I, Brittany Burton: An American Woman in Guatemala

I spent the weekend exploring San Pedro La Laguna, which is located about 20-minutes via boat from Santiago. A really interesting aspect of Lake Atitlán is that each town seems to have it’s own unique alma. San Pedro is close to Santiago, and while much of the local community is indigenous, to outsiders the town portrays itself as a hippie haven for expats and backpackers. A small winding cobblestone street that is only wide enough for pedestrian traffic connects the town’s two main docks. Once you are following the path between the docks, you suddenly are inside a world of yoga studios and thermal bath pools, health food stores and smoothie shacks, and bars that feature nightly performances of acrobats and fire dancers.

Great hang out spot

The Santiago dock. Rising water levels --> several underwater restaurants

I arrived on Friday afternoon, and checked into Casa Santa Elena on the main road. For less than $5 a night, I got my own private bedroom with queen size bed and a balcony with a view of the lake. Over the course of the weekend I had my fair share of falafel and $0.50 cuba libres, watched a movie screening of The Hangover with subtitles in Japanese, ate some of Guatemala’s best barbeque and hung out at the pool, and enjoyed a live performance from a group that called themselves “Nomads United: The International Horse Circus Caravan”.

Typical San Pedro bar activity

"Acroyoga" fire dancer performance at Buddha Bar

Lunch spot at Shanti Shanti

Like any good solo vacation, I had an excellent balance of meeting a lot of interesting people paired with time for self-reflection. On Saturday night at the bar, I spent several hours chatting with a young Guatemalan named Manuel about the hardships of growing up in Guatemala and his dreams to move to Miami. I also had a chance to read for pleasure (which is a luxury for a grad student). I read the book I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala which is a biographical account of an indigenous Guatemalan peace activist. Her brutally violent history was kind of excruciating to read at times. Also, Menchu speaks a lot about how her Christian faith got her through her painful past and is what keeps her fighting against the ladino establishment, but to be honest, this refrain left me confused. Wasn’t it the Spaniards and ladinos who brought Christianity to the region, and replaced traditional indigenous faiths, in the first place? Fighting to maintain traditional values by defending her Christian faith seems kind of paradoxical to me. Either way, it was a really great read for someone who is here living in an indigenous town, and it also gave a bit of insight into the systemic marginalization and segregation that indigenous people have been suffering for centuries.

I must say that the biggest highlight of my weekend was the climb up Volcan San Pedro. The 5-hour hike was by no means easy, but the views of the lake were absolutely spectacular from the top. It was especially cool to be able to look down on Santiago and Chuk Muk. I found the main cathedral in Santiago and traced my way to approximately the location of my home. In Chuk Muk (the village that was built by the government for displaced victims of a 2005 mudslide) you could see that every single home was the exact same size and color, which is apparent by land but even more strikingly visible from the sky looking down. And of course, the lake was framed by several volcanoes and glisteningly blue and beautiful. I’m still sore two days later, but it was worth the trek!

At the summit, finally!

Busting out the new hiking boots

Panorama shot

This week I’m working on the launch of our online marketplace and grant proposal work, as we’ve almost collected all of the finished products from the first round of the Just Apparel project. Also, I’ll be traveling to Chiapas, Mexico at the end of this week to examine how our projects in San Cristobal have maintained sustainability and hopefully learn a thing or two from them. Stay tuned… hasta pronto!

Tuk-Tuks, Coches, and Chicken Buses-- oh my!

Visiting the Just Apparel women this week has been an extremely rewarding and fun experience! Dolores and I traveled to neighborhoods on the outskirts of Santiago to visit each of the women one-by-one in their homes. We were able to check in with each woman individually to make sure that she understood the Just Apparel project, and also see if she had any questions or concerns. I also had the chance to speak with each woman and learn a bit more about her family and her background, as well as check out some of the other embroidery and beadwork that she was working on at home. It was a good way to help build a personal relationship with each woman, and gave me an opportunity to appreciate her unique artistic skills! 

