STORY by JESSICA BRANDI and KRYSTINA GUSTAFSON
They’ve been waiting for this all day.
“Light! Light! We have light!”
The children yell, running in circles on the cement slab porch as the clock strikes 6 p.m. and the filaments flicker to life. The faint buzz of electricity and the circle of light emitted by the bulb are as welcoming as the hearth of a crackling fire—pulling the family together with gravitational warmth.
Dimas Calderón looks at his children from under the brim of his white cowboy hat, smiling and laughing at the pleasure they receive from the simple novelty of light. Every night is the same. The light always comes, but in two hours there will only be darkness.
Dimas is a dairy farmer in Llano Verde, a small, rural suburb of Zacapa, Guatemala. Tending to another man’s herd, working another man’s land and living on his property in a one-room, cinder block shack, he has nothing material that he can call his own. Earning 300 quetzales a week, roughly $40, Dimas often doesn’t have enough money to buy food for his wife, Gloria Leticia, or his six children, ages 10 months to 11 years. With the childhood of their oldest son wasted at work in the fields and the life of their youngest child nearly lost to severe malnutrition within months of his birth, Dimas and Gloria struggle daily to keep their family together and alive.
The Inequalities of Struggle
The mornings are as dark as the nights.
“Canela, Canela, Canelita!” Dimas yells as he calls the cattle to the stable one by one.
Every morning at 4:30 a.m. he milks the cows, their underweight frames visible by two faint street lights at the end of the road.
As the sun rises so do the chickens, which roam freely across the property. Although they strut through Dimas’ yard, an unpleasant combination of mud and cow manure, they are not his either. They belong to Zoila Delmira de Vargas next door, the family’s acting property manager and aunt of Mauricio Vargas, Dimas’ employer.
Dimas could buy one of the chickens for 30Q, but at such a high price, the family can only splurge on meat once every three months. Even essentials like rice and beans are more expensive because of the global food crisis, which affects 36 other countries throughout the world. This phenomenon has caused “localized food insecurity, lack of access to food, or shortfalls in food production or supplies,” mostly affecting the “poorest people within developing countries,” according to USAid. Average food costs have risen 43 percent in the last year, according to the International Monetary Fund, and about 44 percent in Llano Verde in the last three months. Baby Miltón Obenial’s unwillingness to breast-feed adds another 67.5Q to the family’s weekly expenses for formula.
The Calderón shack, with its corrugated tin roof, looks forgotten. Debris litters the ground, and a barbed wire fence surrounds the property like a prison wall. Separated by a few yards, a narrow stream and a few scattered palm trees, the fermented backyard sits juxtaposed against de Vargas’ manicured lawn.
Her gated home boasts a scooter and a white Mitsubishi Montero on the stone driveway. Inside, a television, stereo and landline telephone rest comfortably atop the tile floor, which can be seen through the glass-paneled front door. Jugs of pure water are propped up in the living room—a luxury compared to the mixed basin of city and rain water the Calderón family shares with the cows. The family drinks from the cement pila moments after the cows dunk their snouts into the manure and mud.
Despite her pleasant demeanor, de Vargas unwaveringly believes that Dimas’ wages are sufficient, though he can ill afford basic necessities. When the family runs out of food, it isn’t a big deal, she says, because they receive donations from the town’s Protestant church and the local non-profit organization, Hope of Life Ministries. But monthly supplements from these organizations act more as a bandage than an actual solution to the family’s problem—one they will likely never escape since de Vargas refuses to increase Dimas’ wages.
“It’s enough money,” she says. “The majority of people make that.”
Turning on the Calderóns electricity for more than two hours a day isn’t an option either, she says, even though Dimas starts work before the sun is up. If she turned it on longer than from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., her bill would skyrocket, she says. But that doesn’t stop her children from lighting the electric chandelier in their living room, which is already flooded with sunlight at day’s peak.
Complaining would be futile. Dimas is resigned to the fact that he will never own his own land or receive any form of raise.
“I want to tell Mauricio I want them [the lights] on all day, but I think he’ll say no,” he says.
After lunch Juan Antonio, 11, goes to the store buy baby formula. He walks down the dirt road until he reaches a cobblestone path, where freshly painted pink and yellow homes contradict the family’s gray dwelling. These are the homes of Llano Verde’s upper class – the homes of landowners like de Vargas, who employ farmers like Dimas.
Unequal land distribution is a common problem among Guatemalan farmers. Only 2 percent of the country’s population controls 70 percent of the land, according to the International Development Research Centre. These statistics carry over into other Latin American countries, but not as drastically as in Guatemala, says Carmen Diana Deere, director of the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies.
Poor workers like Dimas comprise their own society, rarely intermixing with the landowners.
