TO WALK IN SOLIDARITY …es bello amar al mundo con los ojos de los que no han nacido todavía.
…it’s beautiful to love the world with the eyes of those who have not yet been born. Otto René Castillo
INTERNATIONAL ACCOMPANIMENT OF HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS IN GUATEMALA LETTERS BY PHIL NEFF
“IT’S NOT TIME THAT GOES ABOUT CHANGING THINGS, IT’S HUMANITY.” Flickering candle light illuminates the spacious kitchen, perfumed with the scent of wood smoke and fresh corn tortillas. Diego and Maria‘s youngest children sleep cuddled together on a blanket on the concrete floor. His words, somehow, seem too large for this simple moment; a quiet aside in the narration of a family‘s history, charged with the wisdom of a lifetime. Diego and Maria are survivors of the Guatemalan state‘s genocidal massacres of indigenous Maya communities—hundreds of villages razed, hundreds of thousands murdered, tens of thousands simply disappeared—and veterans of more than a decade of hiding beneath the jungle as refugees… I left my home in the Pacific Northwest in December 2007 to serve for 9 months as an international accompanier of human rights defenders in Guatemala, representing the Guatemala Accompaniment Project, a program of the U.S.-based organization Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA). Diego and Maria‘s testimony is one of many I now carry, just one shard of a people‘s history of terrible suffering and extraordinary resistance. It was through a University of Washington study-abroad program that I first became involved in human rights issues in Guatemala. Like many other individuals on their first experience in a less-developed country—let alone a country that, like Guatemala, only recently emerged from a bloody 36-year civil war—I was overwhelmed by the magnitude of poverty, violence, and suffering which the majority of Guatemalans face every day. While before I was unaware that Guatemala‘s indigenous population was subjected to acts of genocide as late as the 1980s, now I listened as a survivor told the painful story of the day when the army massacred her entire village. Even as I was confronted with such inescapable horrors, I found a powerful source of hope in the example of the courageous survivors and committed activists that we met each day, risking their very lives to promote truth, justice, and human rights in their country. How could I ever repay them for the inspiration and education that they had given me? Human rights accompaniment, I believe, is one small step in the lifelong mission of living up to their example. Like the concept of human rights itself, accompaniment is a simple idea with profound implications. Accompaniment places international observers from economically and politically powerful nations like the U.S. at the service of individuals, organizations, and communities working for
human rights in environments where this puts them at risk of threats, intimidation, or violent retaliation. In theory, the presence of accompaniers decreases the likelihood of such repercussions by raising the visibility of violations—crimes that were once committed in complete secrecy will now be reported back at the international level. Living and traveling alongside human rights defenders, accompaniers document conditions and incidents, which an international structure of 10 organizations in 8 countries in North America and Europe can disseminate to networks of thousands of supporters. Through urgent action campaigns and political pressure the physical presence of the accompanier is backed up by the power of global civil society to ultimately dissuade further human rights abuses and aid in Guatemalan struggles for justice. Those who have requested and receive accompaniment today in Guatemala include witnesses participating in historic legal cases against the dictators and military high command who planned and executed the genocidal military campaigns of the 1970s and 80s; lawyers, psychologists, and others investigating and healing the wounds of the past; indigenous community activists facing off against mega-corporations to defend their territorial rights and natural resources; and leaders of labor unions, victim‘s organizations, and other civil society groups. International accompaniment is just one tactic in the security strategies that allow their work to continue. Additionally, accompaniment provides a degree of moral support and validation for their work, especially for witnesses and activists who live in isolated rural communities. While the sometimes overwhelming number of requests for accompaniment and the often grim reality of human rights activism in Guatemala attest to the continued necessity of accompaniment, it is not without practical and philosophical complications. Can a tactic that employs structures of inequality—national, economic, and racial hierarchies—be used the advance the cause of social justice? When is accompaniment useful, and when is it inappropriate or powerless? Is it possible to gauge the subjective effects of accompaniment on the actions of state institutions, corporations, and the accompanied themselves? Among the worst of my apprehensions during my preparation was the thought that an accompanied individual might feel that their security has been improved only because, in the prejudiced view of the world, her accompaniers‘ lives are worth more than her own. Minimizing these complications requires a conscientious awareness and critique of the power dynamics of accompaniment, instilled through training in issues of oppressions, privilege, and cultural sensitivity. It also
means defining clearly the accompanier‘s role as passive observer, a restriction that is often a psychological burden for volunteers who are used to acting as protagonists in social and political struggles: accompaniers may attend and listen in meetings if invited, but they do not participate in the work of the communities and organizations they accompany; they live often amidst conditions of great social and economic deprivation and necessity, but do not provide material aid. These restrictions on the accompaniment role avoid de-legitimizing the grassroots social struggles of Guatemalan human rights activists, and also seek to limit the development of dependency on the support of Northern organizations or funds. As an international accompanier in Guatemala, I was brought into the communities, homes, and lives of many courageous and inspiring people who are struggling for memory, truth, justice and human rights in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles of poverty, trauma, impunity, and renewed violence. Their generosity, humility, and dignity continue to sustain me even though my time walking with them has ended. These writings are dedicated to them and to the currents of solidarity which are deepened immeasurably by their strength.
January 26 Dear Friends and Family: Greetings from Guatemala City! I arrived here in mid-December and spent the last month reviewing and improving my Spanish skills in the city of Quetzaltenango. I am extremely proud to represent the U.S. human rights community here in Guatemala. Unfortunately, my work as an accompanier will begin under the shadow of some bad news. In mid-December the Constitutional Court of Guatemala ruled against the extradition to Spain of former military officials to stand trial for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. This is a blow against the movement for justice in Guatemala and a demonstration of continued impunity for those who have committed the worst crimes imaginable. Moreover, it is a violation of international law, which under the principle of ―universal jurisdiction‖ allows for the prosecution of such crimes in any country in the world. This ruling has been denounced by a wide sector of groups working for human rights and justice in Guatemala, as well as by the Spanish judge carrying out the case, which will continue with or without the assistance of the Guatemalan authorities. Two legal cases against the same accused war criminals continue in the national courts—it is the courageous witnesses involved in these cases who I will be accompanying during my time in Guatemala. Thus the movement for justice in Guatemala will struggle onwards. Some see hope in the new government of President Álvaro Colóm, which was inaugurated on January 14 (the night of the inauguration there was a round of fireworks so loud and powerful I almost thought it was a coup d’etat!), but many remain skeptical. We know that there are members of Colóm‘s party who participated in atrocities during the war. The new president‘s cabinet has very low representation of indigenous people and women, even though his campaign was notable for the substantial promises it made to the indigenous population, and the support it won in majority-indigenous areas of the country. Colóm‘s government proclaims a commitment to ―social democracy,‖ and has announced that it will make the plight of Guatemala‘s impoverished majority a priority—55% of Guatemalans officially live in poverty, 14% live on less than $1 a day. Whether this promise is just empty political rhetoric or the real deal remains to be seen. En paz, Phil ―Felípe‖ Neff
