Oxlajuj B'aqt'un, part 1

So, it should be obvious to all that the world didn't end December 21. Instead, a 400-year cycle of the Maya calendar came to an end and the following day, December 22, a new cycle began. I decided to time this winter research trip to Guatemala to coincide with the celebrations of this occasion, in part because it had been hyped so much, and also because for many of my Maya friends, it promised to be an important moment. This has been a difficult  year, to say the least, for the Maya in general and for those involved in political struggle, or defending their own rights, in particular. The new government had barely taken power in January when it began to step up the  imposition of neoliberal economic initiatives, while seeking to dramatically rewrite the social contract in Guatemala (through a series of "financial reforms", a proposed constitutional reform), and at the same time stepping up the repression of those who challenged these measures. I have blogged previously about the military take-over of Santa Cruz Barillas in May and the massacre of the peaceful protestors at Cumbre de Alaska on the Panamerican highway in October. Cumbre de Alaska is the name of the community where the massacre took place, although those involved in the protest were primarily from Totonicapán, a municipality that has a very well-organized indigenous mayoralty in all of its 48 communities. There have been numerous raids on community radio stations -- the station at Doble Via was raided only a week after the massacre at Cumbre de Alaska. Throughout the year there have been displacements of people in rural communities that are slated for the construction of hydro-electric projects or the production of biofuels. Much of this has been met with resistance as communities have not been willing to lie down and let the state and foreign transnationals roll over them. There are a few other communities that have been sites of popular resistance, including San José del Golfo in the department of Guatemala.  

The government had been promoting the Oxlajuj B'aqt'un -- a b'aqt'un is a 400-year calendar cycle, and oxlajuj (pronounced "osh-la-hooh") is the number 13, a sacred number in the Mayan numerological system. So the ending of the 13th b'aqt'un is an especially auspicious moment in the history of humanity, according to the Maya cosmovision. Let me explain the significance of the number 13, as it was explained to me in the wee hours of the morning in one of the four ceremonies that I attended at Q'umark'aj, also known as Utatlan -- the capital city of the ancient K'iche' kingdom ("kingdom" is the best I can do in English for the Spanish word "reino") that was destroyed by the Spanish invaders. Although it is nominally under the control of the Ministry of Sports and Culture (under whose aegis archeological excavations and reconstructions are carried out), it is still used as a ceremonial site.  I will talk more about the ceremonies and all that in a little bit. I spent nearly 24 hours at Q'umark'aj between the 20th and the 21st, and both during and in between the ceremonies, the priests/spiritual guides (again, English doesn't quite have a word that corresponds to the K'iche' term ajq'ij -- "day keeper" is a frequent translation, but in Spanish people often use guia espiritual or sacerdote Maya) who were presiding over the ceremonies offered some reflections, and there were two interesting ones about numerology.

The Maya philosophy, spirituality, cosmovision, or whatever you want to call it, is based both on the natural world and human beings as part of that natural world. They believe that humans are complete in ourselves, and we are representations of the sacred at the same time. We have a physical self, a body, that has to be protected, nurtured and cared for. We have social selves, and so our relations with other people need to be taken seriously. And we have spiritual or cosmological selves. In this way, humans are conduits between "the heart of the sky" and "the heart of the earth" -- we stand as a gateway between "father sky" (or "grandfather sky") and "mother earth" (or "grandmother earth"). 

But in this context the human body is a representation and reflection of the cosmos. And much of the numerological system, which is at the base of the calendar, is based on the human body. The number 13 corresponds to the major articulations or joints in the human body: we have two ankles, two knees, two hip joints at the bottom. Starting with the hands, we have two wrists, two elbows, and two shoulders. That adds up to 12. And then the neck joint is the 13th. So that's where the significance of thirteen comes in.  Another important number is 20. This also comes from the human body: we have ten toes and ten fingers, 20 digits altogether. The number 20 in the K'iche' language is the word winaq -- which is the same word that means "human being". There are 20 nahuals (guardian spirits) and thus 20 sacred day-names in the Maya calendar -- a month consists of 20 days, one for each nahual. So a "year" in the sacred calendar, the ritual calendar, is 260 days (13 times 20). This also corresponds to the gestational period, the time between conception and birth. 

