Month: December 2012

TODOS SANTOS CUCHUMATÁN, GUATEMALA – There’s a new road to Todos Santos.

It used to be an uncomfortable daytrip from the departmental capital of Huehuetenango to this one-street town, tucked between mountains in northwestern Guatemala. The highway is mostly paved now, and those 17 miles of switchbacks climbing 10,000 feet only take an hour or two.

[caption id="attachment_253" align="alignright" width="3888"]Todos Santos sits in the moutains of northwestern Guatemala. (Photo by: Brenna Goth)[/caption]Those mountains protected Todos Santos and kept it nearly impermeable to the outside influences that caused other Mayan groups to lose their language and customs dating back to Spanish colonization. Separated by those 17 miles, Todos Santos was once a world away.

Today, Todos Santos is looking more like the rest of the world.

On November 2, high above Nogales, Sonora at the Colinas del Buen Pastor cemetery, Taide Elena placed two lit candles on the grave of her grandson, 16-year-old José Antonio Elena Rodríguez. “Era mi niño,” she said over and over again through tears. He was my boy. He was my boy. Colinas del Buen Pastor was…

Chanting demands for justice and a thorough investigation, roughly 30 friends, relatives and supporters of the slain 16-year-old Nogales, Sonora, resident José Antonio Elena Rodriguez marched to the Sonoran side of the downtown port-of-entry Saturday morning. José Antonio was killed the evening of Oct. 10 in a Border Patrol shooting that is still under investigation…