a story about the armed conflict, ten years after

Today, more than 10 years after the UN brokered peace accords were signed, it is painfully clear that the armed struggle of the guerilla did not bring the end of the inequallity and oppression of the poor and indigenous population any nearer.
When the special UN envoy Rodolfo Stavenhagen, visited Guatemala in February, he told in an interview in La Prensa Libre that the current situation depressed him. Nearly no progess has been made to improve the situation of the Mayan population.
Me myself I got a bit of a blow after visiting Victor his family. Victor is working for CEIBA (the local branch of the International Friends of the Earth network) and we interviewed him at home for the documentary. After the interview, he showed us some pictures from his past. Victor fought 18 years in the Guerilla as a sub-commandante.
Victor his house is the kind of house you mostly see in Guatemala. Bare concrete bricks and a metal roof on top of it. We hung around a bit and talked to the other family members. His father barely survived one of the massacres committed by the army. He told it with a soft expression on his face.
Victor has two daughters. We asked his oldest daughter, who is 16, about her studies. "Right now I am not studying she told us, I am working", "Ah, so then you are earning a bit of money". Se had a mixed expression on her face, and we saw a painful expression on Victor his face too. Both glanced at each other. "Not really she says". She earns 12 Quetzal a day at the tortilleria where she is working from 7 in the morning untill 7 in the evening. FYI, that buys you just one beer here in Guatemala (in the cheapest places), and is worth 1,2 Euro.
Victor told us that they don't have the money to let his daughter continue her secondary studies ("diversificados"). He put his head to the table for a second, his wife put her arm on his shoulders.

I guess by that time I also had a painful expression on my face. I told how
difficult it is in Europe to make people understand that our material wealth depends on the poverty in countries such as Guatemala. And how easy it is for people in Europe to shove this aside as communist propaganda, which to them is equivalent as Stalin and dictatorship.

When Aline and I left, his wife and daughter gave us a artisan made little bag. We spend only four hours in their home, we arrived with empty hands, they gave us drinks and food, and a gift when we left.
When we arrived at one of the CEIBA offices to go to sleep, I imagined how it must feel to fight 18 years in the Guerilla for a better life for your people, and that more than 10 years after you put down arms, you find yourself your daughter working for 1 Quetzal an hour, because education is too expensive.

It made me angry when I read an advertisement in La Prensa Libre from the Chambre of Agriculture and industry claiming that the plan from the current government, to slightly raise taxes and spend more on e.g. education and the police will create more poverty.

Today we are in Rabinal, one of the places where the violence and army massacres hit the people hardest. Mario, the president of the "Madre Tierra" organisation which is working on agro-ecology in the Rabinal surroundings, told about the work his organisation is doing, mainly working with women, widowed during the armed conflict.
Mario told us that taking up the arms did not bring them any further. He himself is from Rio Negro, a village which was displaced during the armed conflict, and afterwards flooded by the water for a major hydro-electric dam.

Aline and I visited the museum here in Rabinal which is dedicated to the story of the armed conflict in the Rabinal area. The museum basically is a collection of enlarged ID card pictures from a number of the victims, with a short story about their life and death. In a display you can see the necklace from one of the women which were excavated from a mass tomb. Next to the necklace there is the hat from Rios Mont, the military dictator who was governing the country in the beginning of the eighties, when most of the massacres took place.
Rios Mont, who is still enjoying the comfy seats of the Guatemalan Congress, payed a visit to Rabinal in 2003 during his election rally. If you want to read a non-fiction political thriller, here is the story about Rios Mont on the wikipedia site.
Above the hat the people from the museum put a title "the day of dignity from Rabinal": Rios Mont lost his hat when he was chased away by the people from Rabinal, who threw rocks at him.
There is also a little paper explaining the extraordinary quality of the hat...

symbolic choice of national birds

The bird which Guatemala choose as a national bird, a quetzal, a nice colorful bird




The bird which the United States choose as a national bird, the Bald Eagle, a predator.



In January of 1784 elder statesman Benjamin Franklin stated:

"The bald eagle...is a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy.

"The turkey is a much more respectable bird and withal a true original native of America."

Avatar as 3D as it gets

Hola!

This time in English so the English speaking people in the crowd can read along.
As Aline wrote below, we are travelling a lot these days here in Guatemala, to visit projects and people for the documentary we are making. As we are travelling "local style", it is quite tyring, quite stressful at times ( I am talking about the risk of armed assaults and bus accidents, not traffic jams. Yesterday a "4x4 picop" crashed with 21! people in it, because its brakes failed) and it is also a pity we don't get to spend more time with the people we meet. But the documentary starts to take shape. We were struggling in the beginning how to go about it, because unfortunately it is not an easy task to make a documentary with a "positive" approach - sustainable development in the vision of the Maya population - in a country where the vast majority of the people have been robbed and assaulted for 500 years and still are today, and are bearing the consequences from it.
As the people we are talking to here express it: "Guatemala is not a poor country, but a country which has been and is being made poor". Guatemala has so many natural resources, but e.g. the LACK of access to education and public services is equivalent to the amount of natural resources. Where is the money going?

