My first Guatemalan Funeral

Late Saturday night I was woken up by the clanging of pots and pans and the rev of the blender. “What in the world is going on?” I thought to myself. Usually by 10pm everyone in the house is fast asleep. In my sleepy stupor, I decided not to give it much thought and go back to sleep. Sunday morning, while trying to take advantage of the hour of no rain, I ran into my host mom and asked her what was going on. “Don’t you know that Licena’s dad died last night!?” Apparently, in addition to being a Peace Corps volunteer, I am a mind reader.

The father of Licena, my host mom’s daughter-in-law, has been sick for a couple of months now and was diagnosed with cancer recently. He passed away around 10:30 Saturday night and they say he died peacefully, after an evening of chatting and heavy breathing, he decided that he wanted to sleep and died shortly thereafter.
The moment someone dies here, it’s time to work. You not only call family members to advise them of the death, but you begin the “velorio” wake. In order to prepare for the wake, you have to make MASSIVE amounts of food. My host family killed a cow, grinded 2 quintales of corn to make hundreds of tortillas, ordered five baskets of bread and countless pounds of vegetables. People from all over the community gather at the house to pay their respect and lots of people stay the entire night to mourn the death. So the morning after the family had to provide breakfast, then lunch, then dinner, then coffee with bread throughout the entire night (no one sleeps), then breakfast before the funeral. The coffin and flowers were arranged in the front room of the house for all to see the moment they walked into the house. Apparently the night before the burial, the body started to smell and everyone dashed to find incense and candles. I had wondered how they could have put formaldehyde in the body so quickly…answer is…they didn’t! (sorry is that TMI? My censor for that went out the window month three of this experience).

Another interesting thing I learned, aside from the insane amount of cooking and money spent on food for family but also for strangers just looking for a free meal, was another difference between Catholics and Evangelicals. Oh yes, the constant battle about who is the better Christian, pictures this: Jesus is in the middle of the playground and the Evangelical girl with pigtails yells “No I have accepted him into my heart not you!” and the Catholic girl turns to her good friend Virgin Mary and wonders what’s wrong with the pigtailed loud girl. Anyway, they were all going on about how amazing it was that he accepted Jesus into his heart before he died. This was shocking to me because everyone is either Catholic or Evangelical so how could it be that he was neither? I asked, “so he didn’t have a faith?” The women quickly replied “No, he was Catholic. Thank God that he accepted Jesus into his heart and is now with God in heaven!” For the Catholics reading this…surprised! Apparently, we’re going to hell because we haven’t accepted Jesus. No no, it doesn’t matter that we read the same bible, praise Jesus, nope only Evangelicals can get into heaven. Pretty sure Christianity was the umbrella that Catholicism was under but I guess I’m just a Catholic and wouldn’t know any better. Alright, I’ll step off my soap box now. It just gets under my skin sometimes.



So we went to the cemetery, the pastor gave his last prayer, and they placed the coffin into a tomb (above ground) and someone bricked the opening shut. I found myself getting emotional during these past days. At a funeral, you can’t help but wonder…who’s next? I thought of my family, of how far away I am from home, of my grandparents, of how heartbroken I would be if it were one of them instead. To properly deal with those thoughts, I had to distract myself with quotidian matters.
At the burial, my sitemate noted something I found particularly interesting, she commented on how people’s behaviors suddenly change when a family member dies; you realize how you took that person or life in general for granted. Family members who fought now get along; but the change is ephemeral. Sad isn’t it? Let’s try to remember the delicate nature of life and appreciate one another.

Everyone's a little bit racist

Yup, if Avenue Q hasn’t given you the news yet, well, now you know. Before my service, I imagined myself living in a rural village. My Dad joked about how my new address would be the third hut on the left. During the time when I announced that I had accepted my Peace Corps invitation and leaving for service, I felt as though I was constantly justifying my rationale for serving, constantly defending people and a culture that I’d never even experienced. The “us and them” mentality was in full effect: Americans vs. Guatemalans. Why would I trade hamburgers and draft beers for tortillas and eggs? (Actually, to be perfectly fair, that question crosses my mind from time to time). But back to the point, I felt a clear sense of racism among many Americans against Guatemalans before leaving in August 2010.

Fast forward a year and I come to find that the Guatemalans who are oftentimes subject to racism in the United States are in fact racist themselves. I knew that racism existed in all societies and being part Colombian I knew that skin color was definitely a factor in the societal hierarchy in Latin America. But I never thought that I would witness such a high level of discrimination on a daily basis in site. Working side by side with the Mayan Council, I’m constantly hearing people’s commentary. I’m not sure if people think that since I’m from the States then I’d also have the same racist thoughts against indigenous people or what but people seem to be quite open with me about their thoughts towards “the mountain people”. Yesterday, I sold a solar lamp and water filter to my host mom on behalf of the Mayan Council. On the water filter, there’s a space where you write who sold the item, so instead of writing my name I wrote “Alcaldía Maya” (Mayan Council). Immediately, she doubted the Mayan Council’s involvement in selling the products. The conversation went something like this:

Host Mom (HM): “Is the Mayan Council really selling these products!? What do they have to do with this?”

Me: “Yes, they’re working with an institution that provides them with water filters, solar lamps, they even do eye exams and sell reading glasses.”

HM: “What!? Could they be capable of giving eye exams?” (As if indigenous people are completely incompetent or incapable of accomplishing something aside from farming and selling in the market).

