Escuela de la Montaña
The Mountain School Fund Raising Website

On this page:
History - Life at the School - One on One Studies - Learning Through Immersion - Families & Groups - Volunteer Opportunities - Surrounding Communities

Click here to read about Proyecto Lingüístico Quetzalteco

The Escuela de la Montaña was established in 1997 by the non-profit Spanish language school Proyecto Lingüístico Quezalteco de Español in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. The initiative grew from work supporting organized rural communities and with grass roots organizations using funds generated by the success of the language school. The creation of a small Spanish language school in the rural area outside the town of Colomba expanded the work amongst indigenous and campesino (rural worker) communities -- in effect an attempt to take some of the benefits of the language school industry more directly into the countryside of Guatemala. The jobs created by the Escuela de la Montaña improve the economic situation of our neighbors.
More importantly, profits are used to support grass-roots organizations (for example youth, campesinos, labor unions, women, demobilized ex-combatants, returned refugees and displaced persons) working to promote citizen participation, community development, education, human and workers' rights, and cultural activities. The Escuela also generates outside funding to support a scholarship program for young secondary students and other projects to benefit nearby communities.

The Escuela de la Montaña is easily accessible, an hour and 15 minutes by bus from Quetzaltenango, and only a short walk off the main road. Detailed travel information is available with your registration.
The school itself occupies two and a half acres of what was once a small coffee finca (farm) and the main school building was the owner's modest residence. The grounds include a steep ravine planted with coffee trees; a small organic herb garden with medicinal plants; banana, avocado and lime trees and medicinal plants, a fish pond (carp and tilapia), a fertilizer-producing latrine, a small (5-a-side) football pitch, a chuj (Mayan version of a sauna), and a look-out/view point where you can see the many different kinds of birds (including humming birds) who visit our gardens. Students and some staff stay in the main school building, which has bathroom and shower facilities, indoor and outdoor study areas, a small library with around (1,000) books and a kitchen for students' and staff use.
We do not have internet access at the school but there is an internet café five minutes bus ride away in a local community. Apart from studying and socializing with other students and staff, we have a variety of evening activities through the week; plus the bright stars and brilliant moon, the tropical night sounds and during rainy season, the storms rolling by from the Pacific some 60 km away.

Classes are taught under palm-thatched ranchitos on the grounds, four hours a day, Monday through Friday. Our Guatemalan teachers are trained and experienced. Their interests and backgrounds are varied but all of our teachers share a common commitment to social justice, sustainable development and peace in Guatemala. They will begin your week of studies with an oral and written evaluation and develop a study plan according to your level of Spanish. Teachers can adapt classes to most special needs that students have: in addition, teachers can dedicate class time to using any materials that you choose to bring to class. Students also have access to textbooks, dictionaries and literature from the school library.

None of the families hosting the students for meals speak English. You will be practicing your Spanish in conversation at meal times three times a day and at other times during the day and evening. Students can chat in Spanish with the teachers before class and during break times, and with our Guatemalan (non teaching) staff during the day and in the evenings.

The program also includes various activities which draw upon the richness of the school’s position in the social reality of rural Guatemala. Most weeks we´ll see at least two visiting speakers (in Spanish) covering various social, political and cultural aspects. On a regular basis we visit rural communities and ex-guerrilla communities and meet with local community organizations. Our own programs include a youth night (Noche Cultural); a weekly cookery class where you can learn how to make Guatemalan dishes; the weekly art and music classes for local children; the monthly distribution of scholarships; participation in various community celebrations; walks to the water fall or hikes to a volcanic lake.

Families are welcomed at the Escuela de la Montaña. Nuevo San José and Fatima provide around 120 children to play with and who will happily teach the local intricacies of using slingshots, making kites out of tortilla chip bags, cooking tamales made of leaves, stones and dirt, and playing games in the coffee fields. (We also have 3 dogs, carp fish, humming birds, coffee and banana trees!) The school’s teachers have experience working with children and teenagers. For a minimal extra cost, childcare can be arranged for the youngsters who do not formally study. To make special arrangements for childcare, shorter hours of study or placing a child with a parent in one family to eat meals, please contact us in advance. We are happy to accommodate special needs for families whenever possible.

