Women´s Center San Lucas Mission

Lake Atitlan

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Aldous Huxley once described Lake Atitlán, encircled by steep hills and three volcanoes, as “the most beautiful lake in the world.” Some of the most beautiful landscapes in the country make the lake a popular tourist destination, but the surrounding villages have preserved their Maya traditions well: colorful dress and Maya languages vary from town to town.

Today’s landscape around the lake has its origins approximately 85,000 years ago when a massive eruption blew volcanic ash as far as Florida and Panama. The volcano was depleted of its magma, collapsed, and left a caldera (large crater) which eventually collected water – Lake Atitlán now fills part of the caldera.

The lake, at almost a mile above sea level, measures 18km by 12km (about 11 by 8 miles) at its widest point, and averages about 340 metres (1,120 feet) deep.

‘Atitlán’ means “place of the great waters” in Nahuatl, the language of the Mexican troops who first came with the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado through the region.

The volcanoes of San Pedro, Tolimán, and Atitlán provide the backdrop to one of the world’s most beautiful lakes, which is also rich in Maya culture. Both Kaqchikel and Tz’utujil are spoken in the villages around the lake, the former being the language of San Lucas Toliman. Towns like Santiago Atitlán and the departmental capital, Sololá, remain some of the few places in the country where men as well as women still wear traditional traje.

Women in San Antonio Palopó on the east shore, wear simple but unique blue weavings. The villages are predominantly quiet and small agricultural communities, although the town of Panajachel has, since the 60’s, become the largest tourist destination on the lake. Whatever the culture in each town, however, the lake remains central to life.

The lake provides essential water to the surrounding communities for drinking and cleaning. Men in small canoes can be seen fishing at the early hours of the morning, although the introduction of black bass for sport fishing has reduced biodiversity in the lake.

Women, likewise, make their way down to the lake in the morning to congregate and wash clothes; children swim in the lake for amusement and to cool off. In many ways and for many people, the lake is central to life and fundamental to the local culture.

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Maya culture and life in San Lucas are evident and vibrantly illustrated in a simple walk about the village. Religious life is evident in the centuries-old Catholic Church and at shrines and altars around the town, and the large weekly market is a beautiful illustration of the colors and diversity so typical of the country.

The home is a place where mothers and children spend the majority of the day, symbolically representing the comfort and security of a refuge from the wider world. Indeed, the Kaqchikel language refers to the home as a metaphorical extension of the human body: for example, ruchi’jay (‘mouth of the house’) is the door, ruwi’jay (‘hair of the house’) is the roof, and rupan is the inside (‘stomach of the house’).

In San Lucas, as in many Guatemalan towns, homes are pressed tightly together, lining the streets with a multi-colored, stucco façade. Inside the house is usually different than the outside appearance, commonly having dirt floors.

At the center of the home is the kitchen and cooking hearth. Years ago, hearths were made from three stones grouped around a small fire on the dirt floor, where families gathered for meals.

The majority of families still cook with wood fires, but in adobe or cinder block stoves. The tops of these new stoves are made with a metal plate that has severalremovable circular cooking tops. The fire is built underneath the cooking surface and accessible through a small side opening in the adobe construction. There are usually live coals in the stove, thus allowing a person to quickly stoke up active fires when something needs to be warmed or it’s time to cook.

The Food:

The corn crop that we eat today is a tradition entirely attributed to the Maya people, originating in the Mexican plateau and the highlands of Guatemala over 5,000 years ago. Yet more than simply a staple of the Maya diet, corn is intimately revered as the source of life for the Maya.

Attempting, unsuccessfully, to create men and women from soil, and then from wood, Grandmother God then ground corn and water with her hands, successfully creating and fashioning humankind – so follows the creation story of the Popol Vuh, the sacred history of today’s Maya-K’iche.

Maize and beans are the staples of the San Lucas diet, and a perfectly adequate meal might include little else. In fact, it is considered that, in any meal, the Tortilla is always the main dish – providing the spiritual sustenance that other foods cannot provide.

Likewise, there is an admiration and respect within the Maya culture attributed to the household work of the Maya woman. It is often said, for example, that a young girl does not become a woman until she can tortillar, or make corn tortillas. The esteem for this household work derives from the difficult conditions in which Maya women must prepare foods, often cooking over intense heat and smoke from the fire.

The Dress:

It is said that true, dignified womanhood is reached once a woman learns to weave. Understood to be the traditional keepers of the culture, women play an active role in promoting Maya ethnicity through weaving, an art dating to pre-Columbian life.

