A Visit to Hogar Miguel Magone and Maria Auxiliadora Orphanage (Mixco, Guatemala)

Living (and bartending) in Antigua, a town inhabited by large swaths of both vacationing tourists and young, playful ex-pats makes for an exhausting holiday season. The January Blues have hit town with a vengeance and not only am I no exception, I’m pretty much the poster child. When a friend invited me to join her for a visit Hogar Miguel Magone and Maria Auxiliadora orphanages just outside of Guatemala City, I jumped at the opportunity. What better way to chase away the blues than to spend an afternoon giving and receiving hugs and learning about another nonprofit?

Hogar Miguel Magone and Maria Auxiliadora are supported by Orphan’s Hope Project, a US-based group that has a close relationship with the founders, Karen and Estuardo, and provides material support for their programs. They organized the tour and shared a bit about the homes on the way up. 

Karen and Estuardo began taking in local children whose families were unable to care for them years ago, until they hit capacity in their home with 10 children. They dedicated themselves to the cause of building an orphanage to serve the many other children who needed a home or safe haven, and Hogar Miguel Magone was born. In 2013, with support from Work, Play, Love, they built Maria Auxiliadora, the girl’s orphanage... in the design of a princess castle... yes, really!

Hogar Maria Auxiliadora

Altogether, they house about 100 children. Most children arrive through the PGN (Guatemalan child protection agency), though some are brought directly by relatives. The majority of their children were removed from abusive situations; the home currently caters to victims of physical abuse and neglect, with some cases of sexual abuse. Most of the children will return to relatives at some point in the future, making the orphanage a temporary stop (anywhere from a few months to a few years) for most. In Guatemala as in the US, the courts favor reunification in place of institutionalization. 

We arrived for the tour and were met by Estuardo and his two ‘assistants’ for the day, Leo and Santos. Estuardo provided the group with a brief history and overview of the orphanage, its programs, and its little beneficiaries. He then gestured to Leo and Santos, who were grinning whilst cuddled up to the familiar faces of Janine, who works with Orphan’s Hope, and another woman who comes frequently. 

“Every child here has a heartbreaking story. For example, Leo and Santos are 12 and 10. They ran away from home in Honduras because they were being physically abused by their parents. They had nothing but cheap plastic rain boots, no food or water, and they walked for four days to get to Guatemala. When they arrived last week, their feet were in horrible condition. They were too hurt to walk and needed to be treated. They don’t want to go back to Honduras, but the judge will send them back because they aren’t Guatemalan citizens. We will work with the courts to try and find a good orphanage for them to make sure they are safe when they return.”

We all turned to look at the boys. The boys smiled back at us. Leo held up a camera borrowed from a visitor and peered through the lensfinder back at us. Click.

Leo and Santos, all smiles.

As we walked through the grounds of the boys orphanage, peeking into rooms filled with bunk beds, neatly organized clothes and shoes, and an abundance of stuffed animals, Leo befriended me. He was impressed with my Spanish and couldn’t believe a ‘gringa’ could speak so well (score one for Amy!). We talked about our own countries, asked each other questions, and took pictures all around the grounds and showed them to each other. Santos danced in and out of our conversations, occasionally sidling up next to me and taking my hand.

We visited the girl’s orphanage next- a veritable princess castle painted pink and purple, plastered with Disney princesses. The walls were filled with portraits of little girls dressed in their own special princess costumes, complete with tiaras and magic wands.  While an orphanage is never a great place for a child to be, I can’t imagine a more cheerful setting for a little girl to begin her recovery from whatever trauma brought her into it.

We walked up to the village where most of the children are from with Leo and Santos in tow. Having spent a great deal of time in poorer pueblos and aldeas, the conditions were more or less what I was expecting. Corrugated metal and wood shacks with dirt floors, chickens and dogs abound. 

We passed the students on their way home from school, and were introduced to Nestor, another little tyke with a very sad story. Nestor is 8 years old. When Nestor was 3, his mother began drugging him with paint thinner so that she could beg on the street with him under a blanket posing as her ‘baby.’ Nestor arrived a year ago (I think!), barely able to walk or talk due to neglect, chronic malnutrition, and ingesting poison daily. Walter is now walking (unsteadily), talking (unclearly), and attending school (he tries!).  

After giving high-fives and hugs to Leo and Santos, I boarded the van back to Antigua with a happy heart. The kids' stories may be heartbreaking, but there is inspiration and hope written all over their faces. They're the kind of kids that can grow up to change the world, if given the right support; kids with determination, drive, and indomitable spirit. 

While an orphanage is never an ideal place for a child, I have been in Guatemala long enough to know firsthand how many children need a safe place to live, learn, and grow, even for just a little bit. Leo, Santos and Nestor are testaments to a job well done at the homes, dedicated caregivers, and resources being put to good use. 

The homes accept both short-term and long-term volunteers year round. Anyone interested in volunteering can contact the home through the Orphan Hope Project Facebook page.

You Can Plan a Pretty Picnic...

But you can’t predict the weather. Especially if your picnic is in Guatemala, and the potential storms include protests, social unrest, landslides and the like.

I have a long-time friend visiting from home who happens to be studying botany. Plants, agriculture, soil, ecosystems, various fungi - he is veritably obsessed with the living world around him. What better place to indulge that obsession than on the outskirts of a tropical national forest and lagoon? 

Guatemala had other ideas.

After winding our way along dusty mountain roads, passing the myriad of landslides both big and small that make me weary to make the trek anywhere in or around rainy season, and having the requisite close calls that bring forth an audible gasp from any passenger naïve enough to actually watch the road, we were about to pull into Estacion del Norte when César, our friendly shuttle driver, broke the news.