March 12 Dear Friends and Family, ―¡Salud!‖ from the jungles—urban and rural—of Guatemala! I hope that the last months have found you all as happy and healthy as they have me. I am becoming accustomed to the strange rhythms of life as an accompanier—long weeks of slow village life punctuated by exhausting whirlwind trips to the capital and back again. I hope that this letter will give you all a sense of the communities as I have begun to know them, as well as a clearer picture of my day-to-day life in Cuarto Pueblo and Santa Maria Tzejá in the Ixcán region of Guatemala. Cuarto Pueblo and Santa Maria Tzejá The Ixcán region (pronounced ―eesh-CON‖) is an isolated expanse of tropical rainforest between the Chixoy and Ixcán rivers in the far north of Guatemala‘s Quiché province, sharing a border with the Mexican state of Chiapas. As little as forty years ago the Ixcán was a sparsely inhabited wilderness; today it is a frontier of massive development projects such as dams, transnational highways, and bio-fuel plantations, which place it at The Ixcán region (highlighted in the heart of worldwide conflicts grey) is part of the department of El over globalization. In the early Quiché (white). 1970s settlement projects facilitated by the Catholic Church organized agricultural coöperatives that provided fertile, unclaimed land in the Ixcán for mostly Mayan campesinos, or peasants, from the exploited, impoverished highlands of Western Guatemala. Both Cuarto Pueblo and Santa Maria Tzejá were founded during this period, with the first settlers traveling on foot for up to a week through the jungle for the promise of land. Today Cuarto Pueblo is a village of some 300 families—mostly Mam and Q‘anjob‘al Maya originally from the highland department of Huehuetenango—situated within walking distance of the Mexican border amidst a landscape patterned with a checkerboard of thick, impossibly
green jungle; flourishing milpa, or corn fields; and scar-like pastures cleared for cattle. Isolated from regional capitals and markets by a river that can only be crossed by boat, Cuarto Pueblo lacks electricity, potable water, and reliable health services, yet families here enjoy one resource that the vast majority of impoverished Guatemalans lack—land. Life revolves around the land and its products—through the constant work of men, women and children most families seem able to grow enough basic crops, such as corn, beans, and squash, to subsist throughout the year. Surpluses and cash crops—some community members are experimenting with organic coffee, honeybees, and other projects—bring a small amount of money to families. It is easy to idealize peasant life as somehow outside of history, as a timeless cycle of harvests and generations stretching back into the unrecorded past. While the campesinos of Cuarto Pueblo do indeed work their land in much the same way as their ancestors, one must keep in mind that communities like Cuarto Pueblo face very modern problems. An astonishing number of people from Cuarto Pueblo have migrated to Mexico and the U.S. in search of economic opportunities and the enticing ideals of consumer culture. Nearly every family has at least one member in el Norte, and the village is practically empty of youth between the ages of 18 and 25. Every evening families gather on hilltops near the town center, seeking cell phone signal to call family members abroad. Narcotics trafficking is also a very real worry—and temptation— for communities in the remote, un-policed Ixcán. The community of Santa Maria Tzejá is a striking contrast after one has spent time in Cuarto Pueblo. Though its early history is very similar, and its economy is still centered around peasant production, Santa Maria Tzejá today is a model of rural development success. Made up of around 200 mostly K‘iche‘ Maya families, Santa Maria Tzejá is home to a coöperative that continues to function strongly 38 years after its founding. Less geographically isolated, the community of Santa Maria Tzejá has benefited from strong international connections, such as its partner relationship with the Needham Congregational Church in Boston, Massachusetts, which have brought hundreds of thousands of dollars of material aid to various community projects. While centralized electricity and potable water have yet to reach Santa Maria Tzejá, the community has focused its resources on other important sectors. Education is a high priority in the community, with local teachers working in the primary and secondary schools. Dozens of students are currently studying in technical schools and universities outside the community, and dozens have already graduated, many returning to the community to apply their new skills. International donations have even allowed the community to construct a generatorpowered computer center, which draws students from neighboring communities. While the lack of economic opportunities and the need to
migrate still present challenges for the community, comparatively few have left. Though the community‘s impressive initiative and the striking successes achieved in Santa Maria Tzejá attest to the positive potential of international partnerships and solidarity, I have also come to reflect on the possible downsides of such relationships. In my view, there is a fundamental injustice in the fact that international aid has helped Santa Maria Tzejá achieve so much, while equally deserving communities like Cuarto Pueblo receive virtually no international support, increasing regional inequality. International aid for educational, health, and related development projects comes to supplant national investment, allowing the Guatemalan government to continue ignoring its own marginalized populations. Despite these misgivings, I have left my short time in Santa Maria Tzejá greatly impressed by the committed community organizing and spirit I witnessed there. These brief contemporary profiles, however, reveal little about why I am here today as an international accompanier. Cuarto Pueblo and Santa Maria Tzejá share haunting histories of atrocious violence and almost unimaginable abuses of human rights. The first years after the founding of the Ixcán coöperatives in the early 1970s were a peaceful time of hard and hopeful community building. In the late 1970s, however, the Guatemalan army began to see the strong community organizations of the Ixcán as a threat, and it began a campaign of persecution against community leaders in the Ixcán and progressive movements within the Catholic church. Influential church leaders were targeted, such as Father Guillermo Woods, a Texan Maryknoll priest who was instrumental in the coöperative movement and who was killed when his small plane was shot down by the Guatemalan army in Huehuetenango. Community leaders were rounded up in army raids and subjected to forced disappearance—abducted by the army and never seen again. In Latin American Spanish, the chilling verb desaparecer, ―to be disappeared,‖ and the noun los desaparecidos, ―the disappeared,‖ describe the fates of untold thousands of Guatemalans. The repression in the Ixcán intensified with the appearance of an organized guerrilla movement in the region. The Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres, or Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) formed in the late 1970s and began carrying out attacks against the Guatemalan army, as well as assassinations of rich landowners and army collaborators. Many impoverished, struggling campesinos supported their calls for revolution and social justice. In 1981 a major battle in Cuarto Pueblo led the army to abandon its base in the community for almost a year. The internal armed conflict, know simply as la violencia or ―the violence‖ escalated rapidly, as the army intensified counterinsurgency operations.
Early in its offensives against the guerrilla, the Guatemalan army clearly came to identify the Mayan civilian population as its enemy, a decision that is reflected in the atrocities that would be committed against the civilian population of the Ixcán and other areas of Guatemala. On February 15, 1982, the army marched into Santa Maria Tzejá, where an alert and terrified population had already fled into the jungle. The army burned down the entire village, and the only person remaining in the community, a mentally retarded woman, was raped and murdered. In its patrols through the surrounding jungle, the army encountered a family of women and children and brutally slaughtered them all, with only a six year old boy left as a witness. One month later, on March 15, the army entered Cuarto Pueblo, rounded up all the inhabitants it could, killed more than 300 civilians with almost indescribable brutality, and burned every building and home in the community to the ground. Of the survivors of the massacre Santa Maria Tzejá, many fled to Mexico, where refugee camps were eventually formed, while others returned to a militarized ―model village‖, either voluntarily or as army captives. Except for its reoccupied army base, Cuarto Pueblo lay deserted for almost twelve years, while the army scoured the jungle for survivors. Many from Cuarto Pueblo also fled to camps in Mexico, while others formed the extraordinary Communities of Population in Resistance, civilian encampments hidden in the Guatemalan jungle, surviving first on wild fruits and later collectively cultivated fields deep in the forest. In later letters I hope to be able to relate to you all the first-hand testimony of individuals who lived these incredible experiences. However, I know that many of you have lots of questions about just what exactly accompaniers do from day to day. This I can recount from my own perspective, though perhaps it would be interesting to shift the point of view a bit as I describe... A Day in the Life of an Accompanier You wake beneath the canopy of a mosquito net as the sun rises over the jungle. Stepping outside onto the patio of the building where you and your partner live in community, you look out over the town center spread out below the hillside which your building shares with the white-washed, colonial-style Catholic church. You walk the short distance to the latrine, following a trail of leafcutter ants marching to and from the hive carrying their tiny green sails. Back at the office, you draw water from the pila, a cubic-meter basin of captured rainwater and nighttime condensation; sit in the already hot sun pumping a hand filter to clean a liter of potable water. For breakfast you peel sweet green criolla oranges or chop open a coconut
