Fact: March 25th 2009:  Gladys Monterroso is kidnapped from a restaurant in Guatemala City and tortured. Her husband Sergio Morales, Guatemala’s special prosecutor for human rights, has a few hours previously published “The Special Report of the Historical Archives of the National Police: the Right to Know”. The right to know includes evidence of murder, torture and corruption in the name of the state. How will Guatemala change by 2020? Will it be better or worse than my imaginary ‘Colonial Future?’ What needs to alter in Guatemala to bring justice — and enough to eat — to the impoverished majority?

Colonial Future

November 12th 2020. Janie is reading an email from Emily, who is working in Guatemala, in the school in which her late aunt June was a volunteer 13 years previously. Guatemala is separated from the USA by Mexico.

“Jocotenango, November 11th 2020

Hello mum and dad

As I said in my last email, I decided to try and find out what happened to the children that aunt June taught. I discovered that many of their families still live here, and last Saturday I went on the bus to San Juan del Obispo, on the lower slopes of the Agua volcano, to meet Rosa Ramos, who was 17 and in the secondary school when June was last here. Rosa told me she had to decide between marrying Gilberto and going with him as an illegal into the USA, or staying in Guatemala as a primary school teacher, work you can do after completing secondary school, without any extra training. Anyway, she married Gilberto and they made it through Mexico to the border. Three times they were caught by the border patrols and sent back into Mexico, but the fourth time they made it. Rosa told me that it was a bitter disappointment, as Gilberto smashed his right hip and both legs in a road accident when she was at work one day. The police found him and soon realised he had no papers, so he was taken back over the border. They’d been staying with a cousin who rented a small apartment, and Rosa had no idea what had happened to Gilberto until one of his sisters rang by mobile phone to say he was in a charity hospital back in Guatemala, very weak and crippled. Rosa had found a cleaning job that paid $30 a day, so she didn’t really want to return home, but felt she had to as Gilberto would need to be cared for, and she thought she’d be able to get a job as a teacher, which she has, but it’s only temporary. Gilberto depends on her because there are no welfare benefits, so otherwise he’d have to rely on hand-outs from his family, or beg in the street.

It’s better for Miguel Montejo, his English was so fluent that he was taken on by the Banco Comercial and works in the business division, where he often has to talk to North Americans. Guatemala is still a tax haven — I remember aunt June told me that in 2009 there were great hopes that tax havens would be abolished, but it never happened. Money comes from the USA and goes back to the USA, and hardly any of it benefits Guatemala. Miguel has a little boy and is saving up to be able to send him to a private school. Miguel says the private schools are massively better than the state ones. It’s quite funny where he lives in Antigua, as over the road there is an evangelical church and right next to it a little hotel where people rent rooms by the hour. While the evangelical pastor preaches very loudly about sinners, little children play in the street outside while their mothers are in the ‘hotel’. Miguel’s own life is not easy, he leaves Antigua on the bus for Guatemala City at 5am every morning, two hours later arrives at the bank, and he doesn’t get home again until past 7pm. He says it’s too dangerous to live in Guatemala City, the murder rate goes up and up. Aunt June told me that in Guatemala as a whole nearly one person in 2,000 was murdered or died violently every year when she was there, now it’s more like one in 1,750.

The children I teach have a mid-morning snack, lunch and a supper at school. In the half-hour before the morning snack at 10am it’s hard to get them to concentrate as they are watching and waiting for the food. The charity that funds the school really struggles to raise enough money these days. The children have to share textbooks and they are not allowed to take them home. There’s no library locally, either. In fact there’s no public library service at all.

I do feel quite far away but there are plenty of other volunteers here, mainly from the USA. The internet cafés have become expensive but I can afford to go online for two hours or so a week.

Look forward to hearing from you, love from Emily”

Background information

Meet the Halls, my mythical family:  Rob Hall, born on January 2nd 1970; his wife Janie (February 25th 1972); their children Emily (March 5th 2002) and Joshua (May 4th 1999). Rob’s parents are Tim (November 12th 1937) and Beryl (April 20th 1940). Janie’s parents are Shirley (April 22nd 1946) and Bill Priest (October 17th 1944).

Saturday February 15th 2020. Tim and Beryl Hall’s bungalow in Bracknell, Berkshire. Their son Rob arrives on one of his fairly regular visits, having travelled by train from Reading. He works shifts now, four ten-hour days followed by two days off. The idea is to cut commuting journeys, which was happening anyway because of the expense of all forms of powered transport, especially the car. People aren’t so bothered nowadays about finding the ‘right’ job, but any job near heir home. Rob retrained in horticulture when the construction company he worked for went bust in 2013, and he grows fruit, vegetables and nuts for one of Reading’s rising number of urban food co-operatives. His job has its stresses: crop thefts, hungry insects and small mammals like rabbits, drought and flash floods, and uncertain pollination by bees whose colonies have been unstable for well over a decade.

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The Mail, Saturday February 15th 2020. ‘Workfare for care home residents’ by Christabel Flint.

Maisie Duff, 85, is a great-grandmother, has two artificial hips and is partially sighted. She is one of 65 residents in the Victoria Place Care Home at Brackside in Berkshire, and has been told she will have to work two days a week if she wants to remain in the home. Her only son David, 52, said: “It’s a disgrace. She’s got no money left, and social services won’t pay the fees the care home owners charge.” (more…)

A letter to Janie Hall from her friend Sharon Gates.

February 10th 2020

Here’s a present, Janie, to wish you a happy 48th birthday — it’s a clockwork DVD player. Be electricity independent!! There’s a second one for Emily to take on her travels, she’s off soon, isn’t she? How are you all doing in Reading? How are you coping with the floods? Here in what was so quaintly named the ‘Thames Gateway’ we have some redeveloped areas that are floating islands, able to rise and fall with the waters, but most people are still on ‘dry’ land which as you know is often inundated. I hadn’t paid much attention to it until recently, but think about water supplies and drains – traditional water pipes and sewers do not fit the bill when homes vary in height by up to two metres. The transport systems have to be different, too. There’s a new network of amphibious buses able to travel on land or water, but that’s not too much help when your local bus stop is deeply flooded. The water makes lots of parents afraid, so I think the new law making swimming compulsory for all babies is basically a good idea, although the water is often so dirty that no one in their right mind would want to swim in it. (more…)