Parish Politics, Accompaniers, and Santiago Atitlán

Another quick update. Only a little bit has happened in terms of the public health project--Elena and I are in the process of navigating parish politics, and this makes getting things going a little slower than expected. Despite this, I think we've made some progress. Apparently, Jesús Antonio, who told me that he was the supervisor of the health promoters the last time I was here, and who has subsequently been my primary contact in San Lucas during this past year as I planned the project, does not, in fact, play the role that he has pretended to. There is a somewhat long story behind all of this, the details of which are still mostly unclear to me, but suffice it to say that there is an unfortunate but self-generated rift between Jesús Antonio and other individuals charged with the health and wellbeing of people in the communities. While the concept of the parish health projects is of one network of care based on cooperation between the parish hospital and community health promoters (and, some argue, visiting teams from the US), Jesús Antonio is territorial about his roles as coordinator of visiting physicians and facilitator of other medical attention, and thus refused to cooperate with the health promoters, resulting in the collapse of a theoretically sound (and, to me, exciting) system. What makes this particularly sad is that, as a result of this power struggle--which the health promoters themselves are somewhat confused by--the sick and poor miss out on the care that would otherwise be available. In any case, on the advice of Vicente, the actual supervisor of the health promoters, Elena and I went straight to the bosses, Dr. Tun and Pablo Benedicto, who are the parish hospital's attending physician and administrative director, respectively. We explained the concept of our project, and an official meeting was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon--of course, even then, we were told, somewhat mysteriously, that the meeting would be comprised of, "Dr. Tun, Pablo, and the head of the health promoters." Today, Fr. Greg confirmed that this meant that we would be working with Vicente, who is a wonderfully pleasant person and actually does supervise the health promoters. I am still a little confused because evidently Fr. Greg knows all about the power struggle and the stifling politics--and that I was being mislead. I think that Fr. Greg was hoping that my project--and the fact that I was in contact with the wrong person for the job--might force increased cooperation and a sense of responsibility to the hapless community members. Unfortunately, this has not happened, as Jesús Antonio somewhat rudely told Vicente that he should not get involved in the project since he was already taking care of everything. Of course, Jesús Antonio told Vicente this but then did not follow up even once with us on when exactly we would start working. In any case, we’ve learned our first lesson about doing work here—go to the highest possible part of the locally defined power structure if you want to get things done.

In other news, we’ve met a few new folks this weekend. On Saturday, we spent literally the entire morning chatting with Aaron and Becky, who are “accompaniers” with the Brethren Volunteer Service and whom Julie Windsor Mitchell met on UCM’s most recent trip to San Lucas Tolimán. The title of their positions is a hold-over from Central America’s civil wars, when First World volunteers were placed as witnesses in communities at risk of attack by military or paramilitary groups. The violence in Guatemala officially ended in 1996, but a steady stream of volunteers has continued to fill Aaron and Becky’s positions to serve as witnesses to ongoing processes of poverty and marginalization and to help in the establishment and maintenance of a variety of community development projects. They live in a small village high up in the mountains called Unión Victoria, which, once an abandoned plantation, was the site where two communities of Ixil and K’iche’ Mayas were resettled during the civil war. They told us that neither internet nor a reliable cell phone signal are available in Unión Victoria, so they come down to San Lucas Tolimán every couple of weeks to relax, recharge and download episodes of The Office on iTunes. In any case, they seem to be quite authentically living with the people the way that they live, and I hope to learn a great deal more about their experiences—and maybe even visit their community some time.

On Sunday, we tagged along with a couple going to Santiago Atitlán, a fascinating community a little west of San Lucas on the lake. We visited the church and memorial to Fr. Stan (A’plas) Rother, an Oklahoman Catholic priest who learned Tzutujil and was assassinated by “desconocidos” (masked men, who likely were working on behalf of the military) for his commitment to his indigenous parishioners in 1981. Later, we visited Santiago’s famous cofradía (lay brotherhood) to Maximón, an indigenous demigod who I think represents St. Simon during most of the year and then comes to represent Judas during Holy Week. There is an interesting and relatively quick chapter on this town in a book called Unfinished Conquest.

Another interesting thing about Santiago Atitlán is that it is one of the last remaining towns in Guatemala where the men still wear their traditional ¨traje.¨ Men´s traje in Santiago Atitlán consists of hand-woven blue striped pants, often hand-embroidered with images of birds. The pants don´t have a zipper or a waistband, but are held up by a long sash that is wrapped around the waist a number of times and tied in front. Elena being Elena, she took a bunch of photos while we were in Santiago. To the right, you can see some men in their traditional pants, walking up the steps of the church on their way to mass.

In other news, it has come to my attention that my blog entries are too ¨medical¨for some folks, so I have created a new blog called ¨Social Justice & Medicine in Guatemala.¨ This blog was created so that I could continue developing and maintaining a critical, resocialized perspective (that is, ranting) about my experiences without inconveniencing (or boring to death) people who just want to know how we're doing, for Chrissake. So, to find out how Elena and I are doing, keep reading this blog; to find out what I secretly think to myself, go to www.socialjusticemedicine.blogspot.com.