To kick off Semana Santa (Holy Week aka Spring Break), Alaina and I paid a visit to the Popol-Vuh Musuem of Mayan art and culture. I don't get a lot out of looking at old clay pots, but I was pulled in by the symbolism, the intricacy, and the story of the native people of Guatemala. The Mayan Civilization occupied Guatemala and a lot more of Central/South America from way back in 2000 BC to about 900 AD. They got to the point of building cities, temples, and pyramids, they had a complex socio-political order, religion, and the heralded Mayan Calendar. Then the whole Ancient Mayan civilization collapsed. Plague? War? UFO? It's still a mystery really.
A number of "satellitle" pseudo-Mayan tribes survived and held the fort down in Guatemala from 900-1500, and then the Spaniards came. Even before the conquistadors did much conquering, the diseases they brought over from Europe wiped out a good chunk of the remaining pseudo-Mayans, before the conquistadors did their share of killing, converting, and culture-trampling in the pueblos. Much like the American "pioneers," the attitude was mostly, "Let's be done with this tribal nonsense and get European already." Displaced. Mistreated. Raped. Disrespected. Forced Labor. Taxed.
But to this day, 40% of the Guatemalan population is indigenous, compared to USA's 0.9% Native American population. They're still hanging on. Many still live in isolated, small villages in the western highlands, . They do their darndest to fit their way of life into making a living. That gets tough when you've been pushed out to unfertile, land on mountain hillsides, and when the market for vegetables doesn't really allow small farmers to make a real profit. So if they've got it good, they work for 6 bucks a day. If they don't got it good, they're in the "living off a dollar a day" category. But they're beautiful folks. Mud or tin houses, lots of kids, guipiles, corn tortillas, and village/family interdependence.
Anyway, back to the history. Guatemala gained independence from the Spaniards in 1821. Indigenous folks did cheap labor on plantations, all the good land and decisions and powerful economy is mostly run by ladinos (of Spanish descent). United Fruit Company (UFC) (now Chiquita Bananas) became Guatemala's largest land-owner and employer in the 1900's, had a monopoly of the railroads, degraded a lot of land and a lot of indigenous people. But they owned all the farming land so what are ya gonna do?
Well if you become a popularly-elected president in 1954 and your name is Jacobo Arbenz, then you plan to tax the UFC the same as the rest of the businesses and plan a land reform to take away 40% of that monopolizing company's land to give it back to the people. If you're the United Fruit Company, you hear about this and lobby with Eisenhower who's up in the States, whose citizens love their cheap bananas and the money they rake in from mistreating banana-pickers in Guate. You tell them Jacobo Arbenz is aligning with the Soviets (there's not reliable evidence for this ever happening). Then, if you're Eisenhower, you freak out and get the CIA to train and fund a military cou't invade from Honduras to overthrow said president and be a military dictator so UFC can keep their land and their exploitation.
Military dictators aren't usually fair, and neither was this one. Leftist generals ended up forming a guerilla army against the one-sided, power-hungry, poor-folk-marginalizing government, and these armies recruited indigenas do fight with them...a last-ditch effort for some equal treatment. The government sees this and comes to the conclusion that all indigenas were allies of the insurrection, enemies of the state. Their response:
1) Kill/kidnap/threaten indigenas and you rob the guerillas of their popular support, right?
2) Tell the USA that the guerillas are communists aligned with the Soviets, so they keep training and funding soldiers to torture, kill, massacre.
3) Over 200,000 folks were killed or disappeared. 626 villages were massacred or even razed and the people raped, tortured, murdered. A million indigenas had to flee to other regions.
4) When a group of 36 protesting indigenas took refuge in the Spanish Embassy in the capital, the soldiers burned the whole thing down, incinerating everyone inside.
5) A United Nations peace accord was signed in 1996. After 36 years of civil war.
Following the armed conflict, corruption within the government, private sector, and criminal sector have plagued the country. It's a wonder the government can't invest in social programs, infrastructure, and good justice systems when everyone from the president to secretaries to police officers to gang-led extortionists are taking their cut from funds. (The former president and vice president got put in jail last year following peaceful protests to such behavior. We think the new president (Jimmy) is better. But he's just one guy.)
But Indigenas, without the power to steal and bribe, haven't exactly had it easy just because the war ended. The persisting ethnic inequality reeks of the same exploitation, exclusion and power-hoarding present in my homeland, my hometown, my own relationships. Still in Guatemala today, 70-90% of indigenas live below the poverty line. Many still live in the unfertile and isolated highlands. 40% of Guatemalans can't read. They lack access to health centers and schools. They are steeply underrepresented in government. The average working indigenous person makes 1/2 the income of a working ladino. There are supermarkets, restaurants, and schools who do not allow indigenous women wearing guipil into their establishments. They don't want that symbol of worthlessness in their business. It's subtle, not talked about, but so grossly present. And at this point, most people are "mixed blood" anyway, it's tough to tell who's what.
There's six rooms in the Popol-Vuh Museum of Mayan art and culture. The first five - Mayan pottery, Mayan paintings, Mayan stories, Mayan funeral urns, cups, bowls, scaled-down models of temples, murals symbols. I was irked as I walked into the sixth room, which had a starkly different feel: old articles of Catholic churches: silver, European-style, crosses, Mary's, challises. Post-1500 AD. I didn't stay long. It had the smell of power and privilege that make fools out of people--even people like me.
If you're interested in more Guatemalan Internal Conflict multimedia:
When The Mountains Tremble (Documentary)
“I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala,” by Rigoberta Menchu (She won the Nobel Peace Prize for this book)
Guatemala: Memory of Silence (Official Truth Council Document)
“Testimony: Death of a Guatemalan Village,” by Victor Montejo and Victor Perera, Translator