Monday, January 18, 2010

The first 2010 PLA team, Val Liveoak and Margaret Lechner, arrived in Suchitoto, El Salvador. They traveled together from Florida to Guatemala, where they spent two days in Antigua team-building and laying the foundation for work with local facilitators, which will take place in March.

Margaret writes:

Since this is my first time on Friends Peace Teams, I am definitely following Val’s lead on day-to-day activities and planning. I have listened to her many phone calls, as she contacts FPT partners in Guatemala City and San Lucas Tolíman near Lake Atitlán. It turns out that none of them are available in January, so we will return to Guatemala in February or March to work with the active AVP communities.

Teambuilding was the other item on our agenda. Val and I met only briefly via phone before making this commitment to almost three months of travel and work together. We are now laying the groundwork for that partnership. We are delighted at our many commonalities, some trivial (we both play card games on the computer) some pragmatic (we are both early risers) and some serious (we both would rather debrief right after an incident than put it off for another day). Two of my standard questions for long-term team-mates are: “How will someone know if I am losing it?" and "If my partners see me losing it, what is the best way for them to get me back on track?” During our responses we discovered that both of us have stubborn streaks. We discussed the best way to break through before we get too entrenched – asking with genuine curiosity, “Why are you choosing to do x---?” and making sure that the response has really been understood before offering alternatives as an experiment. Sounds like putting AVP to work in our daily practice. We also agree that chocolate is the best remedy for most difficult situations.

Antigua was a lovely base for our teambuilding. As the name implies, it is an old city. The original Spanish capital of Guatemala was here, until repeated earthquakes prompted the move to Guatemala City. Every other block has the ruins of a church, and low buildings are definitely the rule. As a weaver, I was enthralled by the finely embroidered huipiles and jaspe (ikat) woven skirts, both in the artisans’ market and being worn on the street. But beneath the beauty and apparent tranquility of this town lie tremendous economic disparity and a long history of political violence.

Language schools are a major local industry, and many cafes and shops cater to North Americans and Europeans. One that we took advantage of was a bagel shop with free movies nightly. Though most of the titles were popular American movies, Voces Inocentes was playing the night we arrived. Written and directed by Salvadorans, this biography of an 11-year-old growing up in the middle of civil war in El Salvador was a powerful reminder of the challenges of peace building where a full generation grew up with continual civil war. During my 1992 visit I learned clapping games from local children. Every game involved killing people as part of the singing rhyme. I am eager to learn meet the AVP facilitators in Suchitoto and hear how they are using AVP in their communities.

Val adds: I was hoping that in January we could return to Panajachel on Lake Atitlán to continue the PLA work begun in 2007. Our contacts there work on an environmental program around the lake. They are fully occupied with activities, educational outreach and fundraising to save the lake that is one of the most polluted in the world. They maintain their enthusiasm for AVP, but said, “we are living in a state of emergency here. The condition of the lake affects all of us living around it,” and they are not able to devote time to AVP this month.

Other stories in local news are the earthquake in Haiti, and Guatemalans must remember some of the terrible earthquakes they have experienced when they see the images on TV. Local newscasters devote a large portion of the broadcast to this story. Less present in recent news is an outcome of the “Rosenburg case”. In June a lawyer made a video, saying that “If you are watching this video, I have been killed by agents of the government who have been persecuting me because of another case I was working on.” He was killed, shot by persons unknown while riding a bicycle. A special commission of the UN was delegated to investigate this and other serious crimes with political connections and a report recently declared that the lawyer had engineered his own assassination. Additionally, the investigations into the security and justice systems condemn the failure of the government to control the very high murder rate (6920 in 2009, 90/100,000 residents) and having only prosecuted and sentenced 270 persons last year. These are just a few examples of why AVP is so needed in Guatemala.