Back to the Guatemalan School Year 2008
Public schools are free in Guatemala, minus some administrative fees. But, everything you need for school is not free; you need to buy a every single pencil and sheet of paper as well as any book or notebook, cuaderno in Spanish.
In the picture above, we can see parents with their children making the queues to purchase all the necessary school supplies at Librería Castillo in La Antigua Guatemala; librería is the Spanish term for bookstore or stationary store.