December 2002

Dear Friends,

Gloria and I will be leaving Guatemala in a few weeks. This is my clausura, my closing observations about our year here.

We’ve enjoyed it. I’m sure we’ll find times in our lives when we will recall things we have learned here whether they are apparent to us at this moment. We will miss a lot of things and people we have met. I read the newspapers frequently, Prensa Libre and Nuestro Diario (however there are no newspapers in Coban) and they are filled with stories that might startle the casual visitor. It seems there are about six murders on average every day in Guatemala City. I recall the first time we went to Guate and found ourselves in Zone 1, reportedly the most crime-ridden zone in the city. We were almost afraid to get off the bus. It didn´t help that I walked the wrong direction to our hotel when leaving the bus station.

I didn’t want to ask questions and draw additional attention to ourselves as being lost. I just thought it was better to be lost than to appear lost. Gloria did not agree wholeheartedly with that decision but we got where we were going with only a minimum of difficulty.

We have been to Guate many times since and have no fears of any kind. We don’t walk around at night but Zone 1 is the area we know best and have met nothing but very friendly people. The papers still report on the wave of violence that is sweeping the country but we have never seen any of it or ever been in any danger. Besides, we now read that San Salvador is the most crime-ridden city in Central America, having supplanted Guate for this dubious distinction. Strangely, we enjoyed our time in San Salvador as well and found it to be a pleasant place even though it too has a recent history of violence and death.

I’ll miss certain facts of everyday life. I know of nowhere else where you can buy one envelope or one piece of writing paper or one photostatic copy. I know of nowhere else where you can buy Q1 worth of peanuts or potato chips or candy. These small amounts of candy or junk food or paper are sold in every block and on every corner. There are little empty bags of chips tossed all around the street along with empty plastic Coke containers. I asked why businesses such as Frito-Lay would make such small bags and the answer was obvious in its simplicity: The people can’t afford more than Q1 at a time so business gives them what they can afford. They make no provision, however, to provide trash containers for the waste. I was told the reason for this is that the people would simply steal the containers for other uses. Whether that is true is debatable but it does keep trash cans off the street and an excuse to not provide them. Every now and then individual street sweepers with a broom and dustpan are hired to sweep the streets. It doesn’t last long before the bags and bottles are there again.

Coke and Pepsi and their other brands are promoted heavily here. Either Coke or Pepsi sponsors every one of the professional soccer clubs. There are four levels of professional soccer here with from six to eight teams per level and Coban has a team in the best tier. They play every week except during July. They are sponsored by Pepsi but then Pepsi or Coke sponsor the local grade schools and high schools as well. There are many parades in Guatemala and schools are obliged to participate. All have uniforms (except of course for the schools in the aldeas where a book is a rare thing, let alone a uniform) and Coke and Pepsi are often displayed prominently on some of the uniforms. A Coke is Q3.50 for 12 ounces but can be found time to time for Q2.50, but you can’t find any diet drinks. It’s rare to see a Guatemalan drinking agua pura but it can be purchased for Q10 for 5 gallons. All the drinks are fully loaded with sugar and we see babies nursing on plastic sacks of Coke. We also see a lot of people without teeth and are confident there is a connection but Cokes are more available than water. Some idea of corporate responsibility seems to be called for in this instance but if it’s there, it is hidden.

Sugar is a crop that is grown here as well as coffee and cardamom. Interestingly, these crops are not native to Guatemala and most of the harvest is exported. (In the case of cardamom, all of it is exported since there is no use for it here.)

Millions of cans of pop fully loaded with sugar while millions of teeth are falling from mouths, while malnutrition is a growing problem, while there is not enough land for the campesinos to grow their subsistence crops: all that seems to smell of misplaced priorities. Yet that is the way the market system works, allegedly giving people what they want whether they know it or not.

The people we know best, the Kekchi, are proud of their heritage but their lack of self-esteem is easy for the novice to discern. They and other indigenous have been on the bottom of the social ladder here since the original conquest. Some would say the conquest has never ended. President Rufino Barrios, one of the longest ruling presidents in the history of Guatemala as well as the one who invited the Presbyterian church here in the 1870s, is considered a strong president by some historians. Like all history, which is written by the winners, it depends on your point of view. He declared the land vacant that the indigenous were living on and had lived on for centuries during his regime. It made the indigenous aliens on their own land. They had no papers of ownership, so they were forcibly thrown off their land while the government sold it to investors. We recoil in indignation at the injustice of this but then we consider our own history and the expropriation of the lands of our own indigenous and the half of Mexico that now constitutes most of our western states. I wonder if any of us could really get a clear title to any of our properties. But then the Germans came in, especially to the AltaVerapaz, and began cultivating coffee and cardamom using the campesinos as slave labor. There was a time when every campesino was required to work for free on the land of the proprietor, land which had originally belonged to the campesino. Some would say that is still the case, considering the minimum wage for a farm worker is Q25/day but most only receive Q15 (Q1 is 13 cents) and that is from sun-up to sundown six days a week. There are no provisions for enforcing this minimum wage law because the people it allegedly protects have no way and no money to force the issue. They do invade plantations from time to time and squat on the land to complain but the army throws them out in a day or two. The suggestion is frequently made that the elements of a new armed conflict are growing because of situations like this but that seems unlikely. The government continues to pour more money into the army and raises taxes to do it which riles many but then many are employed by the army and it ensures a certain political stability. There are army posts in every town of any size. Roads have improved but the observation that this makes it easier for the army to control things has some merit.