There are about 10 rich families in Guatemala, who basically own the country, both in a financial and political sense. And they are not nice people.
Rios Mont e.g., former president, massacred thousands of Mayan people on the countryside under his government. Today he is a member of the parliament in Guatemala, and no hassle. How come? Because no other country is making a problem about it.
In 1999, Bill Clinton apologised and said that the U.S. should not have intervened with the politics here in Guatemala. Hilary Clinton is coming to Guatemala on Thursday, I am curious what she will say: A New York prosecutor demanded the extradition of Portillo, another former president, because he cashed e.g. money from foreign governments for educational programs on his family's bank account.
The government is a bit annoyed because yesterday, a few days before Hilary her visit, they had to fire one of their ministers, because he cashed the money for the fuel for the Police Nacional Civil (PNC)on his personal bank account - while on the other hand rationing fuel for the police. Note: the other day there was an article in the newspaper about a police patrol purchasing a criminal in the capital, but they ran out of fuel.

A bit of history: In 1954 the U.S. supported a coup d'etat against Jacobo Arbenz, because he wanted to redistribute - and pay compensation for it - the land which United Fruit and other companies owned but did not use -
Since then the US had been military supporting all the following dictators. That is until Carter stopped the openly military aid in 1979, probably because the blood of the massacres was starting to taste in the bananas and coffee.
After 1979 the massacres continued, the Guatemalan army was one of the most well-trained in counter insurgency in Latin America, thanks to the training of US special forces. In 1980 the military event put flames to the Spanish embassy because Mayan refugees were inside, taking the tactic of "scorched earth" one step further. You can read all this and more in any tourist guide (such as the "Loney Planet") about the country, and of course also on Wikipedia

The story about Guatemala is not very much known though, but altough I haven't seen it yet myself yet, apparently the story of "Avatar" seems to be the story of Guatemala and many other countries rich is natural resources. If you want to read in Spanish, you can read here an opinion article from Magali Rey Rosa, a famous ecologist, about it.

Magaly Rey Rosa is still alive, contrary to the many ecologist and human rights activists who get killed in Guatemala. This morning Calas and frontline presented their 3rd report on all the cases of the past two years. The second report you can read here

All this is very revolting to me. When we grow up, we learn all the moral virtues of being fair, to show compassion and solidarity, but once adult, the majority learns to close their eyes and shut their mouth, or learn themselves that people are simply bad and that everything is supposed to be that way, so you don't want get involved and harm your interests.
Also in vogue seems to be "anyway there are too may people on the planet, so if those poor people die, that is basically a good thing." -
Things are probably more comfortable that way.
By the way, my two cents would be, "if one rich ecologic footprint heavy man dies, four to five other people can live (a more modest but fair and good life). Get on with it!"

Aline and I are making this documentary with a positive approach, because we don't want to leave people with the lame excuse that things can't be changed (grin).
What is coming forward from our talks with Mayan spiritual guides, is the concept of "el buen vivir" - the good living - That good living does not mean the life of a "good savage", but it means leaving according to the values of the Mayan cosmovision, and "desarollo con identidad" -development with identity - and with respect for the "Madre Tierra". More about that in our documentary.
We will also look for concrete alternatives which are being developped here, to adapt to the effects of climate change. Guatemala is in the list of 10 countries which will be hit hardest by the effects of climate change. (here's an article in the Guatemalan press)

In January we met Frauke (from Germany) and Henrique (gringo, as he presents himself - grin - ) in Mexico, professional film makers who are working on a documentary about the resistance from the Maya population against the megaprojects who impair their rights to their "abuelos" land.
We met Frauke and Henriaue again this month in Tecpan, where we and them were for the celebrations for the new year in the Mayan calendar, on the Iximche site.
We are looking forward to see their film, it will come out by the end of the year. I guess you be kind of like "Avatar, as 3D as it gets"

Finally some more thoughts about Europeans and their power to work towards solutions or problems here:
The EU could use its trading power to take a start to end the impunity in this country. If Serbia has rendered war criminal Karadzic, they traded him in for economic reasons and to increase their chances to become a member of the EU.
The EU is currently negotiating with Central America about a trade association. In Honduras, the country next to Guatemala, there has been a coup d'etat in the past months, again because the elected president wanted to grant small farmers access to land, which hurted the interests of the rich elite, which currently owns most of the land. The "golpistas" organized in the middle of the violent state repression "elections", and not surprisingly their man, Lobos, "won" the elections. First thing he did was grant amnesty to the golpistas and amnesia to the international community.
The business representatives said the normalisation of the relations with Honduras was "good, because politics should not mingle with trade".
So instead of using its power to end impunity, the EU just seems to be interested to make deals with the elite of Central America, to continue to get cheap access to its natural resources.
If you want to read more about it, there will soon be a report from Friends of the Earth Europe on this page about the negotiations between the EU and Central America.
Some more revolting stuff, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) said yesterday that it is against a new law in Nicaragua, which allows small farmers to renegotiate their debt from a microcredit. The IMF thinks it is not "healty" to install a climate of "not paying". Anybody heard the IMF about the bail-out for the banks and the money which went straight to pay the bonusses of the managment?
Let's talk about "payback time", and who is overdue about some 500 years..