Living my dream... or just perpetuating a nightmare..?

At some point during my college years, I don’t remember exactly when, I remember thinking how amazing it would be to teach and live abroad.  When I first found out that there was a demand for teachers internationally and that those teachers get a pretty sweet gig, it became my dream to do that.  

I love travelling and I love teaching.  To combine these two things became my dream, which I am now living.  Yes, I am living my dream and it is simultaneously an amazing experience and an extremely guilt-ridden one.  

I am so happy that my daughter is being raised abroad and will be bilingual from an early age.  I love the fact that she is growing up and has grown up in a place where everything isn’t cushy and easy, but is raw and real.  She is surrounded by so much natural beauty and amazing people that all help us to provide a unique and meaningful early life for her.  She is so lucky, and I want to impress that upon her and hope someday she uses her fortunate position in life to aid those who are less fortunate.

Here’s where the guilt-ridden side comes in.  I love my life.  I love my job, my friends, my boss, the beautiful country we live in and mostly my wife and daughter.  However, there is a lot of hurt in this country.  Over half the population lives in poverty.  It has been ranked on the top 10 worst places in the world for women and children to live.  And finally, corruption and impunity rule.  However, that does in no way tell the whole story of Guatemala.  Most Guatemalans have never played a role in the story of their beautiful country.

Over the past 75 years the United States has been a major player (in a negative fashion) in Guatemalan affairs:

• 

  Jacobo Arbenz, 1st democratically
  elected President of Guatemala

  In 1944 they led and supported a coup through the CIA to remove Guatemala’s first democratically elected leader,  Jacobo Arbenz, from office.  Why?  Not a simple answer, but a corporation named United Fruit Company was worried about losing land, so they used their connections to convince Eisenhower that the President was a communist.  He wasn’t of course, but nonetheless was seen as one in Washington and forced to leave the country under threat of violence.
• This led to a series of Right-Wing military dictatorships directly supported, both financially and militarily, by the United States.  This is when violence and impunity became the norm in Guatemala.
• In the early 1980’s Reagan ratcheted up support for the dictator Efrain Rios-Montt who, according to the UN, committed a genocide against Ixil Mayans in the northern highlands of the country.  These actions were supported directly by the weapons and money given to Rios-Montt from the Reagan administration.

These are just a brief overview of the horrid negative effects that my country has had on the beautiful country that I currently live in. What if another country even tried these actions in our homeland?  How would Americans react?  

While I am living my dream, I am often torn with the guilt of the actions my country took here.  Everyday I see the challenges that Guatemala faces and so much of the negative facets of life   here can be directly linked to the coup of 1944 and the aftermath of brutal dictatorships that divided this country and created violence as the norm.  Look what my country has done.  Worse yet, so few American even know or care.  

I wonder if I’m doing any good here or just making a difficult situation worse?  While I’m living my dream, my country helped to create a nightmare of a situation in much of Central America.  The little I’ve mentioned here is just the tip of the iceberg of the USA’s negative influence in this country and region.  My hope is that in some tiny way I can inspire hope and progress in this often times forgotten, but incredibly beautiful corner of the world.