Angie

Welcome to THE CHILDREN´S VILLAGE OF CASA GUATEMALA IN RÍO DULCE, IZABAL

Thanks so much for coming to visit our place, please come in, make yourself at home and fallow me, I will show you my pride: The children's village in Rio Dulce.

My name is Angelina Perez Ortés de Galdámez, but everybody calls me Angie, I am one of the founders and legally represent Asociación Casa Guatemala O.N.G. and together with my Board: a group of Guatemalan´s professionals, we run Casa Guatemala´s projects in the city and Rio Dulce.

Bringing to life the Children's village in Rio Dulce took a life of personal experiences, mental brightness, understanding, disappointments, frustration, perseverance, and why not say it? stubbornness. Through a long period of time, for a moment it was and maybe still is, like engaging in a battle.

Now that the Children's village is not a dream any more, all kind of stories has been weaved around its origin, and around myself. This gossip has turned the whole place into a kind of Children´s garden with all kinds of hide secrets, it has resulted into such a wonderful and mysterious place that it is evident we now have a place which has become a source of material to write all kind of fantastic, intricate, and political stories. Something like Casa Blanca.

Last February, I had a very bad car accident, Thanks God, doctors and therapists are doing a very good job in order to save my foot. This situation has unable me to move around and has limited my visit to Rio Dulce.

Some one with a twisted mind made some threat phone calls, extortion probably, While the investigation went on, I went to visit for a couple of weeks my daughter in Mexico, now I am back, and ¿SURPRISE? Again, I am the protagonist of all kind of fantastic stories regarding my trip.

After I read some stories and novels, the Children's village in RÍO Dulce today, looks like it is not a reality, like it is a myth, a fantasy surrounded by a net of mystery.

The writers, before my death, are already immortalizing me, and I am not sure I like it. I don't know how should I feel about it, but something for sure I feel. I am proud to have built a Children´s village where children without a responsible family and orphan children receive what life has denied to them, as well as a place of inspiration for the youth who is greedy to get to the right place as the perfect stage to place a story that could become a best seller.

My father Rodolfo Perez Inurreta came from a wealthy family, he was born in a place named Palizada near to Laguna del Carmen in Mexico, at the age of 17, he ran away from home to join the revolution, he became a political target, so he had to choose between his ideals or his safety, he decided to escape to Belize which at that time was a British colony. After realizing the poverty of the colony and have heard about the richness and opportunities in Honduras, he took a boat and sailed to Puerto Cortes.

My mother: Angelina Ortez de Perez, was born in El Salvador, her group with her mother, ants, uncles, and together with 13 brothers and sisters, cousins, orphans and displaced children joined the General Sandino forces, some of my grand mother's children were born in the battle fields in different places in Central America, at the time Geral Sandino came down, the troops were dispersed and the whole family had to escape, they got across to Honduras coming from Nicaragua.

My father and my mother met in La Lima, a town were the United Fruit Company had their main quarters. My father work with the Company over 40 years, my mother passed away leaving behind four small children, three boys and me, my father remarried, with a woman who already had four children on her own, later in life they both had two more children, which made 10 children in the family.

I had my schooling in La Lima, Puerto Cortes, San Pedro Sula, and later in life in the Linguist Institute of the N. Y. University.

At a very early age, I got married with Rodolfo Galdamez Griffin, he was from Honduras, a son of a prominent and successful family in San Pedro Sula, We had four children three boys and one girl, as a couple we started a business which with time became very successful, after 18 years of marriage, my husband was killed in a car accident leaving me with the responsibility of four children an two big business to run.

One year after the death of my husband, I took the decision to put the children in boarding schools abroad, my daughter went to Grier School in Pennsylvania, my youngest son went to a boarding school in Main, my second son went to a school in Mexico and my older son stayed in Honduras going to school and working in the business at the same time. My daughter continued her education in England. My sons quit school before finishing their education.

In the mean time, I decide to travel as a backpacker through the world for almost five years, until I found out about the need for volunteers in a home for starving children in Guatemala City.

Through my traveling, I saw and learned many things, I enjoyed very much.

Till September 1977. I walked in an office in a house in zone 10 in Guatemala city, where they invite me to sit down, I looked around, and all the chairs were occupied with the exception of a small blue sofa, no one was sitting there but a small white rolled package was in one end, I decided to sit down and I try to make space by moving the white rolled package, when I touched it, I felt something that my brains were telling me that was the body of a small child. Later on, I was taken to, a room with around 20 starving and dying children, scenes that I felt were a punishment.
I was brutally faced with starvation, that made me open the eyes to the extreme poverty of our countries, the politic standstill system we have had for years. I realized how fortunate me and my family have been. I thought in that moment, if the children of Guatemala are in this state, what state are the children from Honduras?

The scenes I saw in that house broke my heart, I felt guilty and in debt with the children in that room, the body of the dead baby on the blue sofa,
and the starving children in the world.

People frequently ask, why are you here?, why are you doing this job? But I haven't heard any one saying: Why I am not here and stay as long as
she has? Why I am not doing this job? If she can, why not me?

Angie