I was in Guatemala studying for a couple of weeks last month.  Here is the first of some of my writings during that time:

We went this weekend to a small community of tejedores, weavers, outside of the town of San Martin.  There is a group of 30 Mayan families there of a specific group called, Mum.  15 women of this group, representing half of the Mum families, have started a collective and they are succeeding at improving the lifestyle of the people in their community, after many years
of pain and struggle.  The story is long and sad, but it must be told, as it is amazing how few Gauatemalans know what was happening in the mountains for those 35 years of civil war.  

27 years ago, the army came to the village of these women, looking for guerrillas, as they always were, austensibly.  In actuality, it was genocide and oppression, but that is a much bigger story.   In this story, they shot and killed 30 unarmed villagers.  Many more were wounded, including the woman who told us this story.  Her name is Francisca and she was shot in the knee, after the soldiers guns weren´t functioning properly when they tried to shoot her in the head.  They tried to kill her, the guns didn´t work, so she ran.  They shot after her and she was hit in the knee.  She fell.  They came and again tried to kill her and again, their guns didn´t work.  They said, we won´t kill you this time, but you will help everyone else dig graves now.  The surviving villagers were forced to dig shallow graves for their murdered family members and were also forced to
bury alive some who were wounded but not dead.  Francisco was 14 when this happened.  Some of the women that I met were 3 years old, or 6 years old, when this happened.  Some of them can´t stand to even be in the room while Francisca tells the story.

After the massacre, the remaining villagers, over 30 families, walked for over two weeks from the south of Guatemala to Chiapas, in Mexico, where a kind farmer helped them to go through the immigration process.  They were refugees, allowed to live in Mexico, but not allowed to wear their traditional clothing, with it´s rich symbology and familiar comfort, and they were not allowed to speak their own language.  They had to learn Spanish.  So, of course, they did.  They worked for Mexican farmers and slowly built a life for themselves.  

After about 12 years there, many wanted to return to their homeland, to raise their children in the Mayan ways, with the Mum language, allowed to wear the clothes they choose, on the land that their ancestors had worked.  The jovenes, the young people (between 18 and 35), who remembered well the massacre and who still had the strength to reclaim their heritage, set out. They went in small groups, a few families at a time.  The older people, the parents of the trekkers, were scared, tired, and just couldn´t go through it all again.

The small group of families who began this homecoming first worked for a farmer in Guatemala, getting paid about .15 cents a day.  They realized quickly, of course, that they would never be able to buy land in this situation.  They were barely surviving, living under trees and tarps.  They started a collective as weavers.  They retained the help of an international microlending non-profit, based in Holland.  They borrowed about 20 dollars to buy the tools they needed, the loom and the thread.  They made a bag which they sold for 14 dollars.  They bought more thread.  They made three bags which they sold for 14 each.  They paid back their loan and continued to weave.

After a couple years of slowly building this ¨business,¨they were able to buy some land.  More families came.  Slowly, over the years, they have built houses together.  There are now 15 families participating in this women´s cooperative, and 30 Mum families living in the area.   With the help of other NGO´s here, they have brought electricity and running water to their community.

More recently, with the help of two students from the the US who learned of these women through Celas Maya, the school that I am attending, the same way I learned of these women, they have built a community building for their meetings, and for the education of others who also need to know that this kind of cooperation is possible, and that it can change the lives of
Guatemala´s most poor, the victims of three decades of genocide.  

So, that is the story of the Association of Soqjal.  I spent the weekend there, these last two days, hearing the story, getting to know the women (and their children), and experiencing how they live.  We stayed in their homes.  We were gifted with a presentation of Mayan dances, including explanations of the stories that these dances tell.  We saw a demonstration
of how these women weave their beautiful fabrics, by hand, tying one end of their work to a post, and the other end around their waist, rolling the fabric up as they create it, maintaining tension with their bodies.  We played soccer with the boys, and I made a pretend soup of grass and seeds with the little girls...  And of course, the food was incredible.  Avocados
fresh from the tree, shrimp fresh from the sea, tortillas fresh from the oven, papayas, bananas, sweet bread.

They are all bilingual now, and there are international organizations using their story as a model for development among other groups like theirs.  But if you listen carefully for what part of the story elicits the most passion from these women, as they speak, it is the pride that they feel that they, as women, have built this community.  They are proud that they know that they are people too, that they can not only participate in, but they can lead community development, that they can make their own money, that they don´t need to tolerate violence from the men in their lives, from the police, or from their government.  They are empowered and they want to share their story because they want other women to be empowered as well.  At least a dozen times, I heard from different mouths, ¨We know our rights!¨

So, that´s what I did this weekend!  My friend, Carrie, and I were the group translators, having more Spanish than any of the other students, and that was exhausting!  But, of course, it was a beautiful weekend of support and sharing, connection and inspiration.  Perhaps some of you are inspired to help as well???  *wink, wink*


Posted on 8/17/07; 8:56:28 AM