“The people who were born here, who belong to this village, are not rich but they aren’t poor. They have something to eat, they’ve got jobs, the children are in school, they’ve got property,” says Gerber Martínez, a local guide. “If you do see a lot of poor people around here, it’s because they come from other places to live here…that’s why Dimas is here—to get a job.”
Juan arrives barefoot at the market and hands the clerk 50Q. About 16 short for the formula, he haggles with Guta, the store’s owner, who allows him to buy it on credit. It isn’t uncommon that Dimas’ monthly income is spent before he receives his paycheck.
“At the end of the month, I go to the store, and I leave all my money there,” he says.
When Juan reaches home, the other children scamper inside, jump on top of the bed and rattle its frame with surprising force. But Juan remains outside. It’s time to feed the cows.
The Price of Childhood
Juan and Dimas, the boy’s stepfather, take turns shoving corn husks into the roaring metal grinder. They mix the ground-up greens with molasses and dump the sticky concoction into the trough for feeding, five cows at a time.
Juan’s feet are worn and bleeding from herding the cows barefoot up a mountain path earlier that morning. Like Dimas, who started working at 13, Juan’s childhood ended prematurely. Since age 8 he’s been doing a man’s job, waking up at 4:30 a.m. six times a week and working 12-hour days. He does this for 50Q—less than $7 a week. He’s never stepped inside a school, even though La Escuela Oficial Rural Mixta Llano Verde is less than half a mile away.
Although nationwide only 40 percent of children attend school, this isn’t the case in Llano Verde. Between La Escuela Oficial and Liberty College private school, almost every child in town receives an education, says the public school’s principal, Mario Alberto Castañela Garcia.
But not Juan. A school uniform costs about 350Q, which is seven times what he makes in a week. Already living from paycheck to paycheck, saving the money is practically impossible for the family, no matter how badly Juan wants an education.
“I want them to have everything they need to go to school—for example, shoes, clothes, everything like that,” Gloria says. “It’s embarrassing for them to go to school barefoot.”
Juan remains isolated from the rest of his siblings, never joining their games. Holding an empty expression, he says he has no friends. The only sign of his childhood is the smile that spreads across his face when he rides his second-hand bicycle, a gift from a family friend. The bicycle was made for a grown man, and Juan’s tiny limbs, which more resemble those of a 7-year-old’s, can’t reach the ground when he rides.
Gloria says she still considers him a child. It’s okay for him to learn the value of hard work, but she wants him to go to school and get a well-paying job.
“I don’t want him to be like his father because he would kill himself working,” she says. “I don’t want them to suffer like we did.”
Overcoming this obstacle doesn’t seem to be an option. Like his stepfather, who never received a day of schooling, and Gloria, who was forced to drop out after second grade for monetary reasons, Juan is trapped in the same pattern as his parents: destined to spend his life in the fields.
A Mother’s Burden
Gloria begins by grinding the watered-down corn into a messy pulp. She scrapes the mixture against a rectangular stone and passes it between her hands in an unconscious rhythm, slapping the mash into shape against her palms. The motions are as monotonous as the menial tasks that fill her days: making tortillas, heating the beans and rice over the fire and endlessly sweeping the dirt that invades their living space.
She fills a bottle with dirty water from the pila before adding sugar and formula for the baby. Flies constantly buzz throughout the property, landing on the table, the clean dishes and the food the moment lunch is served. The family shares everything with the livestock. The cow troughs double as a jungle gym for the shoeless children playing knee-deep in mud.
Gloria’s sunken eyes are emotionless as she stares at a familiar scene. These afternoon hours are the dullest, each one indistinguishable from the last. There’s no gray in the thick ponytail of black hair hanging down her back and her sun-browned skin is unwrinkled, but she looks older than her 27 years.
Gloria conceived Juan with another man when she was 16. Three years later she had a daughter, Maria Jesús, who lives with Gloria’s parents in a nearby town. Gloria and Dimas couldn’t afford to be officially married, but live as husband and wife. Since their informal union, they’ve had five children: Irma Mariela, 5; Dimas Estuardo, 4; Amarillis Leticia, 3 years and 10 months, Lurbin Arnoldo, 3; and 10-month-old Miltón Obenial. After giving birth to seven children in 11 years, Gloria has too many mouths to feed and too little attention for each child.
Gloria leads a secluded life. Neighbors sometimes stop by, but she and the children only leave to walk to the store. Once every three months, she ventures a little farther to visit the local hairdresser, but not to get her hair done. In addition to her beauty services, Elvia Patricia Olivia Sosa sells contraceptives as a volunteer for APROFAM, an organization that promotes family planning in Guatemala. Gloria is one of 30 women who visit Sosa to buy birth control, an injection called Depo Provera. The shot costs 35Q, almost enough for six bags of rice.
Although family planning is an issue throughout Latin America, Guatemala has one of the lowest levels of awareness of modern contraceptive practices and one of the highest fertility rates, according to a study in the journal of International Family Planning Perspectives.