 Every 400 years, then, we begin a new "long cycle" in the Maya calendar.  But this one was especially significant because it was the thirteenth one. Throughout the year there were attempts to commercialize and turn this into something that could benefit the tourist industry. There were occasional photographs of the president and vice-president kneeling in front of an altar, surrounded by Maya priests. But many were concerned that all of this activity was going to be turned into a piece of "folklore" - a word that, as I have mentioned in previous blogs, has a very negative connotation in Guatemala, and that it would continue to marginalize the Maya communities that have suffered at the hands of governments, both colonial and national, for the last 500-plus years.  Some of the Maya organizations had taken this as an opportunity to try and correct some of the misconceptions about the so-called "Maya prophecies" predicting "the end of the world".  One of the more active political organizations, the Consejo de los Pueblos del Occidente (the Council of Western Peoples), which has organized the community consultations on mining and mega projects throughout the country, put out a call a few weeks ago, asking people to go to the sacred sites that corresponded to their particular ethnic group, starting on the 20th at noon, to reclaim the sites, and together with spiritual leaders, participate in ceremonies to mark the close of one era and the start of a new one. 

I contacted some of my friends who work with the CPO, who are K'iche's, and they were going to go to Q'umark'aj, so I decided I would go there as well. Although my current research project is not specifically about one Maya ethnic group, but since my original starting point was with the Maya K'iche' community in New Bedford and I lived in the department of El Quiché for a year, it made sense to go to Q'umark'aj. A little while later I received an invitation from another organization, Chilam Balam de los K'iche's, an organization that is more spiritual in nature, while CPO is more political. Both are political, in that while Chilam Balam includes mostly Maya priests in its membership and they sponsor ceremonies fairly regularly, they are also involved in advocacy work around sacred sites, trying to regain many sacred sites that are currently not readily accessible, or are under threat from development projects. Chilam Balam was also calling people to attend a series of ceremonies at Q'umark'aj, and since I had known people from Chilam Balam and attended both a few ceremonies and some meetings that they had organized last year, that was another indication that I should be at Q'umarkaj.  

So, I purchased my ticket for the 17th, figuring that I might have a few days (the 18th and 19th) for preparatory activities, or what have you (things turned out differently, as they often do), in order to be fully prepared for the 20th and 21st.

The new contours of indigenous protest 1

It's been some time, and I haven't really written anything since shortly after my return from Guatemala, but it's not as though Guatemala is not on my mind, and I am in touch with people and events there to the extent that the internet (and time) permits.

This morning's paper (in Guatemala) carried a headline about a recent vote in the 48 cantones of Totonicapán against the proposed constitutional reforms. Over the weekend I was able to catch up with the alcaldía indígena (indigenous mayoralty) of Chichicastenango, four of whose representatives were in New York to address the United Nations and network with groups here.  I also met, over the weekend, with a friend from a community radio station in Guatemala who, unbeknownst to me, decided to emigrate not long after we had met, and is now living in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.  But to be able to contextualize these three seemingly unrelated events, I need to give some background about the the state and indigenous communities in Guatemala.

In the past two months, Guatemala has been in a state of turmoil, or at least the parts of Guatemala that concern me the most -- the Maya communities in the highlands, and the community radio movement.  Since early October, Totonicapán has been at the center of people's attention -- a peaceful protest at the highway crossing known as Cuatro Caminos, led by indigenous leaders from the 48 cantones of Totonicapán, was attacked by the army and a total of eight people were killed (four of them died immediately, and another four who had been wounded in the attack died within a day), and dozens wounded.  Totonicapán has now become a potent symbol of indigenous resistance within Guatemala.  About a week later, the Ministerio Público raided the community radio station in San Mateo, Radio Doble Vía, and took their transmitter and other equipment. 

But this needs a little background. I have to confess that I don't know enough about the particularities of the "movement" in Totonicapán on a local level. When I visited Guatemala in March and attended the pubic gathering with the UN Human Rights representative Navi Pillay, I was struck by the visible presence of the local indigenous authorities from the 48 communities, who formed an honor guard as the UN representative walked to the platform, bearing their wooden staffs as symbols of their authority and leadership. It was an impressive sight, and spoke volumes about the level of organization in those communities, which I confess I barely know. But to venture a wild surmise (phrase lifted from Keats' "On Looking into Chapman's Homer", for those literary-minded among you), I think what we are seeing is the resurgence of a national movement for indigenous rights,  bringing together traditional local leaders (who I think have not always been that politicized), along with other social actors --including groups that date back to the armed conflict, like the national peasants' organization, CUC -- the Comité de Unidad Campesino -- and newer formations like the Consejo de los Pueblos del Occidente (the Council of Indigenous Peoples of the West, or CPO).  Well, not sure what the right word is.. resurgence, or the formation of a new movement that includes old-line "movimiento maya" activists with new players. But whatever it is, it bears watching (and in my case, engagement).

