I’ve been on a countless number of tours in my life. Food tours that left my tummy full and my soul happy. Ghost tours where I learned a town’s weird and spooky stories. Market tours where I tried and learned about fruit I never could have imagined for how exotic they were. Tons of city tours. And tours to natural marvels whose beauty took my breath away. But I’ve only been on one tour that was charged with so much emotion, pride, and hope that the guide began to tear up in the fervor of his explanations.
On a recent tour to Guatemala, our guide buzzed with an excitement I had never seen as he explained to us the background of a particular town. Apparently the women there had rallied together to form a co-op that had been wildly successful, despite many obstacles. The result, according to our guide, was better economic outcomes, more independence for women, higher rates of schooling for children, and more women going off to college. All while preserving their Mayan culture and avoiding the oh-so-common brain drain of small towns to larger cities.
Our guide was enthusiastic and his excitement was contagious. I walked away from that tour intrigued by the women of this village. I wanted to know if what our tour guide told us was accurate. Was this town better off? Were these women driving measurable change that would distinguish their town from others? I decided to go to the data to understand if this story was just a fairy tale.
A Model of Empowerment and Development?
Sololá, Guatemala is the region (known as a department) around Lake Atitlán. It’s beautiful, having the deepest lake in Central America. This lake is surrounded by three volcanoes, and home to a vibrant Mayan culture in its lakeside towns. As we prepared to board a boat to take across Lake Atitlán to a different town, our tour guide, Juan, told us that we would visit three distinct pueblos. He explained that one village would be small, but a strong example of the strength of women and the success that self-determination could bring. The second pueblo would be more like Vegas, bold, large, and catering to tourists. The last one would be large and conservative.
The first town, San Juan La Laguna (SJLL), was colorful and clean. It has a population of ~14K. We visited a textiles shop. There, a young woman gave us a demonstration of how to spin thread, color it and weave it. Before her demonstration, Juan explained what made this village so special. According to him:
San Juan La Laguna has developed a lot in the last 15 years. The civil war in Guatemala ended 29 years ago, and that spurred a big lifestyle change and development. This pueblo is a model of positive development, and it’s because of three things:
- Economic sustainability through self-dependence. Unlike other towns that became dependent on NGO aid, this town took NGO help once, formed their own co-ops, and invested in themselves.
- Investment in education. Education is valued here. Unlike other towns, you won’t see children working or asking for money on the street – they attend school starting at two years old. There are nine schools and one university here.
- Women empowerment. The women of this town formed the textile co-ops (even despite friction from the men…he noted that in the beginning there was an increase in divorce). The women of the town are educated, and they earn their own money.
The co-ops have been a positive driving force. 85% of the sales go to families, and they pool the rest of the money as a community resource – a group savings account, scholarships, assistance for if someone gets sick, etc. Also, women cannot join the cooperation unless they send their children to school, further solidifying the culture of education here.
Juan told us that SJLL was unique in all these things. And even better, despite educating their people, they managed to preserve their culture and hold on to their population. He asked the young woman some questions. She told us about how she works in the co-op but is also currently in university. Juan swelled with pride. And I was moved and curious about this story. My mind buzzed with questions throughout the rest of the tour.
The next town we visited, San Pedro La Laguna, was comparable in size to the first. But it had a very different vibe. Juan likened it to Las Vegas, a party town. Right away when we docked we did see swaths of white tourists laying around the docks sunbathing. And, I noticed that unlike our first stop, many children came up to us trying to sell us things.
The last town, Santiago Atitlán, was big – 60K people. We spent the majority of that trip in a church learning about how the people navigated blending their indigenous beliefs with Christianity. We learned about how the town is conservative, but oddly tolerant. I noticed children selling things on the street here as well.
The Stories We Tell vs. the Data
When I returned from my trip, I wanted to understand how much of Juan’s story about San Juan La Laguna held up to reality. Education seemed to be a common thread of the town’s success. So I decided to use education metrics to verify his story. What I found was disappointing.
San Juan La Laguna does not outperform other municipalities in its region, Sololá, in terms of school enrollment.
I expected to see higher enrollment rates for school age kids across the board. In particular, I expected higher enrollment rates for girls. Instead, when I looked at education data for 2023, out of the 18 municipalities in the region, SJLLA was mid. It also tended to have lower rates for girls than other towns. (School age girl enrollment was ranked 14 and 7 out of 18 for primary and high school respectively). This did not hold up to the story that Juan told about San Juan La Laguna. He said that unlike other towns, kids here went to school and did not work and beg in the streets.
