Dear Stupid Ass Neighbors,

I know you won’t ever read this letter. Part of why I am writing this letter is to lament the idiotic nature of the people living in my neighborhood as a whole. As individuals, there are a few who seem to have been raised with an ounce of common sense. However, the rest of you? As a populace? I’m embarrassed to be Guatemalan when I am around you all. 

You lack basic critical thinking skills. You take rumors and gossip as firsthand accounts without any interest in fact-checking that information, then pass it on like it’s gospel. It makes me sick. It is the sort of closed-minded behavior that I make fun of boomers like my mom for, not being able to use the tools readily at hand to verify information before jumping to conclusions. 

Unfortunately, it is not an epidemic shared only by the senior citizens around me. It’s all of you! Young, old, middle-aged. It doesn’t matter! And I want to say it is all your fault, that you should know better. But the fact is, you don’t know better. 

I am coming to learn that Guatemala had a long history of corruption, and I think you’d call it homeland terrorism. Whatever it is called when anyone who tries to stand up for the rights of their people, who wants to be a warrior for justice and speaks openly and intelligently, exposing the corruption in plain sight, when those people are “silenced” or “disappeared”; a lovely euphemism for kidnapped and killed. Whatever that is called, that is what Guatemala has as its claim to fame. That is the legacy. And it makes me sad for all of you.  

According to the tour guide at the Palacio Nacional, the Peace Memorial Sculpture in the main courtyard (the same one my mother made fun of for being lame) was made to commemorate the end of the long civil war in the country that ended many lives, disappeared many activists, and left behind a legacy of post-war corruption. None of you talk about it, but I know many of you were alive during it and were raised in that environment. Taught to keep your head down lest you be singled out and removed permanently for speaking up. 

What you have developed is a survival logic that is difficult to overcome. If even the educated people among you would support someone seen as corrupt, it gets me thinking that your motivation is less from the logical standpoint, such as that you agree with their policies. But rather from a personal beneficiary standpoint, such as this person gave you a job which allows you to keep a roof over your head and live comfortably, and you are willing to overlook a lot to have that. And more importantly, to keep it. 

That sort of mentality is prevalent among too many of you in the Colonia. There are too many of you who would rather just go back to the way things were when you “had things good”. Now that things are changing, especially if this is the way they were supposed to have been from the start, and you no longer benefit from the system having been realigned, anyone who promoted the change is seen as the enemy. 

I am super annoyed with all of you. Annoyed because despite having the knowledge of the world accessible at your fingertips, despite living in the year 2026 and seeing how the rest of the world is navigating, you refuse to take your head out of the sand and ask questions. 

You would rather just have things happen around you, without having any input, without having to lift a finger – but only when they convenience you. If the result of living with your head up your ass is that your fellow neighbors are inconvenienced or damaged by your apathy, you don’t give one shit. 

Sounds familiar to me, in a disturbing way.