(HT) (5) Poverty and Illiteracy

So I was reading the paper this Sunday and found an excellent article that talks about a region in Guatemala that especially has huge issues in poverty and illiteracy. The article highlights why problems such as illiteracy and poverty continue to remain such a big and continous problem in Guatemala. I took me a bit to translate to English... I just hope that I have not forgotten to much English so that you can understand the article. I hope that you all are able to enjoy it.



“Illiteracy and Poverty, the Barrier of Education”

The letters and numbers are simple figures or drawings that do not mean anything for the majority of the women in San Bartolome Jocotenango, Quiche. For them, taking a pen is a complicated task and writing their name, impossible; so is reading a song in church or knowing where to direct the bus to go. They live in a city with the most illiteracy in the entire country, where 7 out of 10 women do not know how to read nor write.

Juana Ramirez says that she does not know very well how old she is, may she’s 20 or 24; she is one of the hundreds of women of the city that never had access to an education and now still do not want literacy courses that the city is starting to give. “I have 3 kids; I cannot go,” she says.

She lives in a small adobe house, and the bed where she sleeps with her 3 kids and her husband is not more than a few branches that hold up some boards, and an old blanket for the cold. She and her family eat tortillas with hot peppers and sometimes eat them with beans.

None of the women of her family learned how to read or write, and for her the only option is to stay in the house with her kids and to wait for her husband during the months he goes to work as a migrant worker in the coast. He has to go to the coast to work because in the village there is no good soil for growing crops, 95% of the terrain is not apt for agriculture there, and there are no more options for work. She hardly participates in the community meetings and she lives practically isolated.

The high index of illiteracy in the city is accompanied with a high level of poverty; 9 out of 10 people there live on the equivalent of $1 a day.

“Illiteracy brings poverty, and poverty brings more illiteracy; it is a vicious cycle,” affirms Hector Argueta, director of the National Committee on Literacy (CONALFA) in Quiche.

He affirms that the situation of San Bartolome Jocotenango is especially complicated inside the department (name for a state in Guatemala). “There is scarcity in services, low productivity; it is as if there were a retreat to 60 years prior,” he says.

Of the 36 kilometers that separate Santa Cruz (which is the region in which San Bartolome Jocotenango is located) from Quiche, 26 of the kilometers are local undeveloped road. It is an obstacle for the kids that go to study in Quiche. “Some of the teachers and doctors did not want to come to work here; it was like a punishment for them to be sent here,” affirms the mayor.

The lack of education of his population has caused some productivity programs to not have the success that was hoped for.

One worker, coordinator of CONALFA, says that she gave capacity building to groups of farmers to begin water systems for their crops, but in the end nothing happened because it was too complicated for the farmers to assimilate the concepts.

In many of the communities, the illiteracy has impeded the commercial growth, because many are not capable of administering sales when quantities grow.

Also, they have had difficulties to find community leaders that have had 6 years of schooling; and it can be counted on one’s fingers the natives of the city that have gone on to study in high school. There are 5 teachers (one only needs high school equivalent to be a teacher), 1 accountant, and one person studying in the university.

The lack of formation has complicated the health problems, because the parents do not realize the gravity of their children, and wait too long to bring them to the health center or do not understand how to give the prescriptions.

They worry that in the community that some cases of HIV have been detected: in the last 2 years four people died, and they fear that those that will get HIV will increase because of the lack of ways to intervene and stop the problem.

The worker of CONALFA affirms that it has been difficult for the illiteracy groups to move forward because many women do not have interest because they believe it is not necessary for them to learn to read and write and many times abandon the classes before ending. But the efforts of the programs of CONALFA have brought very positive results; the eyes shimmer of the people when they say with pride that they can write their name.

Catalina Lopez lives in a tiny village and is finishing her 3rd year of literacy courses. After participating in the course, she changed to a leader of the community and has been able to participate in meetings for women in the capital. “Already I can read papers and I feel content. Now I also have been given a duty in the church,” she says.

Her father died during the armed conflict and her mother did not have the money to send her to school. Only her brothers learned to read and write, with the help of other family members.

Saturday and Sunday afternoon, she receives classes. Next to her is Cecilia Imal, who at an age of 30 recognizes the great difficulty to put together letters, but that she has fought to do it. Now she can help her youngest children with questions on their homework or can buy with more confidence something in the market without being cheated. “Now I can go wherever, it does not confuse me.”

Liberta de Leon has to walk almost an hour each weekend to reach her classes. She is in her second year and tells how she learned how to add, subtract, and make a family budget. She has seen how some of her neighbors did not want to take the courses or have given up, but she insists that she will continue because she wants to learn more and more.

For others, learning to read and write has opened up the opportunity to convert into literacy workers or health facilitators and to earn a dignified wage and more so the recognition of their community.

Desertion is one of the principal problems, and for that they want that the literacy programs offer something more to the users. The goal is to form productive projects, an initiative that the ministry of educations had previewed but in the end did not approve the budget.

The city has wanted to support it and gives funds to organize courses, but they lack resources so that the 500 people that this year signed up for the literacy classes can have an extra course.

The circle of not attending school seemed to break 2 years ago, when a reengineering was done to the educational system. A coordinator for the ministry of education worked very hard to build consciousness in the families and to reduce the absenteeism. “Now, 87% go on to the next grade and before it did not even get up to 70%.”

For them to get the parents to send their children to school, they had to get them all the school material needed because any cost was an impediment. Now, the fight has brought to fruition a middle school. “We managed to retain 25 girls with scholarships, but the money has come late; we need to keep going forward.”

This area is among the top priorities of the government and will be one of the first to receive school funds. The difficult situation of the communities motivate the leaders to ask for help insistently so that San Barlotome Jocotenango stops having the title of being the town with the most illiteracy and being among the poorest in the country.

Article by Gema Palencia, “Analfabetismo y Pobreza, La Barrera de la Educación” Prensa Libre, March 30, 2008