Earrings to Sell

I am trying to help some women artisans in my town get access to wider markets to sell their crafts and now that I am coming upon the end of my service, I was wondering if anyone has any contacts or knows of anyone who would be interested in buying earrings in bulk from Guatemala (for church fundraisers? gifts for friends?) Following are photos of the earrings you have already seen (seeds earrings and wooden bracelets by Dona Ofelia) and new photos of crocheted earrings by Dona Sonia. Please let me know if you have any ideas for how I can help market these earrings outside of Guatemala (initial emails to fair trade organizations have not gotten any response, and I have heard it is complicated....)

Elections and Standfast in San Antonio

On September 11^th, Guatemala held elections for what I believe is the 8^th time since democracy was re-established in 1985. These elections were considered to be some of the most conflictive yet, with a lot of political violence in the months leading up to the elections and quite a bit of animosity between the front-runners. To give justice to the Guatemalan election situation, I would need a stronger political science background and a lot more time, so I will try to keep it brief and hopefully inspire some of you to read further in other places because it is really interesting. For my part, I did a lot of trainings in the months leading up to the elections with women’s groups and on the radio about the importance of getting registered to vote, how to go about voting the day of elections, and explaining what people were voting for.

In Guatemala there are elections every four years, during which the general population votes for: President and Vice President, Congressmen (158 in total, 127 based off of district seats and 31 off of a national list), 333 mayors and municipal councils, and this year for the first time representatives to the Central American Parliament. This year there was a lot of violence around candidates for mayor, with around twenty candidates across the country getting killed in the lead up to the elections. At the national level, the front-runner for president – General Otto Pérez Molina – was hurt by the disqualification of his political enemy Sandra Torres, ex-wife of current President Alvaro Colom (Ms. Torres got divorced from President Colom in March to circumvent the Constitutional ban on close relations of the sitting president from running for the Presidency…the Electoral Court and the Constitutional Court did not buy it, a great sign of the justice system working) since he was seen as a bully. While Sandra Torres was left out of the race, there were still ten candidates running for President and some twenty-six parties registered to participate in the elections (not all had a Presidential candidate and some formed coalitions to support a candidate). The plethora of political parties and the fact that a candidate needs to win 50%+1 votes to become president guarantees that there is always a second round of elections for the presidency, however the rest of the posts (mayor ships and legislative seats) are determined in the first round with few exceptions. General Otto Perez had hoped to win in the first round, but Torres’ exit from the race hurt his chances of an outright win.

My old professor of political science, Professor Matthew Shugart, a self-described electoral engineer, explained the Guatemalan electoral system in an email as following:

Guatemala's electoral system is indeed odd. It is one of a very few systems in the world (El Salvador used to have it, too) that could be called "two-tier parallel PR[Proportional Representation].” Having two tiers of an electoral system is not unusual at all--think of the MMM system of Japan or MMP in Germany or New Zealand. But, of course, in these systems only the regional (Japan) or national (Germany, NZ) tier is elected by party lists. On the other hand, two-tier COMPENSATORY PR is very common, including probably a majority of European systems. For instance, in Sweden, proportionality is calculated based on total national votes, but a majority of legislators are elected in smaller (but still multi-seat PR) districts. So you get both national proportionality to parties, and local representation via the smaller districts. However, having a non-compensatory ("parallel") list-PR tiers is weird. I agree that it makes little sense, although I suspect it is a means to get more proportionality than you would have with only the local districts (some of which are quite small in terms of seats) but also more local representation than you'd have with a fully PR system.

In no two-tier system that I know of--certainly not in Sweden, Japan, NZ, or Germany--is there any formal differentiation of the roles of the legislators depending on which tier they entered through.

So, in short, Guatemala's system fits into a family (two-tier systems) that is common around the world, but it belongs to a bit of a bastard branch of that family, if you will pardon a rather crude expression! (my bold)

In the months leading up to the election, you could not get around without hearing political songs and slogans or getting stuck as caravans supporting one candidate or another rode around honking and blocking traffic. Guatemala has one of the highest rates of poverty in the Western Hemisphere, however it’s elections are some of the most expensive, with candidates putting up advertisements EVERYWHERE, with the money coming from leading businesses and some questionable members of society. Leading up to the election, it was not clear what parties would come out as winners.

