You may be drinking coffee right now, trying to keep up with the seemingly endless list of daily tasks. With everything we take into our bodies, with everyone we touch, there is a history behind it that we become a part of. I am a graduate student living in Central America and traveled for the first time to the Western Highlands of Guatemala with a group of volunteers to visit a recently-established community called Bisan, or 30 de Junio. This is the area of the country most impacted by the massacres of indigenous people during the 36-year civil (1960-1996). It was everything I had imagined intellectually: poor, dusty, set in a beautiful mountainous landscape, with warm and generous people desperate for the most basic necessities.
Upon first arrival, we were greeted by a group of about ten children, some giggling and some peeking out from behind one of the few trees of the encampment. One took my hand immediately as we headed up the hill. She announced her name: Jose Felina de Preciosa. During the following three days, I learned that her grandmother survived several near-death experiences during and after the end of the civil war. Both of her parents were killed along with her husband,
by soldiers who raped her in front of her children. She said the thanked God every day that they did not kill her baby, and survived the next several years hiding in the mountains and moving from town to town finding jobs. She developed diverticulitis from years of going without food, while only being able to feed her five children two tortillas a day.
The family now finally has a place to live, in a house composed of a leaky tin roof, dirt floor, and walls made of woven cornstalks, planks, and plastic. I was very cold sleeping in a nearby hotel, where the mountain temperature goes down to 50 degrees at night. Jose Felina sleeps on a board with the rest of her family under one blanket. This new community was established on June 30, 2006 by a group of about 200 families who had been displaced during the civil war. Like Jose Felina’s family, many had been working on the Coast, where her father still works and earns 25 Q (about 3 dollars) a day, a few hours away from what had previously been their indigenous Maya Ixil community. The community does not have the legal rights to their land, which is on the outskirts of an army base and owned by the government. However, they have organized and are working toward obtaining the legal title to it.
Since so many of the men have been killed or are off working, the community is composed almost entirely of women and children. Everything I touched was something that had been struggled for, worked for, cared for. The Guatemalan government is very weak, spending almost nothing on basic services, either unable or unwilling to deliver things as basic as water. Jose Felina and her community are living in an institutional vacuum as the community leaders fight to legalize their claim to the land. I met with a group of women to ask their priorities and everything boiled down to needing money: for a water pump, for repairing roofs that leak in the rainy season, blankets, medicine, food, a teacher, job training, seeds, etc. On a regular day, the women and children of each household spend several hours walking to and from a nearby spring to bring water to the makeshift houses. As one member of our group from the United States mentioned, the houses are like something she would rig up for a night or two of camping, and couldn’t imagine sleeping essentially in the open in this chilly climate.
Everything seemed overwhelming at first, with the profound range of needs and intense visible suffering. But, three needs became very clear. The first is money: for the most basic necessities to live with some sense of dignity. Secondly, the community needs connections with a stable demand for the goods (such as beautiful textiles) that they can supply, so that they will have an independent sustainable form of income that respects the talents and labor rights of the community. Also importantly, the community needs connections with international and local organizations that could provide assistance and services and who can be called upon in their struggle to legalize their claim to the land.
I have sometimes heard that “you can’t just throw money at a problem and expect things to change.” In a sense, this is correct. "Just" throwing money at a problem is "only" likely to alleviate some suffering in the short term. However, providing relief for basic needs in the short term can be profoundly important for alleviating the grinding hardship of poverty, and can be done at the same time as working on long-term solutions. A little money can go a long way towards buying roofing and blankets, for example, and help to prevent illness which might prevent individuals from participating in community projects. At the same time, we can work in solidarity to find long-term solutions for sustainable forms of income, education, and health care in the community.
If you see suffering and you can do something to alleviate it, you must. For about $30, Jose Felina and her family won’t be as cold tonight with an extra blanket. For $100, her family can buy 10 pieces of tin roofing that won’t leak in the rainy season from April to September. From the moment Jose Felina took my hand, she became a part of my life, a part of my history. Her father is working cutting coffee right now so that he can send the little back home that keeps the family from starving. I ask her mother how she has the strength to go on as she breastfeeds her newborn baby. She looks at me quizzically and replies “I don’t know.” I don’t think anyone has ever asked this kind of question to her before, because the suffering in the community is so widespread people don’t discuss it explicitly unless asked by an outsider.
I have become painfully aware that everything I spend on myself and my family is money that I am not sharing with the poor. It is an empowering sensation to know that so little money can do so much. Even if we cannot change the structural problems right away we can work on both issues at the same time: struggling to help people gain the rights to their indigenous land, access to sustainable markets, and ease the suffering they are experiencing as a consequence of their poverty by just giving a little. When I left the community, I made a small donation. In total, our group donated about $200, which was 
to help cover the cost of the delicious meals they prepared for us. With all of the priorities that the community has, it is likely Jose Felin a will be cold or wet again tonight, and the coffee her father is cutting will continue to be a luxury her family can’t afford to drink.
Please contact Shannon at holashannon(at)gmail(dot)com for information on how to make a tax deductible donation and/or work in solidarity with this community.