for its meat, the fruit gifted by a community member you visited yesterday. After reading in your hammock for an hour or two, you slather on sunscreen and venture out into the sun, saying ―¡Buenos días!‖ and trying to recall the name of each person you meet as you walk to the home of the señora who currently coordinates meals for the accompaniers. She greets you warmly and you ask after her health, news from relatives in the U.S., the crops in her family parcela (land plot); she tells you the name of the family you will eat with today. Later, walking to their home for lunch, you may pass the school at the top of the hill, where the army was once stationed over a deserted village, scouring the jungle for guerrillas or hidden refugees; or you may walk by the coöperative building, where several years ago they found a landmine left from the conflict. Arriving at the family‘s home you call out ―¡Buenas tardes!‖ waiting until the señora answers before entering the yard, which is full of tropical flowers—hibiscus, bougainvillea, coleus, croton—and a menagerie of ducks, chickens, geese, pigs, kittens, and skinny dogs. The señora welcomes you into the kitchen, a cozily dark building apart from the living quarters, with a dirt floor, tin roof, and wooden walls. A smoky fire burning in the stove, she prepares tortillas from fresh masa, or corn dough, as children too young to be in school clamber up to the windows to watch or greet the accompaniers. As she serves a chicken stew or beans and eggs, you chat about community or family news, or about the heat, or you exchange translations of words in English for their equivalent in a Mayan language: Mam, K‘iche‘, Q‘eqchi‘, Q‘anjob‘al, or others. You will be surprised at how quickly these conversations can shift from the mundane to the profound—asking about the airplane that landed briefly yesterday on the airstrip in the center of town, she speaks of her deep fear of hearing airplanes or helicopters, which in the past brought soldiers and atrocities to her community. While you eat the señora cooks more tortillas, a hot, chewy, crisp stack in which you will be expected to make a dent before you are finished. After lunch you might go to the house of a witness to confirm travel plans, to ask about a recent association meeting, or simply to say hello. Walking back to the office you meet dozens of children returning home from school, eager to play or joke with the accompaniers (several boys in one town have decided to christen me ―Hombre Araña,‖ a.k.a. ―Spider Man‖— apparently they think I look enough like Tobey Maguire from the films to earn the nickname...). At the office you lie in the shaded hammock and think about the violence of the history that has brought you to this place, the daily violations of human rights and dignity that you are powerless to
dissuade—husbands and sons absent, forced to migrate ―illegally‖ to the United States or Mexico in search of economic opportunity; sicknesses that develop neglected for lack of money to visit a doctor; the illiterate mother of 12 children who asks to borrow one of the few children‘s books to which accompaniers have access. In the afternoon heat you go down to the stream to bathe and wash clothes in the clearest, cleanest water you have seen in Guatemala, where rivers are too often choked with trash, and crossing bridges in the bus one can often smell the pollution even before seeing the evil-looking foam floating on the surface. Before dinner you will stop at a tienda, or general store, to buy food to give to the family—six eggs, a bottle of cooking oil, a bag of salt, sugar, rice—imperishable necessities that nonetheless hardly seem to equal the home-cooked meals you have enjoyed. After dinner you might read stories for the family‘s children, will walk home in the country darkness lit by a dome of bright stars, the pulsing flashes of fireflies, yellow lightening on the horizon over the Lacondon jungle in Chiapas, Mexico. At ―home‖ at the office, you splash yourself with water from the pila, slide onto your cot, pull down your mosquito net, and write in your journal about a day in the life of an acompañante... In solidarity, Phil ―Felípe‖ Neff
Accompaniers‘ ―office‖ in the Ixcán
April 18 Dear Friends and Family, It is now mid-summer in the Ixcán—the sun feels like it is about 10 inches above my head and I am sure that you could cook a tortilla on the tin roof of our house in community. Nonetheless, I am surviving, though I can‘t say that I don‘t miss the Pacific Northwest, especially when I hear of April snowstorms or think of spring cherry blossoms... Touching the Scars of History In my previous letter to you all, I wrote in my description of ―A Day in the Life of an Accompanier‖ that one often thinks of ―the violence of the history that has brought you to this place‖ to work as an accompanier. The scars of this violence are at once physical, psychological, social, and economic; laced into all aspects of Guatemalan life. As an accompanier I have had the profound privilege to be brought into the trust of individuals who have seen the worst of this violence, to be shown their scars as they share their stories and experiences. This leads to one of my deepest responsibilities as an accompanier—to share in turn the truths of their testimony. In this letter I hope that I can begin to fulfill this obligation by relating to you all the experience of one of the witnesses we accompany in Cuarto Pueblo. Hearing first-person testimony of a massacre, of any atrocity, carries the danger of wounding or traumatizing the listener as well as re-traumatizing the teller. What follows was without doubt excruciating to recall, it was difficult to write, it will be painful to read. For this reason I want to preface the following with a passage written by Father Ricardo Falla in his book Massacres in the Jungle, which recounts the atrocities in the Ixcán through witness accounts, including those of people we accompany. Ricardo Falla is a Guatemalan Jesuit priest and anthropologist who lived in refugee communities in the Ixcán and Mexico during the height of the violence of the 1980s, serving in a religious role as well as documenting the atrocities committed by the Guatemalan army. In Massacres in the Jungle he uses spiritual concepts and religious metaphors in a unique way that helps—even for a non-religious reader like myself—to contextualize and give meaning to violence that seems so senseless: ―Why write about massacres? ...Why recall such unspeakable brutality and cruelty? The witness gives us the key. His testimony ‗I shall never forget it,‘ uttered from the depths of his harrowing memory, states an existentially positive reality for him: that he is alive. His testimony is
good news. The more terrible the account of what he witnessed, the more awesome the reality that he announces: I am alive.‖ Don Milagro‘s Testimony* * (I am sure you all understand that I cannot use Don Milagro‘s real name, I hope you will excuse the precious pseudonym I‘ve chosen. I have written the quotes in italics to emphasize that they are translated as much from my memory of Don Milagro‘s testimony as from Spanish; while they cannot capture fully the impact of his words, I believe it is necessary to hear the details of his first-hand experience from his own perspective. I hope that my transcription has done justice, and not violence, to his testimony.) It was a humid afternoon in Cuarto Pueblo, following a drizzly morning and pounding nighttime downpour. Just a week had passed since I first arrived in community, and I was about to meet one of the witnesses who we accompany here for the first time. We arrived at Don Milagro‘s and found him at home, having decided not to go out to his parcela because of the rain. I suppose he must have been ready to talk on this day. In answer to my partner‘s asking how long Don Milagro‘s family had lived in Mexico, where many fled as refugees, he began to relate his experience of the massacre of Cuarto Pueblo. It was early 1982. For many months the families of Cuarto Pueblo had heard of the wave of violence that had been rising in the cities and the south of the country, sweeping northward through Guatemala towards the isolated communities of the Ixcán. Cuarto Pueblo and other Ixcán villages had already suffered from acts of violence, such as the torture and disappearance of community leaders by the Guatemalan army; ―revolutionary justice‖ delivered by the guerrilla forces in the form of summary execution of accused army collaborators; and battles between the army and guerrilla. Despite rumors that the Guatemalan army was patrolling the area near the community of Polígono 14, Don Milagro and a friend decided to risk traveling through the neighboring village to sell cardamom at a roadside market. With each man carrying a 75-pound sack anchored to his forehead with a mecapal (a traditional head-strap device used to lift heavy loads) they hiked several hours on jungle trails and forded a river to meet the cardamom buyers. While negotiating their sale a warning raced through the crowd of campesinos gathered to sell their goods—the army was coming. ―We were barely able to get the money for our cardamom,‖
remembered Don Milagro, ―and we stuffed the bills in our pockets as we fled.‖ They cautiously approached Polígono 14, skirting the main road, where they saw soldiers as well as dead bodies and body-parts strewn on the ground. ―Suddenly we saw that there was a soldier standing near us, looking in the other direction, thank God! We threw ourselves to the ground, and hidden in the brush we saw the massacre of the people. We saw many women whose clothing was ripped, naked and covered with blood,‖—here Don Milagro paused his account to shoo away several young sons and grandsons who had gathered to listen—‖and we knew that they were being raped by the soldiers.‖ Somehow the sentry realized they were there and began to shoot at them. ―The bullets were flying all around us, but with God’s help we crawled through the jungle and escaped by swimming across the river.‖ After the massacre in Polígono 14, which took place on February 20, 1982, the community of Cuarto Pueblo set up civilian sentries at the main entrances to the village. Several weeks passed without army activity, until March 13. ―One day I was working in my milpa on the hillside above the river, when I saw hundreds of soldiers crossing from the north, in the direction of the border,‖ recalled Don Milagro. ―I ran home like the wind and was totally out of breath when I arrived, at first I couldn’t even talk to warn the family.‖ In the early years of Cuarto Pueblo, families lived in dispersed groups near or on their parcelas, rather than near the town center, which made it difficult to spread the warning of the army‘s incursion, especially as families fled in panic. ―We immediately fled into the jungle, without gathering any belongings or even food. I was carrying one of my children on my shoulders and another in my arms as we ran. We ran into other families hiding in the bush and soon we became a sizable group.‖ These small groups would eventually become the nuclei of the refugee communities that fled to Mexico or remained in Guatemala, hidden in the jungle for as long as 12 years. ―After a while the children started to get hungry, and someone remembered that they had left a basket of fresh tortillas in their house.‖ Don Milagro and several other men decided to sneak back through the thick jungle to the house, hoping to retrieve the food. In the forest that surrounded the house, they were whispering fearfully about how to approach when a squadron of soldiers entered the clearing. Again they flattened themselves in the brush. ―The soldiers were saying things about how all the fucking guerrilla bastards had run away, and we watched as they poured gasoline on the house and set fire to it. In those days all the houses were made of leaves, so they burned very easily.‖ A