What was clear was that citizen participation was definitely a winner, with over 7 million people getting registered to vote, most of them between 18-30 years old, and women and indigenous people getting registered in higher numbers than in previous elections.

Here in Pachalum, as I mentioned in a previous post, six candidates campaigned for mayor, the most candidates ever (usually there were two front runners and a third candidate). In neighboring municipalities we heard about threats and incidents, but in Pachalum nobody expected anything to happen. Imagine my surprise then, when the week before the elections my site mate called to tell me we were going to be evacuated as a precautionary measure! Turns out due to some threats made by one candidate for mayor, Pachalum had been marked as a ‘red’ municipality and in order to prevent any problems, I would need to leave by Friday September 9^th and could not return until at least Tuesday September 13^th. I was not the only volunteer to get evacuated, my neighbors in Baja Verapaz, all the volunteers in the East, and other volunteers in ‘red’ municipalities were evacuated as a precaution, some seventy of us in all. I was told that I could go to stay with my host family from training or a friend in a site with no prognosis of drama. I decided that since I wanted to spend some time with my host family anyways after seeing them for a bit after my COS Conference, I might as well go there. I was allowed to go to San Antonio, but I was told that I could not cross the street to Santa Catarina since it was also a ‘red’ municipality.

On Friday afternoon, I went back to Mamatina’s house and she immediately sent me next door to her daughter-in-law’s to help prepare for tamale making. I spent all day Saturday making tamales with Doña Elsa and it was really fun and delicious. I have declared to many that tamales are my least favorite Guatemalan food, but Doña Elsa’s are an exception. While the tamales in Pachalum are watery and are made with lard, Doña Elsa’s masa is harder and made with oil, which tastes amazing and has a good texture. I helped out cleaning the leaves for wrapping, eating extra masa, and wrapping up the tamales.

Doña Elsa making tamales

Working hard with the kids

My friend Devon was also evacuated and we went on walks and hung out to make the time pass. On Sunday, we went by the polling station and saw HUGE lines around the block. Mamatina went to vote at 6am and expected to be back by 7:30am to make breakfast, but she was gone for three hours and did not vote! She had spent 2.5 hours waiting in the wrong line and instead of going to her designated table, she decided to come home in order to eat and get to church on time. Elsa went to vote at 3pm and expected to be back in an hour, but she ended up staying in line until 7pm, an hour after the polls were closed, to vote. In Pachalum the lines were long as well, with friends telling me they had to wait a good two to four hours to vote. At 6pm the polls were all closed and people waited around for the results. I asked Mamatina to let me watch tv in her room to see the results as they came in, but by 10pm only 2.5% of the votes for president had been counted – an exceptionally slow process. The next day, the newspapers published partial results; it was not until two weeks after the elections that the final and definitive tally was made. A lot of criticism has been directed at the Supreme Electoral Court for its slowness in tallying up results, but happily, most of the municipalities had no problems and the results post-election day were accepted.

General Otto Pérez Molina ended up winning less votes than he and the electoral observers predicted, 36%, and he will face a run off versus a relative newcomer – Dr. Manuel Baldizón, who won around 21% of the vote, a politician and businessman from Peten who among other things is promising to instate the death penalty with public executions an option, lowering the tax, and increasing pay with a ´Bonus 15,´ essentially an extra payday in January to help families pay for school expenses. So the second round elections this November 6^th people will vote between an ex-military leader who signed the Peace Accords and a newcomer populist.

In the meantime, the eight other political parties that ran for the presidency and the two front-runners are forming alliances and changing their strategies to try and get out the vote on November 6^th.

After finding out the results, we still had to stay in San Antonio a few more days to make sure that everything was going to stay calm. I hung around the house and took advantage of the long afternoons to get dressed up in traje típico and take photos with my host family again. Two years later, still rocking the corte.