Students have the opportunity to help out with daily activities such as caring for the gardens and animals, tutoring and reading to the local children, and manual labor. What is available depends upon the season. Volunteer placements might be arranged in nearby communities depending upon a number of factors including the amount of time a student has available, a student’s fluency in Spanish and any relevant skill level. We prefer to get to know you before we make arrangements with our neighbors to send volunteers.

The area surrounding the Escuela de la Montaña and the town of Colomba is the home of large coffee plantations, or fincas, which produce the “mountain grown” coffee that is one of Guatemala’s major exports. The workers on the fincas are usually landless rural workers, campesinos, who earn less than $3 per day, without job security or any of the legally-required labor benefits. Increasingly, finca owners find it more advantageous to replace their long-term permanent workforce with contracted workers who have no entitlements to housing, education or other benefits which may have been supplied in the past. In a linked process, daily work assignments are also increasing so that what was a “day’s work for a day’s pay” often now means the equivalent of two or three days’ work for a day’s pay. Laborers in Guatemala who attempt to organize are blacklisted, threatened or even killed. Many small communities have been displaced from the fincas losing, in many cases, not just their jobs but also the places which have been their homes for generations. These changes come in response to changing economic and social patterns in the area and particularly changes in the world market for coffee which have taken place over the last decade.

The Escuela de la Montaña is located among four communities of families who lived and worked for generations on nearby coffee fincas. Most of our neighbors are descended from “Mam” Mayan migrant workers who originally lived in the highlands outside Quetzaltenango. Our students take meals with the families of two communities who had labor struggles on the fincas where they lived, eventually winning money they were owed but losing their homes and their jobs in the process. The community of Nuevo San José was set up by the workers of the coffee finca San José Altamira, who won their back pay and benefits after years of struggle against an owner who had refused to pay their wages. The workers were then evicted from the finca they had called "home" for generations. Twenty five families pooled their resources and, with assistance from the Catholic parish in Colomba, they bought land to start their new community in 1993. Since then, the people of Nuevo San Jose have purchased two springs and installed a potable water system, built a school and basic block houses and dug a drainage system with funding from the Spanish Red Cross.

In June of 2001, the school received new neighbors when 18 organized families founded the community, Fátima. Like Nuevo San José, Fátima relocated to the area after a bitter labor struggle on the finca where they had previously lived. After being forced to work 18-hour days for less than Q18 at times, a group of workers organized in 1996. The workers were fired and black-listed as labor organizers and instigators, denying them of work in the region. During the legal proceedings, the owners deprived those who remained on the finca of water, firewood and closed the doors of the primary school to their children. After failing to break the union during 5 years of retaliations and unemployment through blacklists, the owners finally agreed to a settlement providing back wages and benefits to the workers. Some of the families in the union decided to settle in a community together and bought the land where they now live from the Catholic Church. That same year, they built houses with help from a housing program linked to the Church in Quetzaltenango. In 2007 community members managed to get water and electricity in their homes and build a primary school, and in 2008 they dug a drainage system – thanks to their hard work and fundraising by former students. Both communities opened community health clinics, through a Catholic Church run program in the local area. The clinics sell low cost medicine and are staffed by community members, who received training as health promoters through this program (and continue to receive ongoing training). Meals and celebrations in Nuevo San Jose and Fátima are a means of learning about the reality of life for rural campesinos. Most of our neighbors now look for work as casual day laborers and suffer from hunger, unemployment and destitute poverty. Because of the low wages and loss of jobs many men are leaving the area and traveling long distances searching for work in construction, agriculture and the informal sector in the cities. There is increased migration to southern Mexico and the United States in search of jobs.

Escuela de la Montaña. See testimonies from former students at the Mountain School here or click here to go to the Mountain School Fund Raising Website.