Ixil Trip (2): El Quetzalito Village

Remoteness is a central feature of many rural villages in the Guatemalan Western Highlands. Here, geography is certainly not an ally in terms of accessibility. Valleys and plains are separated by large hills, often with several hundreds of meters difference in altitude. And when roads are missing, your feet is all you have.

This is the case as well for Aldea el Quetzalito, a small village belonging to the Municipality of Chajul. Fortunately, a (gravel) road exists today from Nebaj until the village of Santa Cecilia La Pimienta. Yet from there, the only way is to walk for 2 hours in a very uneven, rocky and muddy pathway. Before, it was a 6 hour walk.

Villagers have been demanding the Municipality, their closest level of government, to finish the road from Santa Cecilia to Quetzalito. But in absence of any action whatsoever by the authority, they started doing it themselves. Part of the work has been started but funds are largely missing. People live from their everyday work as farm laborers. There's no money here to finance a road, especially not one of this magnitude, where space needs to be gained first from the mountain.

Three years ago, APEI finished building a primary school in el Quetzalito. The regular procedure after building a school is for APEI to take over the administration, including material and teacher's salaries. After some time, administration is transferred to the Ministry of Education for it to fulfill its Constitutional duty. This is the last year that the school in el Quetzalito will be managed by APEI. And with this school, APEI's mission in facilitating primary education in the Ixil Triangle will be concluded, according to Martin. People in el Quetzalito are sad about this step. Understandably, as the central Government, which is in charge of Education policy, is not as effective and efficient as APEI. Yet APEI makes it very clear: they have done the "big push", now it's time for the State to meet its mandate.

To get to el Quetzalito we departed in the morning from Nebaj, where I finally get to meet Aroldo, one of APEI's founders. After a snack and a lunch stop, we do the walking and arrive at the village. The children played with a "piñata" and the parents of Benjamin, the director at el Quetzalito's school, invite us for dinner in their little wooden house. We then get to the house of Benjamin, who very kindly offer us a place to rest for the night.

***Note: The opinions expressed in this blog are based on my personal experience during this trip and are only mine. They do not represent the opinion of Asociación Amigos Para las Escuelas Ixiles (APEI) or that of any my fellow travelers.Weiterlesen