If you are in or around the Madison area, please come to this event!
The Guatemalan Dream: Fair Trade and Fair Politics
DESGUA Speaker in Madison
Monday, March 15th
5:30-7:30pm
Speaker presentation, follow up conversation, and potluck dinner
Centro Hispano of Dane County
810 W. Badger Road
Speaker Omar Mejia will discuss DESGUA’s work to create economic development and alternatives to immigration for rural Guatemalan communities through fair trade. A conversation will follow to exchange information and ideas.
This event is part of a nation-wide speaking tour organized by DESGUA (Economic Development for a Sustainable Guatemala/ Desarrollo Económico por una Guatemala Sustentable) to strengthen a network of solidarity among Guatemalan migrant communities, community coops in Guatemala, and supporters in the United States.
DESGUA is working to cultivate a relationship between Guatemala’s producer community and U.S. markets to generate a sustainable and dignified way of life so that immigration in exchange for food is not the only option.
Event Speaker: DESGUA member Omar Mejia is an agronomist who has worked for more than 4 years providing technical support in various organic farming projects such as organic coffee and livestock. He has worked with Café Conciencia to market products with organic and Fair-trade principles within a network of fair-trade conferences and educational workshops.
DESGUA: is composed of Cafe Conciencia(Guate), Santa Anita La Union(Guate), Grupo Maya K’iche(U.S./Guate), Grupo Cajola(U.S), and the Canary Institute(U.S)
Some predict that the end of the world is going to be December 21 of 2012. A lot of hype and intrigue surround the Mayan calendar.
According to a report in the UK Telegraph the modern day Mayan don’t put any stock into what is being said about 2012. “The famous Mayan prophecy inspired an excellent story,” he said in a recent interview about what he calls the “mother of all disaster films”.
But such a “prophecy” is news to the modern Maya in Guatemala and Mexico. Instead, they view the burgeoning end-of-the-world 2012 industry with a mixture of confusion, exasperation and anger at what is perceived as a Western distortion of their traditions and beliefs.
”There is no concept of apocalypse in the Mayan culture,” Jesus Gomez, head of the Guatemalan confederation of Mayan priests and spiritual guides, told The Sunday Telegraph.
Cirilo Perez, an adviser to Guatemala’s President Alvaro Colom is a prominent ajq’ij – literally a “day counter”, a wise man who makes predictions and advice on the most propitious dates to marry, plant or harvest. He decried the commercial exploitation of Mayan culture by outsiders.
”This has all become business but there is no desire to understand,” he said. “When foreigners, or even some Guatemalans, see us, they think ‘Look at the Maya, how nice, how pretty’, but they don’t understand us.”
Mayan elder Chile Pixtun recalled how he was bombarded with questions about the end of the world during a recent trip to Britain. “Man, they had me fed up with this stuff,” he said, his frustration clear.
The Maya make up about half of Guatemala’s 13 million people and many live on less than $2 a day as subsistence farmers – an unimaginably far cry from the colossal budget lavished on 2012, which stars John Cusack, Woody Harrelson and the British actress, Thandie Newton.
In neighboring Mexico, the Maya are concentrated in the Yucatan peninsula, a popular tourist destination but where local farmer are struggling with drought-like conditions.
”If I went to Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn’t have any idea,” said Jose Huchim, a Mayan archaeologist in the Yucatan. “That the world is going to end? They wouldn’t believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain.”
Central America Lake Atitlan is having serious eco problems.
By Tom Johnson
As reported in the Guatemala Times Lake Atitlan is being contaminated daily by population explosions and the increased urbanization around the lake.
The sewage, solid, liquid and industrial waste is dumped indiscriminately into the different water bodies’ additionally massive deforestation and intensive agriculture around the water bodies is also a big problem. All is directly related to overpopulation of humans.
The recent “algae bloom” in Lake Atitlan has triggered an enormous alarm in the population and the media. Many people are panicking and basically believe that something drastic has happened to Lake Atitlan in just a few days, but this assumption is wrong.
The problem has been steadily increasing for many years. But now, because it is has become finally visible to everybody’s eyes, the problem has finally become tangible, we have: “algae bloom”. Now people start to react.
