Guatemala

This country has a special place in my heart. Guatemala was home to the Mayan civilization (at its peak from around 250 AD to 900 AD). The Mayan were a powerful and advanced civilization and much of what they constructed can still be visited today. Guatemala is a mountainous country and if one visits there today they find most of her people to be friendly, grateful and incredibly poor. Economically, Guatemala is very dependent upon agriculture and is slowly developing into a modern society as emphasis and efforts are made to improve education and tourism.

From 1954 until 1996, Guatemala experienced a civil war. The war began as a fight between Mayans and Ladino peasants against the land owners of the country. The cause of the war can probably be most simply attributed to three factors… the greed of the United Fruit Company… the fear of communism… and racism towards the Mayan people. The war took a devastating toll on the people of Guatemala resulting in millions dead.

I first visited Guatemala in 1991 as part of a mission team that helped the indigenous people living in the Highlands of Guatemala. In 1991, Guatemala was nearing the end of its civil war and the need we found there was incredible. Widows, their husbands killed in the civil war, were living in holes hollowed into hillsides… medical assistance was pretty much non-existent… and family units had been torn apart. The indigenous people we served were understandably wary of outsiders until it became known that we were there to help, then we were welcomed wholeheartedly. My role on this first trip was to help on a construction team. We built crude wooden shacks that widows would live in. Every one of them was especially grateful. We also had a medical component to the team– an eye doctor and a dentist. The health professionals on this first team helped lay the ground work for later medical teams that would essentially set up and staff a hospital for one week.

I have returned to Guatemala 9 times participating on 10 short-term medical / construction teams. The people are colorful; the country is beautiful. Trips of this type are a really neat way to help people who otherwise would have no access to healthcare or assistance.

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