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http://www.newint.org/issue226/killing.htm
Guatemala's killing fields
The Indian majority in Guatemala is still being slaughtered five
centuries after
the Spanish invasion. Bob Carty reports on the resistance that never
stopped.
Twice a week the tourists arrive. They pour out of buses, cameras
ready, and surge through the town of Chichicastenango ('Chichi' for
short) in the highlands three hours west of Guatemala City. On market
days, Chichi's plaza is crowded with 10,000 Mayan Indians wearing a
riot of colour - purples, reds and blues - woven into dresses, pants,
shawls and blouses.
Some tourists stride up the steps of Saint Thomas church, ignoring the
signs asking non-Mayans to keep out. They snap pictures of native men
who look away in silence. The men carry tin pots that smoke with the
incense of tree resins burning on hot coals. Each Mayan watches how
straight his smoke rises, to see if he is sincere enough to
communicate from his heart on earth to the heart of the Mayan sky.
Inside the church a Catholic mass is said at the altar. Down the
centre aisle are rows of candles on the floor and in the thick smoke
Mayan women kneel on palm mats, leaving behind them bunches of flowers
and herbs when they go.
For the tourists it's wonderfully quaint and exotic. Most have no idea
that Chichi is the gateway to Guatemala's 'killing fields'. The hills
around town are littered with mass graves which Guatemalan and
Argentine forensic doctors began to exhume last July. There are
reports of 233 such graves throughout the country. North from Chichi,
the province of El Quiche stretches into mountains where soldiers rule
with terror and bodies appear on road-sides showing horrible signs of
torture and mutilation.
There's little enthusiasm for the Columbus Quincentennial celebrations
in Chichicastenango. 'Here we will not celebrate the 500 years,' says
a local Catholic priest, himself a Mayan who asked to be unnamed. 'It
was a massacre and we will mourn it. And we will remember that the
massacre, the conquest, continues to this day.'
Mass murders
The original massacre began in 1524. The conquistador Pedro Alvarado
(alternatively described by historians as a 'terrorist gangster' and
'slave-hunter') arrived in Guatemala and found a politically and
geographically decentralized Mayan civilization speaking at least 22
different dialects. Conquest was more than a matter of simply
beheading the top indigenous leaders. Instead, Alvarado decided to
exterminate the civilian population as well, a practice yet to be
abandoned.
He directed eight major massacres, killing up to 3,000 Indians at a
time. Mayan chiefs were incinerated alive as Catholic priests burned
Mayan historical records. Alvarado rewarded his soldiers with the
right to enslave the survivors. Mayan lands were appropriated, the
people herded into towns and forced to work the Spanish estates.
Even now a Mayan commonly works three months as a migrant plantation
worker in the sugar or cotton plantations of the Pacific coast (the
other nine months are spent as a subsistence farmer).
Today 60 per cent of Guatemala's nine million people are Indian. And
nearly two-thirds of Mayan children are malnourished. In the early
1980s, Dr Moises Beher, head of the UN's Institute for Nutrition in
Central America, said the Mayan people were better fed before the
arrival of Alvarado nearly 500 years ago than they are today.
Pagan beliefs
For the Maya, 1992 is a chance to expose the history of brutality
which they've endured, and to correct the myth of the stoic native who
is passive in the face of oppression. In fact, there were a dozen
armed uprisings in the 18th and 19th centuries. 'There was so much
resistance that there were rivers of blood,' says Daniel' Matul, a
leader of the International Maya League. Matul now lives in Costa Rica
since his three brothers - teachers like himself - were assassinated
by the Guatemalan army.
According to Matul, the Maya recognized they could not defeat the
conquistadors in battle. So they hid their political leaders and
elders in the mountains to preserve their way of life.
In Chichicastenango, church and military authorities worked together
to erase what they considered to be pagan beliefs. They built Saint
Thomas Church on top of a Mayan temple, but the Indians still came
with incense and herbs to honour their ancestors' gods.