Since the new government came to power, the country has witnessed increased militarization, and also increased popular mobilization.  For the last few months, people have been talking and debating about some proposed constitutional reforms put forward by the party in power. Communities have been expressing their discontent, but those have mostly fallen on deaf ears.  When I was there in August there was some discussion about the proposed reforms -- I attended a fairly large meeting of K'iche' and Mam leaders from Quetzaltenango's communities, and the proposed reforms were one point on a long agenda, and the general sentiment was that folks were against them, as they roll back some of the guarantees that were set forth -- if not exactly complied with -- in the Peace Accords. 

Todos Somos Barillas

At the same time there has been renewed protest against the mining companies and other "mega projects" that would, in the view of many, wreak havoc in highland communities and bring few lasting benefits.  For the past few years the residents of Santa Cruz Barillas, a town in northern Huehuetenango, have been organizing in opposition to a hydroelectric plant -- a project directed by the Spanish-owned company Hidro Santa Cruz. There was a community consultation in good faith in 2007, but plans for the project continued. This is not uncommon: communities hold "consultations in good faith", vote overwhelmingly (like 98% or more) against a project, but the project proceeds. The good faith consultations are a popular consultation process that I described earlier -- according to the ILO Convention 169 on the rights of indigenous peoples, there can't be any "development" projects in indigenous communities without the consent of the community and an open, transparent process of community consultation. Although the government does not recognize these consultations as binding, or grant them any official status, the popular consultation model has been an important organizing tool in indigenous communities, and do provide an opportunity for popular participation, but also grassroots mobilization. The usual model is a large public assembly in local communities: for example, the good-faith consultation in Chinique, which I attended in March of this year, consisted of open-air meetings in each of the 33 communities (cantons, aldeas and other rural settlements) that are official recognized as comprising the municipality. I only saw the public meeting, but they were obviously preceded by conversations, by organizing and passing along information about the project, since the actual consultation was fairly formalized and did not involve a lot of discussion. More time was spent signing people in, giving instructions, physically arranging people in gender and age-segregated rows for the count, and then having everyone sign the "acta" at the end, than anything else. 

SInce the project had not been halted, there was continued opposition in Barillas, and in mid-2011, the company began to bring in security forces, equipment and machinery, and the security guards were apparently very belligerent and threatening toward residents, creating an atmosphere of hostile and confrontation (need I say that the private security forces were armed? It is not uncommon for private security guards to be armed in Guatemala -  one of the the cafés on Parque Central in Antigua where I often had coffee had an armed guard on the premises).   The company had  brought legal charges against community leaders. The protests heated up last fall around and after the elections. There were some acts of sabotage against the company's installations and the equipment and machinery that had been put in place to start construction. There were rumors that the company had gotten orders of capture against 23 community leaders. Then early in 2012 there was a meeting between the new local government, the company representatives and community leaders to reach a solution, but five days later heavy machinery began to arrive, and that provoked another round of protests. 

In late April a dead dog was discovered near the company's installations. Investigations by the police determined that it had been killed by a home-made bomb on the hillside near the company's installations and that the bomb had been made by the company's security forces. On May 1, community leaders who were out walking encountered a pickup truck filled with armed men (who later turned out to be guards hired by the company) who opened fire. One man was killed and two were wounded. One of the wounded was a man who had refused to sell his land to the company and had been outspoken in his opposition to the hydroelectric project. 

