Maya Guatemala – Through the generations

​Early in 1976, a horrendous overnight earthquake killed 20,000 people in Guatemala. While the catastrophe affected much of the country, the devastation was deadliest in Maya communities.
 
In North America, alongside and beyond governmental pledges, American Indian communities and counter-cultural relief organizations responded. Among the Mohawks of Akwesasne, their national Native newspaper organized an overland relief mission, composed of nurses, carpenters, agriculturalists, and others who volunteered in various projects for several weeks at a time. This author was invited to help lead the mission. Plenty Canada, then incipient as a Non-Governmental Organization with Larry McDermott among its crew, fielded a mission as well that summer, one that coincided with the same valley of the Akwesasne mission.
 
It was a meeting of mutual commitments and kindred spirits that would launch life-long collaborations for now elder colleagues. We converged on numerous projects over the years and convened conferences and cultural gatherings that would contribute and sometimes lead the conception of Canadian international development approaches with Indigenous peoples.
 
The experience of 1976 marked a time of response to a serious catastrophe, the development of sound project commitments, and deep personal friendships with Maya people. Initially there were projects with traditional farming families among Caqchiquel and Qhiche, later and most profoundly and long term among the Maya-Q’eqchi people of Alta Verapaz.
 
The nearly five decades since the earthquake of 1976 have witnessed an equally seismic -- and horrendous -- political history, including a long and bloody civil war that unleashed hundreds of military massacres and brutal torture against peaceful and materially humble, yet highly cultured, Maya communities. Over time, the war subsided, peace accords were reached, and the communities launched intro long, painstaking journeys of recovery and revitalization, which are ongoing.
 
With Plenty Canada Executive Director McDermott, we have sustained many collaborations, always weaving close ties with Maya elders, while marking hundreds of events among dozens of small and large projects. The approach has always been to engage with elders, as well as with young activists and always working from within community, privileging the orientations of those who live it.
 
Guatemala’s violent contemporary history upturned a largely traditional Central American society, one lacking in social justice yet still strong in familial ties and decent social values. The present era nationally is one of ongoing social insecurity. Much organized crime and regressive evangelical preaching penetrates political life as people cope with the pandemic’s residual economic stress, worsened by the accelerating effects of climate change.
 
Indigenous community development requires long-terms strategies. The struggle to sustain social unity and cultural cohesion is paramount. The reuniting by Indigenous people after times of major stress and violence deserves attention and support. It is a natural response, and a re-foundational effort.
 
In the Q’eqchi country, as in much of the Guatemalan highlands, the strength of traditional culture and consciousness of ancestral teachings has helped clusters of Maya people, including whole communities to sustain social proximity and maintain daily living relations among large extended families grounded in particular places.
 
Presently, Plenty Canada’s work in Guatemala supports the leadership of young women engaged in the important work of assisting and uplifting the lives and profiles of culture bearing women elders. The new generation women leaders currently work with several Q’eqchi-speaking communities, some 200 families, mostly led or guided by women elders.
 
Women elders are most often the central culture carriers of valores y saberes ancestrales, “ancestral values and knowledge.” The elders in the project are traditional knowledge keepers in Maya weavings, including many beautiful and intriguing cloth designs as well as some of the most ancient patterns and stitches of the traditional huipil (top garment) worn by the women. The community groupings of women elders include also traditional midwives, as well as keepers of healing methods around a large repertoire of medicinal herbs, around the interpretation of healing dreams and about the Maya medicine of time, the Sacred Calendar. Some if not most are also master gardeners, carriers and holders of many types of seeds and expert at family-sustaining culinary traditions.
 
Among ongoing work and activities: support for training of new apprentices; documentation of practices, histories and approaches on weaving and the other main themes; introduction of new and appropriate water capture and drainage systems and other needed repairs for elders’ homes; sponsorship of travel to training events and hosting events.
 
The project has developed an efficient, well-trained working crew, charged with fixing elder housing. Its first year, 2019, impacted by the exploding pandemic, needing a major medical response. The project distributed emergency foods and medicines, and developed needed information in Q’eqchi language for the communities.
 
—  Jose Barreiro