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 late 1994, over 150 Maya
organizations came together to
form the Coalition of
Organizations of the Maya People
of Guatemala (COPMAGUA).
The coalition’s main purpose was
to present a pro-Maya agenda to
the ongoing peace negotiations
between the Guatemalan govern-
ment and the Guatemalan National
Revolutionary Unity (URNG)
rebels. The imminent signing of an
accord on indigenous rights pro-
vided an opportunity for Maya
groups to have a voice at the
national level. Grouped together in
COPMAGUA, they hammered out
their own proposal on indigenous
rights. The coalition called on the
Guatemalan government to aban-
don policies that promote the
assimilation and acculturation of
Maya people. 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. local Maya political leaders.
When COPMAGUA was barred from presenting its
proposals directly to the government and the URNG, the
Assembly of Civil Sectors (ASC), of which COP-
MAGUA is a member, agreed to bring them to the nego-
tiating table. 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.
COPMAGUA includes a broad
array of Maya organizations with
many different perspectives. Its for-
mation represents a process of con-
sensus-building in which indige-
nous groups have sought to
overcome their individual interests.
Divisions have arisen among the
different Maya groups over strate-
gy, emphasis and leadership.
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 very existence is a
remarkable achievement when ew Dawn,” is the coor- placed in historical context. The uatemalan indigenous coalition was organized after the n the popular move- most violent period in modern
Guatemalan history-a counterin-
surgency war in which over 150,000 people, the major-
ity of them Mayas, were murdered. Ten years after the
end of military dictatorship, political repression contin-
ues unabated against groups and individuals that make
concrete demands of the state for social change.
Since the Spanish Conquest, the relationship between
the Mayas and the Guatemalan state has been character-
ized by exploitation and deceit. Wealth, land and politi-
cal power have always been concentrated in the hands of
a mestizo minority. 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.
Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.
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. In essence, they have
systematically been denied their rights as citizens. An
astonishing 87% of Guatemalan Mayas live in poverty;
almost two-thirds of that group live in extreme poverty,
unable to meet their basic daily needs for food, health,
and shelter.
Maya resistance to the oppression and exploitation
that have marked their lives as a people for 500 years has
taken many different forms. Because of the way that col-
onization was imposed, the Maya have traditionally
struggled against state power at the local level. 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 nenetra-
tion of capitalism into Maya communities and the dev-
astating effects of state violence over the past few
decades have undermined the effectiveness and viability
of solely community-based responses.
During the 1960s and 1970s, some Mayas in commu-
nities 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. 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. Others par-
ticipated in the National Coordinating Committee of
Indigenous People and Campesinos (CONIC), which
was also in the forefront of the struggle for land. By the
end of the 1970s, a generalized social and political
mobilization was gathering steam among the Maya pop-
ulation.
he Guatemalan state responded with brutal
repression to both Maya mobilization and the
country’s reorganized guerrilla movements, in
which some Mayas participated. The orgy of violence of
the early 1980s caused a demographic, social and cul-
tural holocaust of the Maya people, on a scale similar to
the devastation wrought by the Spanish Conquest in the
sixteenth century.
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. With the transi-
tion to civilian rule in 1986, Mayas, among others, took
advantage of tentative new spaces for organizing.
Among the first to organize were groups such as the
Mutual Support Group (GAM) and the National
Committee of Guatemalan Widows (CONAVIGUA).
The women in these organizations were united by the
common suffering of having lost a loved one to political
repression. Mayas were a dynamic and active sector
within these organizations. Later, the National
Coordinating Committee of Displaced Peoples of
Guatemala (CONDEG), a group of the internally dis-
placed, became active in making demands for basic
social and economic rights.
In the late 1980s, dozens of new organizations
emerged. Some groups emphasize the cultural oppres-
sion that Mayas have suffered since the
Conquest. They see cultural and racial
discrimination at the root of the eco-
nomic exploitation of the Mayas. Other
Maya organizations focus on more nrapmatic nroiects such as technical
training and literacy workshops. One subset of this ten-
dency is working with the government’s social-compen-
sation funds. Mayas are also active in popular organiza-
tions that fight for human rights and socioeconomic
demands, including health, education, housing and land.
