The little country after Mexico...

"Every time I look at Time magazine or The New York Times I find myself skipping over the articles on, for example, Ethiopia. Out of guilt I make myself go back and read them, imagining how uninteresting the same kind of articles of Guatemala must seem to the average citizen of the world"
From The Long Night of White Chickens(p.150) by Francisco Goldman

The most recent post in HFH motivated me to start putting down some of the ideas I have been brewing about Guatemala and its violent past, present, and unfortunately, future. LD (the blogger behind HFH), as a freelance journalist reporting from Guatemala earlier in the present decade, probably saw or was more aware of the tragedy that is living in my motherland for millions of people more than what I experienced in the almost 25 years I spent there. Probably is the stoicism or cynicism you develop from having been born in such a violent society. Probably it was that I was fortunate (as is my family still, knock on wood) of having been somewhat spared by the effects of the civil war. However, on a lighter previous post on HFH, where I tried to contribute to a list of things that makes you Guatemalteca/o one of the thoughts that came immediately into my head and I didn't add to my comment was this:

You (know you are Guatemalteca/o if you)or someone you know has been kidnapped, carjacked, mugged or assassinated.

That seems to be the common denominator to the Guatemalan experience. And the issue is that I could mention the couple of encounters with common violence that I had almost ten years ago and they are dwarfed by the level of terror (or complete numbness) that the population of my country of origin, that little country after Mexico lives in. More than once I have repeated to people here in Canada when I see the blank look in their eyes when I say Guatemala: "there is Canada, then the States, then Mexico, and then Guatemala". It is not as frequent as I used to think, and really one cannot know the exact location of every single country in the world. But, what is really shocking is the lack of coverage there is about Guatemala.
A link on the HFH post lead me to an article on the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail titled "Anatomy of a shootout". It seems to be the first of a series of articles about Guatemala AND the role of Canadians (mainly NGOs) in the process of bringing peace and safety through a proper judicial system to the third world nation that I love with all my heart. It reads like an update on the post-war crime and violence situation, with that little "feel-good" Canadian section on how good we are helping the poor them. For me is hard to digest because I am "we" and I am "them" (or was, at least). As LD points out, the attitude of many Canadians is that of "if it is not affecting me why should I care". There is even a comment by a reader, mentioned by LD, that blatantly states "In reality who really cares what happens in Guatamala(sic)" unless these savages decide to start crossing borders in mass all the way up to Canada like Mexicans did recently landing into Windsor, and God forbid if then they decide to ride up the 401 Highway and come to Toronto, wouldn't that be awful.
As LD says:

"And unfortunately, that's probably the opinion of a lot of people-- this is happening far away from me, what does it really matter? And sometimes those are the people I was thinking about when I was reporting from Guatemala. Did anyone really care when I did those reports? Are those the stories that, when they came on the radio, were basically like background music, as people did whatever else? It's always so much easier to "sell" a local story-- someone being killed down the block or whatever else is going on down the street. People's ears perk up when they hear about something they know, when they can visualize the street or area or city. But when there's killing in Pakistan or Kenya or Guatemala, some people just don't care."

I agree and I think it must be even harder to "sell" Guatemala. Because it seems to me that Pakistan and Kenya are more on the spotlight these days for their eruptions of violence. Guatemala's violence doesn't seem to have much echo maybe because it is a chronic problem, not an acute response to an event. Maybe because there is no clear "enemy" anymore. Because more than 10 years after the peace accords in Guatemala there is no face we can put to the "parties" involved and thus no mediation is possible. I remember years ago hearing someone saying that humanity doesn't see issues as "problems" until they can see that there is a potential solution, the example given was illiteracy. In any case, maybe there is no solution to the situation in Guatemala. Maybe we should lose all hope that a new government can do anything. Maybe it would have been better for an alleged genocide (take your pick) to become president of my motherland so that the rest of the world could look back at the little country where I left my umbilical cord buried. Yes, there is a new government being sworn in next 14 of January in Guatemala. But not even a comment by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez that he won't attend the ceremony for fear of a potential U.S. backed assassination attempt against him in Guatemala made the national media here in Canada take notice. RomeroGT (click here for post in Spanish) is making a call to fellow Guatemaltecos/as to embrace citizen participation, because democracy doesn't end with putting an X on a ballot. He is also urging people to understand the ideology of the "left leaning" or "social-democrat" people that will become the official party.
Guatemala is a hard sell product. I know it. But I hope that little by little there is more awareness and attention to what is happening, and has been happening for decades, if not centuries, in this third world country. Is not an issue of "Human Rights" as they are usually portrayed, but of Human Dignity. The issues that underlie the current situation won't be solved with a new government, or with social cleansing, or with revenge, or with hand me downs to the poorer masses, or with polarizing the society between urban and rural areas. I have no solution either to propose. What I feel is that there is something missing in Guatemala, a national identity, and that cannot be achieved without before having education, work, safety, health, justice, peace.