Last night you saw the major point of contention in Jalacte Village where Guatemalans have erected fences for their property in Belizean territory. But it's not all contention over fences. In fact much like the village of Arenal there is great degree of easy community interaction between villagers of Jalacte and those from nearby Guatemalan villages. The most visible demonstration of this is the school, St. John the Baptist R.C. that is used by Guatemalan children for their education. Pedro Tush is the school's principal and he told us how this works.
Peter Tush,
"We have 221children and we have 8 teachers. From the 221 we have like a, just last year we had 68 coming from across the border and they come to school here. I was telling the other people, this started way back when we started the village here in '83. They started to build that good relationship but we had to get the okay from the education officers and the local managers and we started to build this relationship between the two villages. Sometimes I hold sessions with the Guatemalan parents and they cooperate with the bylaws that we have because their education system is different from ours, having their children coming to learn and write in English and speak the language as well. And this is the only country in the Americas that the language spoken here is English."
