Conversations That Matter

Reflections on the Biennial of the Americas

By Jennifer Watson

The chicken bus rumbled as our driver floored it up the twisting mountain road. Like most busses in Guatemala, ours had a Christian name painted across the front.

"Our Savior Protects," the letters proclaimed. I hoped the name applied to traffic as well as spiritual hazards. In the United States, we have a tomb for unknown soldiers who die in combat.

In Guatemala, they have a grave for the unknown chicken-bus drivers who die in a different kind of battle. Some die from the road conditions; others die from crime.

That drive came to mind this month, when I spoke to former Guatemalan President Vinicio Cerezo during the Biennial of the Americas. He identified crime as the No. 1 problem his nation faced and warned that crime and other social ills could undermine Guatemala's hard-won democracy.

I hadn't experienced the crime, but I'd seen the poverty he mentioned. I'd been in Guatemala for 10 days on a volunteer vacation with the Colorado-based nonprofit Pura Vida, which provides scholarships to indigenous children. Guatemala is the second-poorest nation in our hemisphere, and it has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. Few children from Mayan families receive more than two or three years of school, so the scholarships that Pura Vida offers can make a huge difference in the life of a child, family and village.

During the trip, I learned again how small and large the world is. I met a young woman and her mother (pictured here, with me wearing a hat they knitted) who live in a highlands village that can only be reached on foot. Most of the residents speak a Mayan language rather than Spanish, and many of the adults are survivors of a 30-year civil war that killed well over 100,000 indigenous people.

As remote as their world seemed, however, traces of my Colorado home weren't far. The next village over had a community clinic, which the local pastor showed us. As I entered the room, I spotted a 9Health Fair sticker and laughed. Pura Vida had brought Colorado doctors and dentists to Guatemala, and one must have left the sticker behind.

I would later learn that other Colorado-based nonprofits, such as Water for People, were working with Guatemalans to develop clean water supplies. And still other Coloradoans traveled to beautiful Antigua to attend its world-famous Spanish immersion programs. Because of the strong ties between Pura Vida and Guatemalan villages, Coloradoans were among the first to deliver food and emergency supplies to families devastated by Tropical Storm Agatha this spring

I discovered that Guatemala was both a different world and the same world, and the Biennial of the Americas reminded me of what I'd learned. I'm looking forward to watching the gatherings evolve in the next few years as we develop a stronger sense of our shared American identity.