When I was a little girl living outside of San Pedro Sula, the place I always wanted to go (other than the family ranch at Tulian, was Copán. The ruins there captured my imagination and made me dream of Mayan chiefs and artisans carving monuments to their gods. I loved it. The trip to Copan from La Lima took a long and winding path that for reasons I don’t really understand, took us into Guatemala… even though Copan is in Honduras. Guatemala, unlike Honduras was full of Indios… with colorful clothes and beautiful children. Really it is no wonder that village Indians in the mountains have to defend their children from kidnapping to the death. They are a beautiful people. Maya. The indigenous peoples of Central America… just a little of that blood runs through my veins… but mostly, I look like the colonial peoples that came to settle in this little strip of land that is Central America. No place in Central America looks as Mayan as Guatemala… the people still speak their native language along with Spanish (or maybe instead of Spanish; depends where you are!) Honduras is a land of Mestizos… the campesinos clearly part Maya and part everything else that came after. Spanish is spoken almost everywhere except in isolated pockets. So, in my little sheltered pocket of Honduras I thought Guatemala was exotic and mysterious in a way that the other places I lived were not. Nicaragua and Costa Rica were more like Honduras than not. Not so Guatemala. So now as an adult…. as much as I want to go back to Honduras, I know that it would be sad and disappointing. All my people are here now, and Honduras struggles to find its way. So it makes me so sad to be told, it is not safe to go, that as an American I will be a target for kidnapping because even today, Honduras remains the poorest of the poor nations in Central America. Guatemala on the other hand remains the exotic land of my childhood… out there waiting for me to learn more about it. The reality that it too is struggling, is becoming increasingly violent, and just now starting to look at the consequences of its decades long civil war does not make me sad or afraid. I don’t know why, but I think that Guatemala is calling out to me just a little bit.
So I am exploring some involvement with the Miguel Asturias Academy in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Established by Ashoka Fellow Jorge Chojolán, the school is dedicated to providing education to the most vulnerable members of Guatemalan society and creating the leaders of tomorrow. They have accomplished some great things since the founding in 1994 and have great ambitions for the future of the school. I believe in their mission and their philosophy. So we will see… life is a grand adventure if you let it be!
