Guatemala
50 Years of Saving and Improving Lives
For the past few months we’ve highlighted key moments, major accomplishments, and the work of development professionals to illustrate some of USAID’s efforts over the past 50 years. Through interviews, Q&A, personal narratives, and posts penned by guest bloggers, we’ve shared stories about USAID’s history from nearly every perspective and point of view. Today, we’d like to share the story of a young Maya woman who has survived atrocities difficult to imagine.
The story represents the pain and struggle of many more who find hope and opportunity through USAID programs. Her measured optimism stems from a common challenge in the developing world: working to balance deeply rooted cultural traditions and modernity. We thank her for sharing her tale.
Flowers Bloom Slowly
K'iche' Maya kids in front of their adobe 'temascal' participants of USAID SavetheChildren Food Security program Sacapulas Quiche Guatemala. Photo credit: Wende Duflon, USAID
When we walked here did you notice that my mother walks paces behind my uncle? That is because he is the head of our family since my father disappeared in one of the massacres in 1984. Last year my father’s remains were recovered in a mass grave with the others during the exhumation that the Foundation did in our fields over there. Your government helped find my father. My mother had to identify his bones and his clothes. It was a time of many tears in our village. Now that his death is certain we registered him with the municipality. Now that my mother is legally his widow, she may marry or sell our property. She says the property rightfully belongs to my uncle who has watched over us all this time.
You say you have come to help us. There have been people who have come before you and they tell us what is good for us and how our life will improve if we do things differently. But, we know our land, we know our people. Perhaps when you understand us, then you can help us more. Would you like me to tell you how life is for us, how life was for our ancestors, and what we want for the children? Perhaps then you can see how to help us so that life will be better, as you promise.
My sisters and I are lucky that my mother bore my father no sons; this way we could go to school. My cousins were not so lucky. Our mother said that our only defense in life is to study. She refuses to go to the school because the teacher insults her when she cannot sign her name to collect the grades.
There is no work here for women like me. Many leave for the City or go to your country to find work—there is nothing here but the milpa agriculture or to wait for remittances from up North.
I am the oldest of my parents’ children and cannot leave my mother. If I could do anything I want I would become a legal secretary or translator to help a foundation like the one that found my father. There was such a person who came with the Foundation. He said that they help in many villages like ours where people are still too afraid to talk about what happened and especially the women who do not speak Spanish. I want to help them.
Administrator Shah Observes Guatemala’s Agriculture Value Chain Programs
By: Wende Duflon, USAID/Guatemala
Dr. Shah and LAC Assistant Administrator, Mark Feierstein, were accompanied by U.S. Ambassador Stephen McFarland, USAID Guatemala Director, Kevin Kelly, and USAID staff on a visit to the village of Magdalena la Abundancia (Magdalene of Abundance) in the municipality of Sacapulas of the Quiché Department. The visitors were met by leaders of the ADIES (Sacapulas Association for Integrated Ecological Development), a small-scale producer group that forms part of the network of USAID agriculture value chain alliances that USAID has supported throughout Guatemala with our long-standing implementing partner, the Guatemala Exporters Association (AGEXPORT).
The successful agriculture value chain approach is a key cornerstone of the USAID Guatemala Feed the Future Strategy to reduce food insecurity and poverty. The value chain program enhances food access for rural populations by assisting small-scale agricultural producers to increase their incomes and improve family quality of life.
Administrator Shah with villagers from Magdalena de la Abundancia, Sacapulas Photo Credit: Wende Duflon
Magdalena la Abundancia is similar to thousands of other villages in the highlands of Guatemala in terms of the high poverty (51% of the Guatemalan population lives in poverty or extreme poverty) and high chronic malnutrition rates (nearly half, 43.4% of all children under five years old). It is within this context of scarcity that ADIES was formed and is thriving, thanks to their ability and determination to maximize on assistance received from USAID and AGEXPORT.