Looking a little deeper, you’ll see in further detail how much the data goes against what Juan told us on the tour. Below, the other two towns we visited are highlighted in yellow. Both of them have higher education enrollment rates than San Juan La Laguna. Below to the right we see that boys in SJLL are enrolled at a higher rate than the average town in Sololá, but girls are enrolled at a much lower rate.
These trends hold true for high school enrollment as well. The main difference is that in Santiago Atitlán, the very conservative town, enrollment rate drops below SJLL for high school. Overall, most towns in Sololá have very low high school enrollment rates at almost 21% on average. And the Sololá region/department ranks 8 out of the 11 Guatemala departments available in this dataset for both primary and high school enrollment (there are actually 22 departments in Guatemala).
Considerations Around the Stories We Believe and Data
I really wanted to see some indication that the women of San Juan La Laguna had come together, advocated for themselves and their children. I thought I’d see noticeably high emphasis on education compared to other towns in the region as a result. But there was no indication of this in the data. One of the things that I considered that could affect the insights drawn from my analysis here is that it is solely looking at the year 2023. Maybe Juan’s story had more of an improvement slant. Perhaps enrollment rates in the town used to be much worse, but had improved (although he certainly painted the picture of better outcomes overall for SJLL than other towns). Unfortunately, I do not have data over time to confirm that in this study.
One other point to keep into consideration is the enrollment rates. Many of them are above 100%. This is because they are calculated as number enrolled over the school age population. However, when children repeat grades, enroll late, or come into lower grades as older kids, it inflates the number of children enrolled to above the level of school-age children. It would be more telling if we only saw enrollment for children who are in the grade that they should be in. However, this has its own set of confounding elements to think about when trying to make sense of these numbers.
Another consideration is that perhaps outcomes by town vary depending on how large or small the population is. Actually, in his story Juan painted SJLL’s size as an advantage — a reason why the women were able to come together and cooperate successfully and make those changes (smaller group of people means its easier to get a majority to adopt). The town has a population of about 14K he told us. I wanted to check to see if there was any indication that population size correlated with education enrollment. Below, we see that there is no strong relationship there. Towns with populations of school age children similar or smaller than SJLL had both better and worse enrollment rates.
The last thing I wanted to check around education is whether college rates for women were exceptional here. After all, this is one of the points that Juan stressed. He had made sure that the young woman that gave the textiles presentation also told us a little bit about her college experience. I observed enrollment rates for the departments in 2023 by sex. The average matriculation composition is 57% women. This is an odd phenom considering that school-age girls are in school at lower rates than boys. Even still, Sololá is unremarkable in the percent of women that make up their matriculating classes. It ranked 11 out of the 22 departments available in that dataset (Estadísticas de Educación INE).
Real Life, Stories, and Data
Juan’s story around San Juan La Laguna was so compelling. The vibe of the town, the sharp, poised, young lady working in the co-op but also attending college, and Juan’s passion in telling it all seemed to support what he was saying. Yet, when we look at education data, a key pillar presented as to why SJLL is a special place, it doesn’t support this story at all. (This isn’t the first time that my takeaway from an experience didn’t line up with what was in the data. Take a look at this article about Guatemala Coffee and Economic Stability). I don’t want to believe that he outright made up a narrative to entertain and inspire his clients. I think he believes what he was telling us.
But I think the story, told by enough people and enough times, grew and solidified itself in the minds of the community so that it became truth. Anecdotes of co-operation, the rules around mandatory schooling for children, the women grasping opportunity and casting aside their men until they fell in line with the vision all have groundings in truth, I’m sure. But, anecdotes are confined to narrow perception. They don’t give us the wide view of a situation. They can’t give us an overall analysis of how we’re really doing. And that is why data is important. It can give us the wider context that our anecdotes and narrow perceptions are missing.
But we also have to be careful of the limitations of data. I don’t know if there’s a part of the story I’m missing due to having data for just one year. Or if there’s some nugget of clarity missing because our enrollment rates can be inflated above 100%. These are all considerations we have to keep in mind.
What I do know is that the story of the women of San Juan La Laguna moved me. Although the section of data I chose to focus on, education, did not support the narrative, it doesn’t mean that these women did not do something special. It doesn’t mean that they haven’t made their town better off from what it was. It does not mean that we should discard the tenets from Juan’s story that made the town a model for economic development. Stories, just like data, can be powerful.
Sources
Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (INE). https://www.ine.gob.gt/educacion/
Ministerio de Educación. https://estadistica.mineduc.gob.gt/anuario/home.html#
Guate en Datos. https://guateendatos.org.gt/educacion/cobertura/#educacion-superior
