Felipe and Elena Ixcot: We are Guatemalan refugees, descendents of the Ancient Mayas, with a great civilization admired by the whole world, this civilization existed more that 10,000 years before Jesus Christ. We speak our language Mayan Mam, one of the twenty-two Mayan languages that are actually spoken in Guatemala.

In our town we were catechists, we studied about Liberation Theology, we also studied in the Catholic Institute of Training for Social Promoters of the Dioceses of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala in 1968.

Our work in the community was of service and development of the community, for example, literacy, sanitation, agriculture and health. Our work was as base communities within the social doctrine of the Church, approved by the bishops in the Pastoral Meeting of Medellin Columbia in 1968, during the visit of Pope Paul the IV concerning the Development of the Community and Respect for the Cultures of Latin America.

The situation of the war in our country during the 1980,s was the cause of our exile. We were persecuted by the army and death squads of the Guatemalan government. The mayor "crime that we committed" was that were helping the people in our community learn to read and write because one of the most powerful weapons that the rich in our country used was illiteracy, because a people ignorant is more easy to dominant and exploit. We left Guatemala the 25th of October, 1982, today is the 25th of October the year 2000, it has been 18 years that we have lived in exile. We were first in Mexico, working in the coffee plantations, earning a salary of only 35 cents a day, we had four children, and later our last daughter Maya Ixchel was born.

The Catholic church wanted to prepare Mayan leaders to help their communities know the value of the life, their relationship with each other, based on the messages of Jesus of unity and change to construct a new kingdom of God. We were 35 young Mayans of different communities and languages. We began to form a distinct vision to work with the community with the only proposition to leave this misery that that the people lived in.

In 1969 we married, and I, Felipe, was elected to the Secretariat of the Catholic Action, and after a few months I had another charge, and that was to be the Secretary of the Parochial Council. In addition we were members of the Savings and Credit Cooperative in the community. I was elected to the Secretariat of Education Commission of the Cooperative and afterwards I was nominated to take on other roles in the community as well. Along with Elena we were coordinators of the Christian Family Movement, MFC, and the last responsibility I had before I had to flee from my community was the vice-president of the Community Youth Association of Pro-culture and Service which had been organized by the young people in the community to implement a literacy campaign. But when the repression arrived all of our work was destroyed by the army and death squads who killed various of my coworkers and friends, others were kidnapped and never seen again.

I was three months as an internal refugee in Guatemala - displaced in my own country. Elena during this time received death threats and therefore we had to leave the country with our family. We entered Mexico, near Tapacula, Chiapas, and there our daughter Maya Ixchel was born. Ixchel means moon and according to our history the moon was the being that taught our ancestors to weave, and for this reason the word Ixchel means the Teacher or the Goddess of Weaving, and Maya is our race.

After living in the coffee plantations we had to leave because I suffered from severe arthritis in the hands and I felt I had to look for other work where I did not need to use the machete. I went to the city of Tapacula and by coincidence I passed by an art museum called Socunuzco and out of curiosity I went in. The person in charge asked me if I was Guatemalan because he saw my daughter Juanita who was wearing her Guatemalan clothing and we started a conversation. We talked about what had happen to my family and community in Guatemala and after he heard our story he directed me to the Catholic parish were they were helping Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees. So we went to the parish and they received me with great kindness and they told me to go get my family from the coffee plantation and come live at the parish house. So I began working with the church helping feed the many of my Guatemalan brothers and sisters who were fleeing Guatemala to the Mexican border.

Unfortunately, after a few months we had to leave the Church since a spy of the Guatemalan army had infiltrated and wanted to kill me and my family. We returned to working in the coffee plantation where our daughter Maya Ixchel was born.

The Mexican immigration was always in the coffee plantations looking for

undocumented so we could never live in peace. We began to look for ways to leave the plantation and fortunately we were able to get assistance from Catholic and Presbyterian Mexican friends who helped us go to Mexico City. When we arrived in Mexico City we arrived in the house of friends who were Presbyterians. They asked us all about what had happened to us in Guatemala but we did not want to talk much about it since we were traumatized and were afraid to tell our story. But these friends convinced us to tell them the whole story and the truth, they advised us that the best course of action for us was to go North to the United States.