San Antonio from atop the hill

Cat snoozing on moto

With the family in traje típico

Laughing with Mamatina

With Betsy

In sexy Coban traje – see through top

With family and Devon

If anyone is interested in politics in Guatemala, I recommend reading the following New Yorker article and the books The Art of Political Murder and The Long Night of White Chickens by Francisco Goldman (a Guatemalan Jew!), they do an excellent job of giving some background on the current and not so recent political and military situation in Guatemala and make for excellent reading. The Long Night of White Chickens is quite literally one of the best books I have read in the past few years, I LOVED it.

Beginning the pila project

As I wrote a few months back, relatively late in my service I decided that I wanted to do a SPA (Small Project Assistance from USAID) project prior to finishing up my service. The people in the village (caserío) of Los Tunales were very collaborative and together we put together a project proposal in June that got approved. The project was for pilas to be installed in twelve households with a grease trap box and water re-absorption well, directly benefitting 64 people living in those households. Along with agreeing to provide non-skilled labor to build the wells and collaborate with the bricklayers, the community members receiving pilas agreed to attend a series of workshops on hygiene, sanitation, water treatment and prevention of illness. SPA funds would pay for all materials associated with building the wells and the pilas themselves and the municipality of Pachalum would collaborate by paying for skilled labor and getting the materials up to the community, making it a three-party collaboration.

In late June we found out that the project was approved and we excitedly waited for the check in order to get started on work. In early July, my APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director) Carlos came to visit the community and explain again how the project would work. Carlos came to visit during Devora’s few days in Pachalum and together with the architecture student (Jorge Mario) who drew up the plans for the pilas and wells; we all went up to Los Tunales.

Carlos explained that getting the project approved was the first step in a process, the check would take a while to arrive and in the meantime the families needed to prepare their wells, digging 3 – 5 meter deep holes with a 1-meter diameter in the lowest point on their land (to prevent flooding in case the well should ever get too full…though the likelihood of that is not too likely since only so much water can come out of a pila at one time).

Carlos explaining how the pilas would work

At the house where we met to discuss the project, some men went ahead and measured a 1-meter diameter circle and started digging a demonstration well so that all the families could see how to do it. The men told Carlos that since we were in the beginning of the rainy season, they would wait until the check actually arrived to build their wells since digging a huge hole that got filled with rainwater while they waited could lead to collapse.

Doña Isabel watching the model well being dug

Doña Candelaria with her child watching the model well being dug

The decision to wait on the digging was definitely a smart one since the check for the project took over a month and a half to come in early August. When the check finally arrived, we saw that it was written in the name of the COCODE, while the bank account we had opened for the COCODE was in the name of the President. I immediately spotted the problem and told Peace Corps about it, but they told me that it should be fine at the bank, we just needed to put the stamp of the COCODE on the back of the check along with the signatures and it would all work out…of course, it did not work out. The bank that the COCODE had opened their bank account in and the bank that emitted the check for Peace Corps were two separate entities, and while we followed the instructions from the bank clerk to properly endorse the check, the bank that had emitted the check was not pleased with the endorsement (name on check did not match the bank account name) and rejected the check. Within a week of telling the community that the money had arrived and to build their wells we found out that the money in limbo.

Being the Zen person I am, I started freaking out almost immediately about the check problems – when a check is lost or somehow mishandled, it can take up to six months for a new check to sent from Washington, DC and I was about to attend my Close of Service Conference. Luckily for me, my Project Specialist was willing to go with us to the bank in Antigua to fix the misunderstanding. Early in the morning the day before my COS Conference, I went with the President and Treasurer of the COCODE and Doris to Antigua. When we got to the bank the manager came out and was not very sympathetic. Everything the clerk at the other bank had told us to do was wrong and she stamped VOID all over the back of the check. While I dramatically put my head on the counter and started praying to all the animist spirits, Doris calmly explained that checks take at least six months to be reissued and that we could surely come to some sort of conclusion. The manager relented and agreed that if we opened up a receiving bank account in the same bank, they could deposit the money there for us to then take out and put in the original bank account. Doris agreed and the lady went to the back room to make arrangements. In a short while, she called us all in the back room and busted out wads of bills – the full amount of the check, Q21,500+ (at a Q7.5=US$1 exchange rate, some $2,866). She told us that instead of making us do a ton of paperwork to open up a trash bank account (an account that would only be used once to take money out) she would give us the cash.

