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Rodrigo Abd / AP
A woman sweeps the floor of a barber shop in Guatemala City. Guatemala City is a place where people live in fear.
Rodrigo Abd / AP
Passengers travel on a packed public bus in Guatemala City.
Rodrigo Abd / AP
Police officers take cover from the rain under a plastic sheet in Guatemala City.
Rodrigo Abd / AP
Evangelical pastor Esbin Bar Flores, preaches on a microphone as Noe Laria holds his speaker in La Terminal popular market in Guatemala City.
AP reports: GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala City is a place where people live in fear.
Dire poverty, gang violence and drug trafficking, and the failure of the government to provide a safety net, have contributed to the creation of a society where people isolate themselves from each other and make sure others keep their distance and where many seek solace in religion.
Squalor and poverty are constants in this city of 3 million. Paint peels from walls. Shantytowns sprawl along the sides of mountain ravines.
"We're a sad people, living in a depression," says Marco Antonio Garavito, a psychologist and director of the Mental Hygiene League. "It's hard for us to help each other because we live inside a shell that keeps us away (from others). We have a hard time with physical contact, with giving a good handshake.
Read the full story here.
Rodrigo Abd / AP
Homeless men gather at the La Terminal popular market in Guatemala City.
Rodrigo Abd / AP
Blanca touches the hair of an exhumed body as she walks through the the main cemetery with her grandchildren in Guatemala City. In Guatemala bodies are exhumed if relatives don't pay, six years after the burial, to renew the graveyard permission for another period of 4 years. After sending a telegram, if there is no payment, cemetery workers destroy the individual graveyards, and throw the skeletons into a collective graveyard.
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wow. all I can say.
I'm guessin' exhumed bodies are a "normal" thing in Guatemala. They don't seem too shocked by it.
There goes the necrophilia rates! (sorry, I know that was bad)
But we can afford to send Billions of dollars to Israel so they can buy new bull dozers for destroying Palestinian homes. How much do we good Christians send to these poor people?
How much can you good Christians afford to send to Guatemala? America has to borrow more money every day just to pay its bills.
The truth is that the rate of growth in the world's real wealth can not keep up the rate of growth in the world's population and most "good" Christians are opposed to teaching about how to have sexual gratification without causing a pregnancy and most are opposed to providing family planning counseling and medications for birth control.
If you want your God to smile upon you, send your own money to Guatemala, don't ask the US government to send mine.