The young North Americans did the same, they questioned us about Guatemala and after we told our story they told us they could help us go to the United States. We had no other alternative so we accepted this generous offer. We had hoped to be able to stay in Mexico City but the owners of the house where we stayed told us that the Mexican immigration was looking everywhere for undocumented immigrants. We began the journey in car with these new friends heading North.

We crossed the border the 6th of January 1984. The first place of refuge was in a Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona. We stayed there for eight days afterwards we went to the reservations of the Pima and Pagagos, Native Americans, who live outside of Phoenix. On the reservations we stayed at the Catholic parish house where they spoke Spanish and this was a great help in making us feel less isolated.

After a few days on the Reservation a women Darlene Nigorski, a religious worker, arrived to see us and to see if we had a plan where we wanted to go or if we had family or friends in the United States. We told her we had no plans, family or friends and she suggested we might be interested in the concept of the sanctuary movement. We said we had been given some information about sanctuary, we understood the explanation and we said yes that we were interested. She told us she would return in three days with an answer whether there was a church or community ready to receive us. That is when we heard about the Sanctuary of Weston Priory.

We were a far distance from Weston, so we began the journey step by step with the first stop in Chicago, Illinois. We stayed in the United Church of Christ and from this place we went church to church giving our testimony, we also gave interviews to the media - both press, radio and television. We then began a plan to have a caravan to Vermont to the Western Priory and we arrived the 24th of March 1984. On this day we began our Human Rights work and our work for the Promotion of the Values of Mayan Culture and we have continued this work up to the present day.

We successfully founded an organization called the Guatemalan Refugee Network of Atanacio Tzul, that was also a member of the Sanctuary Movement of the United States. And in 1990 we founded the International Maya League/USA, a non-governmental organization, NGO, of which I, Felipe, am the president and Elena is treasurer -- the International Maya League has a board which is comprised of both Guatemalans and North American friends.

In 1993 we also founded Guatemala Watch of Vermont, this is a sub-committee that support our work, and finally in the past year in December 1999 we succeeded in forming the Mayan Congress of the United States and the month of November we are to have our second assembly in Philadelphia, PA in which more that 40 Mayans and non-Mayans will participate.

JP: Have you visited Guatemala since you arrived here at the Western Priory?

F. Yes, we now have permanent residency which we received January 7, 1999 and we went to visit the land of our birth in march and returned in April of 1999, after almost 17 years in exile, and again that year we went again to Guatemala in August and this year we went to Guatemala in August. In total we have traveled three times to Guatemala.

JP: Can you describe your experiences on these trips?

F. Well, we have many experiences to share, because we saw that our people have been traumatized by the war, there exist distrust, because there has been no true reconciliation, the government passed but till today has never fulfilled the accords of the Peace Agreement. An essential accord that needs to be fulfilled is the trengthening of the Power of the Civilian Society -- this would end impunity - which has been one of the main obstacles to heal the wounds of the people.

In actuality one of the new problems in the communities is lynching, because when the people catch a thieve and bring him to the police the next day he is free on the street and therefore the people believe the thief and the police have some sort of connection and therefore now what the people do is burn with gasoline the robber they capture. This demonstrates the lack of confidence and trust the people have in the laws and in the authorities, this can only be changed when there is an end to impunity. It is well known that the 2,000,000 Guatemalans that were killed during the 36 years of the civil war were killed by the colonels and generals that designed the scorched earth policies.

In terms of security, we see a threat of a return to the past. There continues to be assassination and disappearances of leaders of popular and human rights organization, offices of groups who watch over the peace process are broken into. And common crime is rising as well -- children are kidnapped and help for ransom, many people say that no one is safe on the street or at work.

The Mayan population is the most abandoned by society, the politicians only visit the Mayan communities every four years when they are looking for votes for re-election. Then they arrive offering the heaven and earth and when they get elected they forget about the communitas. Many communities receive no assistance for schools, potable water, roads or health clinics.

