The Guatemala Thing
Genesis: How Guatemala Came to be a Thing
One morning in April, 1990, Mary called me during my 30-minute break from teaching 4th and 5th graders, and asked if I wanted to spend most of the summer in Guatemala.
It was a rhetorical question, because by that time I was very much fascinated with Central America in general, and Guatemala in particular. My interest stemmed from nominal involvement ('nominal' was the only option in Wichita Falls) in the Sanctuary Movement, which mostly consisted of a few nuns in Texas giving, then being arrested and prosecuted for giving, safe shelter to a few political refugees from Guatemala. Prior to that, especially during the Reagan administration, Mary and I had been involved in some (very) small scale protests against US support for the tyrannical and murderous government in El Salvador, and against direct military aid for the Contra insurgency (which was illegally promoted by Reagan, Ollie North, et al.) through sales of missiles to Iranian terrorists) in Nicaragua.
On that April morning in 1990, the deal was that Mary, who was Catholic Campus Minister and adjunct faculty at the local state college, Midwestern State University, had been offered funding from the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth to study Spanish. At that time (and still), there was no cheaper, more exotic, or better place to study Spanish anywhere in the world. So off we went to Guatemala for seven weeks that summer … and the next and next … and into a new life of, first, acquiring some fluency in Spanish, then becoming involved with support of non-governmental organizations and development projects. Five years later, that involvement drew me away from my job teaching grade school kids in Wichita Falls to a Latin American Studies graduate program at Tulane University in New Orleans.
As will be described in future essays, in 2001, as I was doing dissertation fieldwork, Mary and I funded small out-of-pocket scholarships for a few street-vendor kids we had come to know. The idea was to keep them from dropping out of grade school or middle school, but the project took on a life of its own as we told other North Americans and they wanted to help. And now, 22 years later, the resulting partnership of the Guatemalan NGO, ACEBAR, and the US 501(c)3 organization, MayaCREW, has granted and administered thousands of scholarships to impoverished primary and secondary indigenous Maya students in the Guatemalan Highlands municipality of Chichicastenango.
Our work with ACEBAR and MayaCREW continues as the constant touchstone and centerpiece of my interest in all things Guatemalan, and more generally the under-observed and under-reported realities and events of Central America and Latin America. I profoundly believe that by largely ignoring the Southern two-thirds of our hemisphere, the U.S. is missing huge opportunities as well as underming our own regional security.
And now, with my own documentary plaything that this website represents, I will share some of my thoughts, memories, and published reports about Guatemala and our ongoing educational project there. My posts will include photos and anecdotes and opinions about the little Republic. I'll also throw in some other information more generally about Latin America.
Hopefully, somebody will find something of interest here. Please feel free to share any thoughts or responses you might have.
Recent Posts
