Pitching in: inhabitants of El Mezquital digging a trench to install water pipes.
Guatemala
Groups also seek to protect children, the prime targets of poverty.
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Key
figures
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Population:
11.1 million (1999)
GNP per capita:
$1,660 (1999)
GNP per capita
annual growth rate:
1.7 % (1990-98)
Life expectancy
at birth:
64 years (1998)
Adult illiteracy rate:
32.7 % (1998)
Sources: World Bank, UNDP. |
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Timeline
1954: A
CIA-supported coup topples the reformist government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.
1962: The first guerrilla movements are formed.
1966-1984: Counter-insurgency war. The four guerrilla movements unite to form
the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (URNG).
1986: President Vinicio Cerezo is elected, marking a return to civilian rule.
Violence continues amidst frequent reports of torture and killings by right-wing
“death-squads.”
1993: President Serrano imposes martial law but is forced into exile. A gradual
return to constitutional rule and the first genuine efforts to investigate past human
rights violations.
1994: The UN establishes the Human Rights Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA).
1996: Under UN auspices, signing of a peace treaty between the government and
URNG guerrillas on Dec. 29.
1999: The UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission publishes its report
in which it estimates that more than 200,000 people disappeared or were killed between
1962 and 1996. It documented 600 large-scale massacres and attributed 93%
of the violations to the armed forces.
2000: Un Secretary-General Kofi Annan recommends extending MINUGUA’s mission
until December 2001. The government accepts state responsibility for a very
limited number of massacres, individual executions and disappearances which occurred
during the country’s civil conflict and agrees to compensate the relatives of some
victims of human rights abuses.
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Maria del Carmen, an energetic co-operative member. |
The
El Mezquital slum may still be a target for gangs, but its inhabitants have devised
some of Guatemala City’s best-run community projects, giving access to clean water,
health centres and schools
”Gangsters kill three
youths in El Mezquital” ran the headline in one of Guatemala City’s evening papers
in its first edition of the new year. Few readers were surprised, since the name
of El Mezquital has, like other poor areas of Central America’s biggest city, become
intimately associated with extreme poverty, crime and violence.
More than 120,000 people are thought to live in the six districts or shantytowns
of El Mezquital on the southern edge of Guatemala’s capital. Some work for the government
or in the private sector and a few have professions, but the vast majority are either
unemployed or, like 43 percent of the country’s labour force, work in the informal
economy.
In the centre of El Mezquital the roads are paved, there is public transport and
small businesses operate. But the shantytowns are mostly run-down areas where wood
and tin shacks are often built on the edge of ravines.
Because they were built on illegally occupied land, the shantytowns at first had
no public services of any kind. This encouraged the growth of community efforts that
have turned out to be the best run in the whole city. Determined not to rely on what
little government help was available, the inhabitants decided to set up groups aimed
at spurring community development, either by providing vital support to some government
institutions or by taking direct charge of supplying and administering basic services.
“When the co-operative was founded in 1990, there were just 35 of us. Today we have
over 1,600 members,” says Juana de Jesús Padilla, a housewife who is spokeswoman
of the “Effort and Hope” United Housing Co-op (Coiviees), which was set up to obtain
legal titles to squatted land and raise money to build houses.
“Back then we didn’t have any water supply,” she says, “so we did our laundry in
the river and drank water we bought from the water trucks that came round. As a result,
many children contracted stomach illnesses.” Several NGOs and government bodies gave
money to help the community come up with its own project to supply drinking water,
and the recently founded Coiviees agreed to get the plans going and run them.
With the initial funding, three wells were sunk, pipes laid and plants built to treat
drinking water and purify contaminated water. Although experts did the technical
work, many volunteers from the neighbourhood helped out for free. The head of the
project, María Elizabeth Mijangos, reports that the wells produce about 57,000
cubic metres of water a month for 2,600 families. “We charge one quetzal ($0.13)
per cubic metre, while the city authorities charge other neighbourhoods three quetzals,”
she says.
Garbage collection is also managed by Coiviees via a truck that passes through twice
a week. The service charge is 15 quetzals ($1.95), about five times cheaper than
what the city charges.
The Neighbourhood Association for the Betterment of El Mezquital (Aveprocomez) was
founded in 1989. Its current secretary, civil servant David Luna, recalls how six
years ago the El Mezquital health centre announced it would have to close down because
it could not meet the minimum standards of cleanliness and security required to operate.
The area around the centre, protected by a simple fence of wire netting, was also
a constant target for gangs.
“We held raffles and went door to door asking for donations,” says Héctor
Gutiérrez, the engineer who heads Aveprocomez. “We wanted to build a perimeter
wall to protect the centre, but we soon realized we needed more than that. So we
thought of investing the initial funds in something that would generate enough profit
to ensure the centre’s future.”
A car park next to the health centre was thus born. “The area was full of rubbish,”
says Jacinto González, the association’s vice-president. “It took us six months
to clean the place up, get rid of the weeds and level the ground.” The car park,
which holds up to 35 vehicles, charges 90 quetzals ($11.70) a month or 5 quetzals
($0.65) a day, and the profits go to maintain the centre and pay for a security guard.
