Learning Spanish in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

It is hard to believe that week one of my Spanish program is already over and I have settled into a routine of living in the charming town of Quetzaltenango, affectionately known as Xela (Shayla). So much has happened this week.

After spending Saturday night in somewhat underwhelming Guatemala City, I caught an 8:00 am bus for Xela. It was a 5 hour trek through the stunning Cuchamatane Mountains dotted with tiny Mayan villages. The difficult life led by these people was immediately obvious in the tiny houses and the fact that dozens of them were trekking along the road with huge loads of firewood gathered from the hills on their backs and heads. We passed several busy Sunday markets. The Mayan women look festive in their colourful traditional dress. The startling thing was that this peaceful area was the focal point of the 36 year civil war in Guatemala which only ended in 1996. I meet a number of other Spanish language students on the bus heading for Xela. This city of 140,000 people is developing a reputation for the quality of its language schools and the fact that it is a well-organized Guatemalan town, in a beautiful setting, welcoming to visitors but not overrun by them. While Antigua is famous for its Spanish colonial architecture, people here see Xela as the real Guatemala; Antigua is "Guatemalan Disneyland".

I arrive in Xela and head by taxi to the Proyecto Linguistico Quatzalteco de Espanol (PLQE), the school where I will be studying for the next 6 weeks. It is in a fine old Spanish colonial building that used to be a hotel. The school administrator Fedelma arrives and lets me in and we do the paperwork to get me set up with my homestay. I am fortunate to be placed in a house just around the corner from the school with Dona Yolinda who, word has it, is the best cook of all the host families.

The house is typical of middle class families in the town. All rooms enter onto a patio and courtyard. By North American standards it would be considered very basic. Hot water is limited to the shower and there is no heat, despite the fact that temperatures in Xela, high in the mountains, drop most nights to near freezing. But with lots of blankets it is okay - ´til morning when a real effort is required to get out of bed.

Food has been great thus far, as promised. Breakfast consists of hot cereal, (a cream of wheat type affair) with bananas, as well as a very large pancake with homemade strawberry preserve. (I brought some maple syrup but it has not yet appeared!) Lunch is the main meal of the day and several teachers also turn up at Dona Yolie´s most days for the affair. There is often a soup, some form of chicken or meat, with rice and vegetables, beans of some sort, tortillas and often fruit. There is lots of conversation, which I struggle to pick apart and participate in. Of course, my carefully crafted sentences have to be only in the present tense at this point (try having a full conversation in present tense!!) and oriented around my limited vocab. Dona Yolie is a very charming woman with a great sense of humour and easy laugh. (I provide her with many opportunities!) and really works at helping me with my Spanish.

The School itself has exceeded my expectations and the 30 or so students from the US, Europe and Canada are a very diverse and interesting lot. Proyecto Linguistico Quetzalteco is a non-profit school which has existed in Xela for about 20 years. Its aim is to teach Spanish within the context of Guatemala´s history, culture and politics. It is committed to promoting human rights in Guatemala, the most basic of which have been trampled upon regularly throughout its history, and supports a number of projects aimed at improving the lot of working class and disadvantaged Guatemalans. The quality of the teaching and the extracurricular activities is excellent. Each student is assigned a different teacher each week and has 5 hours per day of individual instruction, oriented to the student´s ability level. The sessions take place in various rooms of the school, in the sunny courtyard or on the rooftop terrace (days get to about 20-25 degrees Celsius). Teachers are all university trained and very skilled and supportive.

Many of the teachers were directly involved in the latter years of the 36 year long civil war here. Most were university students at the time. The war was largely focused in the Cuchamatane Mountains with Xela at the heart. Each week the school holds several "conferencias" where local speakers, including some teachers, provide information and insights into an aspect of Guatemalan history or politics. Last week we had a very interesting presentation on the 1996 peace accords which ended the War. While the guerrillas disarmed, about 85% of the content of the Accords remains to be implemented by the Government, a situation which has meant that most of the Mayans, who make up about 50% of this country, have seen very little improvement in their impoverished lives. We also learned that a UN sponsored report on the human rights abuses committed during the war, which saw 250,000 people killed or "disappeared" in Guatemala and some 400 towns wiped out, found that the Government death squads and the military were responsible for 97% of them. The author of that report, a Catholic bishop, was killed two days after the report was released in 1998.

Another presentation was by a tiny, delightful Mayan woman, Maria Tulia, who was the announcer on the guerrilla radio station for 9 years during the conflict. Her stories of starting and maintaining this radio station, Voz Popular, while constantly evading the Guatemala military were fascinating. I had a chance to talk with her more (in my limited Spanish) when she turned up for lunch at my house! We cannot imagine the horrendous abuses (much of it supported by the CIA in the US) that drove these warm, gentle and humorous people to take up arms against the Government in self-defense and in an effort to improve their lot. Each week someone will also present a summary of key news events of the week with commentary and discussion. It makes for a very interesting way to learn Spanish.

Friday nights are graduation ceremonies for students who complete their stay that week. It includes a full dinner, prepared on alternating weeks by students or teachers. It is accompanied by a pick-up mariachi band led by one of the teachers which performs Spanish songs including some from the revolutionary music tradition in Latin America. Last Friday´s event was a blast.

Outings so far have included visits to several nearby Mayan towns, as well as trip to a local hot springs (very rough!) of which there are many around Xela. There are definite advantages to being surrounded by volcanoes! We also had a session of salsa with a very flexible salsa teacher -- mucho caliente!!

On Sunday I went with a group of students (from Germany, US and Canada) on an organized trek with a local tour company to a sacred Mayan site. The site is a lake in the interior of a volcano where Mayans still make ritual sacrifices of live animals at altars which surround the lake. It was quite a mystical setting as fog rolled down into this peaceful lake surrounded by cloud forest. The hike was excellent and a real workout (and my spiffy new hiking boots proved up to the challenge!). On the hike I met another Ottawa native, Emily, who was on the same plane as me coming to Guatemala City.

My impressions after my first week: I am making progress on the Spanish and having fun learning, but it is a huge challenge; Guatemala is a beautiful country with stunning scenery, a rich culture and people who are among the most friendly and good humoured anywhere; while Guatemala, like most of Central America, has had a tragic recent history, much of it caused directly or indirectly by forces beyond its control, people remain optimistic that progress is possible; still, it faces enormous socio-economic, and political challenges, and the reality of a virtually non-functioning justice system; our difficulties in North America pale by comparison; if my first week is any indication my travel is going to be an amazing and extremely enriching experience - with no snow to shovel for a full year!!

Hasta luego!!