Rural Guatemalan Library Slowly Revives After Devastating Fire

When she heard a fire had destroyed the Popular Library, 14-year-old Daisy Guamuch rushed home and grabbed every book she could find.

“I came back with everything we had in the house, even with the TV magazines from old newspapers,” she said. “I was ready to make anything part of the donation.”

The Biblioteca Popular, a three-room library overflowing with books, magazines, videos, board games and computers, burned to the ground Nov. 28 in a fire that investigators blamed on faulty wiring in an abandoned municipal building next door.

While questions about the fire linger, no one disputes that it wiped out the finest rural library in Guatemala.

In a country where less than 40% of people can read and children go to school for an average of only two years, hundreds of children had packed the library every day to study, read and discover a world outside this largely Mayan town on the shores of a breathtaking volcanic lake.

“I thought all of our hard work had been lost,” said librarian Norma Guzman. “Everything the library offered so many children and adults was destroyed.”

But it didn’t take long for the community to respond. As dawn broke after the fire, children flocked to help Guzman sift through the rubble in search of anything that could be salvaged.

When it became clear that everything was lost, a local TV station staged an impromptu telethon. Soon its one-room, concrete-walled studio was full of donations: tables and chairs, a new computer, four typewriters and 2,000 books. Those who did not have books donated a total of 23,300 quetzales ($3,000) in cash. Still others brought bicycles, paintings, soccer balls--anything that could be sold to raise money.

Two days later, the fire’s lone survivor--a yellow, red and blue sign whose bubble letters read “Biblioteca Popular”--was moved to a nearby junior high school. A temporary library was set up at the school in a long storage room that has just one electrical outlet.

In the months since, the library has received 4,000 more books from around the globe to help replace the 8,002 books lost in the fire.

Crews have begun building a new, larger building on the spot where the old library stood. City officials expect the $53,700 building to be finished by summer’s end.

“The community support has been absolutely fantastic,” said library coordinator Ann Cameron, a children’s author and former National Book Award finalist who moved to Panajachel from New York in 1983. “It shows how important the library has become to those who live here.”

First opened more than 70 years ago, the library was ignored by city officials and locals alike until 1992, when Cameron read a magazine article criticizing tourists who flock to Panajachel demanding first-world comforts but giving little back to the community they invade.

The article prompted Cameron to donate a collection of books to the mayor’s office. When she stopped by the library to make sure that the mayor had not kept her donations for his daughters, she found the books and a group of 12 children whose plight changed her life.

“They were sitting there, sweating in a dirty room where the windows didn’t open, trying to do research from a 1979 almanac,” Cameron said. “I felt: ‘These children aren’t going to make it. No matter how smart they are, they just have no opportunities.’ ”

Lining the dusty and decrepit shelves were Argentine Fashion magazines from 1948, government pamphlets pledging full Guatemalan literacy by the end of the 1970s and about 200 dogeared books.

Cameron began writing friends and publishers, who donated money and books. She then traveled to book fairs in Mexico and Spain to stock the library’s shelves with children’s stories and textbooks.

“Many of these kids live seven to a room that has only one small lightbulb. There is nowhere to do their homework,” said Cameron, whose new home inspired her to write a book about a young Guatemalan boy who teaches himself to read while shining shoes to support his family.

“After we cleaned up the library, children with illiterate parents began bringing books home to read.”

The books drew thousands of children who walked for miles, rode ferries across the lake or caught buses down from nearby mountains to enjoy the library. Its success at inspiring a thirst for learning is an important reason why more than one-third of Panajachel’s 13,000 residents are enrolled in school.

“Before, when we studied there were no books,” said Elisa Maria Cacrum, 23, a maid who returned to high school in early February, a decade after dropping out. “Even after the fire, the library makes what we learn in school much more clear when you see it in the books there.”

Every day, more than 100 children brave the sounds of pounding basketballs and clanging bells from the surrounding schoolyard to pore over the library’s new collection. When the 30 donated chairs run out, children sprawl on the concrete floor.

Like its predecessor, the temporary library may be the only place in Central America where it is not uncommon to find law students studying mammoth textbooks next to 3-year-olds scribbling in coloring books.

“We have to adapt our plans based on the books at the library. That’s the only place anyone can find books to do their homework,” said Rodrigo Barrera, a seventh-grade teacher. “The fire changed the way schools operate, though with all the books that have already arrived, the change should be temporary.”

Some books couldn’t be replaced. Gone forever are an 1843 book on the Prussian army, City Council notes from the 1600s when a number of Guatemalan cities were run by local militias, and a study published in the 1930s documenting all of Guatemala’s libraries.

“The ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ books are not here anymore,” said 3-year-old William Rodriquez, flipping through a picture book on bridges of the world. “But there are still lots of books to be found. I am really getting to like lots of other stories now.”

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On the Net:

Ann Cameron’s home page, with information on the library: https://https://www.childrensbestbooks.com