Guatemala has the same phenomenon in Lake Atitlan although this is due to specie of blue green algae. Well, algae is the wrong word, what we see is actually something called: cyanobacteria. Cyanobaceria grow because of excessive levels of nutrients including phosphor and nitrogen in the water.
The cyanobacteria in Atitlan have been identified as Lyngbya hironymusii (Lyngbya hieronymusii), actually a rarity among the cyanobacterias.
This is a serious crisis, but a crisis is also the best time to join forces, accept that we all are to blame for not doing enough and it is a tremendous opportunity to solve the environmental problem of Lake Atitlan for the future.
With the sever economic situation across the globe it is causing sever hardship on countries that were already facing financial problems like Guatemala.
A new Survey on Remittances 2009: Children and Adolescents, the eighth in this IOM-Guatemala series and jointly produced with UNICEF, confirms the negative impact of the financial crisis on children and adolescents in Guatemala.
The decline in remittances from family members abroad has forced tens of thousands of children to leave school and find work to supplement the family income.
Amongst the 3,000 households interviewed by IOM and UNICEF, 8.7 per cent of the children between 7 and 17 years-old can no longer attend school and 7.4 per cent or 92,905 children of the same age have been forced to find jobs to supplement the family income.
“Forty-two per cent of these children were in school in 2008. This confirms the direct impact of the financial crisis on the choices families are making,” explains Delbert Field, IOM Chief of Mission in Guatemala.”
This is sever and only getting worse. With no economic relief insight young men and women that have come to America to work and send money back home are now starting to head back across the borders to their home countries. Conditions for them here are not much better than what they came from.
A long-running land dispute between local residents and a foreign-owned nickel mine in Guatemala exploded in violence over the weekend, leaving one man dead and thirteen others injured, police said on Monday.
The latest trouble broke out on Sunday when a fight broke out between security guards and local residents protesting their expulsion from the property of the mothballed mine, which is owned by the CGN subsidiary of Canada’s HudBay Minerals (HBM.TO).
Police said one man was killed and another eight were wounded by gunfire. Five security guards were wounded by machetes and several buildings at the mine were damaged in the fighting, CGN said.
A spokeswoman for CGN said the company’s security guards did not carry live ammunition and were forbidden from using their weapons.
Police reported that their barracks were raided during the disturbance and three AK-47’s were stolen.
HudBay acquired the mine, which originally opened in 1977, last year, said earlier this month it would consider reopening the mine if nickel prices continue to improve. The mine has been shut since the ‘eighties and could cost up to $1 billion to reopen.
The mine’s previous owner faced extensive opposition to its plans to reopen the mine earlier this decade due to the land dispute. Local residents burned down a hospital and community relations office in 2004 in protest when plans to reopen the facility were announced.
With the drought hitting hard the people in Guatemala Reuters reports that Walmart is donating $350,000 to support Disaster Relief Around The World.
This news came out of Bentonville, Ark. yesterday from the Walmart Foundation office.
Walmart stated that, “At Walmart, we are dedicated to providing support for communities around the world, especially when they need us the most,” said Margaret McKenna, president, Walmart Foundation. “Given the scale and devastating impact of these occurrences, we want to do our part to help in these tough times.”
Heavy rains and flooding in southern India have impacted more than 2 million people, resulting in approximately 300 deaths. The Walmart Foundation’s $125,000 donation to CARE will assist in implementing immediate relief activities for approximately 25,000 flood survivors in the areas of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
Helene Gayle, president and CEO of CARE, said, “CARE is grateful to Walmart for its generous commitment to helping thousands of families impacted by the flash floods in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. With Walmart’s support, CARE will provide both immediate and long-term relief to the most vulnerable groups affected, such as single mothers, children, disabled people, the elderly and those from socially excluded castes.”
In Guatemala, a $100,000 donation to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) will go toward purchasing and distributing therapeutic foods to fight acute malnutrition in the impacted areas. The donation will provide 95 tons of Vitacereal(TM), which provides essential micronutrients that are lacking in rural indigenous diets but play an important role in growth and protection against disease. The funds will support 31,000 beneficiaries to reduce chronic malnutrition in the most affected areas of the country
“The WFP thanks Walmart for this contribution to the Vitacereal program in Guatemala, which is in critical need of funding and supplies,” said Willem Van Milink, WFP representative in Guatemala. “With this contribution, Walmart is ensuring nutritional assistance specifically for pregnant women as well as young children. This will help with their development as well as break the intergenerational cycle of hunger and poverty.”
