Gutemala 2006
David's reports below in reverse chronological order:
January 7th
January 11, 2005
January 8th and 9th
Clowns Without Borders Borders visited two isolated and very
poor coffee Fincas. Lots of hours bouncing around
in the back of a jeep.
January 8th we went to Finca La Candelaria above the pueblo
of Pochuta. We were down in the hot lowlands at the
beginning ot the hills. About 250 people packed around
a concrete slab. They laughed like hyenas and we played
for almost two hours, which made us quite proud since we put
this show together in a few days after not even knowing each
other before hand. The people were as friendly as could
be and some of the child volunteers were true clowns.
January 9th we repeated this experience at La Florida Finca
near the town of La Columba in a fold of incredibly steep
hills covered with coffee plantations and scrub jungle.
About 200 people laughing themselves silly at this show.
Both of these fincas are large coffee plantations that originally
belonged to single owners. When the owners abandoned
them as unprofitable the workers, about 100 dirt poor indigenous
families at each one, claimed and squatted the land.
After some years of negotiation with banks they now own the
land and work it cooperatively. But they have to pay
the banks off.
At La Candeleria all the money from each years coffee crop
is dedicated to paying off the land which they think they
can do in 7 years. Thus, besides working their own land
all the families need to go work at nearby plantations to
earn money to live on. Unfortunately they lost much
of this year´s crop to the hurricane´s mud flood.
At La Florida, the crowd was smaller because the day of the
show most of the men trucked off to a town
to support other poor workers, who apparently were threatened
with getting their homes repossessed because of debt.
Their coffee hillsides are badly grown over and decimated. For
their first year of squatting they had almost no housing at
all and still they are very crowded. In the old house
that belonged to the orginal German owners, 12 families are
packed in. They have a lumber saw and a corn grinder
powered by a water mill.
The steep hills we drive through are sprinkled with hundreds
of landslide scratches of exposed dirt, many of them thousands
of feet long. There are many washouts in the road, most
of them reasonably repaired three months after the hurricane.
We have been trying to do a show in the Central Park of
our host city of Quetzaltenango. On January 6th we had
started a show on the central square but the police came to
stop us. The crowd booed and heckled the police but
we calmed them down and moved to a filthy stage near the market. We
had a wonderful show there for about 250 people, mostly poor
market children plus some families and a sprinkling of tourists.
We knew we could get a huge crowd in the Central park so on
January 10th we petitioned City Hall, got a letter typed up
explaining Clowns Without Borders, signed by three officials
and still were refused in the end. The Chief of Police
felt that we had been upsetting his authority in our first
show in some way and swore at us rudely. The mayor,
the only person who could overrule him, never showed up.
So instead we went to a different park to play. We had
a fantastic show there for about 500 people including perhaps
100 homeless street children and shoeshine boys.
On January 11, with the support of the San Juan Ostancalco
office of woman, children and human rights, we performed for
two schools in a very poor hillside barrio of that town.
At the first school, Communtaria Los Lopez, we had 450 kids
and 50 adults absolutely in stitches. At the Escuela
Comunitaria Los Romero, we had to walk in a few hundre meters
because of a bridge that been washed out by the hurricane.
There we played for about 300 children and 20 adults with
great success.
On the walk back to the truck I talked to a man living nearby.
He had spent two years working in Michigan (although he didn´t
speak any English) and had earned money to construct a two
story concrete house and buy a pickup truck in his hometown.
In many towns like this all over Guatemala all the newer,
nicer houses are built with money from immigrant labor in
the United States. Current debate in the U.S. congress about
the new immigration law and the attempts of Mexico and Central
America to influence it are headline news here. Most
rural Guatamalans live in one room concrete blocks or shacks.
Tommorow, January 12, we are off to distant communities on
the Vulcan Tajamulco, the tallest volcano in Central America.
These communities are reportedly very hard hit by the hurricane
and require long walks to reach. It will only be Sayda Trujillo
and I because Shea is already going back to start his university
term.
David Lichtenstein
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
January 7th, this just in:
Clowns Without Borders USA is now performing in Guatemala.
This trip was launched with the idea of bringing smiles to
children and adults in the communities most effected by torrential
rains and mudslides caused by Hurricane Stan in October, 2005.
Over 1000 people were killed in Guatemala, mostly by tremendous
mudslides that drowned houses and whole villages. Rebuilding
and replanting are still very much in progress in these poor
indigenous villages and many people are still on emergency
food aid in temporary housing.
Three clowns make up the team, David Lichtenstein, an
experienced CWB performer from Portland, Oregon and two performers
new to CWB, Sayda Trujillo and Shea Freedom Howler.
Sayda is a Guatemalan-American; we used her Grandmother´s
house in the country, where Sayda went to grade school, as
a place to rehearse our show for two days. Shea had
never been out of the USA before.
Our principle local organizer is Pieter Van Nestelrooy who
runs CAPAZ, an organization that teaches animal husbandry
and encourages the estabishment of cooperative farms in indigenous
communities. We are also supported by Manos Campesinos,
who organize small coffee farmers to get fairer prices for
their coffee.
Our show yesterday was in the aldea of Panabaj, in Santiago
de Atitlan. There a giant mudslide originating 2000
feet higher on the mountain buried much of the village at
4:00 AM in the morning, killing 80 people, most of whom are
still buried under the mudflow. Crowded temporary housing
has been set up on top of the mudflow. We performed
on top of the mudflow at the edge of the housing. There were over
300 children, plus many parents. The show was made difficult
by strong gusting winds that swirled the volcanic ash of the
flow all over us, but the children loved it. One woman
told us that it was the first time she had seen the children
laughing like that for months. It was an extraordinary
experience.
We were also able to visit (and bring supplies for)
a farm run cooperatively by 70 families of the village.
They have already heroically dug all the most essential parts
of the farm out from under more than one meter of mudflow
by hand. Unfortunately it is not possible to grow anything
in the volcanic sand and ash of the flow.
We are performing in Guatemala everyday from January 5 to
January 18. We have a schedule targeting the communities
most effected by the hurricane, all of whom are difficult
to reach. We also our performing for a few schools and
orphanages in poor communities closer to our base in
Quetzaltenango which should allow us to get in 2 shows
on a few days.
David Lichtenstein
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
January 7, 2006
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