The Peace Accords are not functioning. Many people have said that the Agreement was to silent the fighting and not to reach to the roots of the problems that started the war, the people continue with hunger, more that 50 percent of the people have no work, 75 percent of the best lands remain in the hands of 3% of the population, the devaluation of the dollar has also affected the economy of the country and for this reason everyday many Guatemalans leave their communities and head to United States in search of work. One concrete example is that in my town of 14,000, over 6,000 young people have gone to work in the United States. Many of these have received an education, some are teachers, but because there is no work, no land to grown corn or beans they leave.

JP What changes did you see in Guatemala when you returned in 1999?

Well, Positive changes we saw hardly any. Negative changes abound. When we arrived at the airport at eleven in the morning one could see the air pollution -- black smoke all around the city - this was new for us.

All along the outskirts of the city and along the roads was garbage -- plastic. This did not exist before. In Mayan communities before when our grandmothers and mothers went to the market to make purchases they carried a basket with cloth napkins to wrap up their purchases, they carried plates and the vendors would sell sugar and salt by the pound and wrap them in leaves of a plant called machan, that is cultivated on the riverbanks in the coastal zones of Guatemala.

And if we bought soap - made by hand by the campesino farmer -- that also would be wrapped up in leaves, the same with chili, rice, onions and other food that could be wrapped up in the napkins that our mothers brought to the market in their baskets. And if they bought meat they would put it right on the plate they had brought from home. And when the mother arrived home, she washed the leaves in hot water and use them to wrap up tamales and if she had domestic animals like a cow or horse she would feed the leaves to them. Nothing was wasted. And nothing contaminated the land or air - this was the system of our ancestors.

But now we have the grand foreign corporations -- they have ruined the natural environment with their products - or as they call it the advance of great civilization.

Another great change we saw was the price of thread to make weavings. The price is very high. This is another way to kill our culture -- because the weaving is the way of life of the Mayan woman it is the way she expresses the connection of being human with the natural world, also in the weavings she writes the story of the our ancestors. The weavings are not only a means to protect us from the cold but are also an learning tool to teach the value of nature, land and the cosmos. The designs of the weaving of the Mayan women are really a library of books. The cotton is a Mayan product from thousands of years ago, and the natural colors come from insects and plants. Now foreign companies from Germany and North- America have mis- appropriated the dyes and cottons.

JP: I remember that you helped form the International Mayan League some years ago -- what is its function?

F. The International Mayan League began in 1989 in Costa Rica. It is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). Its direct function is to unite all the Mayans who live outside of Guatemala with a joined and universal vision of what it means to be human and to live in this world. To strengthen and develop Mayan thought, maintain a permanent connection between culture, science, technology and art, and relationship with contemporary thought and with the social cultural and economic reality of today.

At the same time the IML analyzes and understands the role of the Mayan women plays in society and looks for a mechanism to help her reclaim the social position the she always held in the Mayan society.

To create a solidarity and a social conscience in the international community to the end that they fully understand the oppression that the Mayan culture has suffered since 1524.

The International Maya League, is an cultural - political institution because we do not only raise consciousness about our beautiful culture but also about the suffering that we have experienced for the past 500 years -- oppression, racism and death, especially the genocide war that the Guatemalan government and army implemented against the Mayan people during 36 years, especially the years from 1980 till the signing of the peace accords the 29th of December 1998.

We have also begun working with a group of young people in our home town in Guatemala that they will know the value of their race, especially the advances and successes of our ancient ancestors before Columbus, for example in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, engineering etc. This is an other road to peace and tranquility, for the young people to see that they are the future of our people - for the Construction of Our New Nation -- pluri-cultural and multi-lingual.

We have to begin with the roots of our history -- it is necessary to return to the past to understand the future. We have projects of short, medium and long term goals and objectives. Also here in the US we have succeeded in organizing a Mayan Congress. The first assembly was in Lake Worth, Florida in December, 1999. Thirty five Mayans from 9 states attended a meeting during which we gave training in the political situation in Guatemala, as well as our cosmovision. We want that Mayans and non-Mayans that live in the United States to have a clear vision of our true history, in order that they can understand Guatemalan politics.

JP You have spoken about the theme "identity." Why is identity so important to the Mayans?