soldier was sent to search the forest for ―guerrilla,‖ and stood just several meters from the men scanning the darkness of the jungle but failing to see the motionless, terrified men just below his boots. ―I don’t know how he didn’t see us, it was only by the grace of God that we were not found.‖ When the soldiers left the men stealthily went to check the homes of other families. They could see columns of smoke rising, indicating that several groups of soldiers were patrolling the area. ―We went to the home of one family that had decided not to flee, because the father was an Evangelical leader and believed that, since they had done nothing wrong, the army would not hurt his family. Everyone had been killed, the women, the grandmother, the little children, and their bodies were all around. One señora was still tied up when we found her— she had been raped and choked to death. I untied to ropes on her body before we left to search for my children’s godparents.‖ This search brought the small group of men to the village center. It was now March 14. ―In those days there was a big market in the center, and on Sundays it was full of people from all around. It was beautiful, you could buy anything there.‖ The army had planned their incursion to fall on just such a market day, and columns of soldiers entered the center from two directions, trapping many people who had come to trade goods and to worship in the Catholic and Evangelical churches. The men saw that the soldiers had gathered the captured people into groups, and he recognized his godmother among them. He watched as the soldiers interrogated her about the whereabouts of the guerrilla, watched as they tortured her by cutting off first one breast, then the other, breaking her legs and then her arms before throwing her into a bonfire. ―I thought that she must certainly have died from the torture, but I heard her scream and knew that she was still alive. Then they threw a man tied up into a ball into the fire, alive... oh God!‖ At some point during the massacre, which lasted many hours, a helicopter arrived, and an army Coronel gave a speech to the soldiers in order to encourage them to follow their orders. In Ricardo Falla‘s study of the massacre, another witness gives details of the Coronel‘s speech, saying that he told his soldiers that they had the support of the U.S. government in their war against the Communist guerrilla. Although U.S. military aid to Guatemala was suspended in 1982 as a left-over policy of the Carter administration, many members of Guatemalan military had received training in the United States or from U.S. advisors. Falla suggests that the military counted on tacit U.S. support for its actions, and indeed the Reagan administration resumed military aid to the dictator Efraín Ríos Montt while continuously denying widely-reported atrocities.
By the time the military was finished in Cuarto Pueblo more than 300 men, women, and children would be slaughtered. Don Milagro watched as people he knew were machine-gunned, killed with grenades and machetes and burnt even as they prayed in the churches. Somehow the soldiers realized that there were people hiding and began to shoot at them, and several of the men who had come with Don Milagro were shot as they fled. Later the survivors found their families hidden in the jungle and began an arduous, fear-filled exodus into Mexico. They endured hunger as they survived on wild fruits, roots, even rotten wood. The slept on the ground with only leaves to shelter them from the night-time rains, on constant alert for army patrols. In order to maintain silence they had to stuff rags or leaves into the mouths of young children to stifle their crying. Some families made it to refugee camps on the Mexican border, where they found international aid and marginally improved conditions. Others refused to abandon their lands, staying hidden in small groups in the jungle and later forming the Communities of Population in Resistance (CPR). For more than 12 years these civilian communities survived by organizing self-defense patrols, working collectively to farm hidden corn-fields and gardens, raising families under the threat of constant bombings and surprise attacks. Despite everything, they even managed to organize schools for their children, and it was said that the CPR were the only communities in Guatemala which had eradicated illiteracy. Finally, in the mid-1990s, both the refugees in Mexico and the CPR negotiated their peaceful return to their communities. Don Milagro‘s family spent more than 4 years in the CPR of the Ixcán and many more years in refuge in Mexico. As he finished his testimony, Don Milagro asked us to be sure to tell his story to people in our country, so that people in the United States would know the true history of Guatemala, so that the memory of what happened would not be forgotten. The Chain of Annunciation I want to return to Father Ricardo Falla‘s Massacres in the Jungle before I end this letter, with two more passages that explain better than I ever could the responsibilities we undertake when we hear or read testimony of such atrocities: ―In the chain of annunciation from the witness through me to the reader, faith is indispensable in forging each link, because the good news can be accepted only voluntarily. In the first place, the witness believes that his testimony is worth telling. He does not merely believe in what he sees and hears, in the fire and the butchers, because he experiences them
directly. But there is another important aspect of his faith, for as he describes his experience he realizes that it will be difficult for many to believe that man is capable of the macabre levels of dehumanization that he has witnessed.‖ Our first responsibility is to listen and to believe, to privilege the word of the victimized, not the victimizer; the powerless, not the powerful. This does not mean that we must allow ourselves to be fooled by false testimonies, which certainly exist. What it might mean in practice is that we should question more forcefully the denials of governments accused of human rights abuses, the excuses of those who condone torture, the cold rationalizations of those who promote war. For me, this has a special urgency as the President of my country vetoes a law that would outlaw certain forms of ―harsh interrogation‖ of ―War on Terror‖ detainees; as soldiers in Iraq are acquitted of the massacre of civilians or accuse their own superiors of abusing those under their command; as undocumented immigrants are rounded up in workplace raids and deported while the companies that employ and exploit them pay petty fines. Finally: ―The danger of the annunciation lies in the denunciation, which is the condemnation it embodies. The witness, by proclaiming that he is alive, forcefully accuses the army of having butcher-soldiers who specialize in stabbing victims before burning them. This denunciation is a cry that awakens tremendous aggressions and may even, although it seems paradoxical, trigger new atrocities. The denunciation cries out: You have murdered the just one.‖ This, of course, is why I am here in Guatemala as an accompanier. Those of us who hear such testimony have the responsibility to act, in the ways in our power, on behalf of justice. We can add our voices to the cry of denunciation by calling for an end to impunity, by insisting on the protection of equal rights for the most marginalized and vulnerable among us. In Guatemala, raising one‘s voice in denunciation carries the risk of violent retaliation. By supporting international accompaniment for human rights defenders, you—we—are joined with witnesses as an integral link in the chain of annunciation. Happy spring, Phil ―Felípe‖ Neff
Monument to the massacre of Cuarto Pueblo 2 August, Cuarto Pueblo What does it feel like to hear testimony of a massacre? Revulsion, of course, and remorse, though perhaps true empathy for survivors of violence that staggers the imagination is impossible. As an accompanier one of the stranger feelings is a certain excitation—in part a feeling of ―this is why I am here,‖ as if the teller‘s suffering validates our presence; or worse, ―this is the experience I was promised as an accompanier.‖ Is this related to something as vulgar as morbid curiosity? Perhaps this strange sense of excitement, mingling with remorse and revulsion, is the excitement of hearing truth, of the ―good news‖ of the survivor, as Falla describes. It‘s a wholly different feeling than when hearing people tell of the trials and pains they suffer in the now—beyond sympathy, and perhaps less vulnerable to the despairing impotence that often colors our hearing of daily struggles or raw wounds. Anger, less present in the moment of hearing, comes later. Honor, for being entrusted with truth, and certainly great responsibility to carry the message well, to hear truly...
