Helping Rural Maya Communities Through Basic Education of Girls and Women  

Women and Development in Maya Guatemala
by Max Kintner

 Revised 4 August 2005

Without a doubt the most profound of these changes is overpopulation of rural areas and the atomization of family land holdings through hereditary divisions.  As a result of generational splitting of land between siblings, few families now have enough land to rely on agricultural production as even a truly significant, much less exclusive means of support.   Since the traditional role of boys in Maya culture remains working with their fathers and brothers in the fields, smaller land holdings mean less field work.  Thus, boys often have more leisure time and a decreasing role in the family economy.   Shrinking contributions by male offspring, of course, along with sharply limited wage-earning options for men, makes other sources of income even more important, meaning a commensurate increase in responsibility for girls working in non-agricultural endeavors. 

Meanwhile, even families with enough land to substantially assist family survival have experienced increasing reliance on the commercial activity of women.   For while the “Green Revolution” of the fifties and sixties substantially increased harvest yields, it also mandated regular large investments in fertilizers and pesticides across the growing season.   Since alternative organic methods of cultivation have not yet gained wide acceptance in the Guatemalan Highlands, the expense of chemicals or purchased organic fertilizers continues to be necessary.   At the same time, real income in the altiplano remains abysmally low, with a minimum wage of well under U.S. $6 per day and an actual rate of daily remuneration of less than $5 (in summer of 2005, depending on number of hours and whether lunch is served, 40 quetzales, or about $5, was considered an excellent wage) if and when work could actually be found.  Therefore, men have few viable options for accumulating the investment needed for the only accepted agricultural technology, meaning – again – that income generated by women and girls is even more critical than was the case only a few years ago.

Given their importance to the family economy, it might be assumed girls would now be enjoying increasing autonomy and self-actualization within rural Maya societies.   But although certain [not always desirable] elements of “western culture” have wedged their way into rural Maya society, in some respects Maya women remain unfortunately limited not only by ‘new’ changing economic realities, but by ‘old’ sociocultural and economic pressures.

Of the “old” pressures, there remains the fact that education for girls is not prioritized in many traditional Maya families.   Especially in rural areas, where schools have never been readily available, girls have often not attended school at all.   Recent years have seen elementary schools built – and at least minimally staffed with teachers – even in most remote schools in the Highlands .   As a result, educational achievement by girls has  [ ever so slowly ]  increased.   Still, profound problems remain in rural villages, and educational achievement remains tragically low. 

In the Chichicastenango area, where CEBAR has granted 240 scholarships to girls and women (plus another 15 o4 so to 'special case boys), for example, teachers in remote schools with whom we have talked uniformly estimate that 10 to 15 percent of young rural girls never attend school at all.  Five reasons are often cited to explain failure to enroll.  In a more or less generally accepted ranking of importance, teachers say:  1) the poorest families cannot meet the minimal costs of enrolling offspring in public school;  2) anecdotal evidence suggests that more rural families (up to at least 15 percent in some remote cantones, or hamlets, say teachers) are migrating to the south coast for the sugar harvest, meaning that the enrollment period and first several weeks of school are missed;   3) parents who can’t speak Spanish at all are reticent to deal with school officials who don’t speak the native Maya K’iche’ language and, in a related sense;  4) because astronomical failure rates for children who do not speak Spanish make dedication of scarce family resources to education too risky (about 60 percent of teachers in Chichi speak little or no K’iche’);  and 5) because many parents, for often quite valid if very sad reasons, simply do understand education as a good investment, especially for girls.  

But while failure to enroll is a huge problem in itself, an even greater problem is that the rate of early school deserción – dropout – is tragically high.  Within the municipality, for various cultural, familial, linguistic, and administrative reasons, the annual failure rate through the second grade runs between 35 and 50 percent in rural schools.  Failures – and especially repeated failures – induce a high level of frustration and shame on the part of both students and their families, and only about 50 percent of girls in Chichi’s 70 or so public primary schools complete the third grade.  If they do complete the third grade, the attrition rate improves, with some 80 percent of graduating third graders going on to pass the sixth grade and become eligible for junior high.  Because of late starts, multiple failures, and year long dropouts along the way, meanwhile, very few girls finish primary school before they are 14 years old, while the average is closer to 16 years old. 

Supposing a señorita actually does pass the sixth grade, she is faced with even more obstacles in continuing on to the basico (junior high) level. 

There is, first, that in Chichicastenango, simple geography  represents a huge impediment.  The municipality is not simply a little town, but 400 square kilometers of rough mountain terrain, cut through with deep gorges.  This vast area is dotted with some 85 ‘cantones,’ or hamlets, connected only by primitive, easily eroded roads.  Pickup “taxis” ply the roads closest to the pueblo with relative frequency, but in more remote cantones only occasional or no public transportation passes by.  In any event, for the vast majority of families, even low-cost pickup transport is a moot point, since daily payment of fares is out of reach.  And while almost all hamlets have their own state-supported school, as of academic year 2005 (academic years run January through October) there are only 10 junior high schools serving the rural communities, most of which are 'cooperative' –  meaning that parents and local improvement committees must bear the cost of founding and building the school, and proving to the State for several years that the institute is a valid operational educational institute, before the government begins to share an appreciable share of salaries and maintenance.  Not only are rural basicos few and far between as well as impoverished and woefully under-equipped, however, but most are also clustered in the wealthier cantones – generally meaning those closest to the three highways that pass through the huge municipality.  Thus, both students and their very low-paid teachers are faced with long and difficult daily hikes up and down mountains and across deep and dangerous paths through the gorges to get to school.