The temple buried beneath the church in Chichi was originally built
for Hun Ahpu, one of the most important figures in Mayan history.
Today, although many Christian beliefs have been absorbed by the Maya,
in Chichicastenango they still worship the way their ancestors did.
'We refuse to be assimilated,' says Daniel Matul.
That determination is visible everywhere - from the traditional huipil
blouses worn by Mayan women to the flourishing Mayan languages, many
of which are now being recorded in writing. There are invisible forms
of resistance too: clandestine political and religious structures at
the village level, and secret training of Mayan priests. Matul says
this adamant refusal to knuckle under is one reason for so much
repression in Guatemala. 'They kill us because we are not
assimilated,' says Matul. 'Because we have never been conquered.'
Among the ladino (people of mixed Spanish and Indian blood) and the
Spanish elite, Mayan defiance generates a savage paranoia. The
aristocracy is afraid of a Guatemala run by Mayans.
'They know our values are still alive,' says Daniel Matul. 'If we had
political power these values would flower throughout the land. Spanish
would not be the official language. We would seek economic development
for everyone. The land would be a communal possession, not private
property. That's why they see us as a danger.
The Guatemalan military and their wealthy supporters want to wipe out
that threat forever. In 1982, former Defence Minister Oscar Humberto
Mejia Victores declared: 'We must do away with the words "indigenous"
or "Indian". Our mission requires the integration of all Guatemalans.'
Soldiers are so brutalized in their training (new recruits must kill
small animals and drink the blood) that they obey orders to kill their
own people as enemies. 'It is a totally racist state,' says Guatemalan
anthropologist Carlos Sarti. 'The military operates as if this society
is contaminated by foreigners that must be extirpated.'
In the early 1980s it was as if the conquistador Pedro Alvarado was
back in power. All Mayans were seen as supporters of the guerrillas;
the military set out to destroy the people as well as their culture.
Mayans were burned alive, babies murdered and women raped. The
dictator Rios Montt wiped 440 Mayan villages off the face of the
earth.
The government forced hundreds of thousands of Indians into so-called
'model villages', a tactic learned from the Americans in Vietnam. The
villages are designed to dilute Mayan identity. Instead of scattered
huts on plots of family land, people were crowded into rows of houses
hundreds of miles from their homes, beside Mayan neighbours who spoke
different dialects. They were forced to speak Spanish and attend
churches run by American fundamentalists.
Those who escaped the military went into exile: 200,000 fled to
Mexico. Others stripped off their traditional dress, shed their Indian
identity and melted into the cities.
Hidden holocaust
It is easier to understand the cycle of repression and resistance
inside Guatemala than to understand why the outside world has paid so
little attention to this outrage. Guatemala has experienced more death
squad killings than El Salvador, more disappearances than Argentina or
Chile, more systematic use of torture, more burning of villages and
more massacres than any other country in Latin America. So why does
the country receive so little attention from the international
community and media?
One reason is that freedom of expression is stifled inside Guatemala.
Death threats are commonplace for working journalists - and they are
routinely killed to prove the point. As a result many atrocities go
unreported. A recent fact-finding report by the Canadian Committee to
Protect Journalists says the media has 'become the messenger for state
terrorism'.
Another explanation is the low-profile of the United States. Although
the US installed the current military in a 1954 CIA coup and later
trained them in their repressive craft, Guatemala has remained low on
the White House agenda. Consequently, the country attracts little
attention in either the US or international press.
Many Guatemalans can't help but wonder if part of the lack of
attention is rooted in racism. Bluntly: the majority of people being
killed today in Guatemala are indigenous, not educated middle class
people with communications skills and backgrounds with which North
Americans and Europeans can identify. Like the tourists in
Chichicastenango, outsiders see the quaint and the exotic, but often
miss what is beneath and within.
