Guatemalan History

The theme for this week is Mayan history and culture. We read several articles about the history of the country – the conquest by Spain, the discrimination against indigenous peoples, the impact of the US government (surprise!), watched a movie, and visited a museum. Ultimately, the long tentacles of the United Fruit Company, often referred to as the octopus, intervened with Guatemala’s efforts for democracy. The UFC owned a majority of the land, the railroad, and only port in Guatemala in the first half of the 1900s. When progressive President Arbenz came to power in 1954 after the overthrow of dictator President Ubico, life was looking on the up and up for Guatemalans. There was a new social security system, land redistribution, and labor unions. The UFC had a lot of connections to the US government and had taken advantage of the weak Guatemalan government to make a lot of money at the expense of the Guatemalan people and not have to pay taxes. Arbenz reclaimed some of the UFC’s uncultivated land to distribute to the poor people, the majority of the population. The UFC worked with the CIA to develop a plot to overthrow Arbenz and place someone else into power who would allow the UFC to keep benefiting from their previous arrangements. At this time, the fear of Communism was a great motivator for the US to get involved. Although Arbenz was not a Communist, his social reform ideas limited the power of the UFC. The US government provided weapons, training, money, and propaganda to sway the Guatemalan people and scare Arbenz out of office. This later contributed to the armed conflict/war from 1960-1996.

The film When the Mountains Trembled documented some of the major events and interviewed participants from all sides of the conflict. They interviewed soldiers, guerrillas, indigenous people, and politicians. The film was narrated by Rigoberta Menchu, an indigenous woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize for sharing her story and fighting for the power. She worked with local Christian groups and farming communities to educate them about the oppression they were facing under the dictators and capitalist industries. Many poor mountain people could not survive solely on the land they farmed but had to work on fincas (plantations) near the ocean for several months. The conditions were tough (to say the least). They were underpaid and underappreciated. Rigoberta’s family spoke out against the mistreatment and earned the reputation as guerrilla or subversive and were sought out. Her father died in an uncontrollable burning of the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City along with 37 other protestors. Her mother and brother were tortured, raped, and killed. Her two younger brothers died on the finca – one from inhalation of crop dusting chemicals and the other malnutrition. Her two sisters joined the guerrilla army. For her popularity on the international scale, Rigoberta is running for her second attempt at the Guatemalan presidency. However, she does not have the empathy of the local people because she spends her time traveling the world to tell her story. Unfortunately, her lifestyle is now the one she worked so hard to oppose.

One of the most interesting things I have learned about el conflicto is that both military and guerrilla forces went into communities to commit murder, destroy homes, and rape and pillage; both forces dressed in military attire; and both forces manipulated the poor and indigenous with fear to side with them. Many poor and indigenous people did not know if the military or guerrilla forces where in their community. Both groups claimed to be the other to avoid blame for the massacres.

The museum we visited was a result of the 1996 Peace Accords. One of the laws established was to preserve the Mayan culture. In 2004 the museum was founded and in 2006 it moved to its home at the Queztaltenango Cultural center in zona 3 (25 minute walk from my house). We listened to a presentation about the traje, the traditional dress, of the indigenous people. There are 22 indigenous linguistic communities, a handful of others from the Caribbean slaves imported during the Spanish rule, and Spanish. Each individual community has its own traje – some 132 in total. This museum displayed the process for making the trajes and examples from 12 communities. The trajes are made from locally grown cotton, which is dyed using plant and animal extracts, on a loom. One type of loom, commonly for women, is wrapped on a tree branch and the other end around the person. This creates tension for the loom and the cotton is woven in between. This creates a narrow fabric. Three pieces of fabric are joined together vertically to create a huiple, blouse. Wide embroidery is used to hide the seams between the three pieces and smaller embroidery to embellish the shirt with local symbols, such as the sun, mountains, and animals. A huiple takes a month to make if you work 8-10 hour days and will cost you about 8000Q ($100) at the market. The men learned to use a foot loom with the arrival of the Spanish. This creates wider pieces of fabric used for skirts. Men also have a traje of pants, sobrepantelones (literally a second pair of pants worn over the first), and more Western shirts and straw hats.

A final thought for the week from our articles: Why do we celebrate Columbus Day if he arrived to the US on accident, raped and enslaved indigenous peoples, and brought epidemic diseases?