MCC Learning Tour focuses on arts in Guatemala, Cuba

Mennonite Central Committee
Monday, 23 July 2001

AKRON, Pa. -- The glass through which we interpret what it means to be human is the arts, writes Chicago Tribune reporter Steve Johnson.

That "glass" was the window 10 of us from the United States and Canada used to understand the social, economic and political realities of Guatemala and Cuba during a Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) learning tour June 15 to 30.

What a sacred window it was! The art historians, literary experts, seminarians, church workers, gallery owners, ministers, poets, sculptors, dance instructors, painters, jazz musicians and others with whom we met seemed genuinely intrigued with sharing the soul of the Guatemalan and Cuban people. Our tour leaders, Deanna Durham of MCC El Salvador, and Bob Brenneman of MCC Guatemala, offered insight based on their own experiences in Latin America.

Jeremias Ochoa, sociologist and lay leader in the Casa Horeb Mennonite Church in Guatemala City, spoke of the historic land division that produced extreme poverty for Guatemala's indigenous peoples. Then he used indigenous dress, from Spanish colonialism with Mayan overtones, to illustrate art as the history of a people.

We each carried a scrap of huipile (traditional woman's woven blouse) through our Guatemala journey and encountered the colorful huipile everywhere -- from the city dump, to the beautiful Mayan markets of Chichicastenango; from the Ruth and Naomi Project, where we watched huipile weavers as we ate with war widows, to the beautiful ancient capital, Antigua.

Yes, we began our tour of Guatemala City at the dump, a once-beautiful ravine now filled with waste, where three generations of workers have lived scavenger lives as metal workers, cloth scrappers and lumber pickers. Their shacks line the walls of the ravine; their children work alongside.

These young children were given cameras 10 years ago by an American photographer and asked to document with photos the details of their lives. They eventually created a book, "Out of the Dump." We visited their current work site in the city where they spoke to us about the project. Art in the service of reclaiming human lives. We were powerfully moved.

As powerful as the arts lens was, just as instructive was the contrast between the two countries: first Guatemala, a country where democracy and voting rights seem impossible to achieve; where government officials who claim to be Christians try to mask their corrupt policies, and where crime and armed guards are omnipresent. We pondered the harm done over the years by U.S. intervention. We were not allowed out of the gates of the Anabaptist seminary alone after 6 p.m.

Contrast Havana, Cuba, and the Martin Luther King Center where we stayed. The first night we arrived, our Cuban guides took us downtown to beautiful Old Havana in an old yellow school bus from Rockford, Ill., with "Dairyland" printed on its side. They showed us landmarks and set us free to walk where we wished, alone if we wished.

The U.S. government has squeezed this beautiful island to the bone with its blockade. Cuba's people went hungry in 1993 and 1994 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and today citizens feel strengthened by unity through hard times to make economic progress (though times are still hard in Cuba, and children beg for soap).

I will not soon forget the arts we experienced in Cuba. I will not forget being led into a cramped Cuban home where huge murals were made on the kitchen floor. Nor walking down poverty lanes to a small home that a Cuban sculptor shared with her husband and another couple, and following her upstairs to her tiny cubicle off their bedroom where she makes art and gives it to the Ebenezer Baptist Church.

She makes art to survive and art from her soul: the carving on the wall, "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," came to her in a dream and was not for sale. We stood on the sacred grounds of artistic experience in Cuba

For more information, or to contact Mennonite Central Committee, see their website at: www.mcc.org