New Ulm area Catholic students visit Guatemala

by Dan Besser, Shelly Waibel, and Christina Smith

A one-week Guatemalan mission trip for our group of fifteen New Ulm people turned out to be quite a learning experience. Traveling with the New Ulm Catholic youth, we left New Ulm on March 16 and headed for San Lucas Toliman, Guatemala. We experienced their culture and came to understand why they live the way they do.

Monsignor Greg Schaffer heads efforts at the San Lucas mission and we were privileged to learn much from him about the "process of poverty", and the many reasons for it. Life for the people is difficult because they are oppressed by the causes of poverty. The majority of the people wish to continue farming with metal tools that have no moving parts, such as a hoe and machete. Unfortunately they do not have land. Eighteen extended families own over eighty percent of all the arable farmland in Guatemala. Only two percent is actually in the hands of the people.

The mission in San Lucas works to reverse the oppression the people experience. Father Greg said, "Poverty is an illness, not a part of the culture". So the mission provides education, religion, land, jobs, and more.

Our place in the whole scheme of things in San Lucas was multi-leveled. We did some hand labor with the people such as sorting coffee beans and sanding and moving boards, but even our presence was worth something. "Self-image is the first thing to go when living in poverty," Father Greg said. He continued, "This is because the people see that we pay money to come and leave behind everything. Then they know that we want to be with them." Another reason for our visit was to learn and experience as much as we could about the Guatemalan culture and spread the word.