https://www.jancapps.com/about-guatemala daily 0.75 2024-03-11 https://www.jancapps.com/about-guatemala/blog-post-title-four-54hkp monthly 0.5 2024-03-11 https://www.jancapps.com/about-guatemala/blog-post-title-three-ezcah monthly 0.5 2024-02-29 https://www.jancapps.com/about-guatemala/blog-post-title-two-3n3jt monthly 0.5 2024-03-11 https://www.jancapps.com/about-guatemala/blog-post-title-one-46fft monthly 0.5 2024-03-11 https://www.jancapps.com/revised-blog-1 daily 0.75 2023-11-12 https://www.jancapps.com/revised-blog-1/blog-post-title-one-drk3x monthly 0.5 2020-08-25 https://www.jancapps.com/revised-blog-1/blog-post-title-two-dszk2 monthly 0.5 2020-05-20 https://www.jancapps.com/revised-blog-1/blog-post-title-three-twep6 monthly 0.5 2020-05-20 https://www.jancapps.com/revised-blog-1/blog-post-title-four-el9nc monthly 0.5 2020-05-20 https://www.jancapps.com/home daily 1.0 2024-02-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/bcf5b0c9-cbba-42e0-8260-9b719392f50a/cover.JPG https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/13358211-4c59-4bd6-8e70-5e41fd0c30a2/kayak.jpg Book “Bird’s Eye View” style painting from San Juan Laguna, Guatemala incorporating Jan and her daughter. Light and life guiding the way on life’s journey. https://www.jancapps.com/about daily 0.75 2023-11-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/a79f4885-c138-4070-a0e1-a5e368bb522c/jancapps1.jpg About Jan Raised in the South and now based in Seattle, Jan has worked domestically and internationally in public health for thirty years on projects serving Guatemalan campesinos, migrant farmworkers, battered women, and communities of color. Her greatest, most challenging, and most humbling project has been raising her daughter. Weaving in mythology and spirituality, she writes and speaks about blending her parenting and professional lives. https://www.jancapps.com/new-page-1 daily 0.75 2023-11-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/fac8df6f-1c1f-4008-9f60-21eb4db05bb0/maximon.jpg Dance of the Moors and the Christians Now Maximon, or San Simon is depicted as mannequin seated in a wooden chair dressed in a dark suit, sunglasses, and hat and has money hanging out of his jacket pocket. The cigar poking out of his bushy mustache is a tell tale sign of his whiteness and the bottle of Quetzalteca aguardiente with a woman in corte on the label is a sign of his “Indianess.” The locals still venerate Maximon bringing him gifts of liquor and money and a cofradia or Catholic brotherhood rotates his care to a different home each year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/f6f18351-c24e-476e-80a3-6bd25af8513b/clinic.jpg Dance of the Moors and the Christians - When I have visited “Spanish speaking” countries in the past, rather than calling me “Jan”, people wanted to know and call me by my name in Spanish, “Juanita.” When I interviewed for my last job in Guatemala, I offered staff the option of calling me either Jan or Juanita, whichever they felt more comfortable using. When I walked into the clinic on my first day of work, I was surprised to see “Bienvenida Jan” written in construction paper cut outs taped on the wall. Though no one said it outright, I inferred that this preference to use my English name was a token of resistance to Hispanization. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/38885acd-da33-4272-a908-591fcf3feb88/staff.jpg Dance of the Moors and the Christians - ODIM, the organization for whom I was working, had 15 full time staff and 25 part time. Of the full time staff, 3 were English speaking North Americans and 3 Ladino professionals, who were native Spanish speakers. The rest of the full time staff and all of the part time staff were Mayan Tzutujiil. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/224a700f-6772-4fbf-b7ae-3cf6399c3500/dance.jpg Dance of the Moors and the Christians - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/761f50ef-a9bc-42b6-a173-a5b3c2f9be85/coat.jpg Dance of the Moors and the Christians - I wondered who were these masked men? Were they from the village or a traveling troupe? Were they re-enacting a history that perhaps they did not know and acting out a tale that perhaps they themselves did not understand? Did they realize the metaphor of this dance as it related to their own conquest by the Spaniards? Does it even matter if they are remaking this dance into their own? Curious about whether what I had read about the dance aligned with either what I saw or what the villagers thought, I snaked in and out of the crowd, asking about a dozen people if any knew the meaning of the dance. None did. https://www.jancapps.com/home-1 daily 0.75 2023-11-11 https://www.jancapps.com/home-2 daily 0.75 2025-06-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/64a2dc17-811d-4992-92b4-039333298430/Takaya.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/e5187ba3-2b18-4721-bdbf-f7f0f0761813/logo.jpg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/ae819b21-99b9-4e4b-b1c4-8c22d7032b61/interview.JPG https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/b0f3f119-991c-4b0d-9e74-9cedbb9820d6/everything+changed.jpg Media - Podcast interview Jan was featured in the podcast And Then Everything Changed in which she shared her story. As a young woman, Jan found refuge from her deteriorating family life by working with immigrant farmworkers and farmworker women to help them create more just and equitable lives in the US. She moved to Guatemala to work as a community organizer for a health program so she could better understand the poverty and inequity for so many living in Central America. Upon her return to the US, she met a man she thought shared her vision and commitment, with whom she had a child and married. After a decade of planning with her husband to realize what she thought was a joint dream -- to embark on a great adventure to move to Latin America with their daughter -- and just three months before they were set to leave, her husband backed out of the trip. Within weeks he backed out of the marriage. Jan eventually decided to continue the journey without him and took a position as a clinic administrator for a small non-project organization in rural Guatemala and moved with her daughter to a Maya village for a year. As a single mother, working full time as an immigrant in a poor country, she was faced with the consequences of her commitment, the paradox of privilege when trying to blend in, and what it means to have dreams change. https://www.jancapps.com/new-page daily 0.75 2023-11-11 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/0d526de1-3cfa-4df5-9602-ecf4b7dfb2e1/IMG_20160803_1504452_rewind%5B1%5D.jpg https://www.jancapps.com/store daily 0.75 2024-01-15 https://www.jancapps.com/store/p/birds-eye-view-soft-cover monthly 0.5 2024-03-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/1705296605780-4842Q5ERXT9BAA9OSRLG/covercrop.jpg Store - Bird's Eye View-Soft cover https://www.jancapps.com/store/p/birds-eye-view-hardcover monthly 0.5 2024-01-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/629bf280af6cc57d9c80ed34/1705294754012-T0J3XIZY1YX6JZ5217IJ/covercrop.jpg Store - Bird's Eye View-Hard cover