Santiago Atitlan

On Sunday, we took a boat across the the lake to Santiago where we visited two places. The first is a large, beautiful centuries-old church. At the back of the church is a memorial to a missionary priest from Oklahoma and local people murdered by death squads in the early 80´s during Guatemala´s civil war. As our spanish teachers shared with us, the government has a scorched earth policy that resulted in many murders and exterminations of entire villages throught the countryside. The president, an evangelical Christian, killed and tortured many indigenous people. He was deposed in ´83 but violence continued until the peace accords were signed in 1996. It was quite disturbing to hear my teacher´s personal experiences and family tragedies that had occurred so recently especially because how little I remembered being this conflict being discussed in the US.



We also viewed Maximon - a saint or deity revered throughout Guatemala. In Santiago, he, in the form of a wooden statue, resides in different homes with a caretaker where he recieves offerings of money, rum, cigars, and Coca-Cola.

More to say about all of this but it will have to be later.

P.S. We´ve also added some photos to our previous posts below...