By Emily Moore
Today we went to visit the Canadian Embassy in Guatemala City. We spent the morning preparing our questions together and going over the specific topics we wanted to discuss. After two weeks in Guatemala, there were so many things we wanted to talk about but we decided to hammer in on the themes of government corruption, the criminalization of activists, and human rights abuses connected to Canadian mining in the country.
We arrived at the Embassy at 11 a.m. and shortly thereafter found our way to a private meeting room where we were offered coffee and tea. We began by telling the Ambassador and his colleagues about some of the experiences we had over the past few weeks and soon began to ask them specific questions about what the Canadian government was doing to help deal with some of the most pressing issues we encountered. However, the majority of us left the meeting slightly frustrated with their responses. Although they were very friendly and polite, we did not receive direct answers or helpful information to the majority of our questions. Nevertheless, it was a valuable learning experience and it helped us understand the complexities of policy and diplomacy much better.
For our last night in the city, we went to Restaurante El Adobe in zone 10. It was a wonderful experience, although-fairly bittersweet as we were all very sad to leave each other but also excited to go home. We gave presents to our two friends, Javier and Martin, to thank them for all their help translating, navigating, and teaching us during our trip. After dinner, we headed back to Casa San Benito and packed up for our flight the next morning.
All in all, I think I speak for everyone when I say that Guatemala was extraordinary and will be an experience that I’ll hold close to my heart everyday for the rest of my life.
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