Julio E. Batres interview about Casa Xelaju Spanish school in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. The history of Casa Xelajú is one built on trial and error with visions of a better future for Guatemala and an international awareness of Guatemala’s political, social, and cultural situation. The seeds of the school were sown in the midst some of the worst years of the nation’s civil war in the 1980´s, at a time when tourists were a rarity in the country. The school’s founder Julio E. Batres moved to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala in 1974 to attend his last year of high school. Originally from Aldea Francisco Vela, a small farming community of about 2,000 people located outside of the San Felipe municipality, he got into trouble in his high school in Retalhuleu for participating in a teacher’s strike, one which the teachers lost. The school administration saw him as a trouble maker and various administrators told him that he would never graduate from the Institute. Wanting to pursue...