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. These underly-
ing fissures were evident in the preparatory
conference of the “500 Years of Resistance”
; campaigns held in Quetzaltenango in
-” October, 1991. At the meetings, a plethora of
S1 ” local as well as national groups with varying
focuses and political perspectives were rep-
resented. In the conference discussions, very different
positions emerged on issues such as whether or not to
work with the state. By the end, some groups were
accusing others of being extremists. All sides claimed
that they were the legitimate representative of the Maya
people. While difficult to contend with, these differences
have not prevented the pan-Maya movement from forg-
ing ahead. Many activists have come to realize that in
spite of the different emphasis that each group has-
whether culture, education or politics-they are all chal-
lenging an oppressive system that has consistently
excluded them.
The Maya organizations’ initial entrance on the
national political scene occurred in the wake of the pres-
idential coup of Jorge Serrano Elfas in 1993. Two
umbrella Maya organizations joined with a broad coali-
tion of other groups-including some representing the
oligarchy-to create a common front against Serrano’s
attempt to impose a “civilian dictatorship.” One of the
two organizations, the Unity of the Maya People
(UPM), a coalition of ten groups, was reluctant to par-
NACLA 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. Seventy-
six 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. The INC enjoined the two Maya
organizations to arrive at some form of consensus. The
two groups were ultimately able to overcome many of
their differences. In the end, the INC permitted the par-
ticipation of four Maya representatives, two from each
umbrella organization. Participation was, however,
short-lived since the INC dissolved soon after Serrano
stepped down.
COPMAGUA’s involvement in the peace process was
another step forward in pan-Maya orga-
nizing and participation in national pol-
itics. 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. 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. Perhaps most being “d
significantly, it recommends that the
Constitution be revised to define and “su
Guatemala as a “multiethnic, pluricul-
tural and multilingual” nation. The fomentin
accord did not, however, address the of fe economic rights of the Maya people.
COPMAGUA formally accepted the intimi
agreement “with reservations” at a mass
meeting in Chimaltenango. “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.”
That same year, a number of Maya organizations
made their first organized foray into electoral pol-
itics in the presidential and congressional elec-
tions in November. 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-of-
center opposition force. Maya women activists, Rosalina Tuyuc, a leader of CONAVIGUA, and
Manuela Alverado of Quetzaltenango, were two of the
six FDNG candidates elected to Congress. The FDNG
also forged alliances with local indigenous civic com-
mittees throughout the country. One such committee
won the mayoralty in Zelajui (Quetzaltenango), the sec-
ond-largest city in the country. Other Maya groups sup-
ported 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 sec-
ond round of elections in January, 1996.
Other sectors of the Maya movement kept at arms’
length from the national political campaigns. Asserting
that it was premature for Mayas to enter electoral poli-
tics, these organizations chose to work at the grassroots
level to fortify local Maya political and economic struc-
tures instead. It is important to note that the majority of
Mayas did not participate in the national elections at all.
The high voter abstention rate in Maya communities-
estimated to be about 80%-speaks to the continuing
and deep-seated distrust of electoral politics.
Despite the Maya people’s modest political gains,
important challenges remain. In recent months, certain
sectors of the government have made
public statements about the “danger” of
the “subversive” Maya movements. ment Some are accusing the Maya organiza-
accUSe tions of being front groups for the guer- rillas. These threats have fomented a cli-
laya mate of intimidation and fear, and put the lives of Maya organizers at risk. 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. 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). Both were active in their organizations’ ation. campaigns to end forced military
recruitment and to disband the civil
defense patrols, organized by the mili-
tary in Maya communities.
Throughout history, the Mayas have fought many bat-
tles against state oppression: first during the Conquest,
followed by the colonial period and then the liberal era
of the late nineteenth century, through the counterinsur-
gency war of recent decades. The Mayas have demon-
strated a remarkable capacity to resist domination and to
adapt to changing circumstances without ceding their
culture and their identity. The new Maya organizations
are the fruit of that struggle.
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. Despite the contradictions that persist with-
in the movement, each organization has played an im-
portant role in that struggle. The Maya organizations are
coming to realize that pan-Maya unity will strengthen
their call for fundamental changes in Guatemala’s eco-
nomic and political system. Much remains to be done.
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.”
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