Roots & Wings International

I was going to write about an indigenous community outside of Guatemala, but I just finished Naomi Klein’s excellent book, The Shock Doctrine, and the systematic destruction indigenous people’s way of life is still fresh in my mind. While I don’t have the book in front of me, I do have this handy link from PBS that covers the same basic information. I recommend picking up a copy of Klein’s book, if you get the chance. Also, watch the excellent documentary, Voice of a Mountain. You can watch the entire thing, for free, here.

Guatemala wasn’t always a country in ruins, where indigenous Mayans lived in poverty and were denied basic rights such as affordable education. Guatemala was once an egalitarian society where, under the rule of read more

Language is an inseparable part of one’s culture. Why else would the French ban the word “email” from their government documents (they prefer to use the phrase “courier electronique)? To accept even a fraction of another culture’s language is to forever lose a part of your own. h

Colonization – and its newer brother, neocolonization – has done much to influence, and sometimes wipe out, a culture’s language. Spanish colonialists caused both the Incan and Mayan empires to pull a disappearing act, though descendants of the Mayan people remain in parts of Central read more

This Youtube video sums up nicely the programs we offer in rural Guatemala:

1. Full university scholarship
2. After-school elementary tutoring program
3. Computer literacy program
4. University preparatory school
5. read more

In the recent past, my husband Oscar, my family of 3 children (at the time; there are now 4) and I moved to Honduras for a job opportunity. We went to live in Choluteca, a city in the southern part of Honduras, near the Pacific coast. This was a very interesting time for us, which allowed us to make new friends and experience new cultures. At the same time, our eyes were opened even further to the great necessity in Central America. Oscar and I had lived in Colombia (his native country) just after we got married, and of course also know that great need exists there and all over, even in the US. During our two years in Honduras, though, we had daily reminders that we were in one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere and even the world.

My perspective as an American surely shines through my observations, and also makes me mindful of all the benefits of having been born in this country. There are so many things that we take for granted that you cannot just assume read more

My name is Pascual Can Chox. I’m 31 years old. I study Pedagogy and School Administration at Mariano Galvez University in Mazatenango, Suchitepequez.   

The biggest difficulty I came across when I started studying at the university was a lack of financial resources, because both my parents had died–my mother of cancer and my father of alcoholism.None of my siblings survived. I have neither a house of my own, nor electricity, sanitary service, or potable water. I’m renting a friend’s house. 

It was difficult for me to decide what to study because I had no idea about it. I had to borrow some money from other people to pay the first inscription and monthly fees.

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