A Politicized "Beauty" Pageant

Last Friday we had the fortune to attend the election of the Reina Flor del Cafe 2009 in San Antonio. It was really wonderful to see how the concept of a pageant was adapted to an indigenous community, with an emphasis on the preservation of their culture and traditions. The 7 contestants had to wear a variety of traditional dresses, explain their origin and symbols, dance typical dances, speak the native dialect Kaqchiquel, and deliver a short speech on a topic of their choice.

The candidate in the video is the winner, for whom we were all rooting after her speech, which we found so moving & educational. Enjoy!

Community Tourism

A 2-hour debriefing session yesterday afternoon with all of the students led to some specific decisions in terms of how we want to be working here in San Antonio, and with the artisan groups that we met on Wednesday. We've decided to move forward under the budding local program of Community Tourism. San Antonio's mayor shared that this is a priority of his office, and he would be interested in whatever feedback we can give him.

So, the students have decided to move ahead with this, and not only focus on community tourism, but invite as many people from San Antonio to participate in defining these terms for their municipality, and in terms of what roles they can play.

Our students have designed flyers to promote two information sessions - Friday and Monday at 3pm, during which we will present the idea and facilitate a brainstorming session on how this initiative can impact the community, and how each person can prepare, and benefit from, a potential influx of tourists. Currently, tourists are dropped off on the main square, in which they sit for a while, before wandering into the one artisan market that exists in town, and then return to sit in the park, before hopping on a bus to return to the touristy city of Antigua.

Some potential deliverables and activities for next week may include:
[]Working with workshop participants to develop, design, print, and distribute a multilingual map of San Antonio that orients tourists in the town and points to some interesting destinations and activities
[]Creating a media kit about San Antonio (the place, the people, their traditions) via a digital storytelling workshop using Flip cameras
[]Teaching a pricing and design strategy workshop for artisans to keep in mind what types of products are more likely to sell (while still receiving a fair wage for their work), as well as what types of services could be offered (spend the morning cooking with a local family, learn how to weave, walk up the mountain and chop some wood, etc.)
[]Developing guidelines for the municipality, and its residents, to keep in mind when adapting their activities to tourists (making sure they are not demeaning themselves nor their culture, and not artificially creating culture)
[]Running a workshop on how to exploit tourists - possibly the most controversial of our ideas, students are very interested in making our community collaborators very aware of how tourists may try to exploit them, their culture, or even their image

Cooking a Typical Guatemalan Lunch

Silvia, one of the women who attended our first meeting yesterday, invited us today to join her and her family to learn how to cook "Pepian," a typical Guatemalan dish. We'll share the recipe that they taught us, but in the meantime enjoy these shots from the day.


After shopping at the butcher and a couple of vegetable markets, we started the cooking in their outdoor kitchen, a shack in which they have a wood-burning stove. All of the surfaces on which they cook are black ceramic, handmade in another region of Guatemala.

The pepian sauce has chilies, tomatoes, and onions which are blended after being cooked on the wooden stove.

We also participated in making (or trying to make!) tortillas, which could be clearly identified as the not perfectly round ones during lunch.


This is what the final dish looks like - rice (with carrots and peppers), beef rib which was cooked in water for hours with cilantro, and a lot of the pepian sauce.


It was wonderful to spend the day with the three generations of this family - they were all so welcoming and really made us feel at home (we started at 10:30 am and left at 2:30pm!)

Setting Goals

Although we were supposed to meet with the artisan women with whom we'll be working, a last minute invitation to them from the central government postponed our meeting for Wednesday. We used the time to meet as a team, debrief our conversation with San Antonio's mayor, and set goals for ourselves. On the left part of the image you can see the highlights from what was discussed with the mayor. And on the right, a proposed list of deliverables that our students are interested in pursuing, and which we believe align with what the mayor presented to us. The list on the right will probably be updated on an almost daily basis, as we get to the know the women, learn their needs, wants, and as we realize what resources we have (or don't have) to accomplish each item.

