Biblioteca Popular de Panajachel

Panajachel has had a public library since 1926. It took over a part of my life in 1993 after the mayor, Dr. Sergio Lavarreda, reopened the library which had been closed for 10 years because of the civil war. I had not visited it when he did that in 1992; but after the mayor was quoted in Esquire magazine to the effect that too many first world people come to Panajachel expecting services they had at home but didn't give anything back I thought he was right so I looked around to see what I could give back.

I looked in the library, one small room in a building that also housed the post office, and found a mass of dusty old material--but no more than 20 books for children. Even so, there were children there trying to do research in a 1979 world almanac. I had found my place to give back.

We, my husband and I, went to a bookstore in Guatemala city and bought books including an atlas and a new world almanac. We took them to the mayor and later checked to see if the books went into the library or just disappeared--a sort of thing that can happen in this country where officials take public property for their own use. The books were there, and I was hooked for sure.

Nancy Jewel, a Californian who lived here, Nicky Frankenthal, from New Jersey who came annually to Santa Cruz on Lake Atitlán, and I went again to the mayor asking if we could raise money to improve the library. He told us, in effect, to jump to it--he said he likes people who come to him with solutions rather than problems.

So we started collecting money from our friends, books from publishers, and things began to look better. We arranged for the library to be cleaned (the librarian said she was there to tend to the people, not to clean) and put the books in order on the shelves. There were maybe 2,000 items in the library but much was very old and very useless--1940's fashion magazines from Argentina, laws passed as far back as 1915 printed on crumbling newsprint, and the like. There were some classic books donated by the National Library in the 1950's. We discarded some of the material and kept the best, about 500 items in all.

I began to gripe because the librarian often closed early to meet her boyfriend in private and she refused to change from two classifications: "pedagogia" and "other works." Dr. Laverrada made me a deal--I could hire and fire anyone I wanted if I would take on the job of library supervisor without pay. That set the hook. He told the librarian the hours would be increased but the pay would stay the same so she left. We hired Norma Guzmán, a young woman I knew and things really began to get better.

By late November, 2000, the library had 8,001 volumes in Spanish of which about 3,000 were for children. It had six computers, a big screen television with more than 100 videos both educational and entertainment, a laser printer, and a brand new photocopier. There were 20 cartons of books donated by Scholastic, Inc., which had not been added to the booklist and shelved. All was destroyed by fire on the night of November 28, 2000.

Immediately Norma organized a telethon over the local cable network, and within three days the townspeople had given more than 20,000 quetzales, donated 2,000 books from their homes, businesses had pledged items to be sold for benefit of the library, and the city council had promised to build a new building on the old site--only this time it would be the entire site, not just one little corner. Townspeople then began pledging building materials--sand, gravel, concrete blocks--to be used for the construction. In February, 2001, construction began.

In the meantime, Norma arranged for a classroom in the private junior high school near the old site and opened an interim library using the books donated by the townspeople. Lake Atitlán Libraries, Inc., the Wisconsin non-profit entity that supports the library, had some money that had been donated recently, so Norma took the old book list which fortunately was backed up on my computer and was not lost in the fire and went to used book stores in Guatemala city to replace the most useful titles. By mid-January, 2001, Norma had a library ready for the beginning of the new school year. At first there were few shelves so the books were in stacks on top of things. But this soon straightened out with the donation of shelving. Purchase of some handmade wooden tables at the local market and donation of plastic chairs made studying possible.

Publication in the New York Times of an article by David Gonzales spread the word around the US and donations began coming from individuals, schools, libraries, companies. Europeans learned of the disaster and gave help.

The morning of February 18, 2002 started early for library workers. They decorated the new building and its new furniture and books on the shelves with balloons tied to pencils. They tied a white and blue ribbon across the front doorway and spread pine needles beneath it and on the ground outside. City workers built a platform and set out chairs for adult vistors. Some 2,000 school children marched up and surrounded the platform--the speeches were given, the ribbon was cut, and the library was officially reopened, just a bit over 14 months after it was destroyed.

Since then the library has just gotten better and better. By May, 2003, there were 13,000 books in Spanish and more being catalogued. Because of a joint grant by the embassy of Canada to the library and a special school for working children there is a 50-inch television (Teresa Mlawer of Lectorum donated a good number of educational tapes and DVDs). There are now 10 computers all hooked together in a network so they can use a common laser printer. Examples of traditional clothing worn by Mayans line the walls, all labelled to show what town they represent and, incidentally, to reduce the echo from the smooth plaster walls.

All of this came from you--the people of Panajachel, Guatemala city, the United States, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, England, Holland, Canada, and maybe even countries I don't know about. Help came from foundations, Public Welfare Foundation in Washington, DC, and Wild Geese in Holland; from publishers, Random House, Scholastic, Penguin Putnam, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Rodale, Lerner; and from governments, the Royal Library of Sweden, the embassy of Canada, and the embassy of the United States of America.

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One Success Story

Among our local readers, there are some who visit the library constantly. I'd like to share with you what Marvin Velasquez, age 24, told me in November, 2004, about how the library has changed his life.

"I began coming to the library when I was 12. (See the picture below.) I'd read stories with my friends or we'd do homework togther. It changed my horizons. Nowadays I come to the library 25 times a month. I come from a poor family, seven of us kids growing up. There was no way our parents could buy us books. If it weren't for the library, I would have to drop out of school, because there would have been no way I could have had access to the necessary books.

"You live what you read, and it changes the way you think. There are lots of books on each topic, and that makes you reflect and see many subjects from multiple points of view. Even today I don't own many books. Instead I come to the library. Every day I read and I write summaries of my readinig to take home with me. I share what I learn with my friends. See the shelves of university-level books on Education and Psychology? I've read every one of them.

"I've used the library at the university of San Carlos in Guatemala city sometimes, but I can't go there often, and it's very complicated and slow: you must request books one by one, and you hardly get started reading when your time has run out. I couldn't have got this far in my education without the Panajachel library. Now I'm teaching fourth year high school statistics and math in Panajachel. This year I earned my middle school teaching degree as well. Next year I'll get a further degree in Educational Administration and Pedagogy. When we get degrees in Guatemala, we formally dedicate our graduatioin ceremony to someone who's helped us. I dedicated mine to the Biblioteca Popular.

"There are a lot of us in Panajachel who have benefited in this same way from the library. Panajachel has advanced a lot in the last ten years, and it couldn't have without the library. There's no other place we young people could have found the books we needed to continue our studies, and we would have dropped out.

"Every life has bad moments as well as good, and the library for me is a support in bad moments as well as a pleasure in the good ones.

"You ask how the library changed my life. I'm still single, for one thing. If I couldn't be learning probably I'd have married a few years back--and then I'd have a wife and children and no time for study. There's so much to learn and I'm still learning. Because of the library, what matters to me most is contributing to my country."

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Here are the links to slide shows and the story of the rebirth of the library, be patient because all have lots of pictures that may take a bit of time to load: current slide show and rebirth of the library (note that they run in backwards chronological order) part 1 and part 2.