The signing of Guatemala's peace accords in late December marks the first time in over four decades when all of Central America is at peace. But what does that word mean to the millions of people who have fled war, unemployment and landlessness in the countryside to make a life in the city? Maria de Carmen Perez, an illiterate, 44-year-old mother of six, earns $13-$16 a week washing clothes for vendors in Guatemala City. She explains that the key challenge in her life -- like that of most of her female neighbors -- is to raise her son to respect women and not abandon the family. Her words were recorded and edited by PNS associate editor Mary Jo McConahay, a writer and journalist who has lived in Guatemala for over a decade. Photographs of de Carmen Perez are available on request from Pacific News Service.

GUATEMALA CITY -- I'm old and tired -- I'm 44 -- but I struggle to raise my teenage boy, Danilo, so he will not be like other men.

"If I see you with a cigarette I'll grab it and fill your mouth with chile," I tell him, because I know one vice can lead to another, and if he smokes, soon he will drink. And how many men have I known who have died from drink?

I came to the city from a village when I was a child and I will never go back. By the time I was 14, I had learned how to work in houses, how to wash dishes with soap and water, how to iron, how to cook a pan of rice. All we had to eat in the village was beans. My father would come and ask me for money because I was making 60 cents a day.

Like me, most women I know don't have husbands. I look around and see life can be better when a family has both a man and a woman to earn money. Our house has only a dirt floor, and walls made of old boards and tin. It stands on a steep hill far from the center of the city. But from the colonia's main street -- the one that's hard-packed dirt, not a muddy ditch -- I see three shacks being rebuilt with concrete blocks. Each of those women has a husband who lives with her.

For six years I have lived without a man in the house. There is no one to bring home a chicken or some meat. But there is also less suffering. No man means no drinking, no fighting before the meat is cooked. We may only eat herb soup, but I'm happy alone with my children.

You could say I've had bad luck with men, but to me it is common luck. The father of my first child died -- I don't know how because he had already left me. That was after our baby died at age six months from a bronchial infection. I had no money to see a doctor or buy medicine. Then the father of my three eldest daughters left after seven years. I have two little girls now, seven and ten, and I don't dare leave them alone. A few weeks ago I came home and found the smallest girl crying because a boy was trying to force himself on her. This is a rough place.

I don't know why men can't take responsibility, but I do know the law doesn't hold them accountable when they abandon their families. I want my son to have respect for girls, and someday for a wife. "When you say bad things in the street, don't bring those words home -- remember your sisters," I tell him. I want him to learn to chop tomatoes and peel potatoes, to wash clothes, to know how to run a house.

"I'm not a woman," he says when I ask him to carry my heavy basket from the market.

"What happens if your wife gets sick?" I reply.

My son is going to suffer all his life from not having money, but he has to be responsible. I wonder sometimes if I give him too much responsibility. He is only 13. But then I think that both of us have to make an effort because the girls are still young and I want them to go to school and learn how to read so they can get jobs in an office or in a store. "You're not the papa of these girls, I know, but you have to help," I tell him. And he does -- for now. I worry that he does not have examples of good men.

His father was a vendor at the public fountain where I wash clothes. I fell in love with him but I never brought him home. I wanted to protect my girls. Often these "stepfathers," as we call them, molest one's daughters, and there isn't much you can do about it once they are in your house and your whole family depends on them.

When Danilo was born, his father wouldn't give him his last name. "You don't eat from a last name, but from the efforts of your parents," I tell him. In our case that means my clothes-washing which earns $13 to $16 a week if it doesn't rain and the clothes can dry.

I see girls looking at my son because he's handsome and smart but I tell him he must learn to work like I do before he can fall in love and to keep his desire to study. Not many boys in our neighborhood are still in school at his age. And we are plagued with "maras," gangs of boys who swarm over you like ants so you can't defend yourself, and take any money you have. They can make in a day what I earn in a week and buy nice shoes or a shirt. This is a temptation for any boy.

My son was born in the city and doesn't know things can be worse. He wants something more -- I know it even if he doesn't say it. I tell him there are chances in the city if you know how to take them. I am so thankful there are no knife or glass scars on his face from gang fights or the look in his eyes that comes from sniffing glue. But what if he changes? The maras are always there. And he will be disillusioned if he makes all that effort to study and doesn't find good work.

My worst fear is that no matter what I do, Danilo will turn out like the other men I have known. Sometimes a health worker from the school comes to talk about raising children. If I knew how to write, I would take notes. Raising boys can be more difficult than raising girls, one said, and I myself can see that boys want to climb fast in life, which is not always possible. "Hitting the child doesn't fix the cup he broke," another said. Even when I am very tired and frustrated, I try to remember things like that around my son.