Nuevo Amanacer, Guatemala
So, I’m in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala at an awesome Spanish language school called the Proyecto Linguistico Quetzalteca. It was recommended to me by many friends, and they were right. I will write more about the school in another post.
I haven’t wanted to post a lot because I can’t upload my photos, and because I don’t have a ton of access to the Internet. Well, there are TONS of Internet cafes here but I don’t really want to spend all my time at a computer.
But, I really wanted to write about today. Today we visited a small town called Nuevo Amanacer, about 2 and a half hours by bus from Quetzaltenango (also known as Xela). Guatemala has had a long and crazy past that includes a civil war from 1960 to 1996, and prior to that, military rule for most of the country’s post-colonial period (except for a small time from 1944 to 1954, the end of which is written about in great detail in the book Bitter Fruit). I’ve been learning a lot about the country’s history and current economic crisis (exacerbated by NAFTA and CAFTA). Anyway, during the civil war, many Guatemalans, many of Mayan descent, fled the country to Mexico to avoid persecution by the military (torture, disappearance, death). The town of Nuevo Amancera was settled by people who fled to Mexico (Chiapas) in 1983 and then returned to Guatemala in 1998.
It’s one thing to read about people being tortured or disappeared (popular book of the moment: Shock Doctrine), and it’s another to meet people who have experienced this. I think this is an important thing. Today, one of the people from our school, Amaro, brought us to this town because his family lives there. We met a few people, including a woman named Julia who fled to Chiapas in 1983 with her children. Her husband was disappeared and she has not heard from him since. That was 1983. The town is raising money ($3000 US) to create a memorial to him and other martyrs.
The community has suffered greatly. In Mexico, they weren’t legal immigrants and so had difficulty getting papers to work or for the children to go to school. Many of them lived there for 15+ years, and they had to give up their traditional culture to live in Mexico. Many of them didn’t speak Spanish and have lost their native languages. They faced discrimination in Mexico because they were refugees. About 150 families wanted to return to Guatemala because they wanted to return to their culture and the families they had left behind. Julia said that only about 35 families were able to make the original return in 1998. They faced even more hardships here because they had been living in Mexico for so long, and some of their children had never spoken their native language, and people treated them as outsiders.
The community has received some help from NGO’s and the church, but they are struggling to survive. Given the difficult situation in Guatemala and the problems caused by free trade agreements, there is little or no work, and land is expensive. The community has a few businesses: a tortilla store, carpentry shop, and a apiary, but these provide only a few jobs. Many of the members work on a finca (coffee plantation) and make only 30 Quetzales a day – that’s about $4 US. They are really struggling. They only expect the situation to get worse.
I’ve had a lot of concerns about being an international visitor in this country where I am extremely wealthy and come with a lot of privilege, even though in the U.S. I struggle to make ends meet. But going to Nuevo Amancera today helped me understand how important it is for people from the U.S. to know what the rest of the world is experiencing – to truly know, beyond reading it in a book. I feel very lucky that I’ve been able to make this trip.
Photos to come.
Jen Angel said,
July 7, 2008 at 11:21 am
I forgot to mention that Nuevo Amanacer means ¨New Dawn¨ in Spanish.
I also found the visit difficult because when you learn about the people who were disappeared, they were just people who were trying to make a better life for themselves and their community, like writers and trade unionists and such. It´s difficult for me to think about how if that kind of repression happened in the U.S., my friends would be targeted. It makes me wonder about the privilege I have because I was born in a place where you can say what you want without thinking you might get killed, and it makes me fear for the future.
Ari Herzog said,
July 7, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Your story reminds me of my senior year of college, when I enrolled in a class offered concurrently through the departments of urban studies and gerontology. My professors (one from each department) paired each student with an elder immigrant (from Russia, eastern Europe, or Asia) and we spent the semester learning and sharing from each other and our experiences.
My counterpart was a 70ish man from Cambodia, who’d been jailed for decades under the Khmer Rouge, and who I helped study for his U.S. citizenship exam. I’ll never forget his passion for the American tenets of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which he could not have imagined under Khmer rule.
I was a U.S history buff in that central Massachusetts college, but his passion blew me away.
Krista Menzel said,
July 22, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Thanks for sharing this story. I have a friend who adopted a daughter from Quetzaltenango last year. She may already know this background, but I’m going to forward it to her anyway, for more insight into her daughter’s cultural history. They named her Xela, in honor of her roots.
Traveling abroad: Language School « Aid & Abet said,
July 26, 2008 at 5:56 pm
[...] throughout the week, like lectures, films, and trips to neighboring areas (like the trip to Nuevo Amanacer that I posted about previously). All of these are designed to give you access to the [...]
Don Thieme said,
August 1, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I just discovered your blog and enjoyed your description of this language school immensely. I plan to find out more about it in case I have students who are interested.
El Casco « untitled blog / blog uden titel said,
August 12, 2008 at 5:40 am
[...] My friend Jen Angel writes about it here. [...]