Guatemala: how poor is it?

Any discussion of poverty opens the door to a dismal debate as to how best to capture all the discouraging deficits experienced by less affluent populations.  One pretty concrete measure is to make an international comparison of the percentage of infants that are under weight.

By this statistical metric, life is pretty dire for many people in Guatemala.

Anecdotally, the people here are short.  Stunting occurs when children receive inadequate nourishment during the first 1,000 days of their life.  

One Guatemalan was telling me about his journey as an illegal immigrant through Mexico.  He told me that he was tall enough to get through a lot of the police roadblocks in Mexico.  At 5 foot 6, he looked too tall to be from Guatemala.

Guatemala is the first place where I have seen public clinics that advertise dates for "Supplementation" for infants.

Does that mean ethical people should stay away on the grounds that they are exploiting the low wages of all the waiters, gardeners, etc that cater so gracefully to their needs? 

I would argue the opposite - this economy needs all the help it can get.  If you can have a good time while dropping some cash into the economy, so much the better.