To stop listening among the usual and listen carefully to the people who live in poverty in this corrupt and unequal country is an act of justice. When their voice and their presence move from the peripheral places to the center of society, we begin to better understand why phrases like “the poor are poor because they want to” seem so stupid to us. Listening in Cuarto Mundo to several families from zones 18, 7, 3, 21 and the Nueva Esperanza settlement, in San Miguel Petapa, various reflections emerged on what poverty means and the struggle they make every day to reject it. At the end, they almost always added “this is my thought.”

“Since we are born we suffer inequalities, exclusions of all kinds, we are not born in beautiful places, the hospitals in Guatemala are not the most beautiful, from our birth we already suffer all of that,” said one person. "In addition, since we do not have education and training, they discriminate against us anywhere," said another. “Poverty is loneliness, because many homes disintegrate due to poverty. It is difficult to get out of poverty, because we only survive and despite starting an informal business, you are always in the same situation and you never progress because you do not have a formal and decent job. But you can't, you can't; Imagine, I leave at 4 in the morning every day, I return to my house at 5 in the afternoon, sometimes I don't even sell Q10, with that I tell you. Be aware, that is calamity. Imagine going for a walk, because I walk too much, I know the whole neighborhood, I go to the Colombia neighborhood. Imagine, my feet are already very tired, because I am already elderly, without retirement and without any minimum security, "said someone else.

Then the skein unraveled and several more added that “poverty is confusion and you don't know what to do when you're unemployed; for poor people, seeing empty plates on the table causes sadness; despite the fact that we have always worked in all kinds of jobs, we live in affliction; not having our own land or house implies paying rent; if we don't pay they take us out on the street. We tell the children: wait, we'll see how we do for food, but we have to pay for the room, it's better to have a roof over our heads and we can endure hunger for a little bit. That happens because they don't have a stable and well-paid job, so the children are left without food and they are the ones who suffer the most, and that is not happiness. I have a second-hand clothing sale, I'm there but nothing is sold, I'm there from 8 in the morning until the afternoon, and at the end of the day I sell Q5, but there I am asking God to be able to have something and I will continue to persevere. Although that does not allow savings and you can not think of a home improvement. On the other hand, knowing how to read doesn't guarantee having a stable job either. We fight for our sons and daughters, for ourselves to show that we can get ahead, it is our effort, our fight that we do every day is not for fun, but because we long for the best for them.

In a world that loves money and aporophobia abounds, the only thing that belongs to the poor is their thoughts. They know well that to get out of poverty it is necessary to have opportunities, education, decent work, housing, health, food; in essence, to have life. They know that they need open doors and opportunities, because where the State abandons, drug trafficking, pity and handouts enter that nothing changes in substance. "That they take us into account, that society includes us, because being poor does not mean that we are not worth anything," they say. This October 17, a day to remember our desire to eradicate misery, we listen to you to continue building together a future that puts an end to poverty, in which all people and the planet are respected equally. As one of them said: “We have never been defeated and we will never be defeated as women and men of struggle and peace.”