Pretty much all of May is Mother’s Month in Guatemala… there have been activities in the schools all month as well as countless promotions from the cell phone companies and the Wal-Mart owned supermarkets “especialmente para mi mamá.” So, in honor of this Mother’s Month (and because it’s past the actual Mother’s Day) I wanted to share a little more about my host mom, Bethi, specifically one story that happened about a month ago.
Bethi is an elementary school teacher in the town of Pachaj, just one town over from where we live. My oldest host sister, Karin (16), has also just this year started studying to be a biligual teacher in Spanish and Quiché, one of the major indigenous languages still spoken in Guatemala. Both Bethi and Karin are passionate about being (or becoming, in Karin’s case) teachers, but it is not an easy job anywhere, and especially in Guatemala. Just since I have been here, there have been several protests, talk of an all-out strike (but I think that happens most years at the beginning of the school year) and a lot of general dissatisfaction with the current Guatemalan administration’s handling of the education system here. None of that is new, but there was more hope for this current president’s ability and will to do something to begin to change the current Guatemalan education system, so maybe there was a little more diappointment this year.
Anyway, the schools around here (and in most of the country, I think) still hadn’t received all or even part of the money that was supposed to come from the federal government by April... the school year begins about the second week of January. Then in mid to late April some of the other public schools in Xela did receive their money, or at least part of it. Only Karin’s school didn’t receive any. Karin’s school is also the only public high school in Xela that doesn’t wear the typical plaid uniforms. Instead, since it’s a school for Quiché teachers, the female students have to wear the traditional traje from their town. There still exists plenty of discriminacion against indigenous people here. For example, in the univeristy, indigenous students are advised to wear pants suits because they are less likely to get hired if they are wearing their traditional traje. So Bethi thinks that at least part of the reason that Karin’s school didn’t receive the government money is because of discriminacion against the all-indigenous student body.
So eventually there was a parent meeting at the school to discuss what to do, and some parents suggested that they just pay all the school fees out of their own pockets so that the students didn’t suffer from not having the materials they need. But Bethi didn’t like that idea, so she stood up on a chair in front of all the parents (which is kinda a big deal since she’s a woman and there were a lot of men there) and said that it wasn’t fair that all the rest of the schools had received at least part of the money and this school handn’t, and that if the parents pay this year then what will happen next year? Everyone started cheering and yelling and then they decided to all march down to the municipal building to demand the school’s money. So Bethi led all the parents and students through the city to the municipal building (which is not a short walk from the school). They found the head of education of the municipality and surrounded him and began to shout at him, but Bethi got up on a chair again to calm down the parents and explain to the guy what they wanted. She also had an interview on TV and radio and was in two different papers. It was all pretty exciting. They still haven’t gotten all their money, but they have gotten a part of it, and now they’re still trying to decide whether or not to go to the capital to demand the rest of it.
Sometimes things feel kinda crazy here... there are protests all the time for lots of different things, but I’ve begun to realize how complacent I am and how helpless I feel as an American citizen sometimes. I think that we generally expect our government to take care of things for us, and when they don’t we don’t remember where to start to make changes. Or maybe we’re too lazy. Or both. Not that I think visably (and almost unapologetically) corrupt governments are good, but it does seem like the people here feel like they have to take things into their own hands more instead of just saying what they wish the government did differently. There seems to be an attitude of “well if we don’t do it, nobody will,” which I think maybe we have lost some in our own culture.
