I have traveled to many fascinating places in my life. I have written of beautiful waterfalls and monumental temples and luscious rainforests. I have written of awe and amazement at the beauty of nature or the beauty of human made creations. Guatemala was different. This is not a story about magnificent structures or the natural wonders of our world, this is a story about humans and how Guatemala changed the way I think about humanity.
Right away in Antigua I felt the energy one often feels in Latin America. It was late and we were tired. The air was warm, and we had amazing tacos for dinner. Amazing because we were starving and because they brought with them the thrill of a new place to discover. My dad and I often say that sometimes we remember food being so good or a song so emotional because of what it is associated with. I am thankful for that first taco meal for a welcoming introduction to the country of Guatemala. Our trip officially began with a walking tour of the city but the real nitty-gritty began the following day when we drove into the mountains to visit a local coffee farmers plantation.
It was here, on a hill surrounded by coffee that I learned of the devastation the United States had caused Guatemala. The man explained to us how the United Fruit Company had once owned 70% of Guatemalan land but was only using a very small percentage for farming. Slowly, land was returned to the locals and they had the opportunity to own land again but soon after there was a coup that booted the current regime out of office. This coup was supported by the Americans because we feared communism during the height of the Cold War. This started the long and brutal civil war that occurred in Guatemala. The Guerillas, as they were known, were the farmers whose land was threatened by the new regime. They were forced to flee to the hills to survive while the military hunted them down. Most of the killing that occurred was by the military, backed by the United States.
I sat on the hillside after enjoying a delicious homemade meal from the smiling locals while listening to this man recount his experience during the war. He was forced to join the military even though he did not support them and was treated horribly. He endured inhuman training for a cause he didn’t believe in. Now he walks up to his coffee plantation every day, miles of terrain have to be covered, and when asked how well he was doing compared to the rest of Guatemala he gave himself a 4 out of 10. My heart was aching, and I was livid. I was furious that I hadn’t learned about this sometime in all my years of education. The fact that I didn’t know how involved we had been in the destruction of such a beautiful country tugged at everything that angers me about my country. History is written by the winners. Guatemala is a rich country, and would be prospering had we not interfered.
Corruption is the biggest problem Guatemala has faced since the civil war, and what they continue to fight years later. Guatemala is the richest country in Central America, but its wealth disparity is so great. There are more private planes per capita in Guatemala than in the United States. That’s how rich the rich are while most of the country is living on less than two dollars a day. I have seen poverty in my life, visiting other countries, but it was nothing like this. This was pure widespread poverty relating directly back to a war that we helped start. This tour had the most cultural connections that I have experienced in one single trip. We learned from the coffee farmer, a UN employee, locals in every town we visited, women who are trying to better their community, and the advocates who work to liberate people from making a living picking through the local garbage dump. This is how the tour ended, with a visit to the country’s most poverty-stricken area, Guatemala City. We were presented with a video from Safe Passage, the people working to end the garbage dump life style. People who cannot find work come to Guatemala City to seek a living from rummaging through the garbage dump in the middle of the neighborhood. They scavenge what they can and sell it for scraps. These people are so stuck in a loop of poverty it seems like there is no way out. They bring their children into the dump with them because there is no school, so they are uneducated with no useful skills.
Safe Passage works to get the children of the dump into school and teach them valuable skills to hopefully break the cycle. When I first learned we were going to visit a garbage dump I immediately feared our being the ugly tourists snapping photographs of these peoples lives from the safety of our tour bus. But I was relieved to be wrong. This is a well thought-out and concerned program. These people are doing the hard work to try and change something in a place where change seems impossible. Trying to explain what it felt like to look down on the dump brings tears to my eyes. To watch human beings digging through trash because their country is so damaged that they can’t find work any other way shattered my pre-conceived notions of poverty. This was true poverty. The smell was foul, and vultures swarmed. It was vile, and terrible, and horrifying. This tour is not easy, it will make you feel disgustingly privileged and it will make you feel like you are not doing enough. Imprint donates all its profits from this tour to Safe Passage and Global Visionaries, which works to build schools in remote villages in Guatemala. Just by going on this tour every tour member was contributing to a country in need. And they got to see the darkest parts of this county’s poverty. We were thrown right into the thick of it with no sugar coating, which is exactly what we need.
When we went around the room at the end of the tour and said our peace about the tour, I found I couldn’t quite articulate what I was feeling after this experience. I stood and couldn’t keep the tears from my eyes as I said I had never felt so altered by a country and how I thought this might have changed my life. What I wanted to say was, this is what we need to do as a culture. We need to stop hiding from the problems we have caused in the world and start trying to heal what we have helped break. I thought of climate change and how nothing matters if half of the world is uneducated. There is no point in technology if the people don’t understand what their actions mean. What I wanted to say was, my heart was broken wide open by Guatemala and I intend to do whatever I can to help it and share my experience with whoever will listen. It is a beautiful, rich country, that is suffering largely from our hand. People are suffering and digging through trash while just a few miles over the richest people in the city reside in skyrises drinking expensive martinis. I understand what it feels like to be doing so much just by being there and feeling like it isn’t close to enough.
We asked ourselves the same question the whole trip: What do we do? We were all thinking the same thing, how do we fix this? And there isn’t an answer. All we can do is our very best to tell the world what happened in Guatemala. We tell them how beautiful it is. We tell them how friendly the people are towards us despite our countries choices. We tell them it is a country rich with Mayan history and tradition. We tell them that it is a place that deserves our attention. What I meant to say was this is what matters. In Guatemala I discovered what humanity can be at its very worst and its very best. It’s the people that matter. If we help the people, we help the planet. The only reason we want to save the planet is because people live on it, so maybe we should stop focusing so much on not using straws and start paying more attention to the children in Guatemala who want to go to school. This is the heart of it, and I can’t believe it took me so long to figure that out. So go to Guatemala, see for yourself how humanity can break your heart right open.
Here are links to the websites of both Global Visionaries and Safe Passage if you would like to know more.
http://globalvisionaries.org/
https://www.safepassage.org/