We are spending our mornings in two very different types of Spanish classes. The first is with an individual conversation partner. With these “guides”, we have visited museums, explored the black market, and toured centuries old churches. We get a new guide each week, so there has been a good mix of meeting new people and being comfortable enough to make Spanish mistakes and be corrected. This time with the guide focuses on conversation and vocabulary. The second type of class is a formal classroom setting, with 2-3 students and a teacher from the institute. These are more focused on grammar and application of grammar to conversation.

One exciting thing here was the Puebla vs. Leon fĂştbol game at the local stadium. It is quite the experience to be surrounded by 42,500 soccer fans. It was also exciting in a not so great way when a bucket of glass beer bottles was accidentally dropped onto two of the students by a vender. The medics were quick to arrive and after some glass shard removal, we were able to enjoy the second half. Puebla managed to score a goal, which is quite an accomplishment for them as they are far from the top of the league. It was very impressive to hear the stadium go into an uproar just after they scored. Everyone instantly jumped to their feet, and the volume went from a 7 to an 11.

We have all appreciated the increased freedom. It is much safer to go out at night, which is a big contrast with our time in Guatemala. We also have the afternoons unscheduled, which leaves time for exploring the historic center where the Institute is located. There is a central plaza, called the zĂłcalo, which is only 5 blocks from the institute. Surrounding it are restaurants, coffee shops, small tiendas, newspaper stands, shoeshine chairs, and balloon venders. We have all enjoyed getting a coffee, coke, or just sitting and watching people go by.

This past weekend, we toured Africam Safari. This is a driving safari where you can see animals from all over the world right out of the bus window. Following the bus tour, we went to the adventure section. There was a reptile house, a butterfly conservatory, a high adventure circuit, and a very popular opportunity to have your picture taken while holding a lion cub.

We are looking forward to another weekend packed with activity. This coming weekend we will be going white water rafting and zip lining. As we are winding down our time abroad, we certainly have no shortage of activities to occupy us.

-Andrew Kniss

We arrived at a Quaker guest house, Casa de Los Amigos, exhausted and hungry from our long expedition to Mexico City. We were welcomed with warm hospitality as we found that we would be eating chili and corn bread, a more westernized meal, after eating beans, eggs, and tortillas for the past couple of months. That evening, some went to the revolution monument that is lit up with red lights at night. We watched a beautiful fountain of lights while being serenaded with typical music of Spanish guitar and flutes. We all were content with not having a strict schedule there, which allowed for a better transition to Mexico.

The next day we explored the city and all of the locura that it embodies. While walking down the street we saw an entertainer with floating balls, and a flash mob take place. We made our way to the famous Zocolo where we visited the Cathedral and the Palacio Nacional. The Palacio Nacional is filled with murals of the famous artist Diego Rivera. We had a guide explain to us the rich Mexican history from Mesoamerican times until the time of the Revolution, that Diego Rivera incorporated in his paintings.

After the palace, we ventured up seven flights of stairs to a restaurant where we got to see a great view of the Zocolo and taste the picante of authentic Mexican food.

We then took public transportation to Coyoacan, birthplace of Diego Rivera’s wife and also famous painter, Frida Kahlo. Some decided to stay and visit her home which is now a museum of artifacts from her life. Others went to the plaza where there was un chorro of people relaxing and enjoying their weekend.

I personally decided to go to the Frida Kahlo Museum. After doing several projects and learning about her, she has become an inspiration for me. Never in my life did I think that I would get to go to her Casa Azul in the corner that I first learned about in 8th grade, and yet there I was, filled with excitement. In a time when women didn’t have a say, Frida spoke her opinion and went against the current. She experienced so much pain in her life from Polio, and an accident she had when she was a teenager. She expressed this pain through paintings, mainly of herself. She embraced her suffering and found a positive outlet to express it, which is something admirable. She was an outspoken woman of courage and talent and I am pleased to say I got to cross something off of my bucket list by going to visit her house.

Also in our time in Mexico we took a double decker touring bus all around the city to sight see and learn a little history about where famous events took place. One night we dressed up and went to see a Baile Folklorico, or a folkloric dance in the Palacio de Bellas Artes. We watched in awe the women in their colorful traditional dresses accompanied by men in their sombreros float around the stage as they tapped and danced to Mariachi music. None of us wanted to blink in fear of missing out on the amazingly beautiful dances.

