Mangos, The Zona Reyna, and mining in San Marcos

I just returned from a trip to the northern most extremes of the Guatemalan department of El Quiché. It’s called the Zona Reyna. The climate is mainly tropical. There are monkeys and all sorts of wonderful biodiversity living in the densely covered hills of this section of the Guatemalan highlands. I spent about 3 days there working with the staff of the planning office where I work. We went to 4 different communities to conduct a socioeconomic study which will ultimately be sent to the “Cohesión Social” office headed up by the first lady of Guatemala. She recently visited the area and promised a 40 million Quetzales investment for infrastructure, health and education projects in addition to building homes, donating water retention tanks and fuel efficient wood-burning stoves. This will keep us very busy all year and will provide me a chance to get deeply involved with project planning. Now that my Spanish has reached a higher level of fluency I am becoming a more integral part of the planning office which is what I’ve been working hard to attain for the last 3 months.

Anyway, the Zona Reyna trip was eye-opening. The central government has focused development projects on the 45 poorest communities of Guatemala; the Zona Reyna being one of them. So this was the first time I spent any significant amount of time surrounded by extreme poverty Guatemalan style. I’ll write more about what this looks and feels like in coming blogs. I’ll include photos and deeper thoughts. But for now I still need some time to digest it.

We’re now entering la cosecha de mango, mango season. Or literally, “mango harvest.” The large ones cost 1 Quetzal ($ .12) and the smaller ones Q .50. Both are delicious and I eat at least 2 a day. We also have a wonderful variety of fruit here from granadias to anonas to tomates silvestres which are wild tomatoes and taste like the cross between a tomato and a ??? I can’t figure it out. Some people have said guava but I disagree. Anyway, they’re delicious. And it’s my prediction that someone is going to become a millionaire exporting anonas to the U.S. From what I’ve been told there are no anona orchards and the anona fruit you find in the market is from the random tree people come across out in the hills. It’s worth looking into.

And now to the third part of this blog entry: Mining in San Marcos. I had the following article emailed to me from a Peace Corps colleague. It’s about a gold mining operation in the department of San Marcos. It’s owned by a Canadian gold mining company called GoldCorp and the article brings up many interesting points. I’ve even considered going on the next trip to meet with people in the community to discuss the effects mining is having on communities located around the Marlin mine as it is called. I may even take a water sample from one of the local rivers. There is a water testing laboratory where I live and it would be an interesting experiment.

I think you would enjoy reading this article so here is the link:

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1711/1/

Thanks for staying in touch and reading my blog entries. I am now going to watch a TED Talk that I recently downloaded. And if you don’t know what that is exactly, I highly encourage you to visit www.Ted.com to find out.

And remember… UNGOWA!!