Second, especially given that most Chichicastecas are well into their teens and able to take an important role in the family economy before they finish sixth grade, heightened family pressure makes many young women reticent to push the issue in the face of resistance from their elders .  Meanwhile, studies indicate that most girls who continue their education beyond the basic Spanish literacy level receive very little financial or moral support from their famiies, making academic success yet more difficult.  This is especially true because in economic terms junior high studies mean sharply higher financial costs as well as a greater loss of opportunity to make money.   With only one exception, for instance, junior high schools charge a monthly tuition as well as much higher “inscription” or enrollment costs (the 'exception' is a state-run vocational school that does not charge monthly tuition, but high costs of tools and study materials more than offset the difference.  Furthermore, that particular school is low capacity and admission is granted only by lottery, meaning most applicants cannot gain entry even if they can afford the overall high cost).  Junior high attendance, therefore, is more often than not a profound financial hardship on even families who claim relative economic stability, and requires a sincere commitment of time and energy and economic resources by both the student and her family

Third, in Maya culture, young women often go to live with the father’s family when they become pregnant, and especially in rural areas early pregnancy is more the rule than the exception.  If she does cohabitate or marry, a young woman whose education is not encouraged and supported by her own family is even less likely to encounter willingness on the part of her in-laws to share family resources for her education  (girls who remain in school, incidentally, are  much less likely to become pregnant at an early age ).    

As already noted, things are changing at a very slow pace.  Still, however, according to our own studies in Chichicastenango, which so far closely match a recent UN study of academic participation by rural Maya girls and women, only 5 percent of Chichicastenango’s young women make it through the front door of a junior high school, and only about 1 percent make it to diversificado, or high school, of any sort.  As to university studies, meanwhile, many of Chichi’s 85 cantones have never yet sent one of their own – either male or female – to college, while others have sent only one or two of their young men, while yet a few others currently have their first young woman enrolled.

Key to Photos  

1)  Alejandra, from Chucám, attends Anunciata Catholic School, even though she is from an evangelical family.  CEBAR cofounders Max Kintner & Mary Pliska first met María five years ago, and gave her the nickname 'gatita,' or kitten, because of the way she shyly and silently followed them around, never asking for anything but sometimes being rewarded with a trinket, taco, or little bag of french fries for sheer persistence.  Now in her third year as a 'becada,' she is neither shy nor silent, but a fun-loving girl and a very successful student.  She continues to work hard at the market, meanwhile, toting merchandise on her back through the gorge that separates the Pueblo of Chichi and the canton of Chucám, and treading the street each market day to pester tourists into buying the 'dream dolls,' ceramic necklaces, or other trinkets she peddles.  (return to photo)

2)  Little María is not always so pensive.  Her family home is canton Mucubaltz'ip, 7 kilometers above the pueblo of Chichicastenango.  In order to accommodate the CEBAR scholarships she and several of her siblings receive to attend one of the better schools in Chichi, however, she now lives with 10 to 15 other family members in an unfloored, unvented hut of about 4 meters x 2.5 meters.  Meals are cooked in a little concrete block fireplace in this unvented adobe cave.  There is no water, but the landlord recently installed a toilet in one corner, so at least now the 25 meter walk to a patch of grass is no longer necessary (a blessing, even though with no running water hygiene is even more difficult now).   With still very weak Spanish skills, María wanted to drop out after she failed first grade last year.  But her mother, a strong-willed widow, told her that like it or not, she would be back at school again this year.  (return to photo)

3)  This beautiful child, from a far-flung high-altitude canton west of the pueblo, long ago dropped out of primary school, still completely illiterate.  Her family will not let her or her older sister accept the scholarship CEBAR administrators have offered them repeatedly, but beg for a scholarship for one of their younger sons. (return to photo)

4)   As is the custom with young Maya girls, Angélica, now 12, has been carrying her little brother on her back since he was born.  She has never attended school, but began first grade with a CEBAR scholarship this year.   Angélica is a remarkably bright and pleasant child whose mother speaks Spanish quite well, but whose father and grandmother speak almost no Spanish.  As of June 2005, she was doing extremely well in her first grade studies - something for which CEBAR administrators are thankful, since studies indicate no significant correlation between academic success and the age at which children start school.  (return to photo)

Text and Graphics by Max Kintner.   Photos by Ray Waespi, Lynn Waespi, Max Kintner, and Mary Pliska.  All mateirals in this website are copyrighted and may not be reproduced or reused in any form whatsoever without the express and specific written consent of CEBAR administrators.  Contact max@centromaya.org for information on distribution or use of materials in this website. 

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Last Revised 4 August 2005