August 11, 2006

A deep look into the world God created, different people, creatures and terrain might lead someone to ponder why God made such an extensive assortment of cultures within each. You might come to believe that each was hand picked to each be given different characteristics of God, to be developed and manifested within each culture and group. The Latin culture clings tightly to various values, truths and traditions.

One of the most distinct values of the Guatemalan culture is the significance found within relationships. The value of people take a place of importance that is rarely seen in other cultures. People’s worth takes the importance off the individual and onto others; a focus is put on unity and community. Family takes priority above all, it is a unified system of love, support, trust and affection. Friends and neighbors hold a special place among the family and often blend into it’s very center. Time to just be with one another is one of the most treasured values. The laid back lifestyle of small town living allows the freedom to sit, relax and talk with family and friends. The value of time is not used with the mentality that time is money, how much one can get done within a set of time. Instead time is valued for its leisure, for the opportunity that one has to share life, talks, joy and community with one another. Food is often used as the center for which to spend time with one another. Both the act of preparation and the act of eating and dining with one another is apart of this form of daily life.

The Indigenous Mayan community plays a large part of nearly everyone’s culture and heritage. The Indigenous hold a true and rich value for people, family and friends. If someone began to plant a milpa, the community automatically joined to assist in the planting of rows of corn. If someone began to cook, food was made to share with the entire community. The entire community acted and continues to hold tightly to the value of unity, and it has played a large influence in the socialization of modern Guatemalans who have fallen out of most Indigenous traditions. All in all, the value of people is one of the most treasured aspects of their community. Unity and community share a large role in the character of God and the mentality and mindset that he calls the Church to use.

The dedication and faithfulness of the people is a value most affluently seen within the Church setting, indifferently both within the Catholic and Evangelical world. There is an incredible faithfulness is attached to very label of an evangelical. Their dedication is seen in their loyalty to the church. While they attend nearly every service and dedicating their lives to the legalistic rules of the church, every thought goes throughout out the day is done so with faithfulness. Through looking at every part of their life through the eyes of the church their dedication to God is seen. In good times and in bad, authenticity of their hearts is seen. Both when there is no food in the house, no clothes to cover their children and nothing more than a roof to cover their heads from the fierce rain but also when there is enough to go around their true dedication is seen. As for me, in times when I have nothing I find it the easiest to be at the feet of Jesus, but at times when I lack nothing I find it the most difficult to be on my knees in prayer. The church prays on their knees, tired and desperate from a long and hard day’s work, they rest their bodies on hard wood benches. Sometimes for hours, they kneel praying and begging God for every need.

Dedication to their family unit is an extravagant value of the Latin culture. The love, support and community found within the family is a direct affect of their utmost loyalty to one another. It is an unmistakable value of their culture. Seen through their close ties, affection and support for one another in all that they do.

The Guatemalan culture holds many truths inside that obscure the direction and decisions that one takes. There is both beauty and unsightly things that come out of the truth that most abide by what it is to have faith like a child, as God calls us. At times, this is good and at times, it is bad. However, because of lack of proper education and the ability to think for oneself many are left with the inability to question. This has dramatic effects within the church, as everyone takes everything the Pastor says as truth. Many refuse to look up and read scripture for themselves and there is little challenging and questioning of what anyone says. Therefore, theology has wide ranges within this culture and there are such drastic differences between many of the churches. Many say that the other Churches are not Christians as they wear pants or play soccer. If the people knew scripture and knew it well, they would understand that different culture adhere to different rules however only God can be the judge of one’s actions and rules.

Traditions is apart of the deep roots of the culture. I have lacked the opportunity to be apart of many of the traditions of the culture as the Evangelical Church claims that many of them are Satanic. However, I have had the opportunity to witness the celebration of the Quinciñera, or the 15th birthday of the girls. It is a once in a lifetime event to have your Quinciñera and it is almost like a wedding. However, it celebrates the coming out of the daughter of the family, from girl to women. In the church, her life is dedicated to God and after a festival takes place with a feast. This is a beautiful and highly important tradition in the Latin culture.

Many other festivals and traditions occupy the year’s calendar in Guatemala. Semana Santa, otherwise known as Holy Week, is one of the largest celebrations in Guatemala. People from all over the world come to Antigua to view the large and extravagant processions. Their processions are miles long, walking on floral streets, carried by men and women of the Catholic Church on shoulder. The floats are some of the best in the world. However, all over Guatemala, the week and its traditions are not taken lightly and with all the community has they use to celebrate this week. Dia de Los Muertos, in October is a huge festival, where all join their loved ones at the cemetery to celebrate their lives, pray over the dead and feast with them, as they bring their favorite foods to the gravesite. During Dia de la Bruja in May, in Machaquilá there is a grand festival where everyone parades around the town to the Catholic Church with a roasted pigs head, and there is a young woman from the community nominated to be the Queen of this grand festival. There are many other festivals and traditions, each depend upon the town and area as to what pertains their community celebrates, what one town might celebrate is not necessarily what the neighboring town celebrates as well.

As Machaquilá in the Petén of Guatemala holds these different values, truths and traditions found within the community, each are expressed differently both revealed and concealed within my home culture. The value of people and relationships in the urban streets of the United States is not usually a major value of the culture. Instead, we build walls, large doors and attach locks to keep out our neighbors. We construct bigger houses to push away our family and put doors on every room to shut out and privatize our lives. We manage our time as if every minute counts; time is money and therefore must be used as such. We spend our time running errands as fast as we can, scurrying through the streets and wasting our time in traffic jams. We have more inhuman contact with computers, digitalized machinery, cars and music than we have with humans.

Our meal times are on the go, very rarely do we have the time to sit as a family and eat dinner together, as there are always more extracurricular activities to add, soccer games to play and Girl Scout meetings to attend. We eat fast food in the car while scurrying to the next event to check of our lists. Rarely is there ever time to dine together unless it is set out on the calendar or made special by a night at the Restaurant.

The dedication and faithfulness of my home culture takes a different route than does the same value in Machaquilá. Dedication and faithfulness takes more of the form of responsibility and often obligation. Faithfulness to God normally takes the form of a very personal and often private relationship with Jesus. It is to him that all is answered, not anyone in the community. If one does not go to church on Sunday, the world does not fall apart and the whole congregation is not all over you. However, by having only to answer to God, this takes a new form of faithfulness as by having to answer to the community converts this faithfulness to a sense of obligation.
In the truths of the community, the greatest differences lie in the education factor. While the people of Guatemala have an extreme lack of education, many in the United States have achieved a much higher education as its accessibility allows. Higher education primarily teaches the principle to independently think and question everything. It is this that reflects the type of church and the type of faith that is carried out. While the Church in the United States is based upon scholarly Juans and a congregation who does not just accept everything they hear, but instead searches out truths for themselves.

Each culture holds beautiful values, truths and traditions while others are little less than beautiful. The one value that I would give anything to apply in my life is the value of family, friends of people in general and relationship in the Latin culture. However, I realize that to gain this, I would be fighting against an entire culture and atmosphere to input this into my lifestyle. The greatest fight would be against the differences in the culture of time. Without time dedicated to one another, and a slow-paced atmosphere, there would be a large hindrance put on the formation of this type of relationship. The entire atmosphere of the culture plays a role in taking in these relationships, I would need to not only change the meaning of time, but also tear down the walls that stand between neighbors and break down the doors within the house.

Intimate relationship and value of people is a beautiful thing, with time and perseverance it might be implemented into a lifestyle in a completely different culture.