Bob Carty is a Canadian journalist and radio producer based in San
Jos
Guatemala's killing fields
The Indian majority in Guatemala is still being slaughtered five
centuries after
the Spanish invasion. Bob Carty reports on the resistance that never
stopped.
Twice a week the tourists arrive. They pour out of buses, cameras
ready, and surge through the town of Chichicastenango ('Chichi' for
short) in the highlands three hours west of Guatemala City. On market
days, Chichi's plaza is crowded with 10,000 Mayan Indians wearing a
riot of colour - purples, reds and blues - woven into dresses, pants,
shawls and blouses.
Some tourists stride up the steps of Saint Thomas church, ignoring the
signs asking non-Mayans to keep out. They snap pictures of native men
who look away in silence. The men carry tin pots that smoke with the
incense of tree resins burning on hot coals. Each Mayan watches how
straight his smoke rises, to see if he is sincere enough to
communicate from his heart on earth to the heart of the Mayan sky.
Inside the church a Catholic mass is said at the altar. Down the
centre aisle are rows of candles on the floor and in the thick smoke
Mayan women kneel on palm mats, leaving behind them bunches of flowers
and herbs when they go.
For the tourists it's wonderfully quaint and exotic. Most have no idea
that Chichi is the gateway to Guatemala's 'killing fields'. The hills
around town are littered with mass graves which Guatemalan and
Argentine forensic doctors began to exhume last July. There are
reports of 233 such graves throughout the country. North from Chichi,
the province of El Quiche stretches into mountains where soldiers rule
with terror and bodies appear on road-sides showing horrible signs of
torture and mutilation.
There's little enthusiasm for the Columbus Quincentennial celebrations
in Chichicastenango. 'Here we will not celebrate the 500 years,' says
a local Catholic priest, himself a Mayan who asked to be unnamed. 'It
was a massacre and we will mourn it. And we will remember that the
massacre, the conquest, continues to this day.'
Mass murders
The original massacre began in 1524. The conquistador Pedro Alvarado
(alternatively described by historians as a 'terrorist gangster' and
'slave-hunter') arrived in Guatemala and found a politically and
geographically decentralized Mayan civilization speaking at least 22
different dialects. Conquest was more than a matter of simply
beheading the top indigenous leaders. Instead, Alvarado decided to
exterminate the civilian population as well, a practice yet to be
abandoned.
He directed eight major massacres, killing up to 3,000 Indians at a
time. Mayan chiefs were incinerated alive as Catholic priests burned
Mayan historical records. Alvarado rewarded his soldiers with the
right to enslave the survivors. Mayan lands were appropriated, the
people herded into towns and forced to work the Spanish estates.
Even now a Mayan commonly works three months as a migrant plantation
worker in the sugar or cotton plantations of the Pacific coast (the
other nine months are spent as a subsistence farmer).
Today 60 per cent of Guatemala's nine million people are Indian. And
nearly two-thirds of Mayan children are malnourished. In the early
1980s, Dr Moises Beher, head of the UN's Institute for Nutrition in
Central America, said the Mayan people were better fed before the
arrival of Alvarado nearly 500 years ago than they are today.
Pagan beliefs
For the Maya, 1992 is a chance to expose the history of brutality
which they've endured, and to correct the myth of the stoic native who
is passive in the face of oppression. In fact, there were a dozen
armed uprisings in the 18th and 19th centuries. 'There was so much
resistance that there were rivers of blood,' says Daniel' Matul, a
leader of the International Maya League. Matul now lives in Costa Rica
since his three brothers - teachers like himself - were assassinated
by the Guatemalan army.
According to Matul, the Maya recognized they could not defeat the
conquistadors in battle. So they hid their political leaders and
elders in the mountains to preserve their way of life.
In Chichicastenango, church and military authorities worked together
to erase what they considered to be pagan beliefs. They built Saint
Thomas Church on top of a Mayan temple, but the Indians still came
with incense and herbs to honour their ancestors' gods.
