Florentina Puac Puac
Graduate, Santiago Cooperative School

There is little about Florentina Puac Puac that stands out. It’s not that she is so average, but, rather, that she is all too typical.

Florentina is a 16-year-old Quiché Indian. This immediately puts her in double jeopardy: she is female, and she is indigenous. Either of these would be enough to relegate her to a back bench in Guatemalan society. Together, these factors work perniciously to make it next to impossible for her to rise above what is the traditional fate of people like herself: to work on a farm or in a service industry for minimum wage; to be an overworked wife and mother; to have a severely truncated life expectancy; to have little or no schooling.

The plight of the countless Florentinas is one of the main reasons that the education is so important in Guatemala.

When Florentina entered junior high she was introduced to the CoEd textbook program. She remembers how the rental program made proper learning accessible to her for the first time. She also recalls how the books were immediately useful. “We had readings, pictures, exercises and questions. All of these things helped, especially when I was having a hard time understanding a subject.”

One of the rewards of her education was an introduction to the life and philosophy of Abraham Lincoln. He remains her hero to this day. “I learned from the books that he abolished discrimination of black people. And that is what I like. I don’t want any discrimination, particularly against the indígenas like myself.”

Today, Florentina is a student at the Normal Institute for Young Women. She hopes to graduate as an elementary school teacher in three more years.

Aracely Sapor
Teacher, Tecpán National School

Aracely Sapor gives her own unique and personal endorsement of the various CoEd programs. Her experiences with CoEd are so unique because she has benefited first as a teacher and only then as a student.

Aracely is in her mid-thirties, married with two sons and a daughter. Her husband has been severely handicapped for the past four years, ever since a car accident that fractured his femur. Since he has not been able to work, the burden of supporting the family has fallen entirely to Aracely.

Aracely taught at the elementary school level for 13 years while she attended the university to earn a degree in secondary education. As a high school teacher she has specialized in mathematics. She attributes her success in passing the university examinations to having accessibility to CoEd textbooks. She believes that these books served her well in her studies and helped her pass the test that got her her present position. She thinks particularly highly of the mathematics textbook since she has also seen good results in her students’ test scores.

A year after becoming a mathematics teacher, Aracely was formally appointed by the school board as the main social studies teacher. She decided to resume her studies at the university to receive her history and social science diploma. “Anything to make me a better teacher,” she says.

Aracely is completely committed to using the textbooks provided by CoEd as an integral part of her students’ curriculum. She claims that the books awaken in the children a love for literature and a curiosity about scientific truths. Aracely is particularly keen on assigning homework that involves textbooks as well as other reference tools including the internet. In her classes she stresses that students must thoroughly analyze all information before they draw any conclusions. To do this effectively they must have texts to work from.

“I dream that these children will be able to attend the university some day. I also dream that I can go to other countries to share our culture with people who might not know us very well.”

Luis Castillo
Graduate, Tecpán National School

Cabeza de engranaje.  

In any language, Luis Castillo could truly be called a gear head. Not that he looks like one. No glasses taped at the nose piece. No pocket guard with pens and pencils crammed into it. No short sleeved shirt buttoned at the neck. Actually, Luis is a pretty cool-looking dude for 16—tending to casual tees and blue jeans. He’s also a whiz on the basketball court. It’s just that he loves computers.

Luis’s home life is anything but ideal. His father is working in New Jersey and has little contact with his children although he does try to support them financially. His mother has had several children from different men. Luis himself has been bounced back and forth from school to school because the family situation is so unstable. But, through all this he remains single-minded in the pursuit of his goal. He wants to learn as much as he can about computers and make his career in this most technical of fields.

Luis’s introduction to computers occurred when he was in junior high and the Cooperative for Education installed a computer center in the school he was attending. From that point on, he was hooked. Currently he is full time student at the Liceo Tecpán, a local academy where he is taking classes towards a degree in computer science.

Luis feels that what he learned in the computer center has, as he put it, “had a real impact” on his life. While participating in the CoEd project, he learned how to use Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Publisher. These programs have become important tools in his education. He uses Word to do his homework, Excel to perform mathematical operations and Powerpoint to make presentations. He is convinced that his facility on the computer has helped him achieve his top-of-the-class ranking at the academy. He is also delighted that his cousins have picked up his enthusiasm for the computer to the point that they often get together to program in Pascal.

Luis wants to finish his high school in Tecpán and then attend the public university to study computer engineering. Eventually he would like to attend a university in the United States to obtain a Master’s Degree, if he could find a scholarship.

Ovidio Flores Ortiz
Graduate, Santiago Cooperative School

When Maria Elena Ortiz lost her husband some fifteen years ago, she was left to raise two sons by herself. For any ordinary woman this would be a daunting task under the best of circumstances. The present situation in Guatemala cannot be considered the best of circumstances by any stretch of the imagination. Not when women are relegated to second-class status, with few educational and job opportunities. But Maria Elena is no ordinary woman. She was determined that both her sons would make something of themselves. She has been working towards this goal since they were small boys.

Today, Carlos Simón, the older son, is an accountant. The younger son, Ovidio Flores, is in high school.

Ovidio commutes every day to Antigua from Santiago Sacatepéquez to attend classes. To do this he must be out of bed by 4:00 A.M. every weekday morning, take a bus into the city where he prepares for his classes which begin at 7:00 A.M. sharp. School is over by 12:30 and he returns home where he devotes most of his afternoons to study. His mother will allow him to do a few chores around the house but she is adamant that he not get involved with a real job. She is determined to brook no interference to his education.

“My mother wants me to have every opportunity to study and to dedicate myself to studying,” the teenager says.

Ovidio began going to classes when he was only three years old and throughout his schooling he has earned top grades.

When he entered junior high, he had the occasion to participate in the Cooperative for Education’s textbook program. He recalls how he rented the books for his main subjects, math, science, social studies and language arts and how much he appreciated the opportunity.

“The program was very beneficial to me,” he says, “because it made it easier to acquire the knowledge that one needs to perform better in the future. The books were very interesting and made me want to read even more. I especially liked the illustrations and the articles in the books because they make studying more meaningful and exciting.”

To this day, Ovidio’s greatest hero is his own mother. “She brought me and my brother up without a father. I do miss him but my mother has tried to be a father to us too.”