The Comment Factory

Photo of: Evelyn Mansilla; her mum, Hermelinda Castro; and her daughter, Abbey Mansilla Juarez

The sprawling, 40-acre rubbish dump in the heart of Guatemala City is the biggest waste disposal in Central America. Almost twenty years ago it was the setting for the birth of an innovative arts project – Fotokids – which taught photography to children living in the dump. The children were given cameras and encouraged to document their lives, the organisation also provided grants for their formal education. The results were so impressive that their photographs were exhibited across the world and funding opportunities soon opened up. Now the organisation has expanded into some of the country’s most dangerous and troubled areas. Evelyn Mansilla, 27, started at the organisation fifteen years ago when she lived by the dump. She now works as a teacher at the school and as its Administrative Director. She believes that an education in art can offer her students a future out of poverty.

“I grew up living by the municipal rubbish dump in Guatemala City. My family had no financial stability, we survived on the money my mum could bring in from working in the dump searching for items to resell.

A friend of mine from the dump started going to photography classes at Fotokids. I would watch him out by the dump taking photographs with his camera and became really intrigued. I soon started attending classes with him and learning about photography. After a year they gave me a grant so that I could complete my formal education.

I became the first member of my family to graduate from school. It’s very rare for children in the dump to finish school. Their families don’t see the long-term potential of education, they are more interested in being able to get some quick cash, so they send their children out to work in the rubbish dump. I was lucky in that my mum saw the benefit of me having an education.

Once I finished school I became the first Fotokids student to start university. I also began to be employed by the organisation as an administrative assistant and as a teacher to the younger students.

One of the first photographic projects I worked on with my students was based on the theme ‘what I want to be when I grow up’. This was also the first project I had done as a student. When I did it I had to really think about it and explore the different possibilities that were out there for me. Could I really be a teacher or a secretary? Could I really go to university? This is something many members of my family never really had the chance to do.

Poverty in this country is a vicious cycle. Our parents were educated to conform with the lives they were born into: they were born poor, they will live poor and they will die poor. They were brought up not to challenge this, this is partly because they don’t have another way of seeing the world. We have broken out of this cycle partly through the projects we participated in at Fotokids many of which focused on nurturing our dreams and widening our horizons.

I have now graduated and work at the organisation full-time. I recently set-up a girls only class there, the students are all between 15-17 years old. The idea came about because we were keen to start a project which attempts to deal with the issue of machismo, a big problem here in Guatemala. This manifests itself in making it difficult for women to find employment and in high levels of domestic abuse.

It occurred to us to work with girls in order to set an example in the community, to demonstrate that girls are capable of doing the same as guys when given the same opportunities. We wanted to show that their economic status doesn’t matter, we wanted to give them tools that would make them employable and open doors to opportunities other than becoming housewives.

In order to select a group of girls for the course I gave them a short test which included an artistic test and some gender-related questions. We asked them what professions they thought women could work in: 18 out of 20 answered that they could only work in the domestic professions. This attitude is not unusual, it is a reflection of how Guatemalan society views women.

The group has now been running for two years and their attitudes have really changed. They are now continuing with further education, studying a range of things from graphic design, to computing and tourism.

I think the most important aspect of what I do is to try and inspire my students by my example. I am not ashamed to tell them, ‘Look, I suffered from hunger, I had to eat from the rubbish bins, I suffered everything that I had to suffer in order to get where I am today.’ I like my students to see that it’s possible, it’s not easy, there are sacrifices that have to be made to reach our dreams, but the important thing is to have those dreams. This hopefully encourages them to think: ‘well if she can do it, why can’t I?’

I met my husband, Berlin Juarez, at Fotokids. We were both students at the school but the truth is that when we first had classes together I didn’t like him at all! Over time we became friends and then on days that he didn’t come into Fotokids I would miss him and began to realise that I really liked talking to him and spending time with him. One day he asked me if I wanted to go to the cinema with him. After the movie we started to talk about how we felt about each other, we ended up talking for hours about what we wanted from a partner, from love and what we wanted for our futures. That is how we realised that we were made for each other. One year later we were married.

We are good for each other because we both know how much we have struggled in order to have what we have today. We don’t have a lot, but we have jobs that we love and a secure house and family. We have now been together for five years and we can’t believe it. He inspires me, as does our daughter, as a woman I feel very fulfilled and very happy.”

Evelyn Mansilla spoke to Ana Caistor Arendar in Guatemala City.