June 18 Dear Friends and Family, Earlier, I had written to sketch the historical and contemporary situations of Cuarto Pueblo and Santa María Tzejá, where I expected to spend the majority of my time accompanying witnesses participating in legal cases against the Guatemalan genocide. In fact, since April I have been working in a new accompaniment team which works on a regional basis in the Ixcán and surrounding areas, while other accompaniers have taken up our work in Cuarto Pueblo and Santa María Tzejá. Our regional accompaniment team works both with witnesses involved in the genocide cases and with local groups that are organizing in defense of natural resources and their internationally recognized right to be consulted regarding massive development projects that threaten their livelihood and environment. Our genocide case accompaniment centers around a organization formed by survivors of a series of massacres that occurred in early 1982 on a cardamom plantation named San José Río Negro, where indigenous Q‘eqchi‘ workers were murdered by the Guatemalan army following guerrilla activity in the area. 160 victims are known by name, and 96 bodies have been found in exhumations of mass graves. Hundreds more became internally-displaced refugees, hiding in the jungle or relocating to neighboring communities. Today the survivors live in a constellation of small villages in the Ixcán and the neighboring municipality of Cobán, Alta Verapaz. Their work for justice has faced many obstacles, such as a comparative lack of official documentation of the massacres of San José Río Negro and difficulties in qualifying for government reparations programs due to the dispersal of survivors in various communities. Ironically, this last condition is itself a result of the violent displacement caused by the massacres. A generation later, survivors continue to struggle against economic and cultural marginalization, which is both a legacy and root cause of the internal armed conflict. Many families lack legal title to their lands, and economic and educational opportunities are few in isolated, mono-linguistic Q‘eqchi‘ villages, some inaccessible except by boat or foot. The second focus of our regional accompaniment arose directly from the concerns of witnesses and other community-members, many of whom have expressed feeling more threatened by the effects of regional development projects than for their involvement in legal cases against genocide. Their most immediate fears relate to the planned Xalalá hydroelectric dam, the construction of which would inundate, displace, or otherwise affect dozens of communities along the shores of the rivers
Chixoy and Copón. Such projects have an ugly history in Guatemala. Despite government and international promises that projects like hydroelectric dams and mineral mines will bring economic opportunities, in reality many have only brought insecurity, dislocation, and even violence to local communities while yielding massive profits for foreign corporations. In 2007, communities in the Ixcán organized a regional referendum to allow local people to vote on whether large-scale hydroelectric projects and oil extraction should be allowed in their municipality, with a huge majority of those who participated voting ―no.‖ Indigenous peoples‘ right to be consulted regarding policies or projects that would impact their territories is recognized under international law in the International Labor Organization‘s Convention 169, the Indigenous and Tribal People‘s Convention, which has been ratified by the Guatemalan government. Guatemala‘s Supreme Court, addressing a similar referendum on open-pit gold mining, has ruled that such referenda are legal but that the government is not bound to follow the results. Meanwhile, the movement to organize ―popular consultations‖ like the referendum here in Ixcán has become a rallying point for indigenous communities and natural resource defense organizations, with dozens of such consultations resulting in a growing national momentum against destructive mega-development projects. Sincerely, Philip ―Felípe‖ Neff
2 April, Primavera Ixcán We traveled yesterday up the river Chixoy to the community of Las Margaritas Copón for a ―courtesy visit‖ to explain the availability of accompaniment for a regional organization working in defense of natural resources and indigenous peoples‘ right to be consulted about development projects. Before dawn we met several folks from regional social organizations who were heading up to Las Margaritas Copón for a meeting of a newly formed association of communities that would be affected by the construction of the Xalalá hydro-electric dam. We made a short hike down to the river, where a boat was waiting with its pilot dozing under a burlap sack on the deck. In the pre-dawn we set out upriver on the slate-green water, slow and glassy over wide stretches between overgrown banks choked with vines, towering trees bristling with bromeliads; choppy and swift over shallows with river stones slipping by underneath, huge boulders creating rapids and whirlpools. At our front the hills and canopy shrouded in grey
mist, behind us the rising sun drizzling a molten orange on the rippling water. Glimpses of milpa, washing stones, boats, and lonely-looking thatched-roof houses revealing communities on the river‘s banks. After perhaps an hour watching snowy-feathered egrets among prolific lily-like flowers with strange, spidery blooms, our boat pulled onto the shore by a cardamom drying building. We hiked up to the community through pastures dotted with cattle, the sun already heating our backs. The entrance to Las Margaritas Copón is marked by a sign warning, ―RECHAZAMOS TOTALMENTE LA CONSTRUCCION HIDROELECTRICA‖—we completely reject construction of the hydro-electric dam. A village inhabited by Maya-Q‘eqchi‘ for more than 90 years, its population of approximately 300 people does not have legal title to their lands due to a land dispute dating to 1914, during the dictatorship of Estrada Cabrera. Now it is at the epicenter of the conflict over development with the proposed construction of the Xalalá dam, which would displace the entire village. Yesterday‘s meeting to move towards the legal incorporation of a regional association in opposition to the dam seemed well-attended and positive, though these communities face all the might of the state and whichever massive trans-national corporation wins the bidding for this ―megaproject.‖ Moved by the beauty of the community, perched on the flanks of a grassy, flattened hilltop amidst the still-heavy forest and agricultural fields, my partner said she could imagine how a massacre could happen if the people refuse to leave their lands. Today, this would most likely occur if the people chose to confront a violent eviction with resistance, or took up violent means to oppose the project. After the meeting in a sweltering church building, we hiked down to the site of the project through fields of corn and cardamom. The confluence of the Chixoy and Copón rivers forms Xalalá, which means ―crossing of waters‖ in Q‘eqchi‘; a broad, flat area of stones rounded by the rivers, which mix their two strong currents in a churning basin that rushes through a narrow pass between two hills. At this point the river could be dammed by a structure that could easily approach 300 meters in height. The effects that would be caused by inundation to such a level are staggering. On the hillside of the Ixcán side of the river white-painted stones are arranged in a cleared area, spelling out, ―RIOS PARA LA VIDA NO LA REPRESA XALALA‖—rivers for life, not the Xalalá dam.