After four wonderful days in the city, it pained us to leave, but we were ready for our next adventure in Puebla, Mexico.

-Rebecca Cardwell

Judge Lawrence Burman – average of 7 minutes per case, 57 immigration courts in country, deportation system backlogged with 350,000 cases, 40 % appear in court without representation.

“Like doing death-penalty cases in a traffic court setting,” one immigration judge said in testimony before Congress about the job.

This is hard to read and I felt like I might cry, especially after meeting families that have been in these situations.  There are so many stories like this one I’m sure.  So many families broken apart.  I can’t even imagine but that doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying.  I don’t want to [return home and] act like I don’t know what I do know.”

-Savanna Lester

Once inside, many of us were surprised to see the logo of the cooperative superimposed onto chalkboard-sized, professionally printed tarps with Hugo Chavez’s face and the phrase “Continuemos la lucha!”

The politics of the coffee cooperative goes back to the Spanish, and later Ladino (non-Mayan) control of land.  In the 1950s President Jacobo Arbenz attempted to redistribute the land in Guatemala so that the lower class could have access to one of Guatemala’s greatest resources: farmland.  The redistribution would have greatly hindered United Fruit Company’s economic exploitation of Guatemala, and shortly after the United States staged a coup.  By 1960, and all the way until 1996, Guatemala was the grounds for a civil war between the US-backed military and guerrilla fighters hoping for land reform.

After seeing the cooperative’s strong principles of independence and care for the land, we continued on the way to Lake Atitlán, arriving in Santiago in time to explore the town before dinner.  Later that evening, the town plaza was alive with vendors selling pineapple cider and atole de platano, with young men playing soccer, and with old men leaning against the wall wearing indigenous clothing and broad-rimmed hats.

The next day we did a walking tour of the town and surrounding area with an MCC SALT volunteer and the president of ANADESA Community Development Organization.  We saw the sight of the military’s massacre of indigenous civilians, new houses the government built but later declared to be in a landslide zone and thus uninhabitable, and men carrying 100-150 pound loads of firewood on their backs.

During the tour, I asked the president of ANADESA, Juan, why so many men in Santiago still wear indigenous clothing; in most parts of the country I had only seen the women doing so.  Earlier I assumed since the men were out of the house more, they felt more pressure to take up Western dress and thus protect themselves from the government by appearing to be less of a target.  Most of the groups massacred by the military during the war were indigenous.  My guess was wrong and the story much more complicated.

During the armed conflict, 75% of the guerrilla fighters were Ladino.  Although Ladino means non-Mayan, this group is often Mestizo, or mixed race, and includes those who are racially Mayan but have taken up Western traditions.  When men changed to Ladino clothing, they were actually making themselves a greater target, but they did so because the government forced them to change when the government recruited young men from indigenous communities.  Their alliance would then be identified by the “jefe’s” list rather than their dress.

After the massacre in Santiago, the community successfully pushed the army out the town, one of the greatest indigenous successes of the armed conflict.  That is why so many of the men continue to wear their indigenous clothing.

The view from the roof of the hotel was gorgeous.  We were surrounded by several volcanoes, one rising right out of the lake, and a sunset beautified by the air pollution.

The next day, our last  in the area, we crossed the lake by boat to spend the morning in Panajachel.  The tourist market was down on the lake, and a few of us ventured up the crowded “normal” market uptown.  One of my own highlights of Panajachel was asking for a tortilla-making lesson at a tortilleria.  The women guessed that they made 400 tortillas a day each; it took me 10 minutes to make one lopsided tortilla.

We ended our time in a pizzeria, enjoying pizza with fresh pineapple and the shouts of people watching Real Madrid versus Athletico Madrid on the TV.  Back in Guatemala (the nickname for Guatemala City), we arrived tired and ready to be reunited with our host families.

-Emilie Raber

Later on Friday afternoon we made our way to the Hotel Gringo Perdido, which was where we stayed for the weekend. Hotel Gringo Perdido sat along a beautiful, large lake and the entire hotel was open. It truly felt like paradise to all of us. The hotel was located in the country about a 45 minute walk outside of town. So if we wanted to go into town at any point it was quite a bit of a walk as there were no buses. It was really nice to have the whole weekend free to relax and hang out after a very long and busy week of Spanish classes and Spanish exams. This trip was something that all of us needed to help us clear our minds and take a break from schoolwork. There were a variety of activities for us to do during the weekend such as swimming in the lake, kayaking, hiking, and horseback riding.