“La carretera esta cerrado, no hay paso.” The highway is closed, you can’t get through. After enough probing to ascertain that César, a cheerful little man who knows me and my route well by now, was not in fact joking, I implored him for details.

“Hay manifestaciones... Los campesinos han bloqueado la carretera despues de Chisec, en Canaan. Mi compañero esta en Raxruha y no puede pasar. Me va llamar cuando esta aclarada. Quieres ir a un hostel?” There are protests... The farmers have blocked the highway after Chisec, en Canaan. My friend is stuck in Raxruha, he’ll call me when it’s cleared. Want to go to a hostel?

Alta Verapaz is home to many protests, many land disputes, many clashes between an increasingly displaced Maya desperate to hold onto the land that has sustained them for centuries and remains sacred to them, and the government-backed transnational companies determined to remove them to extract every last quetzal in the form of oil, gas, nickel, copper, hydroelectric energy, or palm oil. 

While most of these protests begin peacefully, a demonstration of the right granted to the indigenous communities by the peace treaty signed at the end of the civil war to have a meaningful dialogue regarding the use of their land prior to the initiation of projects that will degrade their land or displace their people, the military, police, and companies often respond forcefully and violently. (Learn more about these conflicts here, here, here, and here.)

Yesterday’s protest was against the expansion of the palmera, the African palm oil company that is rapidly buying up land from poor campesinos for a less-than-fair price. This is causing tension within communities as the African palm is known as an environmental scourge that brings a host of problems affecting the viability of crops for local farmers who choose not to sell their land. 

Needless to say we chose the hostel. In true “Only in Guatemala” form, our avoidance of one public demonstration led us directly into the face of another. After settling in, we walked to Coban’s Parque Central in search of snacks and diversion. We found a crowd assembled outside the gates of a municipal building. There were no signs, no chants, no shouting... only a large crowd waiting patiently.

We stood and watched for a few minutes trying to ascertain what the occasion was. Was this related to the protests a few hours away? A smaller show of solidarity with their campesino brothers and sisters in Canaan? 

As two men and a woman emerged from the doors of the building, the crowd erupted in ecstatic cheers. They approached the gate with arms raised in victory and sincere, wide grins across each of their faces as bystanders set off 50-meter strings of cuetes (sticks of dynamite tied together). After a few minutes of cheers and reaching through the gates to touch the hands of those anxiously awaiting them, they went back inside.

I asked a man in a cowboy hat and a tattered nylon jacket with a US football team logo on it what was happening. Was this related to the protests happening today?

“Nooo, no. Esto no es un manifestación. Es una audiencia. La policia han capturado 8 de nuestros compañeros, pero fue ilegal. Ahora, por fin, ellos nos dan nuestra audiencia y ellos pueden salir.” Nooo, no. This is not a protest. It’s an audience. The police captured 8 of our brothers, but it was illegal. Now, finally, they are giving us our audience and they can leave. He pointed to another man a few feet in front of us and suggested I ask him for more details, as he had organized this demonstration.

He was deeply tanned from a life in the fields beneath his impeccably pressed green oxford shirt and worn blue jeans. His worn face and graying hair told more of his position in the community than his age; a community where years of exposure and hard labor age men quickly, but age commands respect rather than dismissal.

He explained that the community leaders were arrested over a land dispute. They wanted to remain on their ancestral lands, but a mysterious landowner 'bought the law' and paid police to issue warrants for the arrest of the families living on the land. Eight community leaders were arrested and jailed for the past two months. The community members were there in support, demanding an audience - a chance to be heard regarding this injustice. 

A phone call to my dear friend Jeff, a freelance journalist who is deeply invested in the many disputes and protests through Alta Verapaz, provided more insight and clarity into the complex nature of what we were witnessing.

In the 1800's, the government sold the ancestral lands of a Q'eqchi' Maya community to a German family. The families that had been living on this land for centuries were allowed to remain on their land in exchange for free labor, reducing them to slaves working their own land. At the end of the 20th century, the land was finally ceded to the families. In 2011, a name mysteriously appeared on the registry as the owner of the land - the government had once again, quietly and with no consultation to the impoverished farmers who derive both their past and future from the land, sold it out from under them. There were protests, and an eviction of the families was ordered. Community leaders were rounded up, arrested, and detained illegally for two months.

After two months, local authorities finally granted the distraught communities their audience, and were releasing the community leaders. These were the eight joyful, relieved faces that emerged from the building to receive their hero’s welcome through the bars of the iron gates. 

Unfortunately, conflicts like this, which sound medieval to most, are happening all over Guatemala. Throughout big cities and tiny pueblos the indigenous community, determined to preserve its way of life and defend the right to live and work on the lands that have sustained their ancestors for centuries, face a violent wave of neoconservative-driven modernization that threatens to wash away centuries of culture that has been preserved against all odds. What the Spanish conquistadors, subsequent missionaries, and several hundred years of land-owning elite could not eradicate, transnational corporations backed by a greedy, corrupt government just might.

This is a country deeply divided. The indigenous community face not just government discrimination, but discrimination from fellow Guatemalans as well. As a petite ladina (mixed Guatemalan and Spanish heritage) woman checked us into our hostel, she asked if we would be staying long. I explained that we were only here for the night, and were simply unable to get to work due to the protests. Her response reminded me once again that the indigenous struggle for respect, rights, and autonomy will persist long after lawmakers begin to recognize and protect their fundamental rights:

"More protests? Oh, those indios. What imaginary problems are they causing trouble over now?"