The Walmart Foundation will also donate $125,000 to the American Red Cross International Relief Fund to help aid in their response to recent disasters in the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Samoa and American Samoa. The funds will go toward meeting the immediate needs of these vulnerable populations by funding the distribution of medical provisions, water, temporary shelters, and sanitation services, as well as help emergency responders reconnect families, restore livelihoods, and help the communities build their resilience for future natural disasters.
Back in 2006 I took a team of people down to Guatemala to do some work in Xatzán Guatemala. We had a great time and got to meet some wonderful people while doing the work on three church buildings. We stayed a week in Patzun while working on the buildings in Xatzán. This area of Guatemala is so beautiful and the people are wonderful. I could easily live in this part of the country. I don’t think my family could easily adapt to this life, since it is like falling back to the 1800’s lifestyle.
These young women were so fascinated in watching us work, it is probably easy to say that they had never seen people from other countries before. This area of Guatemala is pretty much untouched by many people from the United States of other visiting people.
I have been doing a lot of writing on the Mayan culture in the past couple of weeks for several college papers that I have been writing on. The course is Cultural Anthropology, and the Mayan culture fits right in my studies. In my research I came across a file I had tucked away called the faces of the Mayans, so I thought I would share with you some of the pictures.
This picture was from the church in Chuchuca.
This little girl was in a church we were working on in the highlands around Patzun
According to national statistics, 21% of the population living in the Patzún area (almost all of them are members of the Mayan ethnic group Kaqchikel) are below six years old. 64% of the population are classified as living in poverty conditions and a quarter of those as living in extreme poverty. Child and family maltreatment are a prevalent reality.
I took this picture while we were at a home in Xatzán, what peace
This little girl just loved to play hide and go seek with the camera
I hoped you enjoyed these pictures for today’s post. These pictures are very special to me, I hope you enjoyed them.
If you have a moment please drop me a note and let me know your thoughts.
Once a year the country of Guatemala celebrate a day set aside for children. Activities abound especially in Antigua. The one day of the year that is devoted to the happiness of children throughout the country. Wealthier city people donate presents and toys to be given to the kids out into the country.
Parque Central on October 2 is filled with children and parents, clowns and music, any thing and every thing that children love. It is a special time of year.
The Mercedarian order was established in Guatemala in 1538, and the order had built a church in Antigua by 1546.
The church of La Merced was originally built in 1548. Its present form was designed in 1767 to withstand damaging earthquakes. The intricately-patterned yellow and white baroque-styled facade features important sculptures such as Our Lady of Las Mercedes and San Pedro Nolasco. Inside the ruins of the once-attached monastery stands.
The Church of LaMerced
Today Mercedarian church is popular a among tourists and locals alike. It sits at the end of Fifth Avenue Norte, the main shopping street in Antigua. The masses seem to be well attended. The small park on the south side of the of the church many locals enjoy the afternoon sun from this park.
Fuente de Pescados (Fountain of the Fish)
Within the ruined cloister stands enormous Fuente de Pescados (Fountain of the Fish), reputedly named for the fish-breeding experiments done there by the Mercedarian brothers. This is largest of Antigua’s many fountains, with a diameter of over 80 feet.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=978c7202-5263-4be1-a018-81a1215c1cc9)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=2139e7f9-2984-4564-a570-1d1383421f2d)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=619b0133-167d-444a-8b04-d5bba707da75)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d7299846-e76f-40d9-bd3b-e65807a5f04c)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e789177e-0cf1-446d-9da9-b8362ed33414)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=ae62ba54-5e96-4ac0-8a45-52a744e174dc)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=8006c8b1-5a57-490a-b4e2-da970a80a383)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=0dcb249b-3d8f-442d-90dd-ca996ebab6eb)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=59734949-6c13-4c22-9420-692cc068b0f0)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3b92e086-9acd-4334-8c7f-3246c27e669d)
