San Pablo Xucaneb', Alta Verapaz
Guatemala

Another World IS Possible
In Fact, It's Already Under Construction

Women's Association, July 2006

Xucaneb' is a village of Q'eqchi' Maya 20 km outside of Coban, Guatemala. There are just over 1500 people living there. In 2002, four women from the village wrote a letter to the director of rural health delivery services requesting money to buy a mill for grinding corn to make tortillas; they have always done this by hand, but now many villages are getting a mill operated by electricity or diesel which alieviates some of the daily burden of making tortillas, the staple of the Mayan diet.

When Ann Jefferson, a Village Earth volunteer, heard about this request on a visit to Guatemala, she returned to the U.S. and raised money to buy a mill. When she returned to Coban, she was joined by Adriana Lazaro, a graduate student in community organizing at the local extension of the Universidad de San Carlos, the national public university. And, most importantly, a Q'eqchi' speaker, which Ann was not. The women of the village do not speak Spanish, and this is typical of women in many areas of Guatemala.

When we got to the village to meet with the women, and more than 30 women showed up who were interested in participating in the project, we discovered that a village man had put in a mill just months before. So the women decided on a different project...raising chickens.

Over the past five years we've had our ups and downs with the chicken project, but it still survives, now in the form of free-range yard chickens that provide eggs for the families of the women in the Association as well as for sale, and chicken that becomes a delicious caldo (stew) called in Q'eqchi' kak' ik which means red chile.

The great success in the past five years is that about 15 women have continued to work together on various projects, and now they even have a bank account! This is a very big step for them; many of them rarely if ever left the village before and now they have learned to go to Coban and interact with the bureaucratic institutions. This is largely due to the patience and guidance of Adriana, who has continued to work with the project long after her field work as a student was done.

Hector, Osvaldo, Maria Cristina, Aurora, Aurelia

These five young people are continuing their studies as a result of the scholarships we have offered to the children of the Association. Young people study in the village school until they finish 6th grade. Then if they want to go to middle school, 7th - 9th grades, they have to leave the village which is too expensive for many of them. Before this project most of the kids couldn't dream of going past 6th grade, but now 10 students per year are able to continue their education with the assistance of Q.120 per month, about $15. So for $150 a year a student can continue going to school and hope for some options in life besides farming. Some want to continue the farming life, which they certainly should be able to do, but some are interested in pursuing other fields.

A Fort Collins woman, MaryLou Smith, has taken charge of the scholarship program for the past 5 years and it has been tremendously popular with donors and certainly with the scholarship students and their families. Several of the students have gone on past middle school and are now ready to enter a career in teaching or even go on to the university.

To find out more about the project and get regular, or irregular, updates, check out the topics on the right.