Written by Student Fellow, Megan Abbot
Edited by Melysa Sperber, Vital Voices Senior Staff Writer & Editor

Rosa	Miriam	Ana Luisa

At age eight Rosa Lacan Petzey left home to seek work to support her family. For eleven years she worked away from home for meager pay, living with surrogate mothers. Her 14 hour workday left no time to study or to play. She lost her chance to enjoy childhood.  

Rosa’s story is common in Guatemala, a country recovering from a 36-year civil war that claimed more than 100,000 lives and displaced over 1 million refugees. The devastation wrought by the conflict permeates Guatemalan society, especially for young indigenous rural women.

At age 22 Rosa defies all expectations - she is an educated, single woman in unwavering pursuit of a focused professional goal - advocacy for reproductive health. As part of a Population Council program, she works with girls under pressure to drop out of school. Recounting her job, Rosa tells stories of smart, ambitious girls unable to pay school tuition, who reluctantly decide to enter the sex trade to pay for their fees.

Rosa sees herself as a mentor for vulnerable young women, someone who can inform, counsel and empathize with them. “Parents say the girls need to marry, because they don’t have the means to keep them at home.” As someone who went to work and back to school, Rosa challenges parents to see the potential in their daughters that she saw in herself.

Vital Voices selected Rosa to attend

Rising Voices: Unleashing Young Women’s Economic Potential

, a collaboration between Vital Voices and the World Bank Group supported by the Nike Foundation. After a week of intensive training sessions in Washington D.C. with girls from three other countries, the experience culminated with a panel discussion and presentation to senior government officials and diplomats, including World Bank President Robert Zoellick and World Bank Managing Director Dr. Ngozi Ikonjo-Iweala, at the launch of the World Bank Adolescent Girls Initiative. Guatemalans Miriam Amador Diaz, 19, and Ana Luisa Cholotio Vasquez, 16, joined Rosa.

As one of Latin America’s poorest countries, Guatemala’s economic instability puts girls’ education in a precarious position.

According to recent UNICEF studies, 75 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and the number is higher for rural areas. Only one-third of children, mostly boys, attend secondary school, while 32% of girls age 5-14 are in the labor force, a rate of nearly 10 percentage points higher than boys. The consequences are serious. For every 100 literate men in the country, there are only 84 literate women.

In Guatemala, girls’ economic potential is viewed through two very opposing lenses. Many accept the view that girls’ place is in the labor force, working as manual laborers in bakeries or as domestic servants for wealthy families. Rosa, Miriam and Ana Luisa, on the other hand, believe that empowering girls is vital to the development of Guatemala. Empowerment, according to the girls, demands a holistic strategy - greater access to education, advocacy against family violence, higher quality reproductive healthcare, and leadership opportunities to demand institutional change.   

Each participant’s vision of empowerment encompasses access to education and opportunity. Rosa’s dream is to become a journalist after she finishes school. She eagerly participated in the communications sessions that offered concrete skills in public speaking, on-camera reporting, and oral advocacy. At home, through a program with the Population Council, Rosa recently returned to school, where she is completing 8th grade. Out of class, Rosa meets with women and girls to discuss their health and wellbeing. “I teach them rights and values like self-esteem, identity, and personal values like leadership. I teach sexual and reproductive health,” Rosa explains. “The girls want to learn.”    

Through journalism, Rosa also wants to become involved in politics, especially education reform. “I want to lead a campaign so schools don’t have fees, girls don’t have to pay.”  Rosa sees herself as a role model for other girls pursuing education, especially those going back to school later in life. “I can tell these girls my story about how difficult it was for me to study. When these girls tell me that their mothers don’t want to put them in school, they say that it’s not necessary for women to study, I want to tell them otherwise.  No, girls can go to school. Just look at me.”

Domestic violence is pervasive in Guatemala. Family violence’s destructive ripple effect on relationships between parents, children, siblings, and friends affects the girls’ everyday lives. “We are like roses; you can’t touch a petal without destroying everything. Hitting a woman’s face destroys her face, the representation of her soul. Hitting a woman’s hands has an economic impact, she cannot use them to make her work,” Ana Luisa explains.

Guatemala’s civil war exacerbated tensions between family members and fomented both political and familial violence. Combatants on both sides relied on sexual assault as a weapon of war. Forced conscription and forced displacement severely upset families’ stability and security. Street children orphaned by violence flooded urban streets in Guatemala City.

With tears in her eyes, Miriam recalls her father’s change from the war.  Forcibly conscripted, he returned traumatized and mentally debilitated. “We suffered a lot in that time. Now he tells me he saw us like we were animals, and he would push us away. When he was sick, once he got my mother with a machete [wounding her hand], and it was not because he wanted to do it, but because he didn’t know what he was doing.” Mental health services are scarce and limited to urban areas in Guatemala, where mental illness carries enormous stigma. Further, authorities rarely intervene to protect victims from violent family members, labeling the situation – no matter how egregious – a private affair.