Weaving huipiles (long, sleeveless tunic) in the traditional red and white of San Lucas, embroidered with an assortment of brilliantly colored and detailed flora and fauna, the women of San Lucas are testament to the vibrant expression of Maya culture.

Using a backstrap loom, huipilies often take several months to complete, employing a technique intimate to Maya culture. The warp (long) threads are stretched between two horizontal bars, one of which is fixed to a post or tree, while the other is attached to a strap that goes a round the weaver’s lower back. The weft (cross) threads are then woven into the piece. The Yarn is also often handspun in the village.

Fischer, Edward F., and Carol Hendrickson; Tecpan, Guatemala. Boulder, Colorado. Westview Press, 2003.

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History of San Lucas Toliman:

In comparison with other villages along the shores of Lake Atitlan, San Lucas Toliman is unique. Serving as a commercial, educational and medical center for thousands of people, San Lucas consist of mainly Kakchiquel Maya (85-90%), living in surrounding villages and fincas (coffee plantations).

Encompassing a town of approximately 20,000 people, with another 20,000 in twenty-two surrounding villages, San Lucas is located in south-central Guatemala on the shores of Lake Atitlan.

Pre-Columbian History:

Pre-Columbian history of San Lucas dates to the 15th century, following the southward emigration from areas in the Yucatan after the collapse of the Maya lowland civilization (circa AD. 900). In the 12th Century, according to Robert Carmack, the K’iche’ people had entered into the western highlands of Guatemala, with Maya kingdoms arising in today’s central highland/Lake Atitlan area.

The Kaqchikels, descendants of the K’iche’an people, emigrated further south in to what is now the San Lucas Toliman area, where they became renowned for their military prowess and, many say, were the ascendant power in the region as the Spanish arrived.

Perhaps one of the best sources on the pre-Columbian history of the Kaqchikel is the manuscript known as the Annals of the Kaqchikels, housed in the library of the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1524, Pedro de Alvarado, one of Cortes’ lieutenants in the conquest of Mexico, set forth to conquer the Maya peoples to the south. In May 1540, following several attempts at rebellion against Spanish dominion, and in an attempt to stem further rebellion, Alvarado ordered the last Kaqchikel king hanged.

Post-Columbian History:

Over the course of next 500 years, the descendants and followers of the original Spanish conquistadors acquired more and more of the lands occupied by the descendants of the great Kaqchikel kingdom. In the late nineteenth century, in efforts to develop a national agricultural export, state policies of indigenous communal land expropriation and forced labor laws created a landowning economic elite and provided them with a supply of cheap indigenous labor for the coffee harvest.

While forced labor was abolished by the mid-twentieth century, the legacy is enormous disparities in rural land ownership, below-subsistence wages for most plantation workers, and extreme income inequality.

The Kaqchikel of San Lucas Tolimán endured their losses with resolve, and in the last half of the 20th century there existed a tenuous equilibrium in which potential for growth in the community was stifled, bound by coffee fincas to the south and west, Lago Atitlán to the north and a steep 2000 ft. ridge to the east.

Taking advantage of the land distribution efforts of the San Lucas Mission, and the tremendous agricultural skills and terracing techniques of the Kaqchikel Maya, land which previously had been unusable became available.

Throughout the past 50 years, land ownership and wealth in the area has been dramatically altered, with many, many families receiving land from the San Lucas Mission.

San Lucas Mission:

The San Lucas Mission was originally founded as by the Franciscan order in the late 16th Century, with the building of the Mission Church around 1584.

In 1958, as the Catholic Church in Rome called for greater involvement of clergy and lay people in world missions, the Diocese of New Ulm responded by launching a diocesan partnership with the Diocese of Sololá, Guatemala. Fr. Greg Schaffer, a diocesan priest from New Ulm, began serving as pastor of the San Lucas Mission in 1962.

Perhaps one of the most well-known missions in Guatemala, its long-term devotion has been the enhancement and enrichment of the whole person – spiritually, intellectually, and physically – by addressing both the immediate effects of poverty and its underlying causes.

Efforts at the San Lucas Mission attempt to respond to the expressed felt need of the people, working to build the infrastructure necessary so that the people might grow out of the process of poverty. Socio-economic programming at the mission is based in Christian Social Doctrine and is designed to develop five basic human rights: food security, shelter, healthcare, education and work.

Fischer, Edward F., and Carol Hendrickson; Tecpan, Guatemala. Boulder, Colorado. Westview Press, 2003.

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Artesanias Nueva Vida is an independent organization founded by Maynor Hernandez Ajcalón to help Young adolescents earn income to supplement their education.