The temple buried beneath the church in Chichi was originally built
for Hun Ahpu, one of the most important figures in Mayan history.
Today, although many Christian beliefs have been absorbed by the Maya,
in Chichicastenango they still worship the way their ancestors did.
'We refuse to be assimilated,' says Daniel Matul.
That determination is visible everywhere - from the traditional huipil
blouses worn by Mayan women to the flourishing Mayan languages, many
of which are now being recorded in writing. There are invisible forms
of resistance too: clandestine political and religious structures at
the village level, and secret training of Mayan priests. Matul says
this adamant refusal to knuckle under is one reason for so much
repression in Guatemala. 'They kill us because we are not
assimilated,' says Matul. 'Because we have never been conquered.'
Among the ladino (people of mixed Spanish and Indian blood) and the
Spanish elite, Mayan defiance generates a savage paranoia. The
aristocracy is afraid of a Guatemala run by Mayans.
'They know our values are still alive,' says Daniel Matul. 'If we had
political power these values would flower throughout the land. Spanish
would not be the official language. We would seek economic development
for everyone. The land would be a communal possession, not private
property. That's why they see us as a danger.
The Guatemalan military and their wealthy supporters want to wipe out
that threat forever. In 1982, former Defence Minister Oscar Humberto
Mejia Victores declared: 'We must do away with the words "indigenous"
or "Indian". Our mission requires the integration of all Guatemalans.'
Soldiers are so brutalized in their training (new recruits must kill
small animals and drink the blood) that they obey orders to kill their
own people as enemies. 'It is a totally racist state,' says Guatemalan
anthropologist Carlos Sarti. 'The military operates as if this society
is contaminated by foreigners that must be extirpated.'
In the early 1980s it was as if the conquistador Pedro Alvarado was
back in power. All Mayans were seen as supporters of the guerrillas;
the military set out to destroy the people as well as their culture.
Mayans were burned alive, babies murdered and women raped. The
dictator Rios Montt wiped 440 Mayan villages off the face of the
earth.
The government forced hundreds of thousands of Indians into so-called
'model villages', a tactic learned from the Americans in Vietnam. The
villages are designed to dilute Mayan identity. Instead of scattered
huts on plots of family land, people were crowded into rows of houses
hundreds of miles from their homes, beside Mayan neighbours who spoke
different dialects. They were forced to speak Spanish and attend
churches run by American fundamentalists.
Those who escaped the military went into exile: 200,000 fled to
Mexico. Others stripped off their traditional dress, shed their Indian
identity and melted into the cities.
Hidden holocaust
It is easier to understand the cycle of repression and resistance
inside Guatemala than to understand why the outside world has paid so
little attention to this outrage. Guatemala has experienced more death
squad killings than El Salvador, more disappearances than Argentina or
Chile, more systematic use of torture, more burning of villages and
more massacres than any other country in Latin America. So why does
the country receive so little attention from the international
community and media?
One reason is that freedom of expression is stifled inside Guatemala.
Death threats are commonplace for working journalists - and they are
routinely killed to prove the point. As a result many atrocities go
unreported. A recent fact-finding report by the Canadian Committee to
Protect Journalists says the media has 'become the messenger for state
terrorism'.
Another explanation is the low-profile of the United States. Although
the US installed the current military in a 1954 CIA coup and later
trained them in their repressive craft, Guatemala has remained low on
the White House agenda. Consequently, the country attracts little
attention in either the US or international press.
Many Guatemalans can't help but wonder if part of the lack of
attention is rooted in racism. Bluntly: the majority of people being
killed today in Guatemala are indigenous, not educated middle class
people with communications skills and backgrounds with which North
Americans and Europeans can identify. Like the tourists in
Chichicastenango, outsiders see the quaint and the exotic, but often
miss what is beneath and within.
Bob Carty is a Canadian journalist and radio producer based in San
Jos
