On Monday, after our return from Lake Atitlan and the Chichi market, we were back to our regular classes. In history we started looking at the time of "La Violencia" from about 1978-1983 and beyond. It can be said that the catalyst for the eruption of violence that took place during this time was the 1976 earthquake which devastated Guatemala. The epicenter was Chimaltenango, which is near Antigua, and the effect of the earthquake cause so much shock and despair that people continued to die weeks later simply from the shock. This threw all of the political and economic problems into high relief and led to the re-formation of guerrilla groups including the EGP and ORPA. The Panzos Massacre of 1978 was the first modern massacre in the war and was the beginning of the escalating violence, which developed into the 1980 burning of the Spanish Embassy, a drastic increase in assassinations and political killings and the development of large scale massacres in rural areas.
Religion class was a little different than normal, our TA, Stephan, did his presentation that he has been preparing for presenting to UT as part of his dissertation. The presentation was on Protestantism in Guatemala, and how it has effected the country in the past and continues to effect it in contemporary times. We all got to bombard him with questions at the end as though we were professors at UT, but in all the presentation was very well done, and informative for us all.
In the evening we had our Spanish class during which time we prepared for our second exam on Wednesday.
At my home stay I some wonderful discussions with the others staying here and they are a great group to talk with about political and social issues here in Guatemala. Hearing about their days and practicing Spanish with them has become an important part of my day; I talk more about this in my journals on the right hand side of this blog.
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