Artesanias Nueva Vida Works with locally grown lumber to craft their products,including bowls, serving spoons,tea spoons, salad serving utensils, picture frames and other specialty products.

The group was founded by two brothers who needed work to help them stay off the streets and focused on their school work. They began to work with a few other Young adolescents and decided to form a project focused on helping young adolescents facing the process of poverty.

The group consists of five members and have worked for the past four years with various adolescents who work outside the home to support their families, including young shoe shine boys who work in the local park.

The name Artesaanias Nueva Vida means New Life Artists and symbolizes a new life for the members of the group.

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The Housing Program seeks to address the land ownership disparity by providing a dignified place to live for those without. Faced with the expressed felt necessity for housing, the Friends of San Lucas want to continue building homes for people who cannot otherwise afford them, continuing what Fr. Greg did. Building also creates jobs, something that is very needed in San Lucas.

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Direct Trade, even better than Fair Trade

Juan Ana Cafe is grown, processed, roasted, and packaged in San Lucas, Guatemala. The only part of the process that is not in local hands is the movement of the bags once they land in the US! This Direct Trade Model ensures the highest quality of product as well as the largest impact on the community!.

Our farmers’ Arabica coffee is grown under a full shade canopy at the ideal altitude (between 5,200 and 6,000 feet) in rich volcanic ash soil.

In other words, its the best coffee on the planet. Combine the great taste with the great cause, and its almost too good to be true!

So tomorrow morning, when you brew your morning coffee, take a minute to think about the relationships you have helped foster simply by opting for Juan Ana Coffee. Know you are keeping with the Pillars of Christian Social Teaching that Father Greg preached and the cup will taste that much better.

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San Lucas Toliman is a town of some 25,000 people located on the southern shore of Lake Atitlan, in highland Guatemala. Its primary crop is coffee and the town is surrounded by a series of coffee plantations and affiliated villages that fall within the larger municipality of San Lucas Toliman. The community is made up primarily of descendents of the Maya whose first language is most often the indigenous language, Kaqchiquel.However, most San Lucas residents speak Spanish as well.

San Lucas is materially a very poor community with an estimated percapita income of less than $1,000 (US) per year. Most families are engaged in agricultural labor with an average daily wage about $3 per day.

Health Problems in San Lucas Toliman:

The health problems in San Lucas directly reflect the poverty of the community. More than one in every 25 infants will die before their first birthday. Malnutrition affects about a quarter of all children and infections, including diarrhea and pneumonia cause widespread suffering and preventable death.

Tuberculosis remains a hidden killer, a cause of chronic lung disease and disability that can affect whole families over a number of years. Trauma, particularly work-related and motor vehicle injuries is also a major contributor to health problems in San Lucas. Children with chronic disorders, such as cerebral palsy, birth defects, and developmental delay have emerged as a surprisingly prevalent and serious health need.

Current Health Programs:

The goal of health effort in San Lucas is to couple broader community development initiatives with health strategies that will ensure that the best preventive and treatment interventions are provided to all those in need. The health initiative in San Lucas is a component of a larger community development program begun more than 50 years ago by the local Catholic parish (parroquia in Spanish), with continued support from the Diocese of New Ulm, Minnesota.

In addition to the health program, the San Lucas Mission has engaged in a variety of activities including land distribution, home construction, potable water system construction, and microeconomic projects. The health program has grown substantially over the past few years and now has several components:

The Mission Clinic:

This 65-bed facility serves as the primary source of direct health care services for the town. It is focused on providing high quality outpatient services and emergency care for urgent health problems.

Approximately 50-100 patients a day are treated at the Clinic. The Clinic is the only health facility open 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. Dr. Rafael Tun, the supervising physician, is native to San Lucas and has been working with the Clinic for almost ten years.

Children requiring intravenous and intensive antibiotic therapy are commonly hospitalized here, as are adults with a variety of chronic disorders. Complicated births are delivered at the clinic as well.

Emergency patients are brought to the clinic for immediate treatment at all hours and can either be admitted to the clinic or transferred to the National Hospital in the departmental (state) capital, Solola, for major surgery or complex interventions.

The Health Promoter Program:

In the plantations and 22 villages outside of San Lucas, the best way to ensure the delivery of appropriate preventive and therapeutic health care has been through the training of local community citizens as health promoters. This program now serves 17 communities with the hope of expanding into more.

The promoters have basic education but are specially trained in prevention strategies, health education, and the early recognition of serious disorders. They also have the capacity to provide emergency first aid and arrange referral and transport to the Mission clinic in San Lucas. The promoter program is coordinated by the Mission Clinic and the promoters meet and continue their training on a regular basis.

