Joyce Penfield: Why did you leave Guatemala?

Felipe Ixcot: It is 18 years since we had to leave Guatemala. When I was 18 years old, I became involved in the church because my father was a catechist. I finished a course as Social Promoter in the Diocese of Quetzaltenango along with 35 other Mayan youth of different languages. It was there that I gained my social conscience as a community organizer with only one intention: to get rid of this misery in which we live. Elena and I got married in 1969 and we organized a youth group in the community and a literacy campaign. When the repression arrived in the 1980s, all of our work was destroyed by the army and death squads who killed or kidnapped various of our co-workers and friends. Then they came after us. For three months I was an internal refugee in Guatemala. Elena during this time received death threats and therefore we had to flee the country with family. We entered Mexico near Tapachula in Chiapas and there our daughter, Maya Ixchel, was born. (Ixchel means "moon" in Mayan. According to our legend the moon taught Mayan women how to weave.) In Mexico, immigration officials were always in the coffee plantations looking for the undocumented so we could never live in peace. Fortunately, we were able to get assistance from Catholic and Presbyterian Mexican friends who helped us go to Mexico City. Eventually we fled to a Presbyterian church in Tucson and then we were taken to a reservation near Phoenix, where Pima and Papago native peoples lived. Later Sister Darlene Nigorski came and told us about a church that could give us sanctuary and security. That is how we entered sanctuary with the Benedictine Brothers in Weston Priory, Vermont.

J.P.: Have you been back to Guatemala since then?

F.I.: Yes. We have visited three times since we got our permanent residency in the U.S. in January 1999. What we found was a disaster, because the people are still traumatized by the war. In order for healing to occur, we need to know who massacred our people. But impunity still exists in Guatemala. The people have no confidence in the authorities. Thus there has been no healing. As for security, kidnappings continue, death threats of human rights leaders continue. The Mayan people in the villages have been forgotten. There is no help for their communities: no schools, no roads, no drinkable water, no health clinics.

The Peace Accords have not worked for anyone. Many say that they exist only to silence the armed struggle and not to deal with the roots of the problems. The people continue to be hungry. More than 50 percent have no work. And 75 percent of the land is still in the hands of 3 percent of land owners. The devaluation of the dollar has also had a big effect. In my town of 14,000 people, more than 6,000 young people have left to work in the U.S. because after finishing their studies there is no work. And there is no land, either, to continue working.

J.P.: What changes did you find in Guatemala when you visited there in 1999?

F.I.: When we arrived at the airport in Quetzaltenango, we saw lots of air pollution. This is new for me. On the edge of the city, there was so much garbage right near houses. This didn't exist before. And plastic products have been introduced. International corporations have lured the people to use plastic. When our mothers went to the market, they would take their baskets and plates. If they bought salt, it was wrapped in the leaf of a plant. And later it was washed and used for tamales. The leaves were fed to the horses. Nothing contaminated the earth.

Another thing: thread, which is so important to the Mayan woman because weaving is part of her life and her dreams. Cotton is totally Mayan. Thousands of years ago our ancestors painted thread with different colors for weaving. But now, there is a German company in Quetzaltenango that sells acrylic thread cheaply. International corporations have attacked our culture.

J.P.: I remember some years ago you helped form the International Mayan League. What is its purpose?

F.I.: The International Mayan League (LMI) is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) that was born in Costa Rica. Its function is to further scientific, philosophical and artistic knowledge of all Mayans in Guatemala and also unite Mayans who live outside of Guatemala so that they can know their roots. Another goal is to help the international community become familiar with the political situation the Mayans in Guatemala suffer and to leave a special place for women. LMI also disseminates information about human rights violations. The organization has a political-cultural identity. We don't only speak about the richness of Mayan culture but also its suffering -- the racism, oppression, persecution and death to which the Mayan people of Guatemala have been submitted for 500 long years and, in particular, the last 36 years of war.

We have begun to organize our Mayan people in Guatemala to learn about the roots of their existence. What did the Mayans do to develop their civilization before Christopher Columbus arrived? LMI is a great political and peaceful tool for bringing change to Guatemala. We must begin with our roots. Also we have organized a Mayan Congress here in the U.S. in nine states in which we have training. We want the Mayans living in the U.S. to also know their true history.

J.P.: Why is identity so important for Mayans?

