I visited two of the Southern ruins. They are smaller than the ones in the North, but a lot less people. I was alone walking thru Lubaantun and Nim Li Punit which was cool/eerie.
Here's the village of San Miguel near Lubaantun, not a huge tourist area but at least they have electricity... sometimes.
A couple kids just sitting in the road in the middle of nowhere. But they have nice school uniforms. Everyone there was poor, but they all seemed to be happy.
In contrast here's Placencia, a tourist destination:
A slightly higher standard of living.
The worst poverty I saw was in Seine Bight. It looked pretty bad during the day, but after dark you would have sworn it was a war zone except there wasn't any gunshots. They definitely did not seem to be living happy lives. I didn't pull my camera out driving thru there, either.