guatemala: the working poor

This summer I spent a little over three weeks in Guatemala. I was primarily there to study Spanish, but I was also interested in learning about a country that is geographically very close to the United States but has a lot of differences as well.

While reading up on Guatemala through the always informative CIA World Fact Book (an interesting source of information given the agency's intimate role in Guatemalan history) I came across these pretty stunning and seemingly contradictory facts. Guatemala is an economically poor country with a very uneven income distribution. Over half of the country's population, 56 percent, live in poverty. While at the same time the unemployment rate in Guatemala is lower than that of the United States - Guatemala has the miniscule unemployment rate of 3.2 percent.

Here in the United States there is a common conception (whether it is accurate or not) that if you work and work hard that you will be able to make a decent living. This is a belief argued forcefully against by people like Barbara Ehrenreich. In Guatemala, however, there is a completely different understanding of what it means to be working poor.

Antigua, where I spent the majority of my time, is one of the wealthier areas of Guatemala. There are a number of middle class inhabitants that includes doctors, people that work in the flourishing tourist industry, and the many spanish teachers. There are a lot of other jobs as well, but for the most part they don't pay very much. Walking down the streets of Antigua you pass innumerable people handing out fliers, shoe shine boys, people selling all kinds of stuff. In the markets there are stands with all sorts of goods ranging from bootlegged dvds to goldfish in plastic bags. Many other people are employed as household help, doing the laundry or sweeping the floors.

Despite the low level of unemployment vast amounts of poverty persist. There are multiple explanations for this, including a generally low level of education, widespread discrimination against the indigenous Mayan population, and a very uneven distribution of both income and land ownership. According to a 2005 United Nations Development Program (UNDP) report 2 percent of the population in Guatemala owns 76 percent of the agricultural land. The UNDP report also highlights some pretty interesting analysis from a 2003 World Bank study.

As Lenin would say: "what is to be done?" Well, if I knew that I'd be a lot more productive with my time. Certainly, the case of Guatemala reinforces the dangers of having a weak or non-existent middle class with huge chasms between the rich and poor. A strong middle class seems to me to be one of the primary prerequisites for maintaining a healthy democracy and improving economic conditions.