On Saturday morning eight people from the group decided to go horseback riding while everyone else stayed back at the hotel to hang out. Then on Sunday morning most of our group woke up early to see the sunrise over the lake. It is easy to say that this was one of the most beautiful things we saw on the trip. Seeing the sunrise reminded most of us how beautiful and peaceful a place Tikal really is. The food on this trip was amazing and I think everyone would agree that the food we had in Tikal was some of the best so far.

Going back to Guatemala City was very hard for many of us because we missed the quiet peacefulness and sun of Tikal. Going back to the city meant it was time for us to go back to our daily routines, host families, and Spanish class. Overall our trip to Tikal was very successful for everyone and it was a weekend full of friends, laughter, sun, relaxation, and delicious food!

-Christie Martin

The end of our first term of Spanish brought a new class for Becca and I, and Kiersten will be joining us sometimes as well.  We finished our Latin American Literature class and are now beginning a second course on Violence, Peace, and Justice.  This class will study these themes in the history of Central America and especially Guatemala, and we will focus on themes such as women’s rights, the identity of the Maya, the 36-year armed conflict, and theology of peace and justice.  Our teacher is a seminary professor here at CASAS-Semilla, and we are really enjoying interacting with him in class and learning from his vast knowledge about this subject.   This heavy subject matter has given me much to reflect on, so I will share an excerpt from a journal entry that I wrote on February 18.

“Our teacher is so knowledgeable, and I hope he tells us some more of his own story.  He had to flee the country during the war and go to the U.S. because he was accused of communist activities.  All it took then was an accusation to end up in jail, but he told us that usually the accused were tortured and killed rather than jailed.  When he told the police that he wasn’t a communist but a pastor who preached the gospel, they told him that preaching the gospel was a communist activity.  Awful things happened during that time.  Only recently, one of his students asked him to talk to her dying father, who had something that he wanted to confess.  He went to talk to him and learned that this man had been in the army during the war.  The man confessed to throwing live people out of helicopters into the jungle, the ocean, or the craters of active volcanoes.  He wanted to be told truthfully if God would forgive him for what he had done.  Our teacher told him, “SĂ­, Dios te ama (Yes, God loves you).”  If our professor hadn’t had the opportunity to go to the US, he would probably have been killed too.  He pointed at the whiteboard where he’d written “250,000 dead, 1,000,000 homeless, 50,000 disappeared” and said, “the people who couldn’t leave, here they are.”  It was an odd feeling to look at him standing there in our classroom and realize how easily he could have been one of those statistics.  I think I’ll have a lot to journal about as this class goes on.”

This class material relates to an experience we recently had visiting a forensic anthropology lab that works to identify the remains of persons found in mass graves from the time of the war.  Their organization is trying to find and return the 50,000 disappeared people to their families, the vast majority of whom are villagers from the Mayan highlands who were wiped out by the Guatemalan army so that they couldn’t assist the guerrillas.  They also keep all of their records so that they can be used as evidence in future trials if need be.  As I stood in their lab beside a table holding the bones of a child who was maybe four or five years old at the time of death, I was reminded of a different trip where I along with other members of my high school’s touring choir visited the Auschwitz death camp in Poland and saw hair that had been cut from the heads of prisoners.  The feeling I had in these two places was the same.  The Auschwitz prisoners were executed for being Jewish, and these Guatemalans were killed for being Mayan.  Both were incidences of genocide.

As all of these heavy thoughts and experiences have been mulling around in my mind, words of encouragement have also come to me.  A few weeks ago, I decided to open my Bible to a random passage to see what I would find, and I happened to turn to Psalm 37.  It is too long to post the whole thing here, so I’ll just pull out the passages that meant the most to me.  I especially connected with verse 9, which says that “those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land,” and verse 37 most of all, which says, “there is a future for the man of peace.”  The future for the man of peace has been so hard to see in the history of Guatemala, but these promises are full of hope.

