Guatemala

In 1938 the Public Health Services in Guatemala published the Regulation of the Department of Sexual Prophylaxis and Venereal Disease, this manual provided policies that “open[ed] up horizons of moralizing and personal support” to regulate the “sexual problem” of commercial sex workers in Guatemala. This Public Health campaign ran parallel to the urbanization of Guatemala’s rural landscape during the 1930s and 1940s. Guatemala’s commercial sex workers were usually among the working class that…

Guatemala suffered a thirty-six year period of armed conflict which came to an end signed peach accords in 1996. During that time period, 200,000 people were killed, 45,000 disappeared by force, a million people were displaced, along with 626 documented massacres, and 400 villages destroyed due to government operations according to the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH). Of those that were victimized, four out of five were indigenous Maya. After reviewing the statistics, the CEH…

American ideal of an opportunity for all. Furthermore, on June 8, 1995, my grandmother was born in a small city in Guatemala. In Guatemala, there was the wealthy, who had money and lived a great life, and there were the poor, the majority who lived in grueling poverty. Fortunately, my grandmother was born to a wealthy Guatemalan family with two younger sisters. She lived in the middle of Guatemala City with her family in an amiable home located in a quiet neighborhood. Her childhood consisted…

everyone in our country lives like this. I knew there were people that were starving, homeless, abused, or ignored; what I did not know was how many. I had never been out of the country until last December. My family decided to take a trip to Guatemala. It was going to be a humanitarian trip before our guide cancelled on us, so we ended up going to tour the major sites and to see some of the villages. The flight landed early in the morning and…

Right now there are many different human rights violations going on in Guatemala. Some of the violations include genocide, police brutality, and crimes against women. The reason that the crimes against women are happening is because people in Guatemala look down on women. Men think that women are below them which is definitely not true. Police brutality and genocide are happening because people think that they have the power or right to treat people like nonhumans and do whatever they want.…

Guatemala is a country that I have become very familiar with over the last four years. The reason being: over the past four summer’s I have traveled to the country four times on mission work. Each time is different, no doubt, but my most recent trip, summer of 2016, hit home more than ever before. My team and I quickly realized that God works in mysterious ways and there is a definite reason behind each thing He does. In 2001 my brother, Nate, was born with Spina Bifida. Spina Bifida is a…

Guatemala doesn’t really start until 1523. This year dates the time the spanish adventurer Pedro de Alvarado defeats the indigenous Maya and turns Guatemala into a Spanish colony. Due to earthquakes, the capital was never really made until 1776 at Guatemala City. From 1524 to 1821, Guatemala was the center of government for the captaincy general. It was an agricultural and pastoral area where Amerindian labor served a colonial landed aristocracy. The social life was dictated by the Roman…

On March 12-19, a team of fourteen high-schoolers and two leaders from Gilbert went on a missions trip near the city of Retalhuleu, Guatemala. Specifically, the team went to a small village by the name of La Tercera Calle. The goal of the trip was to build a cement floor in a church that the villagers had long been working on. This project took up almost the entirety of the week, and while the work was immensely strenuous, it was strangely palatable, bordering even on enjoyable. Nonetheless, the…

Human Rights in Latin America October 19, 2015 Granito documentary Mayans Suffering Guatemala has gone through a lot of suffering in the past and it is still striving to recover. Pamela Yates, narrates about the struggles along with the help of others including Rigoberta Menchu. Granito is a documentary and more than that is a living testimony of the injustice that exists in our countries, in this case Guatemala. After watching the documentary of Granito how to capture a dictator, I've learned…

The Mayans are Native Americans from Guatemala. They have struggled for their survival since the Conquistadores defeated the Maya Chief Tecum Uman. Today there are about 4 million Maya. About 200,000 have migrated to the United States since 1970 for a better life. (Roger Daniels 2001) The Mayans have gone through so much trying to survive all the changes they had to overcome. One third of the highland population of Maya died in the first epidemic in 1520. The first epidemic was brought by Pedro…