My original connection with El Quiché, and the reason I had chosen to live in the department when I did my Fulbright in 2011, was through the Mayan community in New Bedford. Nearly all of the Maya in New Bedford were from El Quiché, and most of them were from 3 or 4 towns clustered in one part of the department: Chinique, Zacualpa, and San Andres Sajcabajá. There were a few from other towns: Chichicastenango, Santa Cruz del Quiché, and the Ixcán.
I had initially visited Zacualpa because several of the immigrants who were caught up in the 2007 ICE raid that resulted in 361 people being taken into detention were from Zacualpa, and I had come to visit their families. I had visited the parish hall several times during the years that I either lived in El Quiché or traveled there more regularly, but had never really systematically examined all the details and taken notes.
I was hoping to be able to talk to someone in the parish who was familiar with the history of the establishment of the two chapels that have been turned into memory sites. The nun whom I had met when I first traveled to Zacualpa in 2009, Sor Ana Maria, who had first shown me the chapel of torture, was no longer in Guatemala; I knew from her Facebook posts that she was doing mission work in Africa although I hadn't kept close tabs on her. Sor Ana Maria had taken me along with her in her jeep to visit some rural communities where she went to deliver messages against early marriage (families effectively selling off their 13 and 14-year old daughters). There was another woman I'd met at the church, named Juliana. She wasn't a nun but lived in the parish and worked there. People referred to her as Hermana (sister) Juliana, as distinguished from Sor -- which also means sister but refers specifically to a member of a religious order. She had always been very friendly to me, taking me to meet people in the community. Once she escorted me to the house of an older man who was involved in some of the parish's projects. I sometimes was invited to have tea or lunch with the nuns and Juliana.
But this was all years ago and I hadn't kept in touch with people in Zacualpa very much. One of the families of New Bedford migrants that I had visited many times ended up leaving Zacualpa and moving to another community because of threats; all the remaining members have now come to the United States.
So, I was trying to figure out how to re-establish some contact with someone there. There was a woman I'd met through the women's organization that I'd volunteered with, Asociación por Nosotras Ixmukané, named Doña Catarina Hernández or Doña Caty as most people called her. She was very active with a number of organizations, not just Ixmukané. She was a local leader with a national peasant rights organization, CCDA (the Comité Campesina para el Desarrollo del Altiplano), and a women's rights advocate. I'd been in touch with her a few times around 2012 and 2013because she had been helping someone I knew who was a victim of gender-based violence. We'd re-established contact through Facebook and I knew that she had become active in one of the small leftist political parties, Winaq (this was the party that had fielded Rigoberta Menchú for president in 2011). The word "winaq" means both "people" or "person" and the number 20 in K'iche'. I was taught that the reason the same word stands for both "person" and "20" is that we have 20 digits (10 toes, 10 fingers), so it's symbolic in Mayan mathematics.
I'd reached out to Doña Caty and explained (I thought) my project and asked if she could help find people in the parish who could talk with me. I'd specifically asked to see if she could find Juliana, because I'd read a description of the chapels However, she'd been very busy traveling around at meetings and workshops and the one time she'd been able to stop by the parish
Most of the times I've traveled to el Quiché it's been in my own vehicle, so I've had the freedom to leave when I wanted.. but also the necessity of dealing with asshole drivers (which abound in this country) and maneuvering in what is sometimes treacherous and endless traffic. Lines that snake and barely move for what seems like (and sometimes is) literally hours on end. There is often construction on some part of the Inter-American highway, the main roadway that runs roughly northwest from the capital. It just skirts the edge of El Quiché, at an intersection called Los Encuentros (the encounters) and then heads off towards Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango, and the border will Mexico at a place called La Mesilla. There is a fork in the road at Los Encuentros; all sides of the intersection are lined with small food stands selling sausages, grilled corn, grilled meats, and other quick bites. The highway that continues on to the Mexican border is a four-lane road for part of the way, and then dwindles back to two lanes (I don't know what it does after Huehuetenango since I've never traveled farther north). But the road going into El Quiché is full of speed bumps and hairpin turns that wind up and down mountains. I think I once counted all the speed bumps between Los Encuentros and Chichicastenango, which is about 18 kilometers north, and there were over 60.