-Maria Martin

Sunday morning we arose early and had the opportunity to travel to one of the many Neo-Pentecostal mega churches in Guatemala. We visited Casa De Dios, whose famous pastor is Cash Luna, who is well recognized in Guatemala. This church holds over 15,000 people and the arena atmosphere is much like a concert. However, the fear of the concert atmosphere did not overwhelm our experiences with the Holy Spirit in this church. Most of the songs we could relate to as we sing them in English at home. And with the help of some translators we were able to relate what we had heard from our Neo-Pentecostal lecture to pastor Cash Luna’s sermon, and many of us were able to grapple with the truths of neo-Pentecostalism.

After church we ended our weekend in Antigua (old Guatemala City), where we were able to experience more of the market culture and the sources of income people rely on in Guatemala. The beautiful village of Antigua lies in a valley at the bottom of mountains and volcanos. While walking through the streets we encountered various restaurants, stores, and sites from the early Spanish conquest in the history of Guatemala.  Antigua draws in tourists much like ourselves. We spent the day sight-seeing and walking through the markets of Antigua. Antigua was one of our favorite experiences as many of us would like to return and we can only hope for many more experiences like this one as we continue our journey.

-Jessie Wheatley and Jenessa Derstine

Motorcycles and buses rule the road here and the rest of traffic waits and honks their horn, stop signs and traffic lights are only suggestions, maybe even decoration along the road that drivers do not follow. Airplanes fly over my

house, making it impossible to hear, much less comprehend anyone.  Ants and spiders bite me during the night, leaving me with itchy red bumps in the morning.  The tile in my house is cold and grimy, but feels good on my feet, plus my shoes stink.  The rain sprinkles in the morning and everyone around me is bundled up as if in a blizzard.  The sun warms up the afternoon and I nap and tan. The silence of my family’s presence; but all are studying hard.

The sentimental tears of love after praising me.
My brothers’ compassionate side shows after reading my notes I left for them.
I am part of this family and will lose part of my heart to leave it.
I hope to visit again, maybe with my sister or mother.

-Katherine Graber

We then took a winding road through the beautiful Guatemalan mountains to arrive at our destination, Chichicastenango. In this town we focused our learning on Mayan culture, markets, and Catholicism.  We were able to meet with a women’s widow co-operative that helps them sustain themselves and their families by creating textiles as their sole income. This opportunity allows them to work with an organization specifically like Ten Thousand Villages who are able to buy their products and allocate fair prices. In this co-operative there are twelve women from the K’iche village. This was a fascinating experience to be able to buy items from this co-operative and meet with the women who made them. We also had the opportunity to visit another co-operative called Ruth and Naomi. It was amazing to see that there is hope for people in small villages to make a living for themselves.

On Sunday morning we had the chance to attend a Catholic Mass. The church that we attended was built in the 1500’s by Spanish conquistadors, over a Mayan temple. The current steps of the church are original to the ancient Mayan temple. This church is unique in the way that it still allows Mayans to worship while the Catholic Church is in service. Outside of the church there were Mayan people burning incense and praying. The day we attended was the celebration of la Virgen de Candelaria. There was a procession of lights that we participated in by holding candles and following the priest into the dark sanctuary. This was an interesting experience for all of us, and one of the things that we really enjoyed was the marimba played by six people during the service.

After we left the service, we walked right out to the HUGE market day, which is one of the biggest markets in Central America. The smells, sights, sounds and tastes from the market were overwhelming. We smelled ripe fruit, leather, rotten meat, and burning incense. We saw beautiful handmade artistry such as: masks, jewelry, and the famous brightly colored textiles. We were awakened at 5:00 am by the loud cannons which are a common celebration of the Mayan culture. We heard people speaking K’iche, the music of some of the vendors, and tasted new exotic fruits such as “paterna,” which is like eating a sweet cotton ball.  This is a very touristy town, where seeing our faces was not a surprise to the people. Several vendors were able to communicate with us very easily in English. We were bombarded with children and adults asking us to buy their products. One thing that we all appreciated was forming relationships with the vendors who made the products that we purchased.

This was a very insightful trip for all of us. It brought out a lot of things that we are reading on a weekly basis and also lectures that we have as a group. This experience helped us to appreciate even the things that we think are “little” and also to find hope by helping others sustain themselves.

–   Jasmine Harris and Rebecca Cardwell