Visiting Physicians and Medical Students:

Technical assistance for the Clinic and the promoter program are provided by short-term visits of US-based physicians and medical students. Physicians with specialized expertise, such as general surgery, radiology, and pediatrics, as well as generalists participate in the San Lucas health program on a regular basis.

In addition, medical students and students also spend time with the program, although they work as they would in any US-based hospital or clinic, always under the direct supervision of an attending physician. Students from a variety of medical schools have had remarkable experiences participating in preventive and clinical care as well as learning about the local culture and the determinants of health in resource poor areas of the world. Groups interested in offering services to the community are encouraged to learn more.

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Father Greg always stressed that education was the most important key in helping people move out of the process of poverty and improve their self-image as beloved sons and daughters of God. Help us provide this opportunity to many who can’t afford it.

Your Gift Will Change a Life! Change a Community! Even Change You! Prayerfully consider a onetime gift of $200 or $20 a month to provide a scholarship to a child for one year of school. It will give a child an opportunity to attend school by covering the cost of the child’s tuition and educational materials needed for one year.

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As disciples of the Lord, open to the movement of the Spirit, we are called to promote the kingdom of God as a viable optionfor the people of San Lucas. Based on the life of Jesus, revealed in the Scriptures and reflected in the inherent spirituality of the people, we seek to facilitate each person’s and each community’s spiritual journey through the celebration of the sacraments and a life of mutual service.

As Jesus responded to the people and their needs, we believe it is our mission also to respond to the expressed felt needs of the people of San Lucas and of the surrounding areas that form the larger community.

In our response, we include the individuals with specific needs who come to the mission seeking help. Our purpose is to deal with both the immediate effects of poverty and their root causes.

Recognizing that all of us are made in the image and likeness of God, our goal is to enhance and enrich the whole person. Thus, we promote the dignity, self-respect, and development of the people we have been called to serve. This is a step by step process which shows itself in educational, medical, nutritional, spiritual, and socio-economic planning and programs.

As a cross-cultural parish we are aware of the rich heritage of the Guatemalan people and recognize that the process of on-going conversation for all of us is facilitated by the mutual sharing of cultural values and spiritual insights.

Thus, we recognize we are called to be a bridge, to share with our brothers and sisters in the United States of America who have been associated with our mission, either as members of the Diocese of New Ulm or as benefactors, by offering hospitality, and by sharing the culture, struggles, hopes, and aspirations of the people of Guatemala.

Within our mission we constantly seek alternative ways to peace and justice that are based on the interdependence of people who share their gifts and resources in an atmosphere of Christian love.

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Beginning foremost with recognition and appreciation for the rich Maya culture and the heartfelt understanding that God’s love is for all, efforts at the San Lucas Mission attempt to respond, as Jesus did, to the expressed felt need of the people, using the Preferential Option for the Poor as its foundation, and drawing on Christian Social Teaching to guide efforts in the integral human development of our people and community.

Preferential Option for the Poor:

It was in 1968 when the Catholic Bishops of Latin America gathered in the city of Medellin, Colombia to reflect on and dialogue about how the guidelines of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) could be best implemented in the countries they served.

A key phrase arose from that reflection and dialogue that was to make a powerful impact on how the church would servethroughout Latin America. The phrase: A Preferential Option for the Poor.

Speaking from Medellin, and since, the Preferential Option for the Poor promotes that the moral test of a society is how it responds to its most marginalized.

As the poor have the most urgent moral claim on the conscience of the nation, we are thus called to look at public policy decisions in terms of how they respond to the poor.

Understanding that the poor and marginalized are signs of illness in a society, the option for the poor promotes that a healthy community can be achieved only if its members give special attention to those with special needs, to those who are poor and on the margins of society.

Christian Social Teaching:

Dignity of the Human Person: Belief in the inherent dignity of the human person is the foundation of all Catholic social teaching. Human life is sacred, and the dignity of the human person is the starting point for a moral vision for society. This principle is grounded in the idea that the person is made in the image of God. The person is the clearest reflection of God among us.

The Common Good: Human dignity can only be realized and protected in the context of relationships with the wider society. How we organize our society -- in economics and politics, in law and policy -- directly affects human dignity and the capacity of individuals to grow in community. The obligation to "love our neighbor" has an individual dimension, but it also requires a broader social commitment. Everyone has a responsibility to contribute to the good of the whole society, to the common good.

