Day Forty, Antigua

On Wednesday the fifth of October our Participant Observation Projects were due in our religion class, but we had regular class in history. So, in history we started with the 1982 military coup which put Efrain Rios Montt in the position of Chief-Of-State in Guatemala for a little over a year. It was during this short period of time that "La Violencia" was at its absolute peek with the most deaths and disappearances in the whole time of the Civil War. In the major cities, Montt stopped a lot of the violence that had the middle and upper classes afraid, and so for those people they thought Montt was a leader that was protecting the people, but in the rural areas "fusiles y frijoles" led to the deaths of thousands of civilian Maya people. In yet another coup in 1983, Montt was replaced by Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores, and a gradual transition to democracy started to take place. 1990 saw the beginning of the Peace Accords and by 1996 the civil war officially ended with the implementation of the accords. It was in 1998-99 that the truth commissions started and the realities of the civil war started to become apparent, something that is still happening today.

In religion we stated presenting our Participant Observation projects, each taking a different and unique look at religion and how we have all interacted with it here in Guatemala. The presentations went from experiences at Comalapa to new experiences at Evangelical churches here to Catholic mass, we all presented vastly different, wonderfully intriguing projects.

In Spanish, we had our second exam, and unfortunately we are all having a lot of trouble, so we are going to try to find a way to make the courses and our Spanish practice function better during the second half of the semester. I in particular am sick of not being able to retain the information that we are getting, so I went to a book store in the center of Antigua and bought a Spanish Two Year Workbook and a book entitled "Breaking out of Beginners Spanish" in the hopes that by doing the activities and having a more concentrated focus on Spanish outside of my two Spanish classes a week, I will be able to retain and utilize Spanish more easily and fluently. I spent several hours working in the workbook and trying memorize a few verbs. So far so good!