Unemployment or underemployment continues at 35%. The campesinos and the indigenous exist by selling anything of value on the streets and in buses or by growing their subsistence crops or hiring out as farm workers. I have been the target of vendors who sell only a full array of sewing needles, or individual razors, or soda pop by the bottle, or stuffed animals, or pillows. It could be anything. Newspapers are an obvious thing to sell and I have my favorite vendors.

They are usually little boys about six or seven dressed in rags with big smiles. The people we work with are subsistence farmers and in some cases subsistence preachers. The preachers have a very precarious existence since many of them have no land of their own and rely on their parishioners to provide for them. I suppose they do, in a way. One of our friends, Alberto Sacul, the pastor at Sandieguito in the state of Izabal had been the pastor there for six years. Another equally qualified (some might say equally unqualified) pastor was asked to compete for the position. The congregation had a vote and Alberto lost so he is out of a job. He is 48, has nine kids, four in middle school, two at home, and three on their own. He had been making Q350/month along with some corn. He is in Coban now looking for work of any kind. There are no jobs for people with such paltry qualifications in the formal sector so he will end up selling needles or pop or some such thing in the informal economy.

It hurts to see this because he is as bright as any in the United States or as any Ladino but no doors are open to him. There are others like him. Gerardo Pop, a pastor and one-time president of the Guatemalan church (he was described by a countryman as a token indigenous president) has a church where he earns Q200/month. He had educated himself to read and write Spanish and became a pastor and later was good enough to be hired to teach theology courses to other Kekchi as an extension course in his home town of Chinabal. He made Q800/month doing this. The source of those funds, which was the Dutch Church, dried up in March. He has been teaching for free since April. He is 53 years old and has a passel of kids. I don’t have the details of all his kids because I don’t want to know. I’ve been in his home. You wouldn’t like it. It is impossible for them to save anything or to get ahead since every day is a challenge. Still, we often blame them for their poverty but that is nothing new.

Discrimination, which we know well in the United States, is institutionalized here. The farm workers have been described to me as people who like what they do or people who prefer living in mud and huts. They don’t want to go to school or to send their kids to school, preferring to work in the fields. Some even assert the campesinos have a lot of money and deny any statistics that say 57% of the people here live in abject poverty and most of those are campesinos, the indigenous. Protestantism has caught hold here with a vengeance in the past few years, 20% of the population, I believe, and has given some people some easy explanations for the way things are. It seems the fundamentalism that is rampant here in many parts teaches that Christ cannot come again until everyone in the world has been exposed to the truth of Christianity. It is therefore incumbent upon everyone to preach the gospel so Christ can hurry up and get here. Anything that stands in the way of that happening is not faithful and cannot be tolerated. That includes social programs as well, such as education, health, agricultural innovation, etc. This theology also says that if God wanted you to have it, you’d have it and since you don’t have it, that is God’s will and your obligation is not to question God. Some of those discriminated against even believe that. But then we have seen women in the United States who believe theirs is a subservient role, as have many blacks, because it has been taught them by the dominant white male culture. Getting people to value themselves after being subjected to these ideas for centuries is difficult. The newspapers have listings for jobs. The job requirements specifically list the applicant be male, under 50 years old, with educational requirements that no indigenous could meet. I have had store owners in Guate tell me they would hire an indigenous but they aren’t educated, can’t be trusted, and are not reliable. They believe it themselves but it sounds very familiar if we were to apply the same words to blacks in the United States.

We read in the paper recently about the corrupting influence of drugs. President Alfonso Portillo is widely known to be corrupt. He allegedly has houses in Miami and Switzerland and huge bank accounts in Panama. It appears to be true and there may also be connections with drug traffickers, money launderers, and other criminals in this government. I read recently that Sayaxche, again a place we know well, is the center for drugs coming from Colombia to Mexico and then to the United States. There is an airstrip in Sayaxche and one would wonder why it’s there except maybe to drop supplies to the army post that is nearby. I was told by a proper businessman in Sayaxche that there are about 20 heads of different drug cartels in his city of only about 9,000. He indicated that our good friend the mayor, Guillermo Segura, is narco-traficante numero uno and is a dangerous man.

I spoke with the mayor recently but didnt ask him to deny these rumors. I had asked him earlier in the year to clean up the road where the Presbyterian Center is located. He said that was on tap for May. It hasn’t happened yet but I thanked him for his interest. I couldn’t tell if he was impressed. I don’t think so. He has other businesses including a construction company. We did talk to him about doing a land fill job at the center. He said he couldn’t do it directly but suggested we talk to another fellow who could get it done through the mayor’s company.

