We left Xela on Saturday morning, the 18th, for Santa Anita la Unión. It was a beautiful drive throught the countryside, every lush and green, and a stunning landscape of hills, valleys, farms, and villages. Santa Anita used to be a huge "finca," but is now an eco-tourism project and organic banana and coffee cooperative run by about 30 families of ex-guerrillas. The guest house we stayed in was originally the Patron's (or landowner's) house. In the afternoon, we went on a hike through the finca to a waterfall. I was amazed by the brilliance of some of the flowers and the size of the banana leaves--I knew they were big, but I'd never seen them up close before, especially in such large quantity! There were also some noisy huge cicada-like bugs on some of the trees. We were guided by two women, both of whom were ex-guerrillas.
On Sunday, we heard the history of the community, which was really interesting and inspiring, but at the same time a little distressing because things aren't going well financially and they are struggling to keep their operation going. They bought the land with help from the government after the peace accords were signed, but now they owe a huge debt to the bank which the government is refusing to pay. They can't afford to pay the debt because although there is a high demand for organic coffee, they can't produce enough on their land with the 40-year old plants they have. They need to buy new plants to keep the operation going, but they are very expensive and would take a few years to mature before they start producing coffee beans.
After lunch, our group split in half and went our separate ways for the week. 10 people went to a rural community near Cantel, and the rest of us rode in the back of a pick-up (!) to La Escuela de la Montaña, near Colomba. Our schedule there was very relaxed, and a nice break from the busyness of our program in Xela. Half of us had classes in the morning and the other half in the afternoon, one-on-one for 4 hours. We lived at the school, but all of our meals were taken with host families in the neighboring towns of Nuevo San José and Fátima. Each town is made up of people who used to live and work on a finca but were forced off by the landowner after labor conflicts arose. NSJ was established in about 1990-92, and Fátima has only been there for 4 years.
They are both very poor communities--my host family lived in a room with a dirt floor at the rear of a concrete-block house. You walk through the house, under the TV antennas, and out the back, where there is a kitchen and an enclosed room with a door. The walls and slanted ceiling are of corrugated metal. my family lived in the room, which had it's own kitchen at the back. There were two beds in the corner of the room and tables along the side, where there was a TV and eating area. The stove is a sheet of metal over a fire. The house belongs to the parents of my host mother and some other families live in the other parts of the house.
Elena, my host mom, was only 24 years old-- three years older than me--and had three children: a baby boy, a 3-year old son José, and an 8-year old daughter Maria. Her husband in the US working in Houston. Meals with them were simple and adequate, sometimes with awkward silences, but with good distractions, like the children or the chickens that would wander in and out. Maria was a very entertaining, talkative, energetic, and intelligent girl, who was always happy to see me and sometimes would run up to me in the road and give me a hug or jump into my arms.
On Wednesday morning, we all went on a hike together to a waterfall, which was quite an adventure. Parts of the path had been washed out by hurricane storms and we had to make some detours as well as cross some skinny concrete bridges, and the last 10 minutes of the hike was along a rocky riverbed and across the creek.
Thursday morning, I walked down the road with a few people at 6:15 to watch some smoke coming out the top of one of the surrounding volcanoes and to buy some fresh cheese. The volcano wasn't anything spectacular, but the cheese was! Although I probably should have been nice to my stomach and not eaten it all in one day... I did a little laundry on the "pila" (completely manual) in the morning, and in the evening we had graduation. For a thank you presentation we made up words to a round and performed it for the teachers. La Montaña was the first place where I experienced bug bites on this trip so far, and all of us got them--mostly on our feet from wearing sandals...I don't like having itchy feet!
Friday morning we left La Montaña and returned to Xela for a wrap-up of our experience in Guatemala. On Saturday we drove to Antigua for a last tourist stop in Guatemala before heading to El Salvador. We had the whole day after lunch free to explore, relax, and spend the last of our Quetzales (Guatemalan currency). Antigua is a colonial-era town filled with very old buildings and churches, and is famous for its jade.
I would like to share with you the final reflection I wrote in my journal about Guatemala: "Farewell, my beautiful, bittersweet Guatemala! I didn't get to spend enough time with you! What beautiful countryside, with your surprisingly steep green hills, wild jungles, intesnse flowers, majestic waterfalls...marred by deforestation, Stan's destrucion, sprawling, never'ending towns...What beautiful people, who laugh and smile, welcome us into their homes and communities, teach us, and tell us it's an honor, and wear their indigenous traje...but behind those smiles is a whole lot of pain and hard work, and behind the graciousness is a need to spread he word around the world, and a greatefulness for the income tourists bring. And behind the traje is poverty and discrimination. Vibrant colors, corn growing in unexpected places, brightly colored celebratory cemeteries, delicious bananas, coffee, and beans...but markets are mostly for tourists--colors catch the eye, vendors scrape out a living; corn is one of the few things that can be grown in such large quantities, it's the mainstay of the peoples' diets, but there's not enough; the cemeteries may celebrate the lives of loved ones, but there sure are a lot of dead people...coffee isn't really for local consumption and many people drink instant coffee--and beans are beans are beans. Community organizing and social groups abound! Because they must keep fighting with all their might for democracy, justice, and human rights. You are such a desperate, hopeful country! A beautiful pulsing heart that has been broken many times, bu is trying with all its might to weave itself back together, into something stronger that it's ever been before. Farewell, my beautiful, bittersweet Guatemala...I hope to see you again soon."
We left Antigua at 8am, and arrived at the El Salvador border around 10:30. They made us take all our luggage down off the top of the bus, even though they only look in about 6 pieces, and we left the border a little before 12. We are now in San Salvador, a city of 1 million, an urban area of 3 million, that is more "globalized" than anything we've seen so far. It feels almost like a city in the U.S.--many people have compared it to L.A. Our schedule has been busy with very little down time until now, but I'm excited to be here and to be taking liberation theology in the place where it blossomed.
