Juana Pich Tzurec

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Juana Pich Tzurec by Friendship Bridge in Guatemala. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 12 - 18 months, Friendship Bridge will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

On my arrival at the lane from where you can go to Juanas house we are welcomed by a little boy who immediately steals my heart. He marvels around us like a butterfly asking why we are here so far up, where normally only locals go. We tell him we have a meeting planned with Juana Pich Tzurec and he responses with the loveliest smile: that’s my mama! He then runs of to go and find her because he is sure she hasn’t come back from the markets yet.

While we post ourselves at the corner he keeps running back and forth to tell us she is coming but not here yet, to run off again down the road to see if he can see her coming up the hill. After a little while we notice a tuktuk coming up the hill: filled from bottom to the roof with the leaves to make tamales, but no Juana….

Because she didn’t fit in the tuktuk anymore and she follows by foot shortly after.

Juana invites us to her house and with the help of the loan officer called América I can conduct my interview.

To my question how her credit was used she tells me the credit helped her to buy ingredients to make tamales and her business has gone well. Last week was a bit a difficult week because of the Sololá festival of the virgin of Asunción. You would think a busy festival would give her better business but she explains me other women who are normally not in the city come to the city to sell tamales during the festival and this way her sales were very low. But shortly after she explains me her special recipe has brought her customers who search for her. One woman even asked her to make and bring the tamales to the school she is a teacher at. This way Juana can sell all the teachers tamales. I explain to her I don’t know how to make tamales and she even tells me a couple of her secret ingredients! She uses all kinds of peppers, both spicy and sweet. Rice, tomatoes and potatoes and even some chocolate! It sounds like a yummy tamale to me!

Her daughter walks in and out and I ask her mother how many children she has. She tells me five but her daughter corrects her and tells me four. This confuses me a bit and I decide to ask again and this is when Juana tells me the story of the little boy. (she whispers so he cant hear it)

The boy’s mother died while giving birth to him and his father wasn’t able to take care of him. The mother was a neighbour of one of her nieces who lives in Concéption; much more inland from Sololá. Because Juana knows so well what it feels like to be abandoned, she decided to take him in her house and raises him as her own! This is now almost eight years ago and from the way she talks about him I can see she loves him dearly.

I ask her what her wish for the future is and she explains me she wants to do something on non-market days and she dreams of having a shop where she can buy and sell traditional clothes, while keep selling the tamales. The rising price of food worry’s her, and she knows this dream needs to be put away for a while. She has gotten a new credit now and will first focus on her tamales sales she tells me, but one day…….!

The moment of the picture they all run out of the door. At first I don’t understand why but when I see them arrive back I see they have put on there best clothes and also Moíses (the little boy) has put on his best outfit for the picture.

In the picture we invite Juanas mother as well.

From left to right you see Moíses, Juana, Juana’s mother and Juana’s Daughter with her young son.