Guatemala

Imagine not knowing whether your father, mother, brother, and sister were dead. Imagine having to exist in sheer poverty and terror. Imagine going from day to day fearing to speak, where silence is your only form of protest. A nightmare that most Westerners could not fathom was commonplace in the world of the Highland Maya of Guatemala. For the last thirty years, the Maya have been caught in the middle of one of the bloodiest revolutions recorded in Central American history. The Guatemalan army, reigning through a campaign of terror, has been largely responsible for the loss of human life, particularly among the Indians. Not necessarily by choice, the Maya have been at the very center of revolutionary action in Guatemala from the start.

The Guatemalan Civil war broke out after a military coup overthrew the democratic reign of president Arbenz in 1954. Backed by the United States government, military leaders took control of the country. Initially, in opposition to this change, a revolutionary guerrilla group formed in the eastern part of the country, composed of young army officers and proletarian Ladinos. Aided by the U.S. Green Berets, the Guatemalan military suppressed this reaction, resulting in the deaths of approximately 10,000 people, including students, union leaders, and peasants. By the late 1970s, guerrilla movements began reemerging, this time in the western highlands. Though most of the guerrilla leaders were Latinos from the urban middle class, Indians were slowly becoming active participants. Although some Indians took part in the revolution, many Maya stayed neutral preferring to live their lives as they had for thousands of years. Some enlisted with the guerrillas while others aided the rebel forces. The two most important guerrilla organizations were the Army of the Poor (EDP) and the Organization of the People in Arms (ORPA).

As much of the Maya heartland is located in the remote wilderness of Guatemala, these areas became the stronghold for guerrilla activity. As a result, the Guatemalan army targeted many of these areas, adopting a program of genocidal tactics against the Indian communities. The indigenous population was subjected to the army's infamous "scorched-earth policy" in which hundreds of people were massacred and their houses burned. Between 1978 and 1985 over 75,000 people were killed, many of them women and children, with more than 400 villages wiped out. Over 1 million people fled their homes, finding safety in other regions of Guatemala and in foreign countries, such as Mexico, the United States, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Today, human rights organizations estimate more than 100,000 people were murdered, 40,000 people disappeared, and over 440 rural villages completely destroyed (Green 1999: 29). This is a conservative estimate.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the inhabitants of the Ixil Triangle, a triad of towns located in the Cuchumatan mountain range, were targeted by the military. In the village of Chel, in the Chajul township, on the morning of April 3, 1982, the Army came into the community, calling for a town meeting. Once gathered, the women of Chel were placed in the church and raped by Army soldiers; 97 men, women, and children were then taken to the bridge and killed with machetes. This is one of many examples of the brutality practiced on the Maya.

One of the unacknowledged goals of counterinsurgency was to weaken and eventually eradicate Maya culture. These tactics have resulted in the loss of many of the Maya's traditional customs and way of life. Maya dress, an integral part of Maya tradition, has been greatly affected by these campaigns of ethnic cleansing. The village-specific costumes allowed soldiers, many of whom were of Maya descent, to easily identify indigenous people from areas designated for assault. For fear of being shot on sight, many Maya had to either wear the clothing of other regions or abandon their traditional dress altogether. Those that moved to the capital or larger Guatemalan cities also had to abandon traditional dress in order to avoid social, racial, and cultural discrimination from the dominant Ladino society.

Is the Maya textile tradition in the danger of extinction? In recent years, Maya revitalization movements are trying to ensure cultural survival by forming various cultural and educational organizations. For instance, the Academia de las Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG) and the Programa Nacional de Educacion Bilingue (PRONEBI), promote issues of Maya interest, such as language, education, ritual, health care, weaving, and traje (Hendrickson 1996:160). A return to traditional dress styles is one of the many expressions of these movements. This has been aided in large part by the formation of weaving cooperatives. These have allowed Maya weavers to recapture and continue the costume tradition and provide jobs in the production of huipils for sale to tourists.

