problems.what problems?

Heres a photo of the tallest Guatemalan I could find. She works at the school and has 8 children. A mayan language is her first indigenous language and Spanish her second. The younger generation tend to speak Spanish as their first language, but you can still hear the local dialects in the market. It sounds a bit like Gaelic!



The weekends I have been climbing the local Vocanoes, I was up Tajimulco last weekend, which is the highest in C.A at 4200m. On the main route up theres pine forrests and cattle farming and on the other side theres marijuana fields. Theres some snow on the top but it's still warm, its not really exploited as a tourist destination. All there was at the start of the trail was a pole with a Guatemalan flag and some stray dogs, although Guatemala is usually better at flaunting its other tourist spots, like the lake Atiglan and Tikal Mayan ruins.

Was at the Local football game on Saturday, I missed the only goal as was trying to find the male toilet(as there was none, use the pillars under the stand). Atmosphere was a bit tame, but was amusing when the away side goalie was at our end due to the chants. Tried some of the local Quetzaltecca rum during the game, its $1 for the half bottle, but needed a bit more to make the game interesting. There were kids that looked about 7 working in the stands as food and drinks vendors. Hot pineaple juice, tacos and soup, no pies unfortunately.

In the spanish classes I made the mistake of asking about Guatemalan problems, which opened up a can of worms ["desatar la lengua" is the spanish phrase], as lili my teacher went off one a 1.5 hr rant. I've broken down what I can remember here;

Education - theres a low standard of teaching, teachers missing out silent letters, and relying on volunteers in some schools for English classes [AKA.me - sometimes people like me who don't have a clue how to teach]. Corruption in university is common for example taking money to mark a thesis.

Hospitals are overcrowded, apparently 6/10 women die giving birth. The water is Contaminated - chemicals in the water supply, and lots of amaebas to contend with, which make number 2's like number 1's.

Minimum wage is $75+ dollars a month for local services work, $187+ for banks and government and $750+ if you have a university degree. Indigenous Mayan families are large due to factors like parents wanting more kids to work for them, the Evangelicals and Catholic religions encouraging it and banning contraceptives. Child labour is commonplace.

There is no benefits system for contractual workers (like those fantastic agencies we have in Britain). There are many disabled people as punishment for thievery in rural areas used to be to cut of the arm. As the police force is untrusted and corrupt people still take law into own hands in the rural areas. There is a guy with no arms and legs, who delivers papers on a skateboard in Xela, the city i'm in.

There is a machista culture, chuvenism, inequality in the sexes. Although there may be a female president running in the next election. There is no confidence in rural communities as indigenous farming co-opratives in the past were destroyed the government, due to being communists . . . i.e. It did not adhere to the US intrests of creating a neodependent state, with a one crop export economy.

and the world is going to end in 2012.

Centro Americas

Another history lesson? The coolest thing i´ve found this week is a rum smoothie. Here is a thoroughly unreferenced short history of Centro America.

Central America has history of conflict, a tragedy, for example the 36 year civil war in Guatemala only ended in 1996. They threw government adversaries into active volcanoes from helicopters in that one.

Starting from the beginning, peoples from Asia came across the Bering straight into Alaska and down through the Americas. Around 3000BC the savage and sophisticated Mayan civilisation was gathering momentum before reaching a pinnacle at around 900AD and falling into decline. So the Spanish didn't destroy the civilisation but were extremely cruel to the dissembled Mayan people, they arrived in the early 1500's. The Spanish brought Guns, Horses and Disease (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) all of which scared the bejeezus out of the indigenous peoples. They pillaged the land (along with the British) and enslaved the people until they ran out of the indigenous peoples and had to start importing African slaves. The mix of White European, African and Indigenous gives the diversity of people that can be found today. In 1821 the Centro Americas got independence from Spain, creating the 5 states of Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.

The 19th-20th centuries were full of US intervention, dictators, revolutions, war and poverty. This has lead to countries today that have high unemployment, crime and corruption. There is an abandonment of subsistence farming and emigration north in search of the American dream, to the greatest country in the world.

In the Guatemalan past there was a lot of resistance to the Spanish conquests for land and slaves, In the North the people resisted the armed attack of Spanish but were converted to Christianity instead, another method of subduing the indigenous peoples. In Colonial society there were different classes of peoples any mix that wasn't pure Spanish was generally enslaved, for the mining gold and silver, and working in plantations. The Spanish brought sugar cane to the Americas.

After independence from Spain the next major conquistador was United Fruit [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company] or "El Pulpo" from US in 1902. They bought the best tracts of land and built the port Barrios and a railway through the country solely for the export of Bananas, giving them a monopoly on the export of fruit with no Taxes. This was frustrating for the people of an overpopulated country that had given away the best land. Eventually a president was elected that was too bold for America, whom reclassified huge tracts of land for the people. Then came the CIA sponsored Coup [The American Ambassador in Guatemala and a CIA director were chairmen in United fruit], and the next half of the century, in which 350 villages were destroyed, 35,000 widows were created and 2 million people emigrated. When the mountains tremble . . . http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421089/


Now Guatemala has the highest population in Centro America, with 75% living below the poverty line of $2 a day, and no sign of Ajis, thats a midget who wears a red coat, and if you follow him back to his little red house, he will make you rich [Guatemalan Story]. If that wasn't interesting heres the story how to catch a Haggis.