The ADIES president Manuel Tum welcomed Administrator Shah and his team to a celebration of their successes. The venue was the small concrete patio outside the simple processing and packing plant built in the middle of a field of export-quality onions. A brightly-colored plastic tarpaulin protected villagers and VIP visitors from the strong high-altitude sun and the floor was covered with the traditional greeting of pine boughs that scent the air as people walk over them. Villagers as young as a few months to 80 years old sat on plastic chairs or stood on the sidelines, many in colorful clothes, typical daily wear of this principally indigenous community. (more…)
Administrator Shah Makes His Debut in Guatemala
By: Wende DuFlon, USAID/Guatemala
USAID Administrator Shah Visits a Local Agricultural Project. Photo Credit: Wende DuFlon/USAID
Administrator Shah packed an enormous amount into his day-and-a-half visit to Guatemala. Dr. Shah and Mark Feierstein, Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), were hosted by U.S. Ambassador Stephen McFarland and USAID Director Kevin Kelly and USAID staff on an early morning helicopter ride over Guatemala’s mountainous terrain to a village in the municipality of Sacapulas, Quiché to meet with partners in USAID agriculture value chain, food security, and health/nutrition programs. The ride took travelers by six of Guatemala’s 33 volcanoes and past the famous destination spot–Lake Atitlan. At midday they returned to Guatemala City via helicopter for courtesy meeting with Guatemala’s President Alvaro Colom and Foreign Minister Rodas and an all-hands meeting with USAID Guatemala staff.
The Administrator held a press roundtable with Guatemalan journalists and several meetings with U.S. Government (USG) agency staff (USAID, Centers for Disease Control, Peace Corps, and U.S. Embassy sections) on two Presidential Initiatives—Feed the Future and Global Health—as well as the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI). The U.S. Ambassador and USAID Director accompanied Administrator Shah and LAC Assistant Administrator Feierstein throughout the day and evening at a dinner hosted by Ambassador McFarland at his Residence for government and civil society leaders to meet and talk with Administrator Shah to discuss security and justice issues in Guatemala.
The visit was an exceptional opportunity for USG staff to meet Dr. Shah and brief him on why Guatemala is a key player in a region that is critically important to the United States. Guatemala has the largest population and economy in Central America. Sadly, the country has some of the lowest human development indicators in the world, and income distribution is among the most unequal. Guatemala is also the epicenter in Central America of the fight against organized crime and large areas of its territory are under the control of drug trafficking organizations.
Administrator Shah’s trip signifies the long tradition of collaboration and friendship between Guatemala and the United States.
50 Weeks to 50 Years at USAID – Week 2: Eradication of Polio
Check out what Frontlines covered 25 years ago, in its November 1985 edition . On page 2 read about how former USAID Administrator Peter McPherson announced that 1990 was the goal to end polio in the western hemisphere. Although it took four more years to meet that goal, in 1994 Western Hemisphere was certified polio-free, followed by the Western Pacific Region (2000) and the European Region (2002).
Beginning in the mid-1980s, USAID provided $50 million, about one-half of the total donor assistance to polio eradication programs in the Latin America and Caribbean region, and it was this initial large-scale financial investment that contributed to the eventual eradication of the disease in the region.
Following successful investments in eradicating polio in the Americas from 1988 -1994, in 1996 USAID joined the global Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI), a public-private partnership with international organizations; civil society and governments.
Polio cases have decreased by over 99% since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 cases in more than 125 endemic countries, to 1997 reported cases in 2006.
In 2008, only parts of four countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria – remain ed endemic for the disease. In collaboration with WHO and other partners, USAID continues to provide technical and financial assistance to achieve global polio eradication with an estimated $500 million invested to date.
Natural Disasters Strike Guatemala
submitted by LaToya Butler
On May 26, 2010 heavy rainfall marked hurricane season’s first occurrence, Tropical Depression (TD) Agatha, began in Guatemala and El Salvador causing enormous sink holes in downtown Guatemala City and triggering floods and mudslides in two thirds of the country’s municipalities. Many public schools were converted into temporary shelters for the homeless.
Late on the afternoon of May 27 – Pacaya Volcano, one of the three active volcanoes, erupted 25 miles south of Guatemala City and spread ash, sand, gravel and fist-sized rocks for miles. The volcanic eruption covered the City with up to an inch of debris.
These incidents provide a good overview of what happens in a disaster: U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala Stephen G. McFarland issued a disaster declaration and requested emergency humanitarian assistance from USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA). The United States was one of the first nations to pledge support with $100,000 that USAID’s Guatemala Mission used to locally purchase emergency relief supplies including food rations, fuel for emergency response vehicles and
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