Back from the Mountains

amidst the self-centered melodrama i have been mostly littering here, some lovely times with the people and natural beauty of guatemala have attempted to re-ground me.

here are some pics from a mini-stint to the mountainous department of San Marcos serving as a helper for the logistics of the CASAS group that headed out there with our "green" prof to hear from communities about their experiences with mining companies, family migration to mexico and the u.s., their experience of hurrican stan in 2005, and the rebuilding efforts since then to preserve and protect the beauty that is both the nature and the social and cultural richness of their communities.

our first stop was the community of comitancillo, where prof adrienne and her family lived working with a community development agency there for five years inthe 90s. the org and community are thriving, working in new organic agricultural techniques, creative cooking-nutrition classes, and organizing against the goldcorp mining company that wreaks havoc on their and neighboring communities - with diseases from mining contamination in the rivers and soil, cracked home walls from the explosions and huge dump trucks carrying rock and debris, loss of water sources and biodiversity, displacement of their homes, ancestrial burial grounds, and lives to other locations for the mine´s expansion, not to mention the depressing eyesore an enormous open-pit mine leaves behind.

we then traveled on to La Vega del Volcan. fellow mcc-er Nate has his placement working there and other tiny communities in the tucked-away mountain slopes of San Marcos, working with Caritas, a Catholic relief and development agency.

in La Vega and other communities in San Marcos, they are primarily working in food security and economic development, or in lay terms, in methods to increase nutrient-rich food production (in this case trout and mushrooms) and cultivating income-generating, environmentally-friendly projects in a community cooperative - where the community comes together to bring their products to market, and shares part of the economic benefit for community goals/projects and eventually to start a little cooperative store. (The extra trout and mushrooms, as well as roses).

the communities of San Marcos make it hard not to idealize rural communities and rural life in Guatemala. we stayed in La Vega, a community only accessible by 4x4 pickup, horse or foot, high up in the western highland mountains.

GREEN. is the first of two initial impressions. everything is so green. and there was water everywhere - little streams and rivers, clean, cold.

LOVE. is the second. people so warm, humble and hospitable. full of energy and hope to make their community the best it can be. filled with a faith that is pure. the bible passages of valleys and mountains, and god´s daily provision, his love and concern for the poor, all come alive in a place and people who´s lives and stories mirror exactly this.

and so we listened. to a first community story via a tour over boulders and nature-rerouted rivers. 2005. hurricane stan. the hurricane sent constant heavy rain for days. the mountaintops gave way, and avalanches of huge boulders, entire trees, mud and water rushed down, killing some, sending the rest to seek safety, and later to assess the damage that once was their community.

in a community already isolated by nature´s terrain, in "normal" times malnutrition and scare resources are a reality that come from being hours by foot from the nearest main road, reliant on what the mountainous slopes can provide in harvest time. hurricanes, heavy rains, drought - a year´s food supply is washed away in minutes, along with homes, farming tools, animals, and in some cases loved ones.

we stayed with families in this green paradise. trying to imagine what it must have been like to see the mountain slopes give way. where would you go? the community is in a basin - about a hundred simple brick, wood or tin homes with mud floors, completely surrounded by mountains. if one slope gave way, you would have to rush to the other, and hope it that it didn´t.

the community spoke of thier hope - of their reforestation projects and environmental preservation efforts - planting small trees on the slopes the most vulnerable to future mudslides. they recognized that their home was set in a natural paradise, one of the few that are rapidly disappearing from their country and the planet. a huge verdant lung that they desire to care for, so it can continue providing oxygen for life, and tranquility for the soul - not just for their community and animals, but the city dwellers and visitors normally residing in their concrete jungles.

they proudly showed us their fish tanks where they were raising trout that would provide their families much-needed protein and also a source of incomes, sold down the next mountain ridge in restaurants in mexico.

they talked about what it takes to make ends meet - about generations of seasonal migration to mexico as whole families during coffee season to earn enough cash to make it until their own little harvest of corn and beans.

and how when that was no longer enough, told of the sons, mothers, daughters, fathers, who carried the hope of their entire families -- a family-appointed pilgrim, risking pooled savings and the boarder-crossing perils of muggings, rapes, raging rivers, dry expanses of desert, carrying hope of finding a job as a dishwasher, a day laborer, a custodian-- so that they could send money back that could buy food staples, pay for a sister´s elementary education, rebuild a lost home.

and they showed us proudly to their community school, where they collectively pay a handful of teachers to make the trek in each week to teach elementary through middle school classes.

we feasted on fresh trout in the afternoon, and in the evening, the community arranged a party and bonfire for us - each one presenting him or herself, welcoming us, blessing us, a community band came and played their guitars and trumpets for us, we ate steamed "elote" (fresh corn on the cob) and hotdogs and "smores" fixings we had brought in our packs.

in the morning , we set out early. our contracted pickup didn´t come - the one that was supposed to take us to the top of the mountain ridge, where we would then hike the 2-3 hours out towards the main road. so we added another couple hours in the ascent.

