igualdad, libertad, solidaridad

Yesterday I sat in on an ECAP – Estudios Comunitarios con Aplicacion Psicosocial (Applied Psychosocial Community Studies) – lecture, with grades 7 and 8. Facilitators asked students to define three ideas: equality, freedom, and solidarity. First we journalled, then discussed, then got together in small groups and wrote out our ideas on paper, to present to the class for a larger discussion. Some ideas voiced were: our inherent human rights and social obligations, respect for difference, free space, participatory democracy... the necessary interdependence of equality, freedom, and solidarity. It was overwhelming to be in a class of grade SEVEN and EIGHTS who were discussing ideas that I had barely heard of when I was 12 (or in university?). Issues that are so real here in Guatemala (AND in Canada!), especially for the indigenous population (most students at the fundacion are Maya-Achi) – in land, identity, recognition (or lack of). They spoke about the need for agrarian change that will bring well-being and dignity to those who work the land (in a country where 80% of arable land is controlled by less than 2% of the population, creating a close-to slavery indentured labour supply), the backwardness of how the community of Rio Negro remains without electricity when the majority of it's population was massacred for the creation of a government-backed hydroelectric dam (that now sells power to the rest of the country), and how theory must be followed by action to have any substance: here, in the classroom, we need to recognize that we are equals and support one another via solidarity so that we can have a free community.

Wow.

rumbo...

On Wednesday Heidi arrived, a blue-eyed grad student from the maritimes who is writing her thesis on the fundacion's education metholodology. It's been so nice to have her here -plenty more wholesome n' less lonesome.  A teacher in Nunavut for the last few winters, she's been appointed to teach English, with me as her assistant. Its true I've been avoiding the idea of teaching English since I got here, but it seems to be one of the few things I am actually qualified to do, and it's a chance for me to get more comfortable in a classroom, speaking out, while getting to know students – so do it I will. 

Compost is rumbling right along – I've finished a small zine on how-to and whys, and am onto riding my bicycle around town to collect materials. Sandra has told me to make a wish list of all things “sustainable” and “compost-y” to put in a grant application we are sending off to Pangea. We're even tossing around the idea of adding a recycling project – starting small, with just plastic bottles and paper. Any neat ideas on how to reuse bottles?...

Rabinal at night: view from our rooftop

martes

I sit in Tono's office – a cool classroom, with watery coffee brewing near. It's morning so the sun hasn't hit properly yet, and I haven't started sweating profusely. As usual, the bus skirted by the Fundacion at 7am sharp, and I got on, coffee in hand, to be squished among the other 70 bodies that crowd the blue school bus. A rickety ride from Rabinal to Chiticoy, a few kilometres northeast. Blue mountains, cornfields and grazing cattle greet us, among the cabaña-like school houses that lie at the foot of these hills. I line up and wait my turn to hop off the bus, then wander out passed the fields to check on the hortalizas (vegetable patch). Raddishes, lettuce, carrots, cabbage, onions, and chard sprout from rectangular beds lined with pop bottles. A huge, mounted concrete basin collects water for crops - it's the wet season, so torrential rains hit nearly every afternoon. Even so, soils are dense: cracked and dry from lack of rain and nutrients.

Don Juan, a founder of the fundacion, leads me to the middle of a corn field to show me the abonero orgánico that students built last year. It is a big hole in the ground, hardly 2 metres wide, cow manure and leaves that will sit in the earth for 6 months before it can be used. Manure is used as a fertilizer because it's plentiful and free. Still, in Guatemala, insecticides and pesticides are subsidized by the state, so organic agriculture is a rare find. These crops are sprayed regularly. Garbage collection isn't so hot either - lacking formal infrastructure, most pollutants are burned.


In light of this and my weightlessness, I've given myself a project in attempt to become grounded: composting (i.e. writing up a zine, making bins, getting worms, & sorting goodies). And so, here I sit on a tuesday morning, experimenting in logistics and vocabulary, keyboard humming to the drip of watered down coffee. 

rabinal

so, I suppose I owe an explanation for this 'Guatemala business'  - I mean, I haven't said what I'm doing here, or why I've chosen to come. I guess the explanation is long-winded (hence me avoiding giving it...) but, well, there is no time like the present when it is pouring rain and one can't leave home after dark...!

Officially, I am a "Human Rights and Agriculture Intern" at the Fundacion Nueva Esperanza, with the Breaking the Silence network (BTS). BTS is a solidarity network between the maritimes and Guatemala, existing since 1988, when Guatemala was slowly attempting a transition back to a civil (rather than military-led) government. BTS and organizations here in Guate have continued to work together and support each other since, sending delegations back and forth, fundraising, spreading information, training interns and international observers, as well as pressuring the Canadian government to act more responsibility in its regulation of Canadian companies abroad. The network currently has connections with 6 organizations in Guate - 2 around San Lucas Toliman, 2 near Chimaltenango, and 2 in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz (But for real info on BTS see: http://www.breaking-the-silence.ca/)


This is what our 6 weeks in Tatamagouche were mostly about: solidarity. BTS likes to use Lila Watson's notion of working together for a common liberation: "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
To me, a quote by Guatemala's Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi sums up the idea: "To open ourselves up to the truth and to bring ourselves face to face with our personal and collective reality is not an option that can be accepted or rejected. It is an undeniable requirement of all people and all societies that seek to humanize themselves and to be free". Yep, the idea of solidarity is a big one... with plenty of folds, flaws, and harmonies to boot. But I'd rather not get into that here... or not yet. 

Arriving in RABINAL

Last week, after an emotional visit to the capital, we met Jesus and caught an alamo bus to Rabinal (population 30,000, a few hundred kilometres north of the capital). Despite all the stories I'd heard of Rabinal, I wasn't prepared for the beauty of this place - the tall green cornfields, looming mountains, narrow streets and elaborate markets. The Fundacion's Instituto Comunitario Bilingue (Bilingual Community Institute), an alternative human-rights geared middle school located in the aldea of Chiticoy, was an even greater sight to get used to... an instititution that learns by doing, applying classroom lessons via agricultural projects. (If only Dalhousie University could have been so wise...) There are veggie gardens, fields of maiz and yerba de haimaica, fruit trees, broiler and lay-hens, medicinal plants, and cattle! (which graze all over the canchas de futbol, natural lawnmowers...). An inspiration to say the least!

I've found a home about a block away from the Fundacion's central office in Rabinal, at a boarding house run by two sisters. They're wonderful, beautiful, solitary women, and are hard to describe - warm, kind, peculiar, and contrastingly different from one another. Along with two other BTS interns, Betsy and Elsa, three forestry workers from Coban, a Guatemalan evangelical 'rockstar', and Maddie, a summer intern with the Buefe Juridico (legal clinic).

So far my 'job' has consisted of me trying to figure out just what it is that I am suited to do. A task that's easier said than done, especially when trying to get oriented in a new place... I've got plenty of digging to do! (pun intended)