The community erupted, 5000 people marched to the town center, and the government sent to the army to occupy the town. 12 community leaders were arrested and taken off to a distant jail to await trial.  What was interesting and important about Barillas is that people used social media -- particularly Twitter and Facebook -- to spread word about the army occupation. Within hours, indigenous rights organizations were posting denunciations and statements on Facebook, and launching a national and later international  campaign (largely through Facebook) to put pressure on the government to pull back the army and end martial law. The slogan,  "Todos y todas somos Barillas" (we are all Barillas) spread like wildfire over social media, and the government was eventually forced to retreat. The use of social media and the internet is not precisely new in popular struggles, from the Ukraine to Iran to Egypt.  Cell phones are ubiquitous in Guatemala and, as I have noted in previous blogs, at any public event in Maya communities -- from a wedding to a local school's "indigenous princess" pageant -- the air is thick with people recording the event on their phones, digital and video cameras, and photographers jostle with each other for space and good camera angles. Guatemalans have taken to Facebook and Twitter in droves; in the past year half of my close friends in my small village where I lived have signed up for Facebook. Much of what they post is very localized and personal, focused on their families, and daily lives. But civil society organizations are also recognizing the importance of website, blogs, and Facebook for disseminating information and for popular mobilization. 

From Todos Somos Barillas to Todos Somos Toto

This long introduction is to set the stage for where I started this posting, with the vote in Totonicapán against the constitutional reforms.  There have been marches and mobilizations and blockades, both local and national, throughout the year. October is the month of the official celebrations of the Día de la Raza (day of the race), October 12, ostensibly a celebration of the "discovery" of the Americas, the Central American counterpart to Columbus Day. But through the indigenous world in Latin America, it is referred to as the Day of Indigenous Resistance or the Day of Mourning. I don't know if the protest at Cuatro Caminos was planned as a lead-in to the October 12 actions -- since I know that many of the new and old social actors in the indigenous movement were planning to participate in the October 12 march in Guatemala City. The community radio folks had planned to mobilize a contingent; back in August, I was at a meeting where the organizers were proposing a national gathering of radio activists, and the idea was to hold it on October 11, and to have it relatively close to the capital (instead of in San Mateo, where the workshops have often been held, since that is about 4 hours away), so that they could arrange bus transportation to get everyone to the march in the capital, and then people could find their way home after that, since buses depart from Guatemala City to all parts of the country. Their intention was to continue to raise the issue of the government's failure to pass legislation authorizing community radio stations, and to protest the proposed legislation that would impose penalties and jail time for those broadcasting without a license.

In this context, the authorities in Totonicapán organized a blockade of a major highway intersection at Cuatro Caminos. Highway blockades are a very standard form of socio-political protest in Guatemala. Everyone with a grievance -- from bus drivers who are unhappy about fare increases to secondary-school students angered about changes in the degree requirements for a teaching certification -- blockades highways to promote their cause. As students at a highway blockade in Salcajá told me in August, "If you don't block highways no one listens to you." Or at least that is the belief.

As I noted above, this peaceful (according to the organizers) "occupation" of the highway crossroads was attacked. Cuatro Caminos is a busy, congested place. It is where the major national and international highway, the Panamerican Highway, CA-1, meets the secondary highway that connects the city of Totonicapán with Xela, the second largest city in Guatemala. All around the intersection are stores and restaurants, ranging from auto repair shops to chain restaurants like Pollo Campero, mom-and-pop eateries, and much more. Although there is no physical structure that could be called a "bus terminal", it is where many inter-urban buses stop and discharge or pick-up passengers, and along the Panamerican Highway near the crossing, there are always half a dozen or more buses parked and waiting to ferry people to Huehuetenango or Guatemala City and other locations.  Many buses don't go into the terminal at Xela, so depending upon where you want to go, if you are heading to or from Xela, it is likely that you will have to change buses, or at least stop, at Cuatro Caminos. So, outside of the main roads around Guatemala City, this is about as central a location as one could pick to block traffic and make a point.

There were some confrontations with the local police, who then called upon the army, who arrived and opened fire.  Again, information about the attacks spread within moments via social media and the internet and again, Facebook and other social media were used to mobilize outrage and a public response to these actions. The slogan that had emerged in the army occupation of Santa Cruz Barillas -- "todos somos Barillas" -- was quickly adapted to "todos y todas somos Toto", and the events in Toto were a main focus of the indigenous movement's contingents in the October 12 march. There were a lot of images circulating through Facebook and other online sources: photographs of the government photoshopped so that the officials were dripping with blood, and dozens of online posters, many linking the genocide of the armed conflict (and President Otto Pérez Molina's involvement; as Lieutenant Tito, he was a leader of the secret forces, the G2, that were responsible for many of the massacres in Quiché and other highland areas). 

