Guatemala: The Struggle for Maya Unity
Otzoy, Antonio
Despite the contradictions that persist within the movement, Maya organizations are coming to realize that pan-Maya unity will strengthen their call for fundamental changes in...
...Perhaps most being "d significantly, it recommends that the Constitution be revised to define and "su Guatemala as a "multiethnic, pluricultural and multilingual" nation...
...By the end of the 1970s, a generalized social and political mobilization was gathering steam among the Maya population...
...Despite the Maya people's modest political gains, important challenges remain...
...Since the Spanish Conquest, the relationship between the Mayas and the Guatemalan state has been characterized by exploitation and deceit...
...The imminent signing of an accord on indigenous rights provided an opportunity for Maya groups to have a voice at the national level...
...In March, 1995, the government and the URNG finally signed an accord Govei on indigenous rights and identity, which official drew on some of the proposals made by COPMAGUA...
...COPMAGUA includes a broad array of Maya organizations with many different perspectives...
...The ASC-a broad coalition of different sectors of Guatemalan civil society including labor, church and human rights groups, and non-governmental organizations-develops proposals on key issues for the government and the URNG to consider in the peace negotiations...
...Seventysix other Maya groups coalesced behind the Forum of Maya Unity and Consensus (IUCM), which saw this alliance as an opportunity to make public and formal demands of the state...
...33REPORT ON INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS majority of the country's population, the Mayas have been excluded from state power and forced to act as the cheap labor force of the oligarchy...
...While difficult to contend with, these differences have not prevented the pan-Maya movement from forging ahead...
...local Maya political leaders...
...That same year, a number of Maya organizations made their first organized foray into electoral politics in the presidential and congressional elections in November...
...Tiu was a local activist with CONAVIGUA, and Us was a climate a member of the Council of Ethnic r and Communities-Runujal Junam (CERJ...
...The Maya organizations are coming to realize that pan-Maya unity will strengthen their call for fundamental changes in Guatemala's economic and political system...
...One of the two organizations, the Unity of the Maya People (UPM), a coalition of ten groups, was reluctant to parNACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34 rREPORT ON INDIGENOUS MOVEMENTS ticipate in the National Consensus Forum (INC) for fear of being manipulated by the elites in control...
...One of their first political acts was to choose Juan Le6n, a Maya leader from the Defensoria Maya, as the vice-presidential candidate of the New Guatemala Democratic Front (FDNG), a new left-ofcenter opposition force...
...Two tions of FDNG activists, Lucia Tiu Tum and ngerous" Miguel Us Mejia, were killed in late 1995 in their village of Chimchij in versive," Totonicapin province...
...Divisions have arisen among the different Maya groups over strategy, emphasis and leadership...
...The new Maya organizations are the fruit of that struggle...
...Grouped together in COPMAGUA, they hammered out their own proposal on indigenous rights...
...Two umbrella Maya organizations joined with a broad coalition of other groups-including some representing the oligarchy-to create a common front against Serrano's attempt to impose a "civilian dictatorship...
...While all of these groups share the common goal of social justice for the Mayas, their differences D. .. 4in terms of focus and political orientation 3 t5 have kept them fragmented...
...The genocidal policies of the state have been unable to destroy the social and political consciousness of the Maya people, who are forging their own path to freedom and justice...
...Nonetheless, the coalition is unprecedented in unifying diverse Maya organizations-some 300 different groups are estimated to currently exist-around a common agenda of social justice for the Maya people...
...COPMAGUA's involvement in the peace process was another step forward in pan-Maya organizing and participation in national politics...
...Maya women activists, Rosalina Tuyuc, a leader of CONAVIGUA, and Manuela Alverado of Quetzaltenango, were two of the six FDNG candidates elected to Congress...
...Despite the contradictions that persist within the movement, Maya organizations are coming to realize that pan-Maya unity will strengthen their call for fundamental changes in Guatemala's economic and political system...
...In recent months, certain sectors of the government have made public statements about the "danger" of the "subversive" Maya movements...
...Even though they represent the Vol XXIX, No 5 MARCH/APRIL 1996 4 0 z Antonio Otzoy is the executive director of the Sisterhood of Maya Presbyteries...
...It also demanded that the government officially Majawil Q'i, Mam for' grant local autonomy by recogniz- dinating committee for organizations involved ing and respecting the authority of ment...
...Mayas were a dynamic and active sector within these organizations...
...Participation was, however, short-lived since the INC dissolved soon after Serrano stepped down...
...Others participated in the National Coordinating Committee of Indigenous People and Campesinos (CONIC), which was also in the forefront of the struggle for land...
...With the transition to civilian rule in 1986, Mayas, among others, took advantage of tentative new spaces for organizing...
...They see cultural and racial discrimination at the root of the economic exploitation of the Mayas...
...Despite the contradictions that persist within the movement, each organization has played an important role in that struggle...
...Later, the National Coordinating Committee of Displaced Peoples of Guatemala (CONDEG), a group of the internally displaced, became active in making demands for basic social and economic rights...
...While the violence wreaked havoc on daily life for the Mayas, they paradoxically gained a stronger sense of their own identity out of the atrocities...
...At the meetings, a plethora of S1 " local as well as national groups with varying focuses and political perspectives were represented...
...In the late 1980s, dozens of new organizations emerged...
...he Guatemalan state responded with brutal repression to both Maya mobilization and the country's reorganized guerrilla movements, in which some Mayas participated...
...The INC enjoined the two Maya organizations to arrive at some form of consensus...
...Many activists have come to realize that in spite of the different emphasis that each group haswhether culture, education or politics-they are all challenging an oppressive system that has consistently excluded them...
...COPMAGUA's very existence is a remarkable achievement when ew Dawn," is the coor- placed in historical context...
