Chichi-escuelas


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Las Escuelas de Chichicastenago
El Profesor Sebastian Mateo stands with his second grade class in Patulup Segundo, a canton in the western reaches of Chichicastenango that was particularly hard hit by violence during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Sebastian himself lost two brothers, one to the Army and another to either the Army-run Civil Patrol or to the Guerillas. He’s not sure which because during the violence he was working as a shoe-shine boy in Guatemala City's rough and dangerous Terminal Market. Driven by some inner ambition to educate himself, Sebastian went to night school until he finished diversificado (high school), then worked for several years with OKMA, a team of linguists organized by famous American anthropologists Nora England and Linda Schele, documenting the Chichicastenango dialect of the Maya K’iche’ language. Having since earned his secondary teaching certificate - attending weekend university classes in Xela, two hours down the road, while working three jobs during the week (for about $310 a month) - he is the most credentialed teacher at his school. In Patulup, he works exclusively with younger students because of his proficiency and literacy in K’iche’. Still within the municipality of Chichicastenango but far away from the Pueblo of the same name, is the isolated little canton of Chugüexa Segundo 'A'. To get here from the Pueblo, teachers must take a 45 bus ride, then hike straight up a rutted road (which depending on the season is clouded with choking, silicate dust, or sticky with slick mud) for 45 minutes to a mountaintop that offers a fine view of the east slope of the mountains that border Lake Atitlan's east shore, and to Tecpan Guatemala, to the west. Serving some 250 kids, Chugüexa's school is blessed with one of the finest and most ambitious Directors CEBAR administrators have have had the pleasure to work with. Having the advantage of actually having lived most of his life in Chugüexa II 'A', Eduard grew up in a bilingual household - his father speaking K'iche', his mother speaking Kaqchikel (spoken in the nearby aldeas of Tecpan, a short walk down the mountain from Chugüexa), both of which he speaks fluently. As a youngster, he learned Spanish, and in the years since has been an energetic student of English - which he now speaks passably well. Because of Eduard's enthusiasm and irrepresible commitment to good education, this school will participate - despite its isolation which makes it an inconvenient school to work with in terms of logistics - in a pilot project sponsored in part by CEBAR which seeks to measure the [hopefully positive] impact of increasing the amount of instruction offered in K'iche' during the critical early years of primary education (K-3). In contrast to the school at Patulup or Chugüexa II 'A' (or virtually any of Chichi’s 70+ rural public schools), is the Catholic school run by the Anunciata Dominican Sisters of Spain. Spacious, bright and attractive, Anunciata is one of the most costly private school in Chichi, with an annual cost of about $120 for primary and about $160 for junior high. In 2005, Cebar maintained 8 primary students and 12 junior high students at this lovely little school. All schools, private or public, in Chichi, are overseen by the Ministry of Education. The experience of CEBAR staff is that the 'coordinators' of the the local arm of the Ministry of Education are dedicated, well-prepared, and enthusiastic about their work. If there is a problem, personnel-wise, it is that most teachers in Chichicastenago, like most teachers in Guatemala, work under a very safe 'civil service' structure. Only in the last few years has this situation changed, so that teachers are now held more accountable for both performance and for ongoing education. Still, much improvement is needed (as it is in the United States and other countries too!). Still, disorganization prevails in Guatemala as it does in only poorly administered, quite simply 'poor´ countries around the word. A picture of the offices of the local Chichi administrative offices, labeled the Coordinaciones Tecnicas Administrativas shown here, is evidence of the lack of resources available to the Ministry of Education. The graffiti on the wall, perhaps unreadable from the photo, says '18', the name of one of the most powerful and dangerous street gangs in Guatemala. In small towns like Guatemala, it's a rather meaningless symbol, except for the fact that it denotes loss of parental and village control of young men. Without farms to work on, and without the traditional village structure that kept adolescent boys and girls under control, the kids run wild. In Chichi, the gangs ... even M18 (the 'M' standing for 'mara,' which in Guatemala is used more commonly than 'pandilla,' the other name used for street gangs in Latin America), are for the most part blustery bunch of drunken, glue-sniffing 15 year-olds who suffer more from boredom and identity loss than from criminal impulse. But in the larger cities. Dieciocho (18) is a murderous and very dangerous group of young men, constantly at war with neighboring gangs. In one frightening comedic event in summer of 2005, members of a rival gang, Salvatrucha, broke into a prison to murder more than a dozen members of M18 imprisoned there. That fact that the gangs prey primarily on each other gives little comfort to most Guatemalans - as well as pointing with tragic clarity to the need for viable career and identity alternatives for young adults in Guatemala..