Efraín Bámaca, Quetzaltenango, 2009. Everardo.

Everado Lopez lives in Efraín Bámaca, a small community of ex-combatants in Cantón Chichigüitan, just on the other side of the hills from my house. After the civil war officially ended in 1996, a group of 22 families who participated in the war as guerillas got together and bought this small patch of land behind the eastern hills of Quetzaltenango. They named it after Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, the revolutionary leader of the URNG who was captured and permanently disappeared by the military government in the familiar fashion aided by the CIA. Efraín Bámaca the community lies beautifully among cultivated hillsides and fields of corn and cabbage, which almost all of the inhabitants work as day-laborers since their own land contains little fertile land. After five years of building the community, three family houses still remain to be built, but the community no longer has the external support or funding needed to buy the materials. They’ve recently installed electricity, but the community lacks an efficient water solution, a water drainage, and a paved road to avoid swamping during the rainy season – and dust during the dry season. The residents of Efraín Bámaca also dream of one day building a school and perhaps even a small playground for their children, but due to a large communal debt and low income, they need external support in order to take the community towards a sustainable future.

I visited on February 14th, and the image above is my first out of Aperture, a photo editing software I’ll be using from now on. Click on the image to view the large version of the photo along with its caption, this is an option for every own photo that I upload. More to follow on Efraín Bámaca.