(still climbing up. - note starting place, the community below...) but as tiring as the 5 hour-ish hike was, it was breathtaking.

i couldn´t how many climates we passed through - starting at 4000+ meters of cold damp air, and and then steadily warming as we descended on the windy mountain ridge paths and through the shades of green - first were the pines, potato farms and sheep at the highest altitude, giving way to cloud forests and mountain flowers as we descended a bit, which opened into some surprising tall grasses and small corn plots, which later opened to air like a warm, wet blanket and tropical flowers and foliage.

(we found some rain, and then some temp shelter. )

it was a good douse of beauty for my tired soul. the love, hope and well-determined and holistic priorities of a humble people with healthy relationships to god. family. a united community. their green garden plots. the mountains. streams. animals.

what could i say, but thank you.

Waiting for Godot

Who reads this, I wonder to myself. As a friend of once bloggers who then fell off the face of the earth, I know the trend pretty much goes that once someone stops posting regularly, the few who were once reading dwindle to none.

But since there is still one hard core person out there, asking for an update, here it goes.

The update is that I still don´t have an update. Let´s call this Waiting for Godot, my-life style. I would like to tell you I have been waiting with grace and confident faith and all of that. That would be a lie. There have been moments like that. But there has also been fed-up frustration with not knowing, and what seem like countless scenarios where I focus my last energies and final shreads of sanity promising myself that the next blessed meeting will result in an answer. And nothing.

So I don´t bother to write you. Because who wants to hear that scenario over and over? I can hardly stand to write it. I want to give you an actual answer. I want to give myself an actual answer.

Blek. Moving on.

The last two days I have been able to take my mind off of some of this in part attending the 3rd Social Forum of the Americas, which is held ever two years in a different country in the American continents, and conveniently this time around it not only is being held in Guatemala, but in Guatemala City where I live, and a mere 15 min down the street from my apt by bus in low traffic.

Here´s the link:
http://www.forosocialamericas.org/index.php.en

It has been a good time to listen, to think, to see people from all over the Americas - Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico and more - all working to make the world a more just place to live for all. I have been particularly interested in attending the forums and talks related to indigenous communities and rural communities. Went to a talk on how some Mayan communities are using the traditional methods of Community Consultations to vote collectively on big issues facing their communities - like the impacts mining would bring.

See ¨Sipakapa no se vende (Sipakapa not for Sale)¨ video links on Utube (I think there are several that make up the whole video, here is one chunk):

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=6-hmX942t14

Some representatives from the communities from the video shared with us this experience and how they are using the tool to exercise indigenous rights claimed to be present in international policies (however, rarely followed) to have a say in what sorts of damaging industries are set up in their backyard.

I also attended a debate on bio-fuels. Essentially exploring the question of if it is the salvation we have been looking for to keep up with our ridiculous consuming of fossil fuels and consumerism in general, or if its risks and bad consequenses outweigh the good.

I was once sold on the bio-fule idea. It sounds so earthy and sustainable. But turns out that it has a range of bad consequenses that the poor and the rural dweller have to again take the bullet for, and it doesn´t ask the northern countries (US, Canada; europe) to also take some responsibility and change our lifestyles of luxuary. Maybe one day I´ll write more on agro-fuels, but I´ll leave it there fore now and maybe you will be curious enough to do some research on it.


Also went to a talk last night on the US presidential elections and what potential impacts the two possible administrations would have on Latin America. Interesting stuff.

And just got done watching a few indigenous videos - from Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico - taking a variety of themes like the forced work (de facto slavary) of Gold mining/destruction of natural habitat and native peoples (Brazil), Repression of the teachers strike in Oaxaca and women´s roles in popular movements (Mexico), manipulation of political parties/oppression of coffee plantations/loss of indigenous identity in youngest generation (Guatemala), a video of the dying "ice-harvester¨ vocation of a man in the ice-capped mountains of Ecuador who chisles big blocks of ice from the mountains, wraps them painstakingly with dried grasses to insulate them, and loads them onto his donkíes for the decent to then deliver them to cafes in the valley town who use it in their drinks claiming its health and superior taste to commercially-produced ice. And with that, I will abruptly finish.

So there´s AN update, even if it isn´t THE update. :)