We didn’t do either but it was probably a small job anyway. It seems to be common knowledge about his drug connections. I asked about the local police. There are none. There is a national civil police outpost nearby as well as an army post but both have been described as corrupt, turning the other way when drug deals are in the offing. Corrupt governments are also signs of poverty with the feeling of helplessness that is associated with that, and our Kekchi friends don’t expect much from any level of their government. I’ve never wandered around Sayaxche at night (there is nowhere to go anyway) because that might get a little iffy; at least it seems a little wiser to avoid obvious situations. There is no danger to the casual visitor unless, of course, he is trying to score some drugs and that might pose problems.

Frequently the power goes out. Sometimes for a day, other times for hours. The phrase to use when this happens we have learned is “se fue la luz.” We use it a lot. Surprisingly, being without power is not the problem here it would be in the States. That is also true of being without water, which happens as frequently. We either do without a shower or use some rainwater that the landlaord collects in 55-gallon drums. He also uses that water to wash the dishes, at least now and then. Probably a good idea since we read recently that 100% of the water supply in the Alta Verapaz (which is where we spend most of our time) is contaminated. I imagine that accounts for the rare, but occassional stomach distress.

I don’t know how to evaluate any contribution we may have made. A strong possibility exists, of course, that we made no contribution, but I’d rather not believe that. There is a sense of helplessness when considering the enormity of the disparity that exists between us and those we seek to serve. The truth is a few well-meaning people cannot do much to alter a situation of this size. Yet we say that is what we want to do. But when we talk of development and helping these people to be self-sufficient we are thinking of models like the United States. A cursory examination of the situation, though, says that cannot happen; there is no way these folks could ever live like we do in the States. The simple truth is there are not enough resources, natural or otherwise, for the two-thirds of the people of the world with nothing to have enough to live like the third of us who have more than enough. We use a lot of God-talk—God bless America, God is good, etc.—and we thank God for our blessings. And we hang on to our blessings as if they were ordained by God and we try to amass even more. That is the nature of our system and it has been so associated with Christianity that to suggest there might be a better way to distribute the earth’s limited resources and goods and services is akin to blasphemy. It has been suggested by some writers that the worst thing that ever happened to Christianity was when it was incorporated into the state by Constantine and co-opted by the government. It had more impact when it was on the outside pointing out the disparities that existed, the exploitation of workers that was inherent, pointing out hypocrisy, injustice, but at the same time pointing out how to live and how to treat one another. It seems that no one has ever really wanted to hear these things and those who point them out get killed.

We are reminded that Jesus, by living the most fully human life, opened for us our relationship with God, our way to God, and even the very nature of God, since we believe Jesus was God incarnate. Jesus then, by example, calls us to be more human and to live life as fully he did, which requires pointing out the hypocrisy, injustice, unfairness, oppression, repression that separates us from one another, person from person, culture from culture, country from country, and from God.

Do we really want people to have as much as we do? If they did we might have to do with less, and history teaches that people do not give up wealth or power voluntarily. To suggest a radical sharing of resources to more equitably distribute limited resources gets one painted as a dreamer or a communist. But I am convinced there must be alternatives to the present state of affairs that we find here and with two-thirds of the world’s people.

My experience is that people do not want to live in this manner but the vestiges of colonialism, discrimination, corruption, greed, and, primarily on the part of U.S. citizens, cruel innocence about the choices we make continue this oppression. To suggest that the life styles in the United States and the other third of the world countries will have to change may be suggesting the obvious. The rich cannot keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer. Sometimes the poor will strike back in whatever way they can. Countries that cannot support themselves still have huge tracts of land devoted to export crops that benefit the one third world while much of their own population is malnourished and grows weaker. But this is the global economy of today and since there seems to be no alternative economic system to balance it, capitalism runs amok and seems to prove Darwin’s point about the survival of the fittest. Some have asked me what we should do. I have a suggestion about a radical giving concept—giving 10% off the top. I think there may be some biblical justification for this idea. But I would suggest that if we can give 10% easily then we should give even more. We should give to the point not to where it makes us feel good, such as we’ll be doing this Christmas season, but to the point that it concerns us about how we will pay our bills or to the point where we really do without something we want, or even better, need, like those in the Two-Thirds World. It is also important what we give to. To give our money to build yet grander and larger churches with more basketball courts, bowling alleys, or pipe organs, or staff is to build monuments to ourselves and our own comfort. We need to give to organizations that build monuments that are reflective of the life of the carpenter. And then we need to get off the dime, join groups or people that promote and reflect ideas and actions that resemble the life of Jesus and that espouse what we believe and know to be true. In short, we need to become advocates and risk the censure that, too often, is associated with that. I imagine it will take more than a lifetime to make any difference but how can we do less.

Our Christian heritage calls us to task by the example of Jesus: to care for one another, to be compassionate as God is compassionate, to throw out the money changers, to love the world because He loved the world and to take care of it. Our faith is one of hope in the future, in the promises of God, and one of hard work, never taking our eye off the goal of striving to be faithful. Jesus mixed with the lowly and his message still is as strong today if we listen to it and act on it. He advocated for those on the bottom because he, too, came from a despised class. Yet we say we follow him. I hope I have the strength to do that.

Roger