We slept last night in the church, and I lay on rough-hewn church benches between snoring veterans of the Communities of Population in Resistance of the Sierra and Ixcán, now devoted to the local social movements. Just before sleeping we spoke with the president of the local association, who asked when we would return. We asked if there was a certain date for which they might need our presence, and he replied, ―I think we need accompaniment every day.‖ Although it is obvious why people from this isolated village, with its very existence under threat and a past marked by violence, would want an international presence, for now we have had to leave, not knowing when we will be back…
Proposed site of the Xalalá dam project
July 25 Dear Friends and Family, I have now finished my sixth month as an accompanier in the Ixcán. I am of two minds about this—it feels as if my time has gone by more swiftly than any other period of my life, while I simultaneously feel like it has been ages since I have seen you all, my friends and family. Though I am missing you, and missing my tierra, more than I ever have, I also know that I am not yet ready to leave Guatemala. I have decided to extend my accompaniment commitment for three months, into October. While I continue loving my work as an accompanier, I want to write in this letter about the most frustrating accompaniment experiences I have yet encountered... but first, an anecdote by way of introduction... Timoteo is a young man with bright, wide eyes, a shy wry smile, and a huge responsibilities to shoulder. Today he is in the capital city to file some vehicle registration paperwork and to meet with an old friend. He calls the NISGUA office, where accompaniers live during their time in the city—is it possible that he could stay here for the night, being unfamiliar with the capital? It‘s bending the rules, but we say okay. Timoteo asks if I wouldn‘t mind coming with him to the meeting with his friend, and I agree to the unofficial accompaniment. While waiting we watch Chris Farley‘s ―Beverly Hills Ninja‖ (oh yes!), and as dusk falls we walk a few blocks to meet Timoteo‘s friend. In fact, his friend Doña Ámbar is a lawyer who helped win a historic criminal case against soldiers who massacred 11 people—among them Timoteo‘s mother—in his community. Timoteo lives today in the village of Aurora 8 de Octúbre (also known as Xaman) in the tropical lowlands of Alta Verapaz, formed in 1994 by a mix of refugees returning from more than a decade of exile in Mexico or years of internal displacement. On October 5, 1995, as the community prepared to celebrate the first anniversary of their return, an army patrol entered the town center. I‘ve never talked personally to anyone from Xaman about what happened that day, but I can imagine the returned refugees‘ fear and indignation at the presence of soldiers in their community at such a sensitive time. I can imagine the confusion and the angry desire to confront and drive them away from my home. Yet I can‘t imagine what happened next, as the patrol opened fire in the middle of the village, killing 11 people—2 of them children—and wounding more than 30. The massacre in Xaman is often cited as the last of Guatemala‘s 36-year armed conflict, which was officially ended by the peace accords signed in December, 1996. In 2004, 13 soldiers and their commanding Lieutenant were finally sentenced to 40 years of prison for the massacre of civilians in
Xaman, after a prolonged trial that was marred by many threats and irregularities. Now I squeeze myself into the back seat of Doña Ámbar‘s pickup as we drive to Pollo Campero (the Central American equivalent of Kentucky Fried Chicken, coming soon to a Wal-Mart near you...) so that she and Timoteo can catch up. Doña Ámbar was a member of the legal team representing the community of Xaman during their criminal case. She speaks about death threats, shots fired at her house, break-ins targeting her parents, almost casually—rather, as if she has lived with these horrors for so long that they have become normal. Indeed, this is the norm for Guatemalans who fight for justice in the face of impunity. Later, Timoteo tells me that these attacks sent Ámbar into exile in Europe for several years, and today she says that she keeps a ―very low profile,‖ despite the fact that she continues to devote herself to work related to human rights. Despite the fact that tonight she‘s being tailed by a shaggy-haired gringo (guess who?) feeling very conspicuous, as well as grateful to have the opportunity to share a coffee and listen in on a conversation between two courageous human rights defenders—Timoteo himself is in charge of organizing his community‘s ongoing legal struggle. Late that night, I climb upstairs to one of the dorm-style rooms in the NISGUA office. Timoteo is asleep on top of the covers in one of the bunks with the lights on. He wakes up as I am getting ready for bed, pulls back the covers on the foam mattress. As he lowers his head to the pillow he smiles, sighing with obvious pleasure, and says, “¡Puro Álvaro Colóm!‖ I laugh, because this is a pretty funny quip, though a lot of its humor will be lost in translation. It might be that only the painful social commentary contained within will remain. ―Puro‖ literally means ―pure,‖ but it‘s often used in this type of off-hand descriptive comment. (For example, when I mentioned several months ago that my community nickname was ―Spider Man,‖ that‘s because little boys kept pointing at me and exclaiming, ―¡Puro Hombre Araña!‖) Álvaro Colóm is Guatemala‘s current president, the self-styled ―Social Democrat‖ whose first six months in office have been marred by intractable problems of violence and corruption and a global economic crisis that is squeezing Guatemala‘s impoverished majority even more viciously than usual. Before his political career, Colóm made his fortune in textiles during the industry‘s conversion to the maquiladora sweatshop model. It‘s hard to imagine him lying down to sleep in a bunk-bed— perhaps with his vice-president or fashionable wife on the top bunk?—no matter how soft the pillow at hand. And yet... ―¡Puro Álvaro Colóm!‖
I flash back to the first night I spent in Timoteo‘s house in Xaman, comfortably rocking in a hammock as his four children, wife, sisters, father, and another visitor slept in the same room on wooden platforms cushioned with straw mats, a standard sleeping arrangement in rural Mayan households. ―¡Puro Álvaro Colóm!‖ Luxury and comfort, like so many values, are extremely subjective, especially under the distorting lens of inequality. As so often in Guatemala, this seemingly insignificant, quotidian moment is charged with a feeling I can only describe as a trace of violence. These traces of violence, inequality, injustice, surface more drastically in official arenas, especially the Guatemalan legal system. In my accompaniment with the community of Xaman I have twice traveled alongside more than 30 wounded survivors, widows, and orphans, to court dates in the departmental capital of Cobán. These court appearances are part of the community‘s civil case against the perpetrators of the massacre. Although the case is directed against the individual soldiers, the Guatemalan government could be held liable for their actions and made to pay reparations for the suffering of the community of Xaman. The case was presented in 1996 and only began in 2002, and the community has weathered many set-backs in the legal process. My first trip with the survivors of Xaman was in early May. Arising in the village at 3 am, the group set out for Cobán, in the hope of giving declarations about the events of October 5, 1995. Travel was paid for with their own money, an expense of more than 10 dollars each—a huge sum for families which likely live on about a dollar a day. During the arduous 4-hour trip over pothole-scarred gravel roads and stomach-churning mountain passes, a radio report announced that the group would be giving testimony later that day. Tension was high as we arrived in the city and tried to organize transportation for the old and sick—an ancient man bent double and supported by a walking stick, a sick woman with an upset stomach. When we finally arrived at the audience a fancily-dressed court functionary began to lecture the group for being late. But no matter—after a few minutes another lawyer in an expensive suit announced, without an apparent excess of sympathy, that the audience would be cancelled and rescheduled because the court-appointed Maya language interpreters had not showed up. Apparently unaware of the bitter irony, he said, ―We did our part, we notified the translators. It‘s out of our hands. You have to realize that they have to travel far from their communities to get here...‖ The court made no concessions to the sacrifices of the indigenous subsistence farmers and massacre survivors who had collectively spent
