Briefing on El Estor

Sorry for the lateness of this post,

According to my previous plan, I should’ve been back in Canada three weeks ago – but I’m still in Central America. After a few days in Copan Ruinas, I was ready to press on towards El Estor Guatemala. El Estor is where I will stay until late June... So, how did I end up where I am, and what the hell am I doing?

During the Guatemala semester, the class went on a delegation with Right’s Action, led by Grahame Russell, to visit a number of communities and sites throughout Guatemala. This was a no-holds-barred trip, starting with the FAGA exhumation process in Guatemala City, to the isolated community of Lote 8, and finally the community of Rio Negro. These sights and experiences combined to create a powerful cross-section of both the contemporary struggles and historical scars that have defined Guatemala. The other thing worth noting is, the resultant definition makes Guatemala both incredibly unique and at the same time, a classic archetype for the troubles that have, and continue to plague other countries throughout the Americas. This trip made Guatemala’s troubled existence real in a ways that reading an article never could.

After visiting Lote 8 with the class, I wanted to do more. At the time, I wasn’t sure what – or how for that matter. Just as in many countries around the world, the problems are discouragingly complicated, even more so when one is thousands of kilometers removed. So, if I was going to try to do anything, the best time to do so would be as I was present, living in it. With that in mind, I changed my plane ticket to buy more time. This allowed me to go on the delegation to Honduras during the end of May, and opened up almost another month after that to do what ever I could get organized through Rights Action.

Well, that covers the ‘how did I get here?’ part, but the ‘what am I doing here?’ part remains. As the Honduras delegation wound down, the final details were set for a placement in El Estor. The work is going to be a mix… part human rights observer, part protective accompaniment and part writer. As a human rights observer, I’ll be doing trips to communities that have been touched by violence and repression both past and present, such as in Polochic. As a accompanier, I will be in close contact with three community leaders from the El Estor region as they continue to organize in their ongoing struggle for land, dignity for themselves and a future for their children. As a writer, I’m going to try to keep up this blog, among more ambitious ventures.

Another basic question is of course the simple ‘why?’ – to that, I would answer ‘why not’. Stay tuned, funny story coming up next.