SIBINAL, San Marcos, Guatemala – Juan Pablo Morales and Nate Howard come from vastly different religious traditions, social circumstances and geographies. But in the end, it was their faith that brought them together in their opposition to the mining industry, and in their project to provide economic alternatives in one of Guatemala’s poorest regions.
For Juan Pablo, it was his faith in a just and loving God; for Nate, it was a faith in the potential of humanity. And for both, as they work together to establish sustainable development options in a region slated for strip mining, it’s a faith that the people can find a way to earn a living from the land without destroying it.
“We are constructing the Kingdom of God among the poor in Guatemala,” Juan Pablo began, his smile as wide as a child’s. “Poverty is not part of God’s plan; poverty is the anti-kingdom. When I speak of the anti-kingdom, I am speaking of the forces of darkness, the forces of empire, of neoliberalism, which tend to flow from the North to the South.”
Juan Pablo speaks the language of liberation theology, an approach to Catholicism born in the deeply divided Latin American continent when brutal dictatorships held sway. Some religious leaders in those days saw the brutal repression coming from the government and chose to side with the poor; many paid with their lives. Eighteen priests and 150 catechists were murdered in Guatemala, according to Juan Pablo’s reckoning, and 400 villages were massacred.
“The Evangelicals are preaching the coming of the apocalypse – but we went through our apocalypse during those 36 years of war.”
The numbers are close to home for him; his brother was among those catechists who were killed. But far from driving him away, it left him with a commitment to follow in his brother’s footsteps. After four years of study he, too, became a passionate teacher of the Catholic faith, and soon he moved into a position with Caritas, a nonprofit Catholic organization serving the poor.
Nate is softer-spoken but no less passionate about the church’s calling to empower the poor. Like many Indiana natives, he was raised an Evangelical Christian, but drifted away from the faith in his youth. He studied at Indiana University and then Eastern Pennsylvania University, getting an MBA in international economic development. Now he is working for the Mennonite Central Committee, helping communities to build sustainable, locally based economic models.
His hands-on experience in Guatemala gave him a completely different view of economics from that he had learned from his economics textbooks.
“Economics is not a science; it’s really the study of human relations,” he says. “It’s about our relations with the earth and with each other; it’s about theology, ecology, sociology.”
He sees his work here as primarily supporting Juan Pablo and the villagers, rather than running the development project. “Our goal is to try to help people see themselves as powerful actors and to work together to see what’s possible,” he said on our bumpy chicken bus ride up the mountain.
Living and working in the San Marcos district in the mountainous western side of Guatemala, close to the Mexican border, has been an eye-opening experience for this Midwesterner. Economic opportunity is so limited here that about 70 percent of the male population of this region has migrated at some point to the United States, and the money they send back is what raises the standard of living above that of extreme and grinding poverty. Now, however, with the economic crisis and increasing anti-immigrant sentiment, more and more Guatemalan immigrants are finding themselves out of work; many are heading back home, some compliments of U.S. Homeland Security.
Nate and I rose at 4 a.m. this morning to catch a bus for the two-hour drive to the town of Sibinal, and from there we were going to climb a mountain to La Vega del Volcán and see the fish hatchery. But the top of the mountain is cloaked in a blackish grey, and as we order our eggs and black beans and coffee, Nate’s contacts in La Vega call to warn him that the village is being deluged in a downpour.
The sheer rocky climb is hard enough when it’s dry, Nate tells me, and Juan Pablo arrives and seconds his concern. “You can probably make it, but you will suffer,” he said. So I settle in for an interview instead.
What Nate and Juan Pablo are focusing on is a loosely organized network of cooperatives in several rural villages in the municipality of Sibinal. One is a trout hatchery in La Vega, where the clear, spring-fed mountain streams make this hard-to-cultivate species a natural. The hatchery has been such a success that the community is now working on Phase II, raising fingerlings to sell to surrounding communities.
(Trout farm at La Vega del Volcán: Nate Howard photo)
Other agricultural projects, including potatoes and ornamental flowers, have helped diversify the regional market opportunities beyond subsistence maize and beans, and have brought in a little cash.
(Flower farm at La Linea: Nate Howard photo)
But what has Nate most excited at the moment is the ecotourism project, which would take travelers on a variety of treks, most of them through the unspoiled wilderness of the Tacaná volcano on the border with Mexico.
After breakfast with Nate and Juan Pablo, they took me down to the municipal building to speak with local council members, and I fielded a lineup of rave reviews for their work.
“There’s been a lot of international aid organizations here over the years; they’ve spent millions of dollars, and little has changed,” said Elfego Zunún Ortiz, one of the council members. “But we’re seeing now how these folks are doing an extremely effective project without spending a lot of money, just by involving the people in the leadership and planning of the project – and we have great hope.”
Domingo Javier Godines, another council member, stressed the importance of sustainable development projects like these as an alternative to mining. “We see the mining as bringing development to the United States, to Canada, to Europe – but it brings very little development to us, the poorest people in Guatemala – just 1 percent of the profits stay in Guatemala,” he says.
I’ve heard the statistic many times and have verified it; as hard to believe as it seems, it’s true.
Godines went on to describe the scene at a mining project he’d visited in El Salvador. At the foot of the mountain, 35 communities had lost their water source – a situation he predicts will happen here if the mining is allowed to continue.
Howard, for his part, underscores the importance of these development projects as an alternative to the mines.
“We believe that this type of community organizing and economic development will have a major impact on how communities like Sibinal respond to mining proposals in the future,” he wrote in a recent report. “Why would the people of La Vega del Volcán consider selling their natural springs and land to a mining corporation if they are being used for their trout production and other sustainable agricultural enterprises? Why would the communities of Sibinal acquiesce to the destruction of the mountains and bird habitats that attract paying tourists to their villages?”
Why indeed. He’s shared a few photos with me, and it’s enough to make me return – when it’s not rainy season. I want to see this breathtaking beauty for myself, and I want more than anything for the group to be successful in preserving this spectacular corner of the Kingdom of God.
Meanwhile, for more information about the project, to book a trek, to contribute to the project or to volunteer, contact Nate Howard at natedavehow@yahoo.com.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
