Eduardo

lack of opportunity

It was some time before the pandemic that I started taking Spanish classes with Eduardo. I had rightly decided that my Spanish would never improve if I didn’t continue learning. Some five years later I keep plugging away and have made some progress but find myself wishing that I had a three or five-year old language brain. Along the way, thanks to Eduardo, I have learned a lot about Guatemala, its history, its politics, its Maya population.

A Spanish class

And I have learned a lot about Eduardo and his family. His father grew up in Antigua and his mother grew up as an orphan. She was from Tecpán, an hour or so from Antigua, and her mother died in childbirth when she was five or six leaving her father with a couple of children that he could not manage. He dropped his daughter off at the National Hospital in Antigua and never returned thus she was given an identity and birthdate by the hospital personnel. Eduardo has said that his father is a voracious reader and someone who might have had a good career if he had had the opportunity to finish his education. His father is apparently very good at mathematics.

Eduardo had a sister who died, perhaps unnecessarily, at a young age from uterine cancer. Both preventable and treatable but she was misdiagnosed and set aside to deteriorate. His sister, a single mother, left behind two children, an daughter, now an adult, and a young boy with obvious attention deficit issues. The boy, also called Eduardo, has been officially adopted by Eduardo’s parents and Eduardo has become the boy’s father figure. Eduardo’s sister once made the trek to the US border but she was was picked up and deported.

Eduardo studied attended university but did not finish. He speaks English thus he has a pretty good business working as a tour guide with visiting groups from all over the world. Now and then he finds himself building and/or painting houses with visiting, well-intentioned students.

Shortly after the pandemic I invited him to go along on a road trip with myself and three others. Though he had been to a couple of our destinations he had not been to most of them and was very interested in seeing his own country as opposed to watching YouTube videos about it.

I often think that with his knowledge of the history and politics of the area that Eduardo could be teaching Latin American studies in an American university as he probably knows more than most who are teaching it. But then there is that lack of opportunity.

Often, on our road trip, when we were ready to depart I would have to go and look for Eduardo who would be completely engaged with a local person learning what he could about the person, their life and their village.

In his spare time Eduardo is a theatre buff often appearing in local productions and Holy Week events. He works with local groups who are trying to fight corruption in Guatemala. Like many with limited resources he yearns to know the world but can only do so with YouTube and listening to tales of others who have traveled.

One of the things I admire the most about Eduardo is that he rarely misses a cultural event in Antigua as though he was a first time visitor. He puts many of us to shame with his expansive interests.