I was SO grateful that I could not even express my happiness and Don Isidro, cool as a cucumber took all the money and stuck it in his morral (a traditional woven purse). Don Isidro wanted to go back to Pacahlum to stick the money in the bank account there but Doris would not hear of it, people are killed for smaller sums of money so it needed to get deposited in the bank account stat. We crossed the street to where the other bank was located…and of course the computer system was down and the bank was not accepting deposits nor giving out money. The bank that the COCODE has its account in is one of the largest in Guatemala, so there are a lot of branches in Antigua, but there was no guarantee that the other branches were working either, so we sat in front of the central park and waited. And waited. And waited. An hour passed and the bank system had not been restored. Finally, we decided to check out another branch. Doris walked behind Don Isidro and I walked in front of him the five blocks it took to get to the other branch. I felt like I was in a spy movie, looking at everyone’s hands to make sure they were not getting close to Don Isidro and his morral, I was ready to use my peewee football moves on anyone who got in our way. We got to the branch and the system was working! Over a week and three hours after starting our tour of the banks, the money was finally deposited into the account!

I went to my COS Conference and visited with Estela and my host family over the weekend and arrived back in Pachalum ready to make some purchases. With Don Isidro we went to the stores that we had already made requests before we realized the money had not come through and placed our orders. Instead of starting work on August 15^th like I hoped, the project was going to begin construction on September 1^st. The municipality was a great collaborator, providing us with a truck to take up materials, and I made up a materials list for Don Isidro to make sure that each family got what they were supposed to. There were a lot of materials, so there were quite a few trips up to drop them off over the last few weeks of August.

Don Isidro checking the list as a woman counts her blocks for the top of the well

Two days after my birthday, while I was still fighting a fever, the pilas arrived from the capital and I decided to ignore the doctor’s orders to help deliver them.

With the pilas in Pachalum!

They are really excited, really.

In the first full week of September, Don Isidro and the other two bricklayers who were contracted to work as skilled labor started collaborating on the first house. The architecture student who had designed the project left Pachalum at the end of August, so a new person was put in as the supervisor – Don Jeremías. Don Jeremías is an older man who has worked as a Supervisor of Projects (his title) for the municipality for the past seventeen years. He is a very skilled worker and he brought to the project years of experience to make improvements while the project was being executed.

According to the plans drawn up by Jorge Mario, each well would be topped with a brocal (not sure of English term) of blocks and then covered by a cement top. The blocks were supposed to be flat with the short end going around the well hole, but the first go round the bricklayers misunderstood and though that the blocks needed to be broken in half, making the well stick out more from the ground (I am only explaining this so that in future posts you can notice the difference).

First well

One of Don Jeremías’ suggestions for a change from the original plan was to stick a piece of tubing in the top of the well so that gases could escape and not build up pressure.

Another suggestion that Don Jeremías had was to use bricks to build a base for the pilas and the grease trap box (instead of not making a base and using cement for the grease trap box). Since Don Jeremías has worked on many drainage projects for the municipality, he felt that bricks would be better for building the grease trap box and he donated some 1,500 bricks that had been left over from previous projects. Thanks to the savings of cement from using the bricks, we were able to additionally include a plancha (a cement base) for the pilas so that water would not splash out and create mud around the base of the pilas. This idea had not been included in the original plan because we did not have enough money for all that cement…but Don Jeremías saved the day.

Don Jeremías with the pila resting on the brick base and the initial hole for the grease trap box

Don Jeremías and Don Isidro discussing how to build the grease trap box

Measuring the depth of the grease trap box once the bricks were laid

Covering the bricks with cement in the grease trap box. In the foreground the wood is the mold for the plancha to be built as the base of the pila

The cover for the wells are so thick they need at least a week to dry out before moving them in order for them to not crack

Little girls watching their grandpa, Don Isidro, digging a well

These photos were taken from the first week of construction. In the first week, all the bricklayers worked together, so only one house was completed. The following weekend there were elections and then Independence Day, so work was put on hold for a while and due to some complications, I was not able to return to Los Tunales until the last week of September when the project was completed. Stay tuned for more photos of the completed pila project coming soon!