Reflections on collaborative development #1: Implications of "sweat aid"

I've been thinking a lot about the nature and impact of development initiatives since we left New York yesterday morning. My seating arrangement on the flight from Miami to Guatemala is what triggered my train of thought. I was sitting on 19A, surrounded by a group of 34 missionaries sent to Guatemala to do humanitarian work. Just on my flight I counted at least 60 people traveling to Guatemala for the summer to engage in some sort of humanitarian/development initiative.

It frightened me to realize the amount of volunteer "sweat" aid that Guatemala receives. Each initiative with its own vision, mission and program, each group co-opting the popular lingo from the field to promote their own agenda and approach.

How is the over-saturation of volunteer "sweat aid" affecting or benefiting Guatemala? What is the impact that these multiple interventions have on local communities and their local governments? What are the implications for communities when development/humanitarian initiatives are not part of a local strategic plan, but rather, are project-based, and continuously shifting based on the ideology and agenda of the visiting group?

How can we, as the visiting group, prevent the continuation of project based, isolated, non-coherent initiatives and engage with local actors to strengthen and contribute to their strategic plan. What if there isn't a strategic plan?

Day 1 - A Total Immersion

Today's day started with a typical breakfast (more on that later),


a stop to purchase a couple of inexpensive cellphones (the two major companies are Claro and Tigo) for our students,


and then a public bus ride from Antigua to San Antonio.

In a very nice first meeting with most of the students (one arrived later, in the afternoon) for this first part of our project, led to some great ideas, goals, priorities, and values that we set for ourselves. Some of the things that came up include cultural preservation, cultural tourism, capacity building, community inclusion, urban development, and mapping and networks. I was quite moved with the students' sensibilities which were guiding their desire to not "set the agenda" until we had actually met with our community partners.


After a yummy Guatemalan-style lunch we


waited to meet with the Mayor of the Municipality of San Antonio de Aguas Calientes (which includes the urban center of San Antonio and the small villages of Santiago Zamora and San Andres Ceballos.

The meeting with the mayor was definitely an eye-opening experience for anyone who has not been exposed to Latin American politics. Definitely more on that later, but the big take-away question for me is - how can local governments gain popularity via short-term solutions to big problems, but still pave a path for a sustainable long-term goal for poverty alleviation and the wellbeing of the citizens? A huge question, for which I can only hope that the work we do this summer will maybe help to answer (or even participate in the answering of) this development dilemma.

Our work day ended with a meeting with Veronica, the coordinator of the Women's Project for the municipality, and the person who oversees the project/work with which we will be connecting. There's currently not much structure to the program on the government side of things except that it seems that San Antonio is joining in on a Guatemalan trend of "community tourism" in which they are exploring this notion of preparing towns to "give" to tourists more than just a piece of cloth to buy, but a true local experience (making tortillas, grinding coffee beans, and learning how to weave were some of what they mentioned.)



What are you looking for when you book a trip? What would really make you want to come to San Antonio?

Back in Guatemala - faculty & students

We are happy to be back in Guatemala. This year we are doing things a bit differently. First, we are excited to be working with a new group of artisan women. We are partnering with the municipality of the town of San Antonio de Aguas Calientes and starting off by understanding their goals, the goals of the artisan women, and after a needs assessment, figure out how we want to best work together. The first group of students who are here have prepared workshops in leadership, group work, English, computers, and photography. Stay tuned to see what we end up working on!

In two weeks we will return to San Lucas Toliman to continue the work we have been doing with Ajkem'a Loy'a. This summer we have a specific goal of producing five finished products to bring back to New York for further market research (or even to present to retailers for orders.) We also want to be diligent about evaluating our work thus far, and deciding on a mid to future term long plan.

If this is the first time hearing about our work, please read this paper which serves as a trip report from last year, and outlines how this all started.

Thank you for reading, and we promise many more images and video entries in days to come!