Amid El Mezquital’s traffic and pollution the renovated health centre is a little
oasis, with lawn grass, trees, rosebushes and birds. “We see about 2,400 patients
each month and give them free consultations and medicine,” says Walter Méndez,
one of three doctors working there. Although the clinic belongs to the health ministry,
“most of what you see here is the result of Averprocomez,” he says. “I think it’s
the best-equipped clinic in the whole city.”
Money from the car park has also been used to buy desks and other furniture for the
new government-owned Institute of Basic Education, whose premises were handed over
completely empty to the teachers appointed by the education ministry to run it. Primary
education in the neighbourhood is mainly provided by two state-run and two Catholic
schools that are virtually free, though there are also a few private schools
Street crime, however, remains El Mezquital’s greatest unsolved problem. “We all
risk being attacked in the street or in our homes and the police do nothing about
it,” complains José Luis Guitiérrez, who lives on 10th Street, one
of the most dangerous in the whole neighbourhood. The threat posed by gangs of youths,
known as maras, is not confined to El Mezquital. A survey published in the local
press showed that about 90 such gangs operate in the capital. In 1999 alone more
than 4,000 gang members, most of them children from slum areas, were arrested and
charged with using and dealing drugs, possessing illegal firearms, murder, sexual
abuse and blackmail.
Brother Demsey Luarca, who runs the Dios Con Nosotros parish, shares the concerns.
“The kids at our school are an easy target for the maras, who lie in wait for them
as they come and go and rob them of their small amount of lunch money, their schoolbooks,
even their clothes and shoes.”
After many fruitless attempts to get the police to act, Brother Demsey tried to set
up a neighbourhood watch system similar to one in an adjoining community, where residents
raise the alarm with whistles when they suspect criminals are prowling around. But
the idea did not work, he says, because people feared reprisals from the gangs.
Although El Mezquital has a police sub-station with six permanent officers, inhabitants
seem to have little trust in them. The story has been the same at the national level
following the 1997 peace agreement between the government and guerrilla forces which
created a young police force that is still inexperienced and lacks the equipment
needed to maintain law and order.
Meanwhile, the people of El Mezquital have fixed their hopes for a better future
on their own efforts. At the end of a day’s work as a small merchant, Jacinto González
often joins a few neighbours to do community tasks such as cleaning and painting
the Institute building. “Some people manage to contribute money,” he says, “but it’s
more valuable to give an hour of one’s time.”
Despite some inevitable internal problems and occasional power struggles, the community
groups are attracting people in growing numbers. There is talk of opening a second
health centre, another car park and a playground, as well as expanding the water
supply system and launching a reforestation campaign.
“I’m 67,” says Juana de Jesús Padilla, “but I feel more like 15. As long as
I have the strength I’ll spend all my free time working for the co-op.” No-one could
doubt her determination.
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Francisco
Diaz*: “A historical thirst for change”
The key to
El Mezquital’s success stems from its inhabitants’ clear understanding that they
were living in unbearable conditions. Many had come from rural areas—or at least
their parents had—and their determination to adapt to city life made this awareness
all the more acute. Their representatives asserted that they wanted to make the slum
into a proper town by changing it physically and by setting up basic urban services.
Such a strong will comes as no surprise: throughout their history, Guatemalans have
repeatedly shown their appetite for change, and yet every time, they have been crushed
in their efforts.
The government, absorbed by a civil war and unable to respond to such a desire either
institutionally or materially, stamped out every grassroots initiative. Such schemes,
it thought, could only be the work of its enemies. This absence of the state only
sharpened the thirst for change among the people of El Mezquital because it gave
them a free hand. And, paradoxically, the general breakdown of Guatemalan society
encouraged the emergence of self-governing structures.
Foreign aid organizations—mainly UNICEF and Médecins sans Frontières
in 1986—did not come with ready-made solutions to impose but aimed to inspire and
encourage a movement that had already begun. The people of El Mezquital had created
institutions and democratically elected their own representatives independently of
the state’s electoral system.
The leaders of these grassroots organizations cannot be easily categorized. Some
are natural leaders, some have political or trade union experience, while others
are very ordinary, almost self-effacing people. Their dedication to the cause is
not without a few predictable flaws. Personal agendas, power struggles and even embezzlement
are inevitable, as in any group endeavour, though a bit less here than elsewhere.
The limits to the kind of grassroots self-government that has developed in El Mezquital
is tied to the shifting relationship between state officials and local organizations.
The state acknowledges that local leaders relieve them of some duties and control
rebellious neighbourhoods, so much so that city authorities officially delegate power
into their hands. Links with foreign aid organizations also offer a guarantee of
their good behaviour. But no authority—city or government—wants to see self-governing
groups turning into alternative power centres: attempts are thus made to control
and impede them.
This kind of independent self-development comes at great cost. The World Bank, which
arrived on the scene later, calculated that investment between 1994 and 1997 was
about $1,300 per family. Foreign aid organizations must persevere and be very diplomatic
in their behaviour and goals. They also have to accept that what they experience
in El Mezquital is life itself, with all its ups and downs.
* Worked
for 10 years with grassroots organizations in El Mezquital; currently responsible
for water hygiene with Médecins sans Frontières.
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