Monday, October 10, 2011

Guatemala City


Friday was my last exam in Spanish!  It took me 3 hours to finish and one hour for my teacher to grade.  If you ever need to be humbled, try learning another language.  I feel like my brain is so incredibly saturated that it cannot possibly absorb anything more.  I want so badly to learn and I am learning so much everyday but when I talk to people or read a menu or watch a movie in Spanish I am so frustrated by how much I do not know.  I have gained so much respect for people who can speak more than one language. 
We are back in Guatemala City again this weekend.  Today we went to FAFG which is the Forensic Anthropological Foundation of Guatemala.  At the end of the genocide in 1996 there were 200,000 dead and 50,000 missing.  The FAFG is working to uncover mass graves, identify the victims, and allow their families to give them a proper burial.  We got to go into the laboratory which was a big room full of tables that were covered in dark blue table clothes and the bones of victims pieced together on them.  It was really weird that there were just peoples’ remains all spread out in front of us with no glass separating us from them.  We then walked through the narrow paths of several warehouses filled with cardboard boxes that each held human remains and were stacked all the way to the ceiling.  There were 1,492 in all.  The building that the FAFG is in had no sign, had an armed guard inside, had bullet proof glass, and we had to have ID to get in.  The reason for this tight security is that many of the people responsible for these deaths are still alive and do not want these stories told.  Many people who have attempted to call for the justice of those responsible have themselves been added to the list of those who have disappeared.  People even go into villages posing as the FAFG to uncover and destroy the evidence of mass graves.  On an interesting side note, one of the two presidential candidates was a former military general in the war and was involved in mass killings so it will be interesting to see what will happen if he gets elected in November.
                We then continued our tour of life, love and happiness by watching the Guatemalan made film “El Norte.”  This movie was about a brother and sister whose parents were killed in the genocide and escape to the United States.  They have to crawl for miles on their hands and knees through an old rat-infested sewer to get to the U.S.  Once there they found that life in the states was much harder than they had expected.
The next day we went to the National Cemetery in Guatemala City.  It was really interesting because here they do not bury people underground but in large and often immaculate above ground tombs.  There was one enormous tomb that was made to look like an Egyptian pyramid.   

While many of the tombs were larger and much nicer than the majority of houses in Guatemala, some were quite different.  The distinction between the rich and poor in Guatemala is great even in death.  The bodies of the poorer Guatemalans can be buried in large structures that basically have drawers for each body.  A drawer in this structure can be rented out but as soon as the family cannot pay rent on it the body is dumped.  

The whole time we were in the cemetery we could see hundreds of vultures circling a little ways off.  As Paul took us to the back of the cemetery the vultures got nearer and the stench got stronger until we were peering over the edge of a straight drop-off into the Guatemala City dump.  This dump is approximately the size of 24 football fields and sits in what looks like it used to be a beautiful lush valley.   

However, now the equivalent to the volume of 35 Boeing 757 airplanes of trash is delivered there every day.  To fully understand the smell you have to realize that in Guatemala used toilet paper is put in the trash instead of flushed.  The most disturbing part is that as the garbage trucks were bringing in their loads, crowds of people swarmed to pick through the mounds of trash that had already been picked over several times before making it to the dump.   

Recently Guatemala made a law that visitors were not allowed to go into the dump so we were not able to see it any closer than our little perch in the cemetery.  Guatemala also recently made a law that people can no longer live in the dump.  Apparently so many people were living in the dump that cave-ins, garbage slides and fires were causing thousands of deaths.  The thought of people, mostly children, living in this vile place and picking through atrocious things everyday brought tears to my eyes.  I honestly do not even know how to mentally deal with this thought.  On the other side of the valley sits a shanty town called La Limonada. 

It is only about a mile wide and a mile long but it is home to more than 60,000 people.  It is an incredibly poor and dangerous town and simply having a La Limonada address can keep residents of getting jobs.  We watched a movie later that day called Reparando that is about La Limonada and what two missionaries are doing there.  I would highly recommend this movie to anyone even slightly interested.  It was really good to see something that shed a little hope on this bleak situation.  I am still a little overwhelmed and disturbed by everything I saw this weekend and I do not really know what to think of it all or how to deal with it.  For now I will just find peace in that “I know that the Lord secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy.” – Psalm 140:12


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