F.I.: When the people finally know this, they are going to open their eyes and understand why they are suffering now. They are going to realize who are the legitimate owners of the land. Why are the grandchildren of Mayan doctors now dying of what only costs five cents to cure? And why do we who lived here before Europeans arrived on this continent now live under such oppression? It is important that the Mayan people know who their ancestors were and what they achieved in science.

According to history, Mayans developed their civilization with three crops: corn, beans and pumpkins. Mayan legend has it that our creator made us out of corn: love of the sky and love of the land. So if we are corn, we are part of nature. That's why Mayan people are so zealous about caring for nature. If we attack plants, we are attacking ourselves because we are part of nature and we are corn. That is our past. It's not what the anthropologists write in books. They say that we were ignorant and that the Europeans brought us civilization. What is "civilization"? Is it the theft of land? Is it the raping of women? Is it the massacre of people? That is what Europe brought.

And as for the land: We don't struggle so hard for land for economic reasons. We struggle because the land is our mother. That is why we struggle over it. It's because we have this relation with the earth. Many human rights organizations in Guatemala do not understand this. They don't pay attention to the roots of the problems nor educate the people in the villages directly about the value of their Mayan culture -- a civilization in existence for 10,000 years. Christianity scarcely has been in existence 2,000 years!

J.P.: What are the major issues that confront the Mayan woman today?

Elena Ixcot: Endless problems. A major problem that Mayan women confront today is discrimination because they have never been given an important role to play in political and religious areas. The other problem is that the original woman of this continent has no access to political participation. She is illiterate. And because of the war in Guatemala, she confronts more serious aspects of life. She is left widowed and has to work for the survival of herself and her children all alone. She has never had an opportunity to participate in the political and social aspects of the society. But now there is more active participation as Mayan women have begun to struggle for their rights. They demand from their government: Why kidnappings? Why disappearances of their loved ones? Why forced recruitment that takes away their sons? Mayan women continue to struggle for survival but also to claim their rights.

J.P.: I know both of you have worked in the church a great deal. What are your thoughts about the relationship between the church and the Mayan religion?

F.I.: The church still continues categorizing, but Mayan religion can't be called a religion. It is more a "cosmovision." Its form of understanding life and the existence of God is very special. We Mayans believe more in that which gives us life, that which exists. For example, the rain exists. The sun exists. And when we have a Mayan ceremony, it isn't purely spiritual. It is also educational because reverence is given to the earth and it is explained to the people why reverence is given. Neither is Mayan religion polytheistic because we believe in respecting these elements which are part of our existence. We don't say that they are God, but we honor and respect them. One way to complete the encounter of the two cultures would be for the church to assume its responsibility in finding a road of unity and stop calling Mayans pagans.

We know many things that are found in the Bible that the church doesn't realize. For example, Jesus used many plants to explain the reign of God, mustard seeds and fig trees, because these are part of nature and part of human beings. Then there is the Holy Spirit who comes in the form of fire. Fire in Mayan culture is the center of life. There is a huge contrast between the Mayan and Christian cosmovision. For example, when the Christians came and told our ancestors they were going to eternal fire if they didn't respect God, our ancestors said: But fire is our friend! How were the Europeans interpreting the existence of fire compared to the Mayans? The church doesn't even make a space to study: What is Mayan culture? It only criticizes it. The encounter of the two cultures -- Mayan religion and Christianity -- has never been achieved or completed.

E.I.: Our hope and our vision is that we can share more about the Mayan cosmovision with the church because we are from this continent and they brought a religion that was born outside of this continent. But so far, with so many people on this continent in North and South America, we have never heard of anything joined with the church. It hasn't happened.

J.P.: What do we non-Mayans need to understand better?

F.I.: To understand that from a Mayan point of view all of humanity is part of this way of life, and protection of all our environment. In the Mayan cosmovision, everyone is brother of the world and shares in the protection of the environment. Another thing is that Mayan culture is the spinal column that sustains Guatemala. And we ask our North American friends to write your government and ask them to place conditions on aid for the government of Guatemala until the Peace Accords are completed.

E.I.: What we require now is mutual respect. That is what brings unity to humanity. Justice, peace, and freedom can be attained by everyone uniting in mutual respect.

Joyce Penfield attends the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. She was active in the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980s and has led several North American peace delegations to Guatemala. A longer version of this interview is available here. A Spanish-language version is here.