F. Good, identity is very important because it is that we differ from other cultures, but before I enter into this theme it would be good to define what is identity?

The identity of the Mayan people as we understand it is a manner to identify our selves to each other, along with the common actions that permit the norms of living between members and form proper relationship with nature, create values, concepts, institutions and practices that are different from outer people or communities.

This identity is dynamic, it has a profound historical root. .

Here are fundamental elements that determine identity.

1. Direct descendents of the Mayans, language, a common linguistic root that has survived the imposition of the Spanish language as the official language.

The language is the one of the pillars that has allowed our culture to survive- being in particular the means to acquire and transmit the indigenous cosmosvsion. In this sense all of the languages in Guatemala deserve equal respect. In this context, we have had to adopt means to recuperate and protect the indigenous languages and promote the development and the practice of the languages at the same time.

F. About the scientific knowledge we want our people to know that they have rights as the grandchildren of the Mayans, when the community arrives to understand this they can open their eyes and see that they are the legitimate owners of the land in Guatemala. At the same time the can understand that that the grandchildren of the great Mayan scientist are now dying of hunger and curable illnesses, how a vaccine that cost 5 cents could save their lives, and how also we live with oppression and discrimination.

During the civilized life of our ancestors they had great success in the different areas of science - like I said before - mathematics, astronomy, engineering, medicine. History says that our ancestors cultivated corn, beans, and ayotes or squash. With these three cultivated products they were able to develop their civilization and with this system of full agriculture they only needed to work in the fields for 45 days a year, with the remaining 320 days dedicated to their studies. It is not by coincidence that our ancestors were geniuses -- they understood the movement of the stars, the moon and the planets, thousands of years before NASA,

Our history says that we come from corn, yellow and white corn , it was from the heart of the sky and the heart of the earth that we were made.

If we are people of corn, then we are nature. And for this reason the Mayan people are caring about plants, trees, rivers and are because we are part of them - this we have learned from our grandparents -- an oral education that is practice in all Mayan homes.

It is not as anthropologist have written that the Mayans are ignorant and the Europeans were the ones who brought "civilization" to us. And we ask what is civilization to them? Is Civilization to rob land? Is civilization to rape women? Is civilization to exterminate people and communities? This is what the "civilization that arrived from Europe" did.

On the other hand our ancestors said that CIVILIZATION is the mental quality that permits originality, tolerates different points of view, cares for the ideas of justice, peace, human solidarity, to resolve social, money and religious problems with reason, without domination over another, To reject envy, hate and shame. To recognize the life and liberty of others is as precious as our own life and liberty and over all to have the same rights to enjoy all the rights, no matter how small they seem, these illuminate Mother Earth.

This is the concept of civilization that guided and oriented our ancestors, and it is the same concept that today orients and guides our legitimate Mayan thought. And under this same concept we are guiding our children as the Mayan Nation.

However there are many sister organizations that work for human rights in Guatemala, although not all of them understand the above, they focus only on the political situation and disregard the value of our roots as Mayans. For example the struggle for land, we do not fight for this only because of the economics, but because the land is our mother and grandmother, this is the sense we have of the land, it is the basis for our culture, if the landowners do not leave our lands then that is the same as killing the Maya and there culture.

JP What are the most important problems that the Mayan women face in Guatemala today?

E. Good/well. The most serious problems that the woman today faces is discrimination, because the woman never has been given the opportunity to participate in the political, social and cultural life, in the first place many are illiterate, because they never had access to go to school, for example during the armed conflict in Guatemala, many women were displaced, because their husbands were assassinated or kidnapped, the family were forsaken and thousands of children were orphaned and could not go to school, so there was a great increase in the number of boys and girls who could not read or write, and because of the bad practices/policies of the government the government never implemented any programs to help these persons, although the peace accords mention the strengthening of civil society, this never has happened -- the accord has not been fulfilled. On the contrary the new government of Alfonso Portillio, has cut the education and health budgets by 10%, therefore women are most affected, and now you can see their massive participation in protest, imploring that the government punish those who killed and kidnapped their children and husbands.

