World View Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 19)

Letter from Guatemala BRIDGE TO SOMEWHERE To heal the world, you start in Rabinal by Joshua Berman B uilding a concrete bicycle bridge across a streambed in northern Guatemala begins with moving rocks and mixing cement. e work is perfect for my group, University of Georgia students on an “alternative break” in Central America: e work is outdoors but there is plenty of shade; it is physically demanding but produces tangible results. Each morning, we drive in the back of a truck to meet a group of Guatemalan students and their teachers. We wear jeans, brand-new work gloves, and straw hats a few of us bought at the market in Rabinal, a midsize mountain pueblo five hours north of the capital, where we are spending spring break. Our Guatemalan counterparts wear half-traditional, halfWestern garb–bright indigenous corte skirts, T-shirts, and flip-flops. Our trip is one of the volunteer programs offered by American Jewish World Service, an international development organization based in New York City. In addition to these programs, American Jewish World Service funds thousands of small development projects and social justice movements around the world. e organization is guided by the Hebrew commandment “To Heal the World,” or Tikkun Olam, and each participant in our group has his or her own interpretation of this. e idea is for them to explore their personal commitment to service–while lugging rocks in a Guatemalan riverbed. Of course, the real lessons come in all kinds of unexpected forms. ere is a school three kilometers south of Rabinal, just across the Río Chiticoy, which is nearly dry in April, but swells in the rainy season, preventing students from getting to class. is alone would be cause enough to help build the bridge, but this is no ordinary school. It is a bi-lingual institute teaching both Spanish and Maya Achi with a progressive “roundtable” teaching methodology. e school is a project of Fundación Nueva Esperanza, the New Hope Foundation, a human-rights organization in Rabinal. Rabinal experienced the worst of the anti-indigenous violence in the 1980s. At least 70 women, men and children were slaughtered in this highland state of Baja Verapaz alone. ere are many hundreds of clandestine gravesites throughout the countryside. e New Hope Foundation was founded by a softspoken massacre survivor named Jesús Tecú Osorio, who we meet on our second day in town. On March 13, 1982 Jesús lost everybody in his family–except his younger sister–in the Río Negro Massacre. He watched his mother hacked to death by a machete and then was taken captive by her killer to work as the man’s personal servant for two years until he escaped. A quarter of a century later, despite a constant barrage of death threats, Jesús works within the Guatemala courts to bring justice to perpetrators of that massacre. So why is his human rights organization building a bicycle bridge and running a school? Why are they planning on building a nursing school and a university in Rabinal? What does education have to do with rights? “To teach our Maya heritage,” Guillermo tells us are on the flat concrete roof of his home, during our first night. Guillermo Chen is the director of New Hope Foundation and is briefing us about the bridge project. Guillermo is a short, energetic and very busy man who coordinates our work Joshua Berman WorldView 19

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of World View Magazine - Spring 2008

World View Magazine - Spring 2008
Contents
From the President
Lafayette Park
Your Turn
Gallery
Note to Readers
Introduction to the Issue
Engaging Masons
Commentary
Letter from Guatemala
Links of a Chain
Gallery
Science for Good
Letter from Jima
Another Country
Letter from Accra
Community News

World View Magazine - Spring 2008

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