Me: “Yes, they went through workshops and have certificates to prove it. They actually do a lot of work that helps the community”

HM: “The indigenous community you mean”

Me: “No, everyone. They help anyone but are especially able to help Mayan communities because they speak the language.”

HM: “But what if they (the new Mayor and his people) get rid of them?”

Me: “That’s illegal, they have a constitutional right to exist.”

HM: “Really!? But why?”

And then I go on explaining the work that the Mayan Council does (for the millionth time). Then her son enters, asks the same questions, and I repeat myself.
I’ve had so many conversations like this. For all the complaints I get from people in my town about how Americans are so racist towards them when they (usually illegally) are in the US; I would think that they’d understand a little bit about how discrimination is unacceptable…but that isn’t the case. Everyone thinks that the Mayan Council is going to be taken away, nobody in the urban center knows about the work they do, it’s like they’re all afraid of admitting that there’s an indigenous presence in Canillá. My sitemate was telling me how a school director was saying that she didn’t think the Mayan Council was going to be able to stay, calling them “creidos” (conceited, stuck up) because they always want things their way. It reminds me of the racial issues various minority groups have had to endure in the US; whites calling minorities’ complainers for bringing injustices to light.

“Just wait,” I tell my co-worker, “in a couple of years they’ll be raving about all the good work you all do and will be asking for help. Then they’ll see.”

More on Immigration

Due to an increase in unemployment among the municipal workers who will soon be replaced, it seems that everyone is talking about going to “El Norte” (the north aka the US). They all plan on crossing the border illegally which makes me think, once again, about how immigration plays such a large role in my personal life here.

In Canillá, there aren’t really jobs here because it’s so small You can work for the municipality, the bank, be a teacher, work at the health center, own some sort of a tienda, or work your farm (but this is typically small scale and the only market is selling products once a week in our local market or traveling long distances to sell in the markets of nearby towns). . In fact, the more educated you are, the harder it is to find a job in Canillá. If you’ve studied in school, that leaves you with the municipality, the bank, the school system or the health center. Some towns have NGOs or foreign institutions that will hire Guatemalans, but those are also on a contract basis and are typically located in department capitals. For example, Save the Children used to be in our town but they’ve moved on to other municipalities and they either take their staff with them or hope that the municipality hires the local workers.

I keep going back and forth as to whether people who say they’re crossing the border are doing it because of necessity or because they want to keep up with a high-level of living. In Canillá, you definitely see both cases. The people in the municipality are used to a certain amount of pay and some of them have even entrenched themselves in massive debt, thus, taking a low-level Guatemalan job just isn’t going to cut it for them. For others, it’s a matter of survival. It’s far better for them to find a low level US job that no American really wants to do in order to send that money back home (see NYT article about hiring locally for farming jobs). But then there are the risks associated with all of this:

• It’s expensive to cross the border, last I heard it ran for about $8,000 USD plus 10% interest and obviously if you don’t have money to live in Guatemala, you don’t have the money to pay that fee upfront
• It has become increasingly dangerous. Justin was telling me that a coyote from his town mentioned how the narcos are pretty much running shop in the border towns; you can play by their rules, get killed, or wait around indefinitely by the border to cross (and that isn’t guaranteed). This is on top of the other risks associated with illegally crossing the border: border patrol, injuries from harsh weather and walking conditions, illness, gangs along the way, etc.
• You leave your family. I cannot count how many family problems I’ve encountered because a child’s parents have left for the United States. In some cases, the children stay with the mother but then the father gets a new US wife and forgets his family back home. In other cases, both parents head for the US and leave the children with the grandparents who may not be able to dedicate the time and effort to raise another set of children. And in worse scenarios, the children become abandoned, forced to live on the streets or figure out how to fend for themselves.

Despite these risks, in their opinion, it’s still worth it to cross.

Never in my life have I thought about immigration so much. Honestly, immigration and the drug war are the two issues that have been completely eye opening for me. My mom is from another country, so of course I was familiar with immigration, understood the complexities of preserving an old culture while trying to fit in with a new one; but never had I experienced these sort of immigration issues on such a wide scale. I had never been on the other side of the fence.

Whenever I see news coverage about immigration, I immediately download the article or podcast. The New York Times posted an interesting article with photos and a documentary that I read a couple days ago. A couple salient points “Deportation is expensive, costing the government at least $12,500 per person”, “‘repeat crossers are singled out for removal alongside ‘serious felons,’ ‘known gang members’ and ‘individuals who pose a clear risk to national security.’” (I know repeat crossers…they are definitely not anywhere near the status of a gang member or big risks to national security), but what struck me most was the quote by David Shirk, director of the Transborder Institute at the University of San Diego “"If you think drug dealers and terrorists are much more dangerous than maids and gardeners, then we should get as many visas as possible to those people, so we can focus on the real threat…Widening the gates would strengthen the walls." Now before dismissing this comment, really think about it. Who should we really be targeting? The people in my town looking for work? Or the gang members and narcos that make a profit because they can manage increasingly intricate obstacles that the US creates to “stop” immigration? Immigration is incredibly complex and as I continue to meet people in my town who were born in the US, have crossed illegally, just want to visit, want to start fresh, I find myself wondering how can people in Washington, who probably have never seen the other side, make blanket solutions to immigration?