Petronila and her daughter, and an example of her work

Concepcion can multi-task as a momma

Sharing a laugh with Micaela


Some of Carmen's beaded bracelet designs

As I was traveling around Santiago and the surrounding communities this week, I decided that you all might like to know how I’ve been getting around in Santiago. The heart of Santiago is pretty bustling during the day, and pedestrians have to watch out for the three wheeled tuk-tuk taxis that zip through the narrow cobblestone streets. Tuk-tuks cost about $0.50 per ride and take you anywhere around Santiago. The communities nearby Santiago are usually accessed by pickup trucks with built-in handrails in the truck bed. To board, you climb into the back of the truck— standing room only! When you are ready to get off the truck, the proper way to notify the driver is slamming your hand on the truck cab or the side of the truck as hard as you can, until the driver hears you. These are cheaper (about $0.15-$0.25 per ride) and take you much farther than a tuk-tuk.

The coches, with passengers in the truck bed

“Chicken buses” (as the gringos call them) are available for longer trips. So far, most of the chicken buses I’ve seen that start in Santiago are headed towards Guatemala City. Chicken buses are often old American school buses. The school buses are auctioned off and driven down to Guatemala after they have been deemed that they are too old or have too many miles for American use. Chicken buses are usually brightly painted, but behind their playful exterior there lies a bloody secret. Being a bus driver in Guatemala City is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, with over 900 bus driver fatalities in the past decade due to a sharp rise in gang violence. I have had really positive experiences riding chicken buses through my travels in Nicaragua. For obvious reasons I have chosen to avoid them here in Guatemala, even though Santiago is a quaint indigenous town and is nearly a four hour drive away from the capital city, where most of the violence has been occuring. However, the stories about the bus dangers are a constant reminder that even though Guatemala’s brutal civil war has been over for more than 15 years, civilians in Guatemala still have to be wary of the potential of violence on their way to work or their way home to their families.

All warnings about Guatemala City aside, Santiago is a spectacularly beautiful town with some of the most amicable people I have ever met. I hope you enjoy this video I made that highlights a day in my life traveling around Santiago!

 

El Otro Lado del Lago

Tomorrow, Dolores and I will begin in-home visits with all of the women in the cooperative. One of our tasks throughout the visits will be to update the bios of each of the women in Just Apparel. The information that is currently on the website is several years old, so it’s important that we have the most up-to-date information for when we launch the new website and online marketplace. Additionally, meeting the women at their homes allows me to have a more in-depth conversation with each woman about her own perceptions, ideas and insight for the Just Apparel project and helps to build a personal relationship with each woman as well.

With this task on my mind and with today being Father’s Day, I began to reflect upon the women in the cooperative and how their relationships with their own fathers (or the fathers of their children) may differ from my own relationship with my father. In scanning the biographies of the women, I realized that while most of the women in the Just Apparel cooperative aren’t much older than myself, many have already lost their fathers to military conflict, murder, kidnapping, disaster, or disease. Some of the women are taking care of children who were orphaned and never knew their father, and many take care of their own biological children without the help of the child’s father. Guatemalan way of life has a culture that I’ve observed to be more collectivist and family-oriented than the American standard. I can’t even fathom how these women have persisted without the support of their own fathers or father figures for their children.

Children at the Puerta Abierta Biblioteca making Father's day crowns

In an email exchange with my own father today, he suggested that I consider the works of German sociologist Max Weber during my time working in Santiago. I was familiar with Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” and have read articles by Weber in my political economic development courses at school. It was really interesting to contemplate some of Weber’s ideas in the context of the differences in inherent worldviews between myself and my Guatemalan partners.

When traveling to Panajachel (Pana) this weekend, I met a Guatemalan girl who had lived her whole life in Pana yet she shrugged and seemed nonchalant when she mentioned that she had never been to Santiago. A trip across the lake costs about U.S. $3 and takes less than an hour by boat. At first, I was shocked. How could she not even be curious about what was on the other side of the lake? But upon further reflection, I realized that she and many of her Guatemalan peers are struggling each day to simply survive, so my American-bred “quest for adventure” isn’t something that would have ever crossed her mind. A desire to travel has never entered her cultural framework, and isn't a part of her perception of how she lives her life.

My dad articulated it nicely in his email: because of my American upbringing, relative wealth and extensive educational background, I have a “fundamentally different zeitgeist from virtually all of the people you are now interacting with”. But I guess this is one of the reasons why I’ve chosen to study International and Intercultural Communication. Experiencing cultural difference is so deeply fascinating because even while we are learning about others, we are simultaneously learning even more about ourselves.