The night before this march, however, when the community radio people were mostly gathered at a conference center near San Lucas, Sacatepéquez, about 30 km. outside city, the MP raided the station at Doble Vía. Of course, most of the people at that station, and all the stations, were not in San Lucas. Only a few representatives of each station were in attendance, since there wasn't enough funding to bring everyone from every station -- and of course, there was no desire for all the stations to cease broadcasting to attend a conference. Apparently, there was an alarm system at the Doble Vía headquarters and neighbors came out in response, and the officials did not take ALL of the equipment, but they did seize the transmitter. The transmitter was not only an essential apparatus, as it would be for any radio station, but that specific transmitter had historic and emotional value. It was the transmitter that had belonged to the clandestine radio of the armed resistance that had been hidden on the slopes of the Tajamulco Volcano. Tito Recinos, one of the founders of Doble Vía, had been the chief broadcaster of the guerrilla radio, and when the conflict ended, he retrieved the transmitter and, several years later, installed it in Doble Vía. So, while there is a fundraising campaign underway to put Doble Vía back on the air, and it seems likely that the station will start transmitting again soon, it seems highly unlikely that the government will ever return the transmitter. 

Without being too conspiratorial, it hardly seems that this was a random raid by the Ministerio Público. Tito is well known nationally and to a degree internationally as a leader in the community radio movement, and he has never hidden his credentials as a former guerrilla; in fact, he is very proud of his involvement in the armed struggle although he usually reminds people that most of his work was as a broadcaster ("I exchanged my gun for a microphone", is how he often phrases it). They do raid other stations, and not all of them ones that have been at the forefront of the national movement, but the circumstances here are suggestive that this was an effort, however clumsy, to silence protest. Doble Vía has been able to garner support from international sources; when I was there in August the station was involved in constructing a major expansion of its facilities, to include a conference center complete with dormitories and a kitchen, so that they could house gatherings of community radio people without having to send people to a hotel in Xela, and feed the visitors on site (in the workshops I attended, we walked a short distance up to Tito's house where his wife, mother and other relatives prepared food that was served on some long tables set up in the patio). 

Freedom of expression?

So, readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that the situation in Guatemala has not improved -- at least as far as the majority of the population is concerned -- under the government of Otto Pérez Molina. I don't yet have enough perspective to opine on the "big picture" but can offer some snapshots from my somewhat limited vantage point, or the vantage point of the people with whom I speak. It hasn't been good, in short. The congress has been stalled for most of the year; only 12 bills have been passed and no one seems to think that any more will be acted upon for the remainder of the year. Congressional committees and hearings are suspended frequently because there is not a quorum. Meanwhile the president and the Ministry of Mines seem to be only too eager to hand even more of the country over to mining companies. The government imposed a so-called fiscal reform, one of the effects of which has been to clamp down on civil society organizations that receive support from international sources -- especially if it seems that any of those funds are used to support political action. One of my colleagues said the government had basically said that they would oppose any organization that based itself on the provisions of the peace accords.  In the early part of this year the peasant and indigenous organizations were able to mobilize thousands of people in large and long marches across the country, but I'm not sure that level of popular mobilization is going to continue.  It also seems as though the 2015 elections have already begun. Apparently Sandra Torres, the former wife of the former president (they divorced so she could qualify as a candidate but her candidacy was thrown out), is already trying to make alliances for 2015; she was candidate for a centrist party, and she has reached out to some of the left parties.

Closer to my particular interests is the continued assault on community radio stations, and the lack of any initiative that focuses on indigenous people. The government seems determined to roll back anything that has to do with the peace accords, as I noted above, and so there has been a proposed reform of the constitution that has changed the language dealing with indigenous people. I don't have the document with me, so I will paraphrase and not quote. One proposed change is that the new document will not talk about the 24 languages but will say that Spanish is the official language and that the country ought to protect the languages of the Maya, Xinka and Garifuna -- but it doesn't accord official status to the indigenous languages. Further, it does not mention anything about indigenous peoples' rights to their own means of communication.

But more worrisome is the direct attack on community radio. The representatives from the LIDER party (which lost the presidency but has a pretty substantial bloc in congress) have introduced a bill, 4479, that criminalizes the use of the airwaves without authorization and imposes harsh prison sentences (6 to 10 years) on those who violate it.  This goes against all of the international conventions that protect indigenous communities' right to have their own media, and the Guatemalan Peace Accords, among other national and international legal conventions. It also is a slap in the face to the community radio movement, that has been fighting to gain legal status for the last several years, and that has promoted a bill that has been stalled in Congress, # 4087, that would grant legal recognition to community radio stations.