...The fomentin accord did not, however, address the of fe economic rights of the Maya people...
...Among the first to organize were groups such as the Mutual Support Group (GAM) and the National Committee of Guatemalan Widows (CONAVIGUA...
...These threats have fomented a clilaya mate of intimidation and fear, and put the lives of Maya organizers at risk...
...Mayas are also active in popular organizations that fight for human rights and socioeconomic demands, including health, education, housing and land...
...One such committee won the mayoralty in Zelajui (Quetzaltenango), the second-largest city in the country...
...almost two-thirds of that group live in extreme poverty, unable to meet their basic daily needs for food, health, and shelter...
...The orgy of violence of the early 1980s caused a demographic, social and cultural holocaust of the Maya people, on a scale similar to the devastation wrought by the Spanish Conquest in the sixteenth century...
...Translated from the Spanish by NACLA...
...As Maya-Cakchiquel leader Demetrio Cojti Cuxil says, "We still have far to go to arrive at a democracy that reaches both the economic and the ethnic sphere...
...The coalition called on the Guatemalan government to abandon policies that promote the assimilation and acculturation of Maya people...
...In the conference discussions, very different positions emerged on issues such as whether or not to work with the state...
...Maya resistance to the oppression and exploitation that have marked their lives as a people for 500 years has taken many different forms...
...The women in these organizations were united by the common suffering of having lost a loved one to political repression...
...COPMAGUA formally accepted the intimi agreement "with reservations" at a mass meeting in Chimaltenango...
...The two groups were ultimately able to overcome many of their differences...
...Asserting that it was premature for Mayas to enter electoral politics, these organizations chose to work at the grassroots level to fortify local Maya political and economic structures instead...
...Some groups emphasize the cultural oppression that Mayas have suffered since the Conquest...
...The accord, which will the not go into effect until a final peace accord is signed, spells out a number of organiz indigenous cultural rights...
...The FDNG also forged alliances with local indigenous civic committees throughout the country...
...The uatemalan indigenous coalition was organized after the n the popular move- most violent period in modern Guatemalan history-a counterinsurgency war in which over 150,000 people, the majority of them Mayas, were murdered...
...Both were active in their organizations' ation...
...An astonishing 87% of Guatemalan Mayas live in poverty...
...In essence, they have systematically been denied their rights as citizens...
...All sides claimed that they were the legitimate representative of the Maya people...
...Much remains to be done...
...The coalition's main purpose was to present a pro-Maya agenda to the ongoing peace negotiations between the Guatemalan government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) rebels...
...By the end, some groups were accusing others of being extremists...
...The high voter abstention rate in Maya communitiesestimated to be about 80%-speaks to the continuing and deep-seated distrust of electoral politics...
...Because of the way that colonization was imposed, the Maya have traditionally struggled against state power at the local level...
...The Mayas have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to resist domination and to adapt to changing circumstances without ceding their culture and their identity...
...During the 1960s and 1970s, some Mayas in communities throughout the highlands began to utilize the structures of national institutions such as Catholic Action, as well as rural develop- 44 ment projects and later liberation theology, to create and to promote their own agenda for social justice...
...Other Maya organizations focus on more nrapmatic nroiects such as technical training and literacy workshops...
...The Maya organizations' initial entrance on the national political scene occurred in the wake of the presidential coup of Jorge Serrano Elfas in 1993...
...This accord does not necessarily fulfill all our aspirations," said a coalition statement, "but it is the minimum fruit of five centuries of resistance and three decades of armed internal conflict...
...In 1978, Mayas formed the Committee of Campesino Unity (CUC), the first indigenous-led labor and land-rights r. organization in the history of Guatemala and the first to bring together highland Maya campesinos with poor ladino farmworkers...
...ment Some are accusing the Maya organizaaccUSe tions of being front groups for the guer- rillas...
...In the end, the INC permitted the participation of four Maya representatives, two from each umbrella organization...
...In late 1994, over 150 Maya organizations came together to form the Coalition of Organizations of the Maya People of Guatemala (COPMAGUA...
...When COPMAGUA was barred from presenting its proposals directly to the government and the URNG, the Assembly of Civil Sectors (ASC), of which COPMAGUA is a member, agreed to bring them to the negotiating table...
...Other Maya groups supported the conservative but "modernizing" National Advancement Party (PAN), which gained power with rn Is :alv a a d the election of Alvaro Arz6i to the presidency in the second round of elections in January, 1996...
...It is important to note that the majority of Mayas did not participate in the national elections at all...
...These underlying fissures were evident in the preparatory conference of the "500 Years of Resistance" ; campaigns held in Quetzaltenango in -" October, 1991...
...Ten years after the end of military dictatorship, political repression continues unabated against groups and individuals that make concrete demands of the state for social change...
...One subset of this tendency is working with the government's social-compensation funds...
...Other sectors of the Maya movement kept at arms' length from the national political campaigns...
...campaigns to end forced military recruitment and to disband the civil defense patrols, organized by the military in Maya communities...
...Its formation represents a process of consensus-building in which indigenous groups have sought to overcome their individual interests...
...The Mayas' recent attempts to build a more pan-indigenous movement and to assert their presence in national politics reflect in part their adaptation to a profoundly different political context The unnrecedented nenetration of capitalism into Maya communities and the devastating effects of state violence over the past few decades have undermined the effectiveness and viability of solely community-based responses...
...Throughout history, the Mayas have fought many battles against state oppression: first during the Conquest, followed by the colonial period and then the liberal era of the late nineteenth century, through the counterinsurgency war of recent decades...
...Wealth, land and political power have always been concentrated in the hands of a mestizo minority...
Vol. 29 • March 1996 • No. 5