Ana Luisa’s father was also conscripted, and her grandmother became an outspoken activist for indigenous women. “There is a story my grandmother told me about two women who ran from soldiers that wanted to rape them. The women ran into the mountains, and just as the soldiers were going to catch them, the women turned into doves and escaped. Now when people build a house, women put doves on the ceiling, representing peace.”

Pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous times for women in areas with little access to health care. If a mother survives giving birth, the promise of her child’s future will depend on its gender. When scarce resources are divided among children, boys are favored. The consequences are dramatic: Ana Luisa argues girls are not developing naturally. “Normally girls start bleeding at 12 or 13, but now girls aren’t starting menstruation until they are sixteen years old because they aren’t getting enough nutrition to develop at the right age.”

Concerns about the unequal division of resources and the prevalence of violence at home are nearly universal in Guatemala.  “Kids worry when they go to school, ‘Is dad beating mom?  Is mom eating?’”  

Heightened anxiety, coupled with a lack of education and physical nourishment, results in girls desperately searching for comfort and confidence. According to World Bank studies, adolescent fertility rates in Guatemala are twice the international norm (with 109 births per 1,000 women ages 15-19).  Pregnancy among girls younger than age 15 is not unusual, nor are the physical and emotional complications tied to early pregnancy.

“You don’t know how that will be to start your own family so young. We open a family, but we close our youth,” Ana Luisa comments.

Miriam’s interest in women’s health drives her dream of becoming a nurse after completing her studies. As a youth organizer, she succeeded in getting electricity and furniture for her school. In addition to her studies, she works with a group of women artisans, who face the problem of a lack of markets for their crafts. Leveraging her skills as an organizer, she plans to collaborate with Vital Voices Guatemala chapter to find new markets for and share best practices with the artisans in her community.  

The ultimate vision, according to Miriam, of economic stability in her town includes a health clinic – and Miriam intends to establish it. The clinic Miriam envisions will serve the needs of the malnourished and ill, and provide sustainable jobs for caretakers and medical professionals. “My dream is to be a nurse, and I want to help others, and not only my family and community, to help a lot of people and just be there when they need me. The biggest thing can I do is to give with love.”

The girls are adamant that government accountability is crucial to advance positive changes for girls in Guatemala.  Upon assuming office in January, President Alvaro Colom Caballeros promised a social democratic program focusing on health care, education, and rural development. But Colom faces nearly insurmountable challenges of poverty and reconciliation.
 
The girls point to insufficiencies in the administration’s approach. Disillusioned, Ana Luisa laments, “The politicians offer the sun and the moon.  Until a star falls for each of us, they say. The president offered a 100 day plan, but after 100 days what do we see?  Still more poverty, more unemployment.”   

Ana Luisa notes the growing disconnect between the government’s law-making and law-enforcing abilities. “Guatemala is rich in laws, but they are just papers. One article says this, one article says something else, this article protects women, this protects children. The law protects children, but what childhood are they protecting when there is no food? What is the childhood of an adolescent girl who already has her own children? Or a fifteen-year old single mother? This happens a lot in my community.”

Their evident distrust of status quo politicians does not discourage the girls’ aspirations. Instead, it has sparked an intense desire among the girls to reach their potential as women leaders.

With her moving oratory, Ana Luisa left many senior government officials and dignitaries in awe after speaking at the World Bank’s fall meetings. Several audience members predicted that they would see her again when she becomes president of Guatemala. “I want rough changes in education, not subtle, soft ones. For big changes in education and health, we need more indigenous women in politics.”

Before pursuing political office, Ana Luisa’s aims to help women in her community build a dye factory to facilitate the production of their crafts and weavings. “Afterwards I want to help govern the country. First of all, my city, and then, yes, the country.”

Rosa, Ana, and Miriam all come from different parts of Guatemala, speak different Mayan languages, and did not know one another before their journey to Washington D.C.  In sharing their stories, they found commonality in the challenges they faced. After one short week, the girls established meaningful connections and developed plans to visit one another, exchange best practices, and support each others’ efforts to advance positive changes for Guatemalan girls.

In the short term, each girl will each receive an award from the Vital Voices Leadership & Advocacy Fund to support a community based project. For the girls, the long term goal of Guatemala free of violence, economic insecurity, and threats to women’s health is the emphasis. Their visions for a just and equitable Guatemala are vast and will require a lifetime of dedication. They want girls to not suffer as they have, but to be able to pursue education and enjoy their childhoods.   

“When we express ourselves, we break barriers. If we don’t express ourselves, the barriers stay. With training,” Ana Luisa began to say before Miriam chimed in to complete her sentence.  

“With training we will achieve something.”

“We will succeed and achieve something for our children,” Ana Luisa finished.

“For the future,” Rosa echoed.