So, I spent part of my first Tuesday in Guatemala (August 21)  with my colleagues in the community radio movement talking about the current situation and how to move the agenda of the movement -which is to legalize community radio. The assessment is that the congress is not going to do anything and that working through the congress is probably not going to be terribly effective. There was a long discussion about what legal avenues to pursue, with a charge of inconstitutionality against the government. I didn't follow the discussion entirely since I haven't fully kept up with the legal actions, but much of the conversation revolved around pursuing a legal remedy, and also what political pressures ca be brought on the Congress from outside, since there does not seem to be much will inside the Congress.

So, we drafted a denunciation of the proposed law, and then I translated it into English, and sent both versions on to Cultural Survival so that they could start a letter-wrting campaign to key members of the Guatemalan congress.  Here is a link to the CS website:
Guatemala-new-bill-would-criminalize-community-radio

On the one hand I am very admiring of the people in the movement for their steadfastness in the struggle .. but on the other hands, the odds seem to be worse. This may reflect the overall situation in Guatemala: a step up in militarization, neo-liberal policies, along with a phase of renewed social activism.

Ecumenism, Maya style

Now the discourse has shifted to ecumenism -- not insignificant in a highly religious country where there are often debates and divisions among Evangelics and Catholics and Maya spiritualists. "If you are going to be a Catholic, be a good Catholic, don't fuck around... Why say that my god is the best and yours is fucked up?" 

The closing slide (ostensibly in the voice of the ancestors, talking to the current generation):  "Think, then, in us, don't erase us from your memory, don't forget us. Continue our road and you will see, in the new place, that we will arrive."

Community radio and indigenous rights, part III

Talking about the Maya as political subjects (sujetos políticos) as a way of inspiring the people present to take up the struggle. This is one of the best exhortations I have heard in any language --speaking in terms of the power of the word, of the strength of his discourse. He combines humor, political analysis, and specific anecdotes, along with invocations of the spirits of past generations. "Si esta abuela tiene los ovarios para defender su territorio, porque nosotros no?" (If this grandmother -- showing a photo of an elderly Maya couple -- has the ovaries to defend her territories, why not us?).  

He is now talking about the coming Oxlajuj Baqtun (the "change of calendar"), and the commercialization. What we are going to say on the 21st is to demand autonomy. We are not going to kneel so that people can take photos of us. We are not folklore. We are the owners of time (dueños of the time).

There has been a lot of publicity regarding the "end of the Maya calendar", this coming 21st of December. Throughout the commercial radio broadcasts, commercials refer to "the end of things as we know them", sometimes in a more serious form and sometimes in a jocose manner. Radio broadcasters on the commercial stations also make frequent references. Throughout the indigenous communities there is an effort to correct some of the ideas that this is the end of the world, and so forth, and to a degree this has been covered in the mainstream print media. But there is still a lot of anxiety about how the event will be commercialized, folklorized, turned into a tourist attraction that will not, in large part, benefit the Maya communities.

Now the discourse has shifted to defend life... basically expounding about the project of CPO and why it exists, what it stands for.  "Our project is for the life of the new people, the grandchildren will communicate our thought."  He just made a reference to the white folks (Kaxlan) using indigenous garb (traje), commenting "It would be nice if when they put on our clothing, our thoughts entered them as well."

Community radio and indigenous rights, part II

There are about 50 people present, mostly from radio stations in San Marcos, Huehuetenango, and Quetzaltenango. I am the only person from Quiché, so to speak, and there is someone from Santiago Atitlán (Sololá). There is a mix of people from religious radio stations, other small local stations, and about five people from the stations that belong to the community radio movement (as I define it). Several people from the CPO, a few from AMARC, which is an international association of community radio stations (as I understand, the AMARC-Guatemala has had some differences with the Cultural Survival/Mujb'ab Lyol/community radio movement folks).

The representative from the CPO is continuing to expound about taking up the microphone as a tool in the struggle. "We are the council of the Maya peoples of the west and we look for unity in diversity. Oh, heart of the fire, heart of the wind, heart of the heavens and of the earthy. One, two, three and four times we give you thanks." They just changed the slide so I can't reproduce the rest of it. 