Some photos from our weekend exploring Panajachel and San Pedro de la Laguna:

At the Santiago dock about to take off for Pana

On the boat ride

With my homestay housemates and friends at the Pana dock

A tuk tuk (3 wheel taxis that roam the towns) named Brittany!

Markets in Pana

Pool party at the Piscina de San Pedro

Best BBQ on the Laguna

$5 Lunch

Me llamo "Tany"

Small-scale microenterprise projects have emerged as one of the most promising development models in recent decades. Research has shown that microenterprises have contributed to livelihood enhancement in thousands of poor communities around the world. However, success stories take time. I’m only going to be in Santiago for two months, so I was really excited to get going on our project as soon as I arrived!

Dolores translating from Spanish to Tz’utijil in Monday's meeting

We spent the first five days that I was here in Santiago trying to figure out logistics about fabric and finances. Anyone who has studied development or worked on a project knows that every project comes with its fair share of unexpected hurdles and challenges! Buying fabric seems like an easy task at first, but actually there are a lot of questions to be answered. Should the women weave the base fabric by hand, or should we purchase local fabric to work with? What styles and colors of fabric are available for purchase in Santiago, and where can we find fabric that is high quality, affordable, and in the colors that we desire? How much fabric does each women need for each product? What is a fair living wage for the labor needed to complete each piece? These questions were some of the things that we thought of after we had already decided which products were making, which colors and designs we wanted, and how we were allocating funding to make the products.

An added challenge is that the majority of the women speak the indigenous Tz’utijil language and only limited Spanish, so I can’t speak with them without a translator. I wouldn’t be able to do anything without Dolores, the Natik’s General Manager in Guatemala, who is fluent in both Spanish and Tz’utijil! Since my name is challenging for many of the women to say, I have started introducing myself as "Tany" to most of the people that I meet in Santiago.

After finally working through all the kinks, we set out to purchase fabric from a local shop for the base materials for our products. We decided to give each woman the option of embroidering either a set of four placemats or a bag with an embroidered flap. Each woman has the option to decide on her fabric color and product based on personal preference as well as the yarn that she already has at home, which she will be using for the embroidery. We decided on a deadline for the projects at two weeks.

Candelaria cutting the fabric

Picking out fabric colors with Anna

This morning the women came over to the meeting place at Dona Chonita’s (my neighbor here in Santiago), and we explained the products and design styles that we had decided for the first round of projects. At the end of the meeting, we distributed the fabric! 19 women came for the meeting. I can’t wait to see what the women come up with for the finished products in a couple of weeks!

My first fabric purchase

Bienvenidos a Santiago!

For an indigenous woman in Guatemala, even day-to-day life can be a constant challenge. The indigenous population makes up at least 60% of the country’s population, but their livelihood remains marginalized. According to my research for a paper for my graduate studies at the University of Denver, 87% of indigenous Guatemalans live in poverty and 61% live in extreme poverty (making less than $1.25 per day per person, according to the World Bank’s poverty measures). In indigenous communities where nine out of ten children under age five are malnourished, indigenous women are not only concerned about their own lives but also about the livelihoods of their families.

Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala is a small village of 40,000 residents located on Lago de Atitlán, the largest lake in Central America. 95% of the inhabitants are indigenous Mayans. The region was hit hard by the 36-year civil conflict in Guatemala from 1960-1996. The conflict and systematic marginalization of both women and indigenous people has left most of the women in Santiago Atitlán with very few marketable skills. Many women depend on artisan handicraft work to survive.

Approaching the docks at Santiago Atitlán, via boat from Panajachel

Women doing the day's washing 

Lago de Atitlán and Volcan San Pedro amongst the clouds

On our way to the market

I am spending the summer living in a homestay in Santiago Atitlán and working as the Project Development Intern for Natik, a U.S. based nonprofit that works together with community-based organizations in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico to transform marginalized communities through economic and educational empowerment.

Natik has been working in the Santiago Atitlán area since 2003. With Natik’s assistance, a group of 34 indigenous Mayan women have formed a microenterprise called Just Apparel in the community. Natik provides the materials for the handicraft work, and the women create beautiful woven handbags, tablecloths, pillowcases, and clothing from the thread. Once the items are sold, the women receive a portion of the profits, and a portion is retained for reinvestment. Additionally, a portion is allocated for a scholarship fund for secondary school for students in the community.

