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Portraits By Tyrone Beason
Julio Quan / In the middle of muddles, a geographer seeks peace
Ever since Julio Quan, 71, moved to Seattle seven years ago, he's been knee-deep in all sorts of causes, offering conflict mediation to the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra, helping organize Fiestas Patrias and Day of the Dead celebrations, and nurturing his green thumb at the Cascade Cactus and Succulents Society. But the job Quan took last year as director of the Tacoma-based Centro Latino community-service agency brings him back to his true passion. The agency offers job training, English-language classes, and teen tutoring and micro lending. When you consider how Julio Quan grew up, the fact that he became a geographer, mapmaker, peace negotiator, human-rights activist and champion of the poor makes sense. Quan was raised in the 1930s and '40s in one of Guatemala City's poorest neighborhoods, but because his family owned the area's largest general store, he led a life of relative privilege. "They called me the 'rich Chinese kid,' " says Quan, who was named after his grandfather, a trader who emigrated from China in the late 1800s, changed his name to Julio and married a Guatemalan woman. Quan is an expert in distinctive human landscapes, and not just because he is a geographer specializing in social trends. The Guatemalan side of his family didn't initially appreciate the Chinese part. His grandfather never spoke Spanish to him. The racism, class divisions and peaceful political upheaval Quan saw as a young man inspired his interest in nonviolence, mediation and economic development. There was a way, he learned, to find middle ground. In the 1980s, Quan met his current wife, Maralise Hood of Seattle, while both were working on peace efforts in Costa Rica. This was when dozens of his academic colleagues back home were assassinated by Guatemalan security forces, he says, simply for exposing social chasms. Quan's new job requires him to usher legal immigrants into the middle class while trying to clear up the legal "limbo" that undocumented workers face. As always, he sees a middle ground. "Everybody wants to be secure, but especially immigrants because we are trying to escape insecurity, not just economic security but physical security, a lack of human rights," he says. His idea of a fair world: "I'd like all Latinos to be able to come here the same way my family comes here — as tourists, to do post-graduate work, to spend money, to visit their family — and to go back home."
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