"Who are we? We are the owners. Before the structure that now governs came here, we were here, we were connected to the air, to the earth, and we were part of the chain of life, and also part of the chain of the world. We talk about a territory of our own, that we have to defend. Our grandparents didn't say that we should give our land to the Europeans, to the Canadians, so that they can do mining."

He is going on to talk about the Maya being only one people, even though different languages, different religions.  "We have ancestral traditions of making decisions. So put the idea of the community radio in front of the local council. And so the radio will talk about what is going on with the land, with the water, with gold mining, in the lives of the communicators" (in Guatemala, people talk about "comunicadores sociales" -- social communicators -- as an umbrella term for journalists, I guess. It doesn't really have an English equivalent -- people who do social communication. It would include bloggers, twitterers, Facebookers, print journalists and broadcasters).

Community radio and the struggle for indigenous rights

That's the theme of a meeting to which I was invited today in Xela. This is a meeting organized by the Consejo de Pueblos del Occidente, the Council of Western Peoples, a regional indigenous rights organization. The CPO has been the major force behind the community consultations about mining, just to place it on the political map a little bit. 

Tino, one of my compañeros from the community radio movement and the founder of the Asociación Mujb'ab Lyol, who got his start in the clandestine radio movement during the armed struggle, sent me the invitation, which was an invitation to representatives from different community radio stations across the country. Although I do not formally represent a radio station, I wanted to attend and so I wrote to the CPO and explained who I was, to make sure it was okay for me to attend, and received a positive reply. Later I spoke to the people in the Asociación Ixmukané and Radio Ixmukané to see if any of them were going to come to represent that radio station, but no one was available. The two coordinators of Radio Ixmukané are both taking university classes on Saturdays, which has prevented them from participating in the workshops for community radio stations, and meant that neither could come today. They did make some phone calls, and for a moment it seemed as though someone from the Youth Network (Red de Jóvenes) might be able to come IF I were able to swing by and pick him up (adding an hour to my trip), but then he wouldn't make a commitment, so I agreed that I would share the information that I received today with the compañeras.

And so, saying an early goodbye to Quiché, I set off this morning. Last night was my last night with my friends Sandra  and Catarino, and I also swept into the town to visit another friend -- who has nothing whatsoever to do with my research, but is a friend nonetheless. She works at the local health center in Chinique and is one of the few Ladina/Ladino friends I have in Guatemala -- in the sense of an intimate friendship.  Not that I have tried to not befriend Ladinos/Ladinas, but I haven't had a lot of contact outside of professional contacts -- many of whom I also consider friends although we don't get to see each other much.  She is the only Ladina from up here in the highlands with whom I have an intimate friendship - intimate in the sense that we have been inside each other's houses, gone out dancing, talked about our intimate lives.  I was extremely tired and so just stayed for a little while, and then went back home to get some sleep before getting up around 5 to head to Xela.

The meeting was called for 9, but I had a feeling it wasn't going to start on time (just based on past experience with meetings here), and so I made a few stops along the way. A friend in New Bedford had asked me to buy some hand looms and since Saturday is market day in Chiché, I stopped in the market to see if I could find someone selling a loom. No luck. I also wanted to purchase some chiles cobaneros -- a particular kind of dried chile that has a special flavor that I adore. Nothing available in the U.S. tastes exactly like it. I bought 3/4 of a pound -- some for me, some to share with friends. And I also wanted to get a couple of the red handwoven belts that men wear. Today, they are mostly worn by Maya priests in ceremonies, but in some areas of Quiché where men still wear the traditional outfit of white cotton shirts and pants, the red belt is part of the outfit.  Finally, I decided to get a handwoven servilleta (all purpose cloth) for my friend Sandra. There is no real way to compensate my friends for their hospitality. They won't accept payment as such for my staying with them, and so I try to purchase food, staple items like oil and soap, and help out by giving them rides. I bring some small gifts from the U.S. (usually clothing for the children).  

I made the trip to Xela faster than I ever have: about an hour and 35 minutes from Santa Cruz to the Centro de Capacitación where the activity was being held.

Now we are discussing the importance of the radios in the struggle. Tino gave a sharp analysis of the current conjuncture and the attacks on community radio. Now some named Eliseo, from one of the Mam councils from San Marcos, is talking very energetically about the necessity of taking up the struggle that was started by the abuelos and abuelas. "They gave their lives, to fertilize the soil, and now it is our responsibilities." I am recording this talk, because it is impossible to catch the passion and force of his language.