferred that applicants have some fluency in Spanish, it is possible to attain sufficient fluency through the four weeks of language training you will gain in the program. Because you will live with middle class families for the duration of your stay in Xela, you will learn about the larger society and . You will also be able to practice Spanish and learn about daily family life.

Escuela de La Montana: PLQ

The third program I want to share with you is Escuela de La Montana. Here is a description of the school from a letter I received from its director, Juliette, last summer:

La Montana: by Juliette, Director, La Montana

Escuela de la Montaña is housed in the buildings of a former coffee plantation and still produces coffee. The school is adjacent to two communities (Fatima and Nuevo San José) who created themselves after having labour struggles on nearby coffee fincas where they had previously worked. The school supports these communities by using student tuition to pay the families to provide daily meals for the students. Students eat with the same host family through the week, up to and including breakfast the following Sunday. The school rotates families because they try to share the work out fairly among the local families, and because students can then meet more members of the neighbouring communities. There are two conferences a week at the Escuela given by members of the communities:, one is a talk on Monday evening by a local community member about issues that affect local people - for example, a community midwife - and the other is a conference either Tuesday or Thursday daytime with someone from the wider local area - for example an ex-guerrilla. Talks are also given about the history of Nuevo San José and the history of Fatima the second week. There are two community leaders from Fatima and Nuevo San José who regularly give talks about the histories of their communities. In addition to these conferences, there are other activities with people from the local communities. On Wednesday afternoon there is a football game with local children and in the evening there is Noche Cultural which is organized activities such as games and arts and crafts, with local children and students from the Escuela de la Montaña, On Thursday evening There is a cookery class with a woman from one of the two local communities and Saturday daytime we have art and music classes with local children and teenagers.

Students can volunteer in local communities depending on their interests, skills and levels of Spanish. Both Fatima and Nuevo San José have casas de salud (health houses) run by the communities, where community members can go to get health advice, get treatment for common illnesses and be referred to a doctor if necessary (the casas de salud are staffed by community members who have had training as health promoters). Students can certainly visit the casas de salud and may be able to help out (but we would need to ask the communities first). Also, students have sometimes volunteered in a local primary school. We have childrens books in Spanish which students can borrow to read to local children (always popular) and an activities room which can be used as a space for students who want to organize extra classes, games or activities with local children. Students can help out in our garden too. Apart from this, we are about to start building a community library in the garden, which will be accessible for all the local communities.

5. References and Readings for Further Investigation

1. Argueta. Guatemala: Moon Handbooks. Map and : 362-388. 2. ConstruCasa, Antigua www.construcasa.org 3. Pop-Wuj, Spanish Language School and Social Action, Xela [Quetzltenango] www.pop-wuj.org 4. Blog, Sabrina, May 2009 www.mrsophietravels.blogspot.com

6. Preview of Next Week

If you look at the course outline we can see what our topic will be for next week: “Topic 2: Poverty in a World of Developing Nations”. We will examine the nature of poverty faced by the developing world. We will look at the “millennium goals” set by the United Nations to address poverty. We will discuss an important strategy or plan set by the international economist Jeffrey Sachs to address poverty and the “millennium goals.” Lastly we will seek to place the problems of Guatemala into this global perspective.

For those of you interested in reading about this topic, I have listed on the course outline the chapters I will be using from Jeffrey Sachs book, The End of Poverty. This book is available in paper back from both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

For those of you interested in reviewing what we covered today, including some of the photographs, I have created a web site with these lectures posted on them. You are welcome to download this file as well as any future files I post. The intention is to post all six lectures for the course on this website: ReviveGuatemala/Wordpress.com