Solidarity: We must walk with the people. Authentic development must be integral human development. It must respect and promote personal, social, economic, and political rights, including the rights of nations and of peoples. It must avoid the extremists of underdevelopment on the one hand, and "super-development" on the other. Accumulating material goods and technical resources will be unsatisfactory and debasing if there is no respect for the moral, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of the person.

Subsidiarity: The principle of subsidiarity holds that in our efforts to work with another culture, we must begin from where the people are, at all times safeguarding their efforts to address the situation of poverty in which they live. When the needs in question cannot adequately be met, then it is not only necessary, but imperative that our efforts, in solidarity with theirs, work to find solutions.

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The San Lucas Mission was originally founded as by the Franciscan order in the late 16th Century, with the building of the Mission Church around 1584.

Through listening to the expressed-felt need of the people, the philosophy of the San Lucas Mission attempts to respond, as Jesus did, to the needs of the people.

The Mission programs began addressing the needs for housing, healthcare and nutrition, education, and land - all attending to the integral human development of the community.

Beginning 50 years ago, San Lucas was a small village of cornstalk homes with thatched roofs, lacking both electricity and plumbing. There were neither health care facilities nor schools and women and children suffered severely from the lack of healthcare, with many women dying in childbirth and children suffering as a result of malnutrition.

Education, inaccessible to the majority of the Maya population, perpetuated discrimination against the Maya, who were consequently unable to find employment off of the coffee plantations. Land ownership, with which the people could live and raise their own crops, constituted the gravest of injustices, having resulted in the systemization of land deprivation with huge disparities in rural land ownership.

Through the initiatives begun by the Mission, San Lucas is now a village with more cement block and stone homes, built by local stone masons and carpenters trained in mission programs.

Healthcare and nutrition programs, including dental facilities and an eye clinic, are also available to the people.

Through education, the people of San Lucas have taken advantage of the opportunity to advance. Very proudly, many of today’s Maya teachers, doctors, engineers and lawyers of San Lucas have been educated in the mission’s programs. The literacy rate, around 2.5% when the Mission school began, is now nearing 85%. For youth interested in pursuing post-secondary schooling, the mission provides annual scholarships and for others there was an apprenticeship program, through which students gained training in agriculture, stone masonry, carpentry, electricity, and plumbing.

With respect to land ownership, perhaps the most significant of the mission’s programs, the San Lucas Mission has undertaken the restoration of land and livelihood to the landless Maya majority - over the last 50 years many indigenous families have received land.

In listening to the expressed felt need of the people, the San Lucas Mission has attempted to address situations of injustice, promoting as its base the structural and systemic change that is necessary in addressing the process of poverty and its underlying causes.

Shortly after Fr. Greg's death, the Diocese of Solola made a decision to continue supporting the spiritual and sacramental needs of the San Lucas Mission, asking the 'Asociation Action Cristiana de San Lucas' to take over the handling of the legal and financial aspects of the mission. The 'Asociation Action Cristiana de San Lucas is a group legally formed by Fr. Greg, back in 1974, to help govern the land acquisitions and legal aspects of the ongoing projects associated with the mission. At about the same time, the New Ulm Diocese began planning and developing a 501c3 non-profit organization called 'The Friends of San Lucas’. This non-profit organization will be in charge of all of the legal and financial responsibilities in the U.S. associated with the San Lucas Mission, including fundraising, communications with donors, administration of the coffee program, developing the volunteer and visitor programs and other associated obligations, tasks and proceedings previously handled by the Diocese. There is a local Board of Directors of the Association de Action Cristiana made up of the Mission Administrator and the project leaders.

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"The Friends of San Lucas was created to carry on the legacy of Fr. Greg Schaffer, by listening, responding to, and walking in solidarity with the people of San Lucas Toliman in an effort to alleviate the suffering and dependency created by the 'process of poverty'."

We recognize that we are to be a bridge, to share with our brothers and sisters in the United States of America who have been associated with our mission, by offering hospitality, and by sharing the culture, struggles, hopes, and aspirations of the people of Guatemala and through this avenue of solidarity provide funding to keep the projects going.

As Jesus responded to people and their needs, we believe that it is or mission to respond to the expressed felt needs of the people of San Lucas Toliman and the surrounding area, that form the larger community. We will uphold the Christian Social Doctrine that Fr. Greg weaved through all his decisions and practices.

Lake Atitlan

Local Culture

The History

Artesanias for New Life

Housing/Construction

Juan Ana Coffee

Healthcare Overview

School Scholarship Program

Mission Statement

Our Philosophy

Mission History/Overview

Friends of San Lucas Mission

Monseñor Gregorio Schaffer