Tucked away behind the iron doors of a simple cinderblock building straddling the unpaved fringes of San Juan Alotenango lies the scrappy anonymity of one man's hope. Asociacion Corazones Unidos para Guatemala, Hearts United for Guatemala, operates the only school in this region, providing an education and a noon meal for sixty pueblo children five days a week. As well, the school offers semi-annual medical and dental check-ups for every child. All of this is free thanks to the efforts of Carlos Humberto Aguilar, a young ex-seminarian who scours the residences and businesses of this town and the ones surrounding it for handouts, loose change, and leftovers, when he isn't working at a nearby university to support himself. In his spare time, a concept I found incomprehensible, he repairs, paints, and decorates the place. Most remarkable are the smiles on the children's faces, on the face of the local young girl he has employed to teach them, and especially on the face of Carlos himself. He is not exhausted, but rather exhilarated by the school's success. It is a success he is quick to disown as his. He says it is the effort that succeeds. The "effort" being God's hand in all of this. In a land whose every town and building is named after a saint, there ought to be a marker for Carlos.