hundreds of dollars to travel to this audience. The representatives of the group protested the court‘s decision, but even through the anger and disappointment many seemed resigned to the failure of the legal system. ―It‘s a strategy to make us give up,‖ said one man, explaining that audiences for the same process had already been cancelled several times due to lack of translators and frivolous excuses. We returned to Xaman on the same day, with one woman having fallen gravely ill due to the rigors of travel and (perhaps) disappointment. So, two months later, I found myself again traveling with the same group of survivors for the same audience, again paid for on their own account. Now we traveled a day before the audience to be sure to arrive on time, and Timoteo had spoken with representatives of the court who assured him that interpreters would be present. And yet, on arrival at the audience the judge informed the group of survivors that, despite the presence of Mam and Q‘eqchi‘ interpreters, the court could not take declarations because Q‘anjob‘al and Ixil interpreters had not showed up. In an ―apology‖ again laced with irony, the judge offered condescending sympathy and contradictory excuses. ―I wasn‘t at the last audience because I was on vacation, but now I‘m here and I will listen to your complaints,‖ he said, before clarifying that this did not in any way constitute an official court meeting, but assuring the group that he would have someone communicate their concerns to his superiors. ―We are not responsible for the fact that the interpreters aren‘t here,‖ he said, and then two minutes later, ―It‘s our obligation to ensure that you all have interpreters so that you can give your declarations in your maternal language, we have to cancel this audience in order to protect that right, the law doesn‘t allow us to only take declarations from part of the group.‖ Again representatives of the survivors expressed their indignation about the cancellation, and very respectfully denounced what they considered an act of ―total discrimination.‖ ―We‘re sure that it has nothing to do with you, Señor,‖ one man said to the judge, ―but as we see it there must be something going on behind the scenes that is keeping the interpreters from coming.‖ His suspicions are given more weight by the fact that this declaration process is the result of an appeal by the defense team— represented at the audience by a sharky-looking lawyer in an orange suit and another well-dressed man whom community members identified as the Lieutenant currently serving time for the massacre. How hard might it be to pass $100 to an interpreter on the condition that they just stay home for one day? Whether corruption or simple incompetence is to blame, these experiences have further prejudiced my already jaundiced view of the Guatemalan
justice system. I see classist and racist dynamics at play as the survivors‘ very right to testify in their native languages becomes a way to frustrate their struggle for reparation. This blatant impunity almost makes me despair at the possibility of wringing justice from a system which it seems built to confound. Yet the survivors of Xaman seem to find moral sustenance in the success of their criminal case against the perpetrators of the massacre, as I‘ve heard several say, ―We‘ve already won!‖ They maintain an impressively uplifting spirit, with lots of good-natured joking amongst both men and women, and despite the frustrations I look forward to traveling with them yet again for their next rescheduled court date. Sincerely, Philip ―Puro Hombre Araña‖ Neff
25 October 2008 Dear Friends and Family, The last of my interminable trips from Guatemala City to the Ixcán, crammed in a mini-bus careening through the verdant, vertiginous hills of Alta Verapaz. Passengers doze or stare listlessly out the windows as Mexican ranchera music blares on the stereo. A new song starts with a ringing telephone and a child‘s voice: ―Hullo?‖ A man‘s voice answers, ―Hi, son!‖ ―Daddy,‖ continues the child, ―when are you coming home?‖ To the band‘s slow, sad waltz rhythm, the singer‘s lyrics follow one side of a father‘s emotional long-distance phone conversation, a migrant calling his family back home. Bringing it all back home I felt my eyes moistening as I listened to the music, a poignant reminder of the massive cultural impact of mass migration from Latin America to El Norte, The North. It‘s not so much the lyrics or melody of the song that affect me as the realization that probably every single Guatemalan in the vehicle with me has a loved one who has migrated to the United States, the thought of the culture of absence created in the wake of mass migration. Migration has been a constant theme in the communities where I have worked as an accompanier, a conversation so frequent it has become an impression of one long, multi-faceted discussion. ―So, where are you from? Ahh, is that close to Georgia? I lived there three years, worked in construction. Just got home this week.” “The trip North is so dangerous! My son walked three days and nights to cross the desert—that desert is full of the bones of immigrants.” “My daughter isn’t sending money because
she isn’t working, she says she is studying English and typing—as long as she finishes her studies, I say it’s fine. She left to join her Dad in the North when she was 16.” “The life of an undocumented immigrant is so hard. My husband says they are afraid the leave their rooms at night, afraid to walk on the street because the migra (immigration authorities) will catch them and deport them. They live locked up like criminals, all they do is work and sleep. You’ve seen what our life is like here, people migrate for necessity, not because they want to.” “So, is it true that you can find good jobs in the U.S.? I’m thinking about going, but it’s so expensive, 20 or 30 thousand quetzals (3000 dollars or more)! How much did your plane ticket cost? How can I get a U.S. visa? Did you need a visa to come to Guatemala? It’s so easy for you to come to our country, but it’s almost impossible for us to go to yours.” “I have three sons in the States. One has two cars—they don’t call or send money any more. How sad to be an old man all alone!” “Many migrants come back, but it’s not the same. They can’t stand the heat or working in the fields anymore— maybe it would happen to me if I went...but I want to stay here.” I‘ve seen many photos sent home from the North, an entire genre of migrant‘s souvenirs, imagery of a strange, familiar world of abundance and isolation: Father posed casually amidst the cornucopia of the WalMart produce section, wearing a rainbow-pinstriped denim jacket, the traditional dress of Mayan men from Todos Santos, Huehuetenango. A family in a parking lot against an unbroken horizon of cars, a vision of almost unimaginable wealth for people from communities where hundreds of families are served by perhaps a dozen vehicles. A bare room, a small mattress on the floor next to a massive stereo. Strange phenomenon in the cold Northern air—trees covered with gold and orange leaves on the golf course where father works, or a foot of ice fallen from the sky. This is a whole world in the shadows, a world rarely seen by those of us lucky enough to claim citizenship in the country where we live and work. The conceptual borders between ―First World‖ and ―Third World,‖ North and South, abundance and absence, are not just porous but non-existent; while the borders enforced by flesh and blood, by chain-linked fence and legal code, remain rigid. In my home state of Washington a MayaQ‘anjob‘al community works the mountain slopes of the Olympic peninsula, gathering salal brush for floral arrangements and pine boughs for holiday wreaths, carrying their massive loads on their backs using the traditional mecapal, a leather strap and tumpline that anchors weights of 100 pounds or more to the worker‘s forehead. One day their homes are raided by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and a community elder is placed in a detention center on the toxic mudflats of Tacoma. Today he awaits his deportation hearing, this man who is both political and
economic refugee. During my 10 months in Guatemala I often read the news with a feeling of shame. More than 20,000 Guatemalans have been deported from the United States so far in 2008. I read story after story about the massive raids against undocumented immigrants, such as the detention of 390 Latin American workers—more than two-thirds Guatemalans—at a kosher meat factory in Postville, Iowa, where factory managers claim ignorance of the fact that they employed under-age workers. Instead of the usual immediate deportation, these immigrant workers were charged with identity theft and many sentenced to five months in prison prior to deportation. They were railroaded into trials with such serious breaches of justice that a court interpreter was moved to break his vow of confidentiality to write an essay, published in the New York Times, documenting the various abuses. I felt a very special shame to read, in the Guatemalan press, about a report on appalling conditions at the NW Detention Center in Tacoma released by the University of Washington Law School and the Seattle-area organization OneAmerica. I read about the deportation of sick, immigrant patients directly from hospitals in Arizona, about a young Mexican immigrant beaten to death by highschoolers in Pennsylvania. I list these stories not with the intent to shock or sermonize, but to show what the view of the immigrant experience looks like from Guatemala. The full injustice of this experience is unfathomable without an understanding of the historical context of the economic and political violence that Guatemalans and other Latin Americans have survived. One example that hits close to home is the U.S.-sponsored coup which, in 1954, ended 10 years of democracy in Guatemala. Since 1944, when Guatemalan schoolteachers and other civil society groups paralyzed the country in a general strike that overthrew the dictatorship, the democratically elected government had reformed labor laws and undertaken a land reform to buy fallow but productive land from massive plantation owners and give it to poor peasant farmers. On behalf of economic interests, especially the powerful United Fruit Corporation (think ―Banana Republic‖), the U.S. government responded to protect investment and ensure that Guatemalan peasants would remain landless. The C.I.A., under the leadership of Allen Dulles (a United Fruit Co. board member whose brother, John Foster Dulles, was Secretary of State), organized a mercenary army and undertook the first U.S.-orchestrated coup in the Western Hemisphere. The coup led directly to 36 years of civil war, financed off and on by U.S. taxpayers‘ dollars (military aid was suspended under the Carter administration due to human rights violations, but reinstated by Reagan), with several of the military high command now