Not until the beginnings of the broad peace process in 1987 did the atrocities of the Civil War come to light in the media and the world at large. In the last decade, steps have been taken to heal these wounds. Most recently, testimonies have been taken, trying to record and accurately gauge the atrocities committed by the Guatemalan army. Only recently have many Maya felt comfortable enough to tell their stories of mass genocide and brutality. Most recently, Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala asked a Spanish court to charge four Guatemalan generals, including former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, with genocide. Menchu made a request to Spain's High Court to prosecute these men and others for alleged involvement in a series of massacres in Guatemala in the 1980s. The court has not yet decided whether to accept the case. Menchu told reporters that "Spain has opened a window so that victims no longer have to hide their pain."

The atrocities committed in these 36 years are unimaginable to most foreigners. Yet with incredible pride, the Maya move forward. The readoption of traditional dress symbolizes the Maya's continued survival and solidarity in the face of terrible obstacles (Otzoy 1996:154).

Southern Mexico

The Zapatista movement is one of modern-day Mexico's rebel movements against the oppressors who have exploited and caused poverty to the indigenous people. These oppressors are "the government that abandoned them, the army that repressed them, the wealthy ranchers and caciques (political bosses) who kept them in subjugation, the ladinos who taunted them" (Collier and Quaratiello 1994: 54). On top of the severe hardships that the peasants have had to endure during the last couple of decades, "they were also disappointed by a number of broken promises from the government: land reform that never occurred; price supports guaranteed, then taken away; and credits extended, then withdrawn." (Collier and Quaratiello 1994: 8)

The conflicts over land have been particularly serious in the eastern parts of the state of Chiapas, which has the highest concentration of indigenous people and is one of the poorest states in Mexico. "The landless condition of most Indians, in part the result of the breakup of the ejido system in the case of Mexico, [has led to] their desperate attempts to survive through sharecropping, land take-overs, indebted wage labor, and production of commodities to sell in the market" (Carmack et al. 1996: 475). Thus, the Zapatistas have placed an emphasis on agrarian reform as their central demand, along with work, housing, nutrition, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice, and cultural acknowledgement (Collier and Quaratiello 1994: 152).

In February, 1996, the commanders of the Zapatista National Liberation Army signed accords with two government officials at the town of San Andres. However, the situation did not change; in fact, more conflict has broken out. There have been frequent clashes between the government and the Zapatistas. The government continues to harden its policies and its conquest of violence in half of Chiapas' territory. Twenty-five municipalities endured murders carried out by the military and other related war crimes; at least 136 people have died at the mercy of ten paramilitary groups. In December, 1997, at Acteal, for example, 45 Indian villagers were killed by a paramilitary gang. As many as 15,000 people have fled the highlands, and some 300 foreigners have been forced to leave. Furthermore, the top army groups have invaded the Lacandon Jungle to look for the leaders of the rebellion. Human rights groups say nearly 70,000 soldiers have patrolled Chiapas since 1994.

The people in the war zone have had to endure the lack of food, clothing and medical supplies, as well as abuses like arbitrary detentions, disappearances, torture, violence against women and harassment. For instance, the Mexican army has detained and arrested men without proper reason for such actions. The women have no idea where many of their male family members have gone, pushed aside as they become widowed, or are left unwed, searching for their brothers, fathers and husbands who have disappeared (Ciam et al. 1999). The intrusion of the Mexican army has isolated many towns. Critics have suggested that the government is doing little to stop the abuse inflicted upon civilian populations. Concerns have been raised regarding the abuse of women by these paramilitary groups. Violence escalated, recently, when three Tzeltal women were raped.

In the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, the participation of women is significant. The men and the women are treated equally; thus some of the female members are given important posts. "We ask all women to fight alongside us," says Comandante Ramona for a press interview, in her long, black, woolen skirt and a hand-woven blouse colorfully embroidered (Perez and Castellanos 1994). Represented by the Zapatista movement, the Maya in Chiapas are still fighting to win basic subsistence and to preserve their cultural identity.