What We Are

"To Make the World Speak Spanish is to dare to do more," says the Latino rock star on this Pepsi billboard, which for months faced the incoming lane of a highway entering the large Pueblo of Chichicastenango. In that Pueblo, some 96 pecent of residents call themselves Maya, and many rural residents speak little or no Spanish. Clearly it is one of the goals of formal education to impart Spanish literacy to all children. Maya Activists, however, say that the entire message of the billboard - images as well as words - smacks of cultural insensitivity (racism?). At the MesoAmerican Academy, we see it as our duty to Guatemala and our students to provide for the discussion of the myriad social, economic and political issues and problems that face Guatemala and its majority Indigenous population in an ever more complicated and global world.

One of the most frequent questions heard from careful language school shoppers is “What makes your school different?”

Given the large handful of Spanish language schools operating in Guatemala nowadays, it’s a good question.  Many of them have good teachers; one-on-one teacher/student ratios are the norm; instructional methodologies are virtually the same; most schools offer a good range of entertaining and informative activities; many schools participate one way or another in a worthwhile service project; with only a few exceptions prices do not vary more than a few dollars per week from one school to another; and all but a few schools in Quetzaltenango have the same host family arrangements as other schools in Quetzaltenango (the situation is somewhat different in Antigua, where one student per household is not the norm, especially in the high summer months).   So only very seldom does a school distinguish itself by the type or quality of service it offers.  And unfortunately, in the rare cases in which the quality of service is a distinguishing factor, it is usually because the school is doing a bad rather than a good job of satisfying students.

The Academy's daily routine of teaching and services is at least equal to the best-run language schools in Guatemala. There is, however, one very important aspect of The Mesoamerican Academy that is unquestionably unique: while the primary day-to-day business of the Academy is teaching Spanish and local culture, the Academy is not just a Spanish, or language school.  IT IS, rather, a project in itself, an important collaborator in a group of non-profit US and Guatemalan non-governmental organizations (NGOs).  

So while language schools often provide an outlet for good-hearted foreigners to donate labor or resources, the Academy quite simply would not exist if it were not for the projects it supports through material and administrative support.  Indeed, to the best knowledge of the Academy’s founders, no other school is so integrally involved in collaboration with other NGOs. Working together with these NGOs, the Academy helps to fund and administrate almost 400 scholarships for primary and secondary students in rural areas of Guatemala; to administrate a teacher resource center that offers low-cost or free services to hundreds of teachers working in remote, impoverished rural schools; to assist in funding, directing and maintaining a dental clinic staffed by foreign volunteers and Guatemalan professionals; and to facilitate an international exchange program that brings together inner city youth from the US each summer to live and develop friendships with rural Mayan youth in the Guatemalan highlands.

Some of the 2007 graduating class of ACEBAR scholarship recipients at Juán de León, a normal school (or vocational school for teachers) in the city of Santa Crúz de El Quiché, present Tito Morales with a "recuerdo," or keepsake, for the opportunity given then by the organization's scholarships. Being President of ACEBAR, as well as director of the MesoAmerican Academy, are only two of the hats worn by Señor Morales, who is also a cofounder of the Maya Collaborative, facilitator of the Hoops Sagrado program, and director of another scholarship program in Cantel, Quetzaltenango.

The Mesoamerican Academy is unique, then, in that it was not conceived as a school that as part of its sales pitch offers visitors and students a chance to feel good about helping poor Guatemalans.  Rather, the Academy was specifically created as a funding and administrative vehicle to bring together the collaborative efforts of Guatemalan and foreign NGOs, scholars, and concerned groups and individuals.  Through donations made by Academy staff, friends and alumni; by the extensive and diverse base of experience of its teachers and directors; and especially by its efforts at facilitating and administrating the projects of US and Guatemalan NGOs, the Academy distinguishes itself not only as one of the best managed language schools in Guatemala, but as an important service and research organization in its own right.  Its promise to visiting students is to offer the best possible language instruction available anywhere in the world.  Its core mission to Guatemala and for the world, however, is to facilitate cultural understanding and constructive international relationships, with the ambition of enabling new friends to recognize the paradoxical wealth of poor countries and the poverty of rich countries. By sharing smiles, conversations, sweat, and sometimes tears, the Mesoamerican Academy seeks to help both Foreign Visitors and Guatemalans understand that wealth and poverty are two sides of one coin in the human currency - a currency of discovery, understanding, and kindness that is an essential reality and gift to all peoples in all cultures.