Guatemalteca

The Mayan were dominant in Central America for around a 1000 years, then the civilisation colapsed for an unknown reason. There were 22 different peoples and they came together at cities like Copan and Tikal to trade and worship. The social hierarchy was divided into the Senores at the top of the pyramid, the Pueblo or public, and then slaves at the bottom. Senores consisted of Kings, Priests and Fighters, the public of farmers, builders and artisans, and the slaves were losers from battles between villages or from losing at Mayan football [campo]. This social divide can still been seen today in the graveyards of Guatemala, which have three distinct sections. You have to pay a tax on your grave, so if you can't afford it you get moved to the lower class section in the yard.





There were many gods in the Mayan religion,for example Hunab Ku, the supreme god, with whom you have to ask permission to walk up volcanos and mountains. Mountains are very spiritual places for the Mayan peoples. The people climb up and perform ceremonies and exorcisms, which is quite a surprise if you get to the top and there are wailing and shouting people there.

The Mayans are known as people of the corn, as maize [corn] was one of the main crops they cultivated. The principle crops were corn, beans and cocoa (which was used as money, not gold!). It may be a tedious link but the Mayans knew the importance of corn, and it's no mistake that the entire American food industry is based on it, i.e. corn flakes, corn syrup in everything, even the cattle get fed corn. interesting film - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286537/

The Mayans were also great astronomers and mathematicians. They invented the number 0 for example. They created two calenders, one for the Moon and one for the Sun, and also ones for religious, civil and the long count historical one. [http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/calendar/]




if thats not interesting heres a bubbling lava video . .

Snakes and Sacrafic

I´ve arrived in Guatemala after a week traveling through Honduras, on chicken busses [buses that you can take chickens on], passing over volcanos [well I took a tour of Pacaya, near Antigua] and through ancient Mayan Ruins. Now i´m at a Language School in Xela, learning Spanish and teaching English.



The snake video is from a Visit at Copan ruins Near the Honduran\Guatemalan border, it´s a Boa so not poisonous i think. The Mayans are the Civilisation\People recently back to public attention due to a prediction of the World Ending in 2012, which was made into a film. Not true! It is a prediction of a change in world order, like a paradigm change or something. They did not do as much sacrificing as the Aztecs, like in Apocolypto, but did it in moderation.



This is the Campo field, which was played with a solid rubber ball [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_ballgame], and if you lost then the other team got all of your belongings and you were sacrificed. I´ll do another post on Mayas because they are pretty interesting!



Next was the Volcan Payaya near Antigua, Guatemala. It had a landscape like Mordor, which gave good opportunity to practice Lord of the rings impressions and also had awesome signs that said Danger, rivers of lava



Now im in a language school in Xela, Guatemala. Today I was trying to teach kids how to play you are my sunshine on guitar, next week i will try some Nirvana. The music was dire in Nicaragua, only reggaetone and bachata. but in Guatemala theres more diversity, They like Metallica for a start!

Adioos

Horse and cart

The horse and cart belong to Carlos, who is the guardian of the second plot of land. He gets first pickings from the fruit trees among other things, and has 11 children! We're just taking some blocks to build a wall inside a house, in the first development of houses. A family left the house and went to Costa Rica (without telling the charity) in search of jobs presumably. The house is going to go to the Doctor that works on sundays for free in the Clinic, which is an interesting contract!

Thats the last week in La Prusia for me. The welding school has started since I arrived, which will bring recognised qualifications to about 10 teenagers this year. The words, a community are not built with blocks and mortar, are probably true here as the houses don't seem to be the most important factor, it's moreso the ownership of land. As Sandino (an early 20th century revolutionary) said, "first you get the land, then you get the freedom!" [as he chopped of an Americans head]. The engineer who visited was not even sure if the new houses could withstand an earthquake (which is due) anyway, because of their shape in plan [the concrete frame is stronger with a square or recalinear plan].

On leaving Nicaragua we passed through Leon and Estelli, which are not as "polluted" with tourists as Granada [theres a saying "we're not tourists, we're travellers!" which one of the volunteers always said but I still don't know the difference]. I didn't get hassled for money so much in these cities. Also Estelli is the Cigar rolling capital of Nicaragua, so did a tour and basically got 20 Cuban standard cigars for $27 in a cedar box [many Cuban cigar manufacturers who were exiled went to Nicaragua with the tobacco seed]. Its an interesting and delicate process and well worth a visit, if you like smoking fat cigars for a hour or two. They also had a zoo with tocan, parrots and a jaguar, which is the guard dog . .

In Honduras we're staying with a couchsurfing (http://www.couchsurfing.org/) [like the hospitality club] friend who has shown us the downtown area of Teguci, but you can't really walk through much of the city as its too dangerous, we have to get taxis everywhere. He knows a lot about his country which makes for a more interesting stay as in hostels you just meet other gringo tourists. Its more expensive here as there has been some inflation, so the limpira buys less melon here than in Nicaragua.

Thats all folks