facing charges of genocide having received training at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. The history of Guatemala is one that was repeated in other countries in Latin America and the world, though rarely with results as brutal. It is the very definition of injustice to criminalize and condemn undocumented immigrants while much larger historical crimes go unpunished. Crimes like the U.S. intervention in Guatemala and support for its genocidal dictators are, in my opinion, just as responsible for the current dynamics of mass migration as are irresponsible global economic policies which facilitate the flow of wealth and resources from South to North and dismantle labor and environmental protections in the name of ―protecting investment.‖ Steps toward justice I know that issues like migration are deeply complex, and I could never fully or fairly treat such an issue in a letter like this one. I am even less able to treat a sensitive theme like the U.S.‘s historical responsibility for violence in Guatemala. However, I hope that through these letters I have raised doubts about the justice of the status quo and given a glimpse of these issues from the perspective of below. There‘s philosophical statement I often come back to when facing such dilemmas: ―There may not be such thing as collective guilt‖ for abuses or systems that are beyond individual influences, ―but if so, there is no collective innocence, either.‖ What gives me hope is the example of the courageous human rights defenders I have had the honor to meet and accompany in my time in Guatemala, and the loyalty and sacrifice of folks like you all who by supporting my work as an accompanier, help make their struggles for justice possible. I can‘t hope to present a sense of closure for my time as an accompanier, because these struggles will go on. However, I wanted to end my last letter as an accompanier by reviewing just a few of the successes of the last nine months: - On August 18 the community organization ACODET (Association of Communities for Development and Defense of Land and Natural Resources) held its first meeting as a legally recognized organization of communities that would be affected by the Xalalá hydro-electric dam project, in order to assert the communities‘ internationally recognized right to be consulted regarding such projects. - On September 25 survivors from Xaman Aurora 8 de Octubre, after four previous audiences were cancelled due to inexcusable failures by the justice system to provide translation for witnesses, successfully gave declarations in front of a judge about the massacre in their community,
marking a step forward in their civil case which could eventually lead to the Guatemalan government paying damages to affected families. - On May 28, five ex-civil patrollers (paramilitary forces organized by the Guatemalan military) were convicted for their participation in the massacre of 177 women and children from the Maya-Achi village of Rio Negro in the municipality of Rabinal, Baja Verapaz. - In May and April of this year, 20 genocide survivors from the survivor‘s organization Association for Justice and Reconciliation gave public testimony about their experiences in front of a Guatemalan judge at the request of the Spanish court which is carrying out an international case against the architects in Guatemala. Earlier, in February, 18 witnesses traveled to Spain to give declarations directly to the Spanish judge who is in charge of this case. - In April a police officer was brought to trial and convicted for raping a woman in police custody. This case was historic as the first time that a police officer ever stood trial or was convicted for sexual abuse of a prisoner, a crime which is reportedly suffered by as many as three out of four women in police custody in Guatemala. These are just a few of the victories for human rights and justice in Guatemala that I could cite. I hope that you will all continue to support these struggles by staying informed and active about human rights issues both in Guatemala and the rest of the world. As for me, I finally decided that I was looking forward more to returning home than to traveling across the continent by land to get here, and I chose to fly home all at once. I think it will be good to be home, though I know that I will leave a part of me behind in Guatemala. I also think about a lyric from the song I mentioned at the opening of this letter (―Lágrimas del Corazon (Tears of the Heart)‖ by Montez de Durango): ―When are you coming back?‖ I hear you ask, and my lips tremble. If only I were able to fly, could have wings and be by your side. Many don‘t have the choice or ability to simply fly home when they want to. I have the privilege to see many of you very soon, and my lips are indeed trembling to think of it. In enduring solidarity, Philip Neff
Resources For more information about the Guatemala Accompaniment Project (including how to become an accompanier), news updates from the struggle for human rights and justice, and urgent actions see: Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) 436 14th Street, Suite 409, Oakland, CA 94612 Web: http://www.nisgua.org E-mail: info@nisgua.org ORGANIZATIONS Center for Human Rights Legal Action (Centro para Acción Legal en los Derechos Humanos): http://www.caldh.org/ (in Spanish) A pioneering Guatemalan human rights organization carrying out cases against genocide Peace Brigades International: http://www.peacebrigades.org/index.php International NGO which also supports accompaniers in Guatemala Rights Action: http://www.rightsaction.org/ Activism for human rights and community-controlled development in Central and North America CAMINOS Colorado/Maya Accompaniment Project of the Sierra (Denver, CO): http://www.denjustpeace.org/about.html GAP sponsoring community which supports accompaniers Needham Congregational Church UCC (Needham, Massachusetts): http://needhamucc.org/dru/ GAP sponsoring community with a partner relationship with Santa María Tzejá ARTICLES Hilly McGahan, an accompanier with whom I worked in Ixcán, wrote a wonderful article about the Xalalá dam, ―Guatemala dam will bring money, misery‖, published June 8 2008 in the San Francisco Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/08/ MN6110LJAP.DTL&type=science Professor Erik Camayd-Freixas‘ essay about serving as a court interpreter during the Postville trials is available on-line and is worth reading in full: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/07/14/opinion/14edcamayd.pdf The UW Law School and OneAmerica report about the NW Detention Center in Tacoma is also available on-line: http://www.weareoneamerica.com/article.php?id=262
Read more about sentences in the case of the massacre of Rio Negro: http://www.nisgua.org/themes_campaigns/index.asp?id=3147 Information about the Xaman criminal and civil cases: http://www.nisgua.org/themes_campaigns/index.asp?id=3246 BOOKS ―Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcan, Guatemala, 1975-1982‖ by Father Ricardo Falla, translated by Julia Howard; a powerful study of the violence committed by the Guatemalan state in the Ixcán ―Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope‖ by Beatriz Manz; a sociological history of the settling of the Ixcán and the community of Santa María Tzejá ―Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala‖ by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer; a meticulously researched history of U.S. intervention in Guatemala and its consequences ―I, Rigoberta Menchú‖ by Rigoberta Menchu and Elisabeth BurgosDebray; the classic personal narrative of the Maya-K‘iche‘ indigenous rights activist, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and presidential candidate ―Transnational Conflicts‖ by William I. Robinson; a dense but fascinating analysis of economic and political transformations in Central America during the 20th century ―Our Culture Is Our Resistance‖ by Jonathan Moller; gorgeous and astonishing photos of life in the Communities of Poplulation in Resistance WEBSITES http://acoguate.blogspot.com/ - Official blog of the Coordination of International Accompaniment in Guatemala, of which NISGUA‘s GAP project is a part (in Spanish) http://www.albedrio.org – News and commentary from Guatemala with a social justice perspective (in Spanish) http://www.mimundo-jamesrodriguez.blogspot.com/ – Photo blog about struggles in Guatemala and Central America (in English and Spanish) http://upsidedownworld.org/ - Covering activism and politics in Latin America, with articles by accompaniers (in English and Spanish)
Gracias Infinite gratitude is due to Bridget Brehen and all the coordinators of NISGUA and CAIG-ACOGUATE; to all my compañer@s acompañantes; to my sponsoring communities, CAMINOS and Needham; and to all the individuals, organizations, and communities which I had the privilege to walk in solidarity with in Guatemala. I would never have become an accompanier if not for Angelina SnodgrassGodoy and my incredible friends in the University of Washington Guatemala Project; for my years of experience with Amnesty International; or without the constant love of my parents and family. My purpose for compiling this pamphlet of my letters to Friends and Family is to show my thanks for the solidarity of all those who supported me as an accompanier. I hope that this will be a reminder of the powerful and ongoing struggles for human rights which they have strengthened by that support. Questions or correspondence: phil.neff@gmail.com Bantyox aa’we.
Gracias a ustedes.
Thank you all.
Mayan altar, Laguna Chicabal
Iximulew 5124 Cascadia 2008