I packed my bags and got an Uber to take me to the bus "terminal" (basically just an area where a lot of buses line up in seeming chaos, and men roam around shouting out the names of destinations and hustling passengers onto the appropriate (one hopes) buses. I managed to get myself onto a bus to Los Encuentros, and aside from the always-interminable traffic leaving the city, the trip was uneventful. Well, and aside from the fact that the bus "jockey" whom I asked about buses to Zacualpa gave me incorrect information -- not surprising. Everyone around the bus terminal is being paid by drivers for one or another bus company -- there are countless small bus companies, all unregulated. We stopped and asked for the name of a particular company that Doña Caty had told me about, but were told that there weren't any more buses that day leaving directly from the capital. Because it was so chaotic at the terminal, and I had a large suitcase, and didn't want to go traipsing back and forth asking multiple times about buses, I agreed to get on a bus to Los Encuentros and change buses there. I was successfully deposited off the bus at Los Encuentros, made my way across the busy intersection to the road that heads off into El Quiché, only to see the exact bus that I had been looking for in the capital come by about 15 minutes later and take on passengers (one of whom was me). Fortunately, Doña Caty lives right along the bus route. I called her when I was getting close to Zacualpa and she asked to speak to the driver or the ayudante, saying "I travel on those buses all the time and I know all the drivers." So I passed the phone to the ayudante and she told him where to drop me (I had been to her house before, but traveling with a group so I hadn't had to really take note of exactly where it was situated along the main road).
Duly delivered at my destination, I then set out to see if I could talk with anyone at the parroquia. Doña Caty told me that she hadn't been able to get there until one evening that week, and by the time she arrived there really wasn't anyone around for her to talk with. So I decided that the best plan was just to walk over and see if I could talk to anyone, and if not, just take note of what I found.
The cloister where the nuns live is directly to the left as you face the main church building, which lies at one end of the central plaza of the town. There is a courtyard as you enter, with a large white cross in the center of the courtyard with the word "Martires" (Martyrs) spelled out in metal letters emanating from the top of the cross. The cross was added more recently, I think in 2012 or 2013 -- it definitely wasn't there when I visited Zacualpa numerous times in 2011. More recent additions include a slide and some swings for children who accompany their parents to church or market.
One side of the courtyard (to the right in this photo) is the external wall of the church). Straight ahead, the "back walls" of some of the rooms of the cloister. The other two sides contain offices and meeting rooms for various sub-entities of the parish, with a covered walkway (portico or colonnade, if you want to get all architectural) that provides shade, and also a place for people to sit as they wait -- either to be attended in one of the offices, or simply to have a place to rest. On market days (Sundays) the courtyard is usually pretty crowded with people seeking shade and seating. I rang the buzzer at the entrance to the cloister and a pleasant-faced nun answered. I explained what I was there for, that I had been to the church many times before, and had known Sor Ana Maria, and had spoken to Hermana Juliana in the past. She told me that she had only been at the parish for two years, and that Juliana had gone out and she wasn't sure when she would be back.
Therefore, I decided to use my time by just looking at the facilities and taking detailed notes. The first wall after you enter the cloister is covered with the mural that you see on the right. The legend at the top reads, "When everything (or everyone) came to light, that revived (or resuscitated) my people (or my town)."
The trajectory of the mural is similar to the much larger ones I saw at the Police Archives and later in Comalapa. You "read" the murals from left to right, and they start either with the "before" (before the invasion, before the war) or the "during", and then end with the aftermath and the future.
This one begins with the "during", with hamlets ablaze, people fleeing. Soldiers with automatic weapons loom over the scene of disaster, and one menacing helmeted soldier peers over. In the center is the church building with smoke coming out of the roof, followed by figures of priests and nuns. At the very center is the figure of Monseñor Juan Gerardi, the Archbishop of Guatemala City, who initiated the massive church-sponsored project of gathering testimonies about what happened in the armed conflict, La Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (The Recovery of Historical Memory, colloquially referred to as REMHI). I've written about Msr. Gerardi before but am repeating it here in case anyone is just starting with this blog entry -- he was killed just two days after the publication of the REMHI report. 
Behind him, scales of justice, and then the process of unearthing the dead. Women bearing wooden coffins on their heads, faces of the dead etched into the hillsides, corn planted among the crosses bearing the names of victims (one says "Mama", another "Papa" and so on). Behind them, a Mayan priest or guía espiritual (spiritual guide) indicated by the flowing red scarf around his head. He and others are gathered around a sacred fire -- a constant element of Mayan ceremoniality.
We then move onto the possibilities for the future: a woman kneels grieving at a grave site, while another woman is reaching out either to comfort her or to guide her away from the gravesite. They are both facing the past, although the second woman has one foot angled away from the past. A man clad in white with a red belt (traditional garments -- while most Mayan women in Zacualpa wear güipils and cortes, I've yet to see a man or boy wearing them except in the context of a ceremony or a dance performance) has his arm on the second woman, and one leg pointing to the viewer (the present). His other leg is angled towards the future, as he is following a heavily pregnant woman, who walks in front of him, signaling that new life and new possibilities await. Overlooking this all is a white-robed (and dark skinned) angel, with arms outspread.
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