Very typical for a good number of the interviews I did. Woman with children living at home, making $25 per week or so cleaning some señora's house 3 days a week. She supplements that income by about $50 per month embroidering items for sale to a dealer in the market, for a total of about $150 per month.

 

With that, she has to pay:

$80 rent for a 2 room apartment, of sorts, with walls of corrugated sheet metal siding, and the door facing somebody's patio, in which she shares a bathroom and concrete sink with other tenants.

$13 for electricity, because, primitive as it is, her apartment has it's own electric meter.

$15 minimum for diapers for her little son.

$45 or so for food, assuming she and her children eat nothing but beans and tortillas from the neighborhood vendor at $.13 for a small ladle of beans and 8 small tortillas for a dollar.

$30 more for food, just to be realistic.

$30 for an also unrealistic minimum for firewood to cook food or boil water at home. Most women I talked to said they spend at least $75 to $90 per month for firewood … but we'll leave that aside for the moment.

We'll also set aside clothing and medicine and hygiene articles, because … well those are 'special expenses,' right?

In any event, do the math. We have a family with $150 of likely, if not entirely guaranteed income each month, dependent as it is on this young woman never, ever getting sick, or the señora always needing her services 3 days per week … and the dealer in town who buys the embroidery always having a need for her handiwork.

And finally we'll set aside school costs for older children, because, you know, school is pretty much optional, which in good part explains why the pre-6th grade dropout rate is still astonishingly high.

So there we have it. Even overlooking those inevitable “extra” expenses, we have an income of $150 and costs of $200 as an impossibly unforgiving minimum.

 

And this is the rule, not the exception. In interview after interview, case after case, some a little better, some a little more dire, but always desperate, day after day, month after month, year after year.

 

But … how does it work? How do they make ends meet?

 

I've wondered that very fact literally hundreds of times in the 25 years I've been working, collecting data, and doing research in Chichicastenango. And the only solid answer I can come up with is … well, in truth I can't come up with any answers. I simply don't know how these people stay alive. And even more, given how much of a continous hustle it is just to stay alive, how is it that they maintain the vibrance and friendliness that I love so much about Guatemala?

 

It's really beyond me.

 

And they have my admiration, because I couldn't do it. Which is why I completely understand why so many of them run off to the United States where they can perhaps, just maybe, nurture a little hope. And for whatever it's worth, I give my blessings to them as long as they can manage to stay here.