Los Manantiales is a traditional rural Maya Cakchiquel community- poor as the dirt they plant their corn on but as colorful and vibrant as their handwoven clothing.
I arrived at the Manantiales grade school at 2p. It was a particularly foggy day. So foggy you could barely see 3 feet in front of you. This obfuscation spilled over and crept into the flavor of the meeting.
We were called here to talk about the new school kitchen. The volunteer mothers in the community are tasked with cooking a hot lunch each day for 60 students. The current kitchen was a small, corrugated tin hovel up 20 stairs and at the rear of the school yard. Frequently with babies tied to their backs, the mothers cook over an open fire on the dirt floor with no ventilation other than the holes in the tin panel walls. Each day, the mothers go to the market and buy the chicken and vegetables for the day’s meal and haul 40 pounds of groceries each up those 20 stairs to the tin hot house that was their kitchen.
We had a community approved design for the new kitchen and the construction plans were almost complete. The financing was secured. We were ready to break ground.
I received a call that the mayor and his councilmen wanted to meet. The alcalde is a formally dressed man with a hand woven suit embroidered with intricate birds, a felt cowboy hat with a feather sticking out of a ribbon on the brim and a 500 year old Spanish silver-plated staff in his right hand, a symbol to all of his power in the community. All the parents at the school had been invited, but as was common, the far majority of attendees were women. The local authorities expressed that they (understood to mean the men in the community) weren’t happy with the new location of the school kitchen at the front of the school yard. We had chosen this location for its access to the one lane road. The women wouldn’t have to carry the groceries quite so far. But, the men felt the front of the school yard was better suited for a community parking lot. Mind you no one in the community owns a car with the exception of the mayor and one merchant. The men had dreams.
…Buuuut, so did the women.
The women, on hearing this new proposal shifted into almost fetal like positions on their wooden benches, doubling up their bodies and hiding their faces with their shawls, faces weathered with poverty and inequity that bely their 30 or so years. I could see them whispering to each other in Cakchiquel as the men stood and shouted and postured.
I expressed that we could not change the design. But, the men were firm that this is what the community collectively wanted. I suggested that we put it to a vote, a secret vote, a suggestion the men were hard pressed to deny. Paper and pencils were handed out. I drew a large 1 and a 2 on the blackboard. I wanted to be sure that even the illiterate moms could indicate their choice. Vote 1 in favor of keeping the design as is and 2 for building the kitchen up the stairs and at the back of the lot.
The vote came in straight across gender lines, 13 in favor of keeping the kitchen as designed and 6 against. The women won the vote. The oddest mixture of joy and fear came across the women’s faces. A rare victory. They would have a viable kitchen AND they would have to face their husbands at home.
Afterword: In Guatemala the minimum wage is $19/day. In Los Manantiales the men make an average of $13.50 per day. If the women are able to find work outside of the house, they make $6.70. Like many communities in Guatemala they struggle with food security and lack of water, things that are worse each day because of climate change. Many villages are devoid of men because they have migrated to the US where they can make a living wage and send remittances home. Viviendas Leon, an organization I collaborate with, has established some empowerment and entrepreneurial programs for women in the highlands.
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