They have also organized to request that the government no longer continues the practice of recruiting their sons in to the army. The women say that after the disappearances or murders of their husbands by the army they have suffered enough trying to take care of their children, and now because the army wants to take their children to the army base to make them soldiers the women of Guatemala have asked the President to respect consciousness objection, and to say it is the decision of the young person to say if they want to participate in the army or not. It is with these struggles that the women continue with the energy struggling in order to survive and protect their rights.

JP I know that you worked with the Church. What are your ideas about the meeting of the Church and the Mayan religion.

In reality, the church continues classifying our Cosmo-vision as satanical belief, witch-craft and as pagan, however the form that the Mayans visualize God is very scientific, because this relationship with the existence of nature, for the belief we do not call our beliefs a religion, because we are not talking about only a supreme being but also we are educated to appreciate all of nature - all the elements that give life and health - like the sun, rain, air, land or earth, the water the clouds and much more. With this we are not saying we are polytheist for we only believe in Ucux Kaj the Heart of the Sky and Ucux Ulew the Heart of the Earth -- this duality is complementary because the earth is feminine and the sky is masculine and this perfect unity created our universe.

In this manner if we want to encounter the true meeting of the two cultures , the church must change their mentality , with this said I want to be clear that I am not anti-Catholic or anti-evangelic or anti-Protestant, but it is better to contribute to this unity, the church can speak about human rights but it practices racism over other cultures.

I was as catechist in the Catholic Church, I learned many things from the bible, especially in the new testament, in which Jesus Christ taught us about the value of the natural environment, it is marvelous to read, how Jesus has the reference of the mustard seed, comparing it to the reign of God, or his children, also the life of the animals, like the sheep, the birds, the sea, the fish or his own mule that served him in entering triumphantly in Jerusalem.

Also when Jesus retreated from his community and spent forty days and forty nights in the mountains mediating, receiving his energy from the trees, the cosmos the animals because wisdom is something difficult we have hope, that all the passages are beautiful to learn and to meditate, also when Jesus was in the Garden of Getsemani he spoke to God in front of a great rock, now we can not classify Jesus as a pagan, it was an external form to express his feelings to his father that had sent him fulfill a difficult mission in this world.

The Holy Spirit, appears in the form of a dove and fire, the fire in our culture is center of our life and signifies unity. And because of this every Mayan home has a fire in the center of the house, because when we get up in the morning we all look for warmth, and only the fire unites us, and for this it is the center of our life.

But when the first Christians arrived on our lands, they told us that if were not baptized that we would burn in hell, and this western vision was a great blow against the teachings of our ancestors who had told us the fire was our friend not our enemy, and this western faith had many things to learn and study before they gave such destructive criticism about our civilization. They not only did this in Guatemala but also in all the continent Abyayala, that begins from the land of fire until the patagonia, or that is from Alaska to Argentina.

JP What do you think about those who are not Mayan and what do we need to understand?

F, First lets make it clear, that the Mayan culture is not only for the Mayans or the Guatemalans, it is for the humanity of the world, the thought of the Mayans is to protect the natural environment, it is the responsibility of all of us, because scientifically we know that without water or air we can not live - and if money continues to be the center piece of life then the world is going to self-destruct. In the mayan philosophy our ancestors always told us that money could not buy life, we can extend our lives for many more years if could understand what they told us - rather people continue to pollute the earth only to make money.

We ask all of our friends of the world to unite to save the environment of the Mayan cosmovision. When you go to the store to buy food, do not take a plastic bag, or a paper bag, it is best you carry your own cloth bags or basket to put your purchases in. To save thousands of trees that are cut to make paper, also lets avoid the pollution of mother earth by not throwing away more plastic bags, we will save money and at the same time be helping the world in order not enlarge the hole in the ozone layer.

E. Also we have ask that our North-American friends write your government to ask that conditions are put on economic aid to Guatemala, for example to fulfill the peace accords and to stop impunity that keeps the people in a state of terror, in this moment it is very important to have the solidarity of north American brothers and sisters, because only unity has strength, to reach the true peace with justice and liberty.

JP What words of wisdom to end this interview. Thank you.