Mayoral Debate and my Birthday!

To celebrate my 27^th birthday this year, I decided to make myself as busy as possible by arranging a second women’s exchange with ladies from Chiantla visiting Pachalum, and the mayoral forum for the same day. I woke up early on my birthday and spent the morning organizing the elementary school salon for the forum. Around 11am the group from Chiantla showed up with my friend Cara, her counterpart and the técnica for the Women’s Office, a councilman, and three women leaders from the Women’s Network. I continued to work on set-up while they were received and got the grand tour of the municipality. At 1:30pm I was back in the elementary school waiting for the candidates to show up. Of the six candidates originally running for office, only five agreed to attend the forum (the sixth candidate dropped out of the race and decided not to participate) and I had a mini heart-attack when 1:45 rolled around and the only person to arrive was a representative of one of the candidates asking to sit in his stead since he got called away on business…By 2 pm, thankfully, the four other candidates arrived and agreed that the representative could sit in for the missing candidate.

Candidates sitting in front of audience

Over forty women representing the communities came to listen to the debate along with outside observers (people from the youth group that put on the first forum), the mayor, a videographer from the television station, and the women from Chiantla. The coordinator and técnica from the Women’s Office in Chiantla were the moderators of the event, chosen for their impartiality, and Juanita explained the forum’s rules (time limits, no referring to other candidates’ positions, etc).

Juanita introducing moderators and rules

Overall it was a pretty good event, though it ran a bit long (various candidates used up the 10 minute time limit for introductory remarks…). My participation in the event itself was pretty limited since as a Peace Corps Volunteer I cannot get involved in politics. I facilitated the event, but I did not participate in the execution. At the end of the debate, each candidate had 3 minutes to give final words and one of the candidates presented his work plan (a four page glossy brochure) and asked for representatives of the women’s office and Peace Corps to receive a copy. Being the consummate professional I am, I ran outside of the forum and hid myself to not receive the document and compromise my impartiality.

At the end of the forum, Seño Sucely, the president of our Women’s Group, and Juanita ‘surprised’ me with a birthday cake (people here are about as slick as I am, I figured out there would be a cake around a week in advance).

My third and final birthday in Guatemala was possibly the best because at the end of the day I was with people I cared about and could see the results of hard work. At almost the end of my service I can look back and see accomplishments and progress, the best birthday gift I can think of.

Giving palabras

Along with the birthday cake my Women’s Committee bought, one of the ladies asked for another cake from a mayoral candidate (one of the women in my committee was a proposed councilwoman with said candidate). The candidate was not aware that the cake was for my birthday; he thought it was for the debate, so out came a box with a party logo emblazoned across the top.

My Creo Birthday Cake

We decided to stick the candles in the other cake (they thought I was turning 28…need to wear more sunscreen) so that nobody could take photos of me blowing on the CREO logo and construe that as support or a photo of me biting the cake and construe it as anti-CREO sentiment. In the end Doña Blanca, the councilwoman candidate, ended up eating the logo (it was on a thin piece of paper of some sort silkscreened atop the cake) so the cake was made a-political and very tasty.

At the end of the debate my whole body hurt and I felt exhausted. I thought it was from overwork, but it turns out it was just a fever. While I started my 28^th year at over 100-degrees, the Women’s Committee and the Women representatives from Chiantla had a great rest of the exchange. The following day in the morning they went to Mixco Viejo to see the sites, and then in the afternoon they shared best practices and exchanged recognition diplomas for everyone’s hard work.

Once again the Women’s Committee was motivated and inspired by visiting with the Women’s Committee of Chiantla and has continued to work hard planning a follow-up conference in September, organizing more exchanges with neighboring municipalities, and working on the family gardens project.