The Just Apparel scholarship fund has afforded at least 15 students with secondary school scholarships. Natik also operates The Puerta Abierta Biblioteca, which "offers creative learning opportunities to Santiago Atitlán children through preschool and kindergarten classes, after school enrichment programs, reading hours, homework help, and the traveling library, which spreads the joy of reading to the most remote parts of Santiago” (Natik.org, accessed June 1 2013).

A day of lessons at the Puerto Abierta Biblioteca

The biggest challenge facing the women of Santiago Atitlán is a lack of work for the artisans. The local tourist market for traditional embroidered goods is flooded, as there are too many women with the same skills and not enough local buyers. With such limited access to local markets to sell their artisan crafts, the women are forced to take on additional work that is often not paid at a fair, living wage.

My project in Santiago (as the locals shorten it) is to assist the cooperative of women to be able to earn a living wage through artisan craft sales by expanding the market for their crafts to include an international online marketplace. I will help with product design, pricing strategy, and website design for the Just Apparel website and online marketplace, as well as create and manage several other online portals such as an Etsy store. I will also be conducting in-house interviews with each of the women, working individually with each woman on her color preferences and embroidery styles in order to help her create and sell unique works of art. I will be writing short biographies of each woman in order to include information about the artist on a small card with each product when it is shipped to the consumer.

Meeting with some women in the cooperative at their homes to discuss fabrics

Monday was my first meeting with the women of the Just Apparel cooperative. At least 25 women came over to my neighbor’s house here in Santiago, and we sat in a big circle and talked about the next step for Just Apparel. I was introduced and we explained to the women that I will be working on the project for the next two months here in Santiago. The women were asked to bring over samples of their products so that we had an idea of what kind of skills the women already have, and how we could incorporate these skills into their future work with the cooperative.

The women of Just Apparel in our first group meeting

One of the examples of handwoven embroidery

The problem in this community isn’t the lack of desire to work but instead the lack of opportunity to work. I truly believe that this project has great potential for small-scale improvement in human livelihood, and I am looking forward to an incredibly rewarding summer!

Development Dilemmas in Nicaragua (and in myself)

As a student of International and Intercultural Communication, a significant focus of my graduate education has been learning how to understand and work together with individuals from other countries and cultures. I came into the IIC program conversational in Spanish yet sometimes apprehensive about speaking, and I found myself challenged by the concept of truly connecting with people who don’t share my same background or language. I’ve always been interested in international volunteer work and have a passion for Latin American culture. So when I heard about the International Service Learning program in Nicaragua over Winter Interterm this year, I packed a guidebook and my courage into a backpack and set off for a month-long trip through Central America.

The International Service Learning course I took through the University of Denver was called ISL Nicaragua: Development Dilemmas. The four-credit course examined how increasing tourism development and political changes in a post-revolutionary society have affected the livelihood of Nicaraguans.

Students were able to observe the inner workings of various organizations on the southwest Nicaraguan coast, including a privately funded charity foundation, a luxury tourism resort, a vacation home community, and a local educational nonprofit. We were encouraged to befriend and interact with locals as much as possible, and stayed for the majority of the time at a small fishing village that is slowly and perhaps undeniably transforming to become a gringo surf town. The number of foreigners developing infrastructure on previously undeveloped landscapes in Nicaragua is growing at a really fast rate, so it was interesting to study the dynamics between the outside developers and the affects of these developments on the local people. The course also had a service component. Some students spent time volunteering for a US-based nonprofit doing ecological conservation and construction projects, while others taught English at a local school.

I spent nearly two weeks with DU classmates as a part of the course, but also backpacked independently through northwest Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama for a few weeks after the class. There, I was able to do some adventure travel activities, spend some time on the beach, and continue to practice my Spanish communication skills. Throughout the course of my time in Central America, I had several nights where I spoke entirely in Spanish. After having dinner and watching a futbol match one evening with my new Tico friends, I had an epiphany—I had just spent the entire night actually engaging in international and intercultural communication. It really felt amazing to be able to actually bond with others in a foreign environment and to be able to share small parts of our worlds with each other.

I’ve learned a lot, but I still have a lot to learn in both cultural and language fluency. However, I definitely believe that cultural immersion is an incredibly valuable experience for those of us who are studying international communication, and for me, this winter in Central America made the world a little bit smaller and more deeply connected.