wall-street-inspired ranting

I learned last week that 73% of Rabinal lives in poverty (on less than 2$ a day), and 32% in extreme poverty (less than 1$ a day) – that translates to almost 30,000 people who are barely able to meet their basic needs, in an area that is about twice the physical size of Knowlton, Quebec.

It's strange that the sheer force of numbers seems to make the inequalities I see everyday feel more solid... It's all too easy to brush poverty away as being part of 'cultural difference'... Even just sitting down and trying to compare struggles at home felt like a slap in the face, with some 10 million Guatemalans living in poor circumstances – 71% of the population. 

Some wisdom from Cornel West at Occupy Wall Street:

In June, the US gave $300 million to the Guatemalan government to "fight the war on drugs".  

Funny enough, the actual UCN government was classified as 'narco' by the US itself (says a Wikileaks cable), and both presidential candidates in the upcoming runoff elections have been linked to the drug trade.

Orange fists have sprouted all over, from walls to computer screens: Perez Molina spent more than 7.3$ million on his political campaign before September elections, with Baldizon trailing right behind him. Wealthy elite on glossy posterboard, mounted high across the country to stamp on the poor majority, one shady business deal at a time... impunity reeling.

And so history repeats itself.... everywhere...

Inspiring and exciting times on Wall Street. 

for the love of vegetables and alfalfa

¿y que de la soberanía alimentaria?

After having a grand time riding around in Julio's truck, stacking together chicken wire, nylon, buckets, papers, screws, nails, branches, and WORMS, then picking up wooden planks from a woman's courtyard I'd previously wandered into on a side street in Rabinal, things were all set in Chiticoy for composting.

Julian arrived at 8am by bicycle (on TIME!) to lead the vermicompost intro. An organizer from Qachuu Aloom ('mother earth' in Achi, a local organic agriculture cooperative that does capacity building in communities throughout the municipality), he was kind enough to offer to help us out when I wandered into the organization's office last week and clumsily explained my ideas of a composting project. Apparently vermicomposting is all the rage here in Rabinal, and red wrigglers ain't cheap, either: one pound goes for about 1,500Q (roughly 200$USD). Qachuu Aloom gave us 25 worms free of charge, to start.

So, after spending weeks translating, formating, budgeting, and collecting materials, this morning was a whirl of bin-building, bed-mixing, and worm prraising with primero A and B (grade 7).

Julian says youth are our hope: a farmer who has been spraying his crops for 20 years is not likely to stop just because someone explains its harmful effects and gives potential alternatives, but, a kid who learns real possibilities and is empowered can change minds and matters a hundred times over.

After almuerzo, I rode my bicycle to ECAP for another charla. Lucky me: today's talk was on FOOD SOVEREIGNTY and la Via Campesina. I am not exagerrating when I say I jumped up and down excitedly as we broke into groups to discuss. Faciltators asked what some essential elements of the idea are, after passing around a guate-related reading. Some thoughts floating were:

• respect: for human beings, mother earth and our ancestors
• self-determination: the right to have rights, to determine our own food system
• space: secure territory/ land access/ control
• community and household sustainability
• gender equity: recognize and (re)value women's role in food
• food is political; (re)value the labourer and farmer
• solidarity

ECAP is wonderful. It makes me sad there are only 2 more sessions like these before the end of the school year, with January a blur to future charlas... Vermicompost was mentioned: taking back our soils, one worm at a time..!

...

And, after a fruitless room-search in Rabinal, I've settled into the great-grandmother's eroded estate – it really is beautiful once you clear away the grey cloud that had been blurring my vision last week. I painted my walls red, hung herbs, lit candles – reclaiming my room from the bugs and mildew. Floors have been fixed (no more flooding!). Good to have my own space, finally, with only the sound of crickets and fireflies at night, jungle on the other side of my window... and the occasional salamander on my wall.

mano dura vs. mano dura...

Ah yes, elections... long story short (as you have probably already heard), two extreme right candidates will be facing off for the presidency come November: Perez Molina, a retired General accused of human rights violations (including genocide) who vows to bring "security" back to Guatemala with an iron fist, and Baldizon, a business man with strong ties to the oil and gas industry who advocates a retroactive death penalty. Great.

"Politics is the basis for the accumulation of capital. This is a central aspect of how these groups operate. By being elected to public office, mainly in municipalities and for congress, they are able to create wealth, through the control of public works contracts, the business world, and networks of political clientelism." -says The Peten Report

The Guatemala Solidarity Network and Aljazeera have wonderfully critical reviews of the current situation and BOTH candidates... 

marejada

It's been a while since I've written, and for good reason...

After getting overwhelming support for the start of our compost project (thank you!!), three scary letters under our doorstep sent me and two fellow interns reeling to Guatemala City. Extortion is common in Guatemala - too common, actually, for anyone who owns a business or is related to someone who does (and in rural guate everyone is related... so...yea). Apparently the home we were living in has been extorted many-a-time over the last few years, belonging as it is to one of the more powerful families in Rabinal. Although the city is safe (and so are we), it gave us a scare - and so after a group trip to the capital to visit some BTS advisers, I fled to San Lucas Toliman, on the south shores of Lago Atitlan, to stay at the Mesoamerican Permaculture Institute (IMAP) with a friend until elections boiled over and things could return to 'normal'.

IMAP could be a meditation retreat in any part of the world: circular sleeping room under green canopies with a view of the lake, an outdoor kitchen with a door turned onto its side as a table, tiny stools on a stoop between the brush. It was healing to just BE there - diving into clear Atitlan in the mornings, devouring Chomsky books from the self, cooking real meals, getting my hands deep in dirt beneath shaded trees.

Elections happened on Sunday, and San Lucas was shakier than the rest of the country: two ballot boxes lay uncounted after UNE announced that it's candidate had been reelected mayor. "Winning" by a slim 42 votes, ANN, the opposing party, was not pleased - crowds multiplied in the parque central to protest while someone burned the remaining uncounted ballots, threatening to torch the municipality as the opposition hunted down the apparent victor with yells of lynching and murder (remember: we were tucked away in the woods, isolated 3km from town). Gas bombs went off in the distance, helicopters flew in the mountains overhead. I lay tucked in bed, nose buried in Profit over People.

By Tuesday chaos had subsided and it was time to leave paradise, so I caught a bus at dawn to the capital. Legs tucked into the plastic covered seats of a used American school bus, I sat with my backpack at my feet and my 'sack' under my arm. I nodded off after fiercely sticking my cheek to the window to avoid a man carrying a guitar who was determined to make me believe in God's salvation. Somewhere between my missed conversion and sleep, my wallet disappeared. I stupidly had not put extra cash into my backpack or my pocket, so stepping off the bus into a roaring, honking Guate, I was left with 25 centavos in my pocket. Lucky for me I still had my cellphone. I called a friend who called another friend, and in no time Humberto rolled up in his falling-apart 1960s box-car, in a whirlwind telling me stories of his years in exile in Mexico before putting me on a bus to Baja Verapaz. I reached Rabinal before dark.

Elsa and I have a new home, for now: a teal green house on the other side of the city, run by a great-grandmother from Guatemala City who moved here for her "bones". The house's concrete walls are decayed, a grandiose poise to the place that has long been overgrown and buried.

Last night I unrolled an old mattress to sleep, bags still packed. 'My' room smells of mold and has already flooded... ants, spiders, moths and salamanders to keep me company. Tomorrow I'll begin a more thorough search for a new home - hopefully this one will last longer. Seems I don't have a very good track record...

Instituto Comunitario Bilingue

en Chiticoy, Rabinal, Baja Verapaz

fellow classmate