Guatemala 4: View from Chicago

I'm back home and trying to navigate the terrain between third and first world. In the tourist city of Antigua, not only are there more signs in English, jade boutiques and ice-cream shops as numerous as the quaint cobblestones, but also I noticed this gym that promises the abs I don't have (the other wall displays the female version).

FYI: I added pictures to my three previous posts from Guatemala...

I was gentle with myself and waited until my second day home before listening to the news. In Guatemala, the papers are full of articles on the continuing violence that ravages the country from murders on city buses (gang & profit wars) to the relentless destruction of jungle habitat that surrounds the famous Mayan ruins in the northern Peten by cattle ranchers, loggers and drug dealers. Skewing the environmental balance is especially worrisome in the context of theories that the jungle Mayan culture disappeared about a 1000 years ago due to their destruction of habitat and inability to grow enough crops to sustain themselves.



These same issues plague us in Chicago and the US. Yesterday's radio contained stories on drug use in the military in Iraq, Afghanistan and among returning vets. Presumably, our strong American market (much among the upper middle-class, suburban, white populations with disposable incomes) drives the supply of drugs and the attendant problems. Gang violence is rampant in our city. Social class and racial identity divide people and pretty much determine quality of life: I read yesterday that our bottom 50% possess 1% of the wealth in the US. With continued growth of corporate farming that uses GMOs, chemical fertilizer and mechanical labor, our environment, health, employment and self-dignity continue to be at risk. Some people still voice the opinion that "sustainability" is something to convert to, as if it were religion, instead of science. Unless something changes, our future could have much in common with third-world countries like Guatemala.

I took the picture below outside the clinic of Common Hope just outside Antigua. [I have been sponsoring a child there to help him or her stay in school for the past decade: this time I was meeting my third child and his family. The previous girl got pregnant at 15 and left school and thus the program :( ] It is an interview with an indigenous woman of 39 who was infected with HIV by her partner before he abandoned her. It's a sad story, relatively new to Guatemala, but not to much of the rest of the world. What I find encouraging in this very Macho culture is that people are speaking openly about this new challenge. After knowledge, is action. We can choose to do nothing or try to walk together step by little step in a direction that honors our best qualities as human beings. Despite the grim conditions in Guatemala, for 25 years that country and its people have inspired me to such a degree that I feel lucky every day. And I believe I must share the privileges I inherited (clean water, electricity, education, health, social & racial advantages and relatively freedom as a women and a citizen) with those for whom they are inaccessible. This gives me great joy. The older I get, the clearer I know, that for better or for worse, this is part of my essential being. On my return flight when I changed planes in Cancun, I was viscerally reminded that I have always been far from the typical American...as if that is not already brought home to me every day in my life and business. Marketing is so ingrained in our global culture that sometimes I struggle to recall & connect with & pursue my inherent values.

Hopefully each real experience makes me braver in advocating and practicing those beliefs I hold dear.

What do you do to keep yourself true??? Please share & inspire.