“I do it so women can space out their pregnancies and have the money to take care of them [their children]…for a better life,” Sosa says.
Despite the shortage of money and food, Gloria would have continued to have children if fear for her last baby hadn’t prompted her to consider birth control.
“Every year, I’ve had a baby,” she says. “I want to stop for a while so they can grow up.”
A Catalyst for Change
Gloria and Dimas’ youngest child, Miltón Obenial Calderón Díaz, was born Feb. 8, 2008. Like his brothers and sisters, he was born at home—“small and a bit fat,” Gloria says. The children never get check-ups, but after Miltón became sick with diarrhea and vomiting at 5 months, his parents took him to a pediatrician.
The doctor told them to take the baby to the Hospital Regional de Zacapa. He came in dehydrated and severely anemic and was given a blood transfusion, according to hospital records. Dimas remained at home with the other children while Gloria stayed with Miltón for 11 days, before bringing him home against medical advice.
Gloria didn’t have prenatal care with any of her pregnancies, but she never experienced problems until Miltón. Unlike the other children he wouldn’t breast-feed, so Gloria began feeding him cow’s milk when he was 15 days old. The wrong diet can lead to vomiting and diarrhea and also can cause infants to develop allergies, says Astrid Aldana, a nutritionist at Hospital Regional de Zacapa. Babies shouldn’t drink anything but breast milk until 6 months, she says.
Mothers who fail to get their children to breast-feed are probably using the wrong techniques. The mother and child need to be together all the time and, women with too many children are too tired or busy to dedicate enough time to the task, she says.
Doctors told Gloria to feed Miltón baby formula and have him weighed once a week. They referred her to the Liberty Nutritional Center in Llano Verde, which is run by Hope of Life and is less than a mile away. The center takes in malnourished children and reintroduces essential foods to their systems until they return to a normal weight. When Miltón was brought to the center at 6 months old, he weighed 6 pounds. In the United States, that would place him below the fifth weight percentile for his age, according to babycenter.com.
Guatemala has the highest malnutrition rate in Latin America, and 53 percent of the country’s children who die under the age of 5 do so as a result of malnutrition, according to UNICEF.
Nutritional center Director Emma Hernández says her staff barely had a chance to wash and weigh Miltón before Dimas sent Juan to bring him home two hours later. The entire community was concerned, and neighbors had noticed how skinny and sick he was, she says. But Gloria didn’t want to leave her son with Hope of Life. They wanted her to sign a waiver absolving them of responsibility if he died in their care, and she couldn’t neglect her other children to stay with him, she says.
Hope of Life has a great influence in Llano Verde and owns property throughout the small village. Besides the nutritional center, the organization runs a monthly food distribution program and a bi-weekly bazaar selling discounted food and merchandise from the United States. It also sponsors a housing project that, in one year, donated more than 1,000 new homes to poor families living in houses made of mud and sticks.
Although Dimas and his family take advantage of the bazaar and accept food from the distribution program, it isn’t enough to tide them over for the entire month. As long as they have a solid roof and walls, they aren’t eligible for the benefits of the housing project or similar programs. These limitations, coupled with an uneducated populace of recipients, prevent these programs from actually solving chronic hygiene and nutrition problems, Aldana says.
“I think education has a lot to do with it, instead of bringing them food, which most people do,” she says. “We just go and leave the food there and don’t even check that they’re eating it and that it’s good for them…education is the heart of a good food program.”
Though Miltón’s condition is improving, he still shows signs of malnutrition. He hasn’t been weighed since his initial visit to the nutritional center, but his head still seems too big for his frail body. You can feel his ribs poking through his skin, and he’s missing tufts of black hair. Gloria does not keep him to a regular feeding schedule and still offers him cow’s milk on occasion.
For Dimas and Gloria, government intervention and help from non-profits may have saved them, but only just. Government-provided vaccinations and vitamins protect the children from the most severe diseases, and free medical care saved Miltón’s life, but it took a crisis for them to seek help.
Gloria plans to undergo a free tubal ligation surgery to stop her from having children, and birth control will prevent the family from descending further into poverty. But for families like this one, change may have come too late. There are six children to feed, just enough money for food and, if global hunger continues to escalate, their living conditions will only worsen. With 4-year-old Dimas Estuardo years away from pulling his weight in the fields, it is unlikely that Juan will be able to stop working and attend school. Even if he could start, “soon” or “next year” as his mother likes to say, at 11, he’s already too far behind to catch up.
At 8 p.m. the lights go out, just like yesterday and surely like tomorrow. Juan falls asleep by his stepfather on a hard, dirty mattress and waits for morning—for the cycle of days to begin again. Just as Dimas sacrificed his youth for his family’s survival, Juan’s childhood too is forfeited to the fields, where hope of a better future is abandoned.  |
