Last updated: December 4, 2022
The oppressive policies adopted for decades by militarized governments throughout Latin America have left many indigenous groups distinctly marginalized from the mainstream societies. It could be argued that, since the arrival of the Europeans, most native groups have experienced systematic injustice in some shape or form. Traces of the violent repression exercised by the coercive systems developed by colonial powers can still be observed in the modern-day governments of Latin America. Just as the European disregard for the interests of the indigenous groups during the colonial times helped spark the movements towards independence, the contempt expressed towards the native indigenous groups by the descendants of the Ladino and Criollo elite populations, who hold most of the political power, contributed towards the launch of modern revolutionary conflicts. Deprived of resources, ridiculed for their languages and costumes, and doomed to experience extreme social and economic isolation, these communities have been condemned to a life of poverty and political disenfranchisement. Continuous and blatant governmental corruption and discrimination eventually led to a reinvigoration of their indigenous identity and an awakening to the awareness of their inequality. In the case of Guatemala, in an attempt to fight back against the pervasive abuse experienced by the indigenous groups, their representatives have devoted an agenda aiming to tackle the most pressing issues affecting their daily lives. By demanding that their Mayan identity is respected as a key component in the framework of the political demands of their programs, indigenous leaders in Guatemala are attempting to combat the socio-economic historical inequalities plaguing their communities by petitioning significant political recognition, preserving their land rights, and obtaining a better education for their children.
All of the debates and protests demanding change in Guatemala have identified democracy, land, and education as key components to be discussed, which finally resulted in the Peace Accords of 1994-96. This achievement took a long and winding road to receive official recognition. It took the longest and most vicious conflict in Latin America to make it happen: “The Guatemalan civil war, the hemisphere’s bloodiest armed conflict in the twentieth century, left over 200,000 dead, most of them indigenous civilians” (Rodríguez, 2016, p. 245). The conflict began in 1960 with the United States supporting the forcible removal of power of the democratic government of President Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz had been in power for three years and was attempting a moderate land reform to combat massive inequality. The United States deemed the Guatemalan government communist and backed conservative military governments illegitimately installed in power. In the 1980s the United States pursued a more subtle approach in Guatemala. Starting in 1986, it allowed legitimate elections while implementing a neoliberal system that favored American corporations. The results of these insidious policies resulted in more inequality and marginalization for the indigenous rural populations, which provoked the organization of a guerrilla revolutionary movement (URNG) that initially proposed dialogue and negotiation, but this strategy was doomed to fail due to the determined resistance of the powerful elite conservatives and the military. Only after the end of the Cold War and the end of the American support of the Guatemalan reactionary sectors would a real dialogue become possible.
The indigenous groups’ demand for democracy, land, and education has been clearly established and has been amply discussed by the experts. However, what is not so conspicuous is the discourse in which these demands have been enveloped: the need that people be empowered to speak the ethnic languages and that ethnic languages should be more respected in the political sphere of the newly configured democratic Guatemala. On her Chapter on Political Linguistics, Brigittine M. French refers to Adrián Chávez, a K’iche’-Maya and a key figure in the creation of this discourse. Chávez proposed the creation of a “Guatemalan orthography”, different from the Spanish, that would represent the singularity of the Mayan languages and therefore, Mayan identity. The languages spoken by the different indigenous groups in Guatemala have been widely used by the Maya as the most valid component to define their ethnic identity, and to detect inequities if the languages are frowned upon in a variety of situations. In the context of Guatemala, the relationship between political and cultural identity is such a close one due to the fact that “spoken indigenous language has been considered a marker of ethnicity because it is a manifestation of people’s attachment to their culture (Armenta et al., 2019, p. 59). French, alluding to K’iche’, one of the main Mayan languages, argues that it is necessary to make some corrections to the manuscripts in this language “for which it was advisable to use a set of symbols genuinely indigenous to bring out the marvelous beauty of the old culture” (French, 2010, p. 47). According to French, until the 1970s, there was a fight between the conservative elite groups in Guatemala who advocated for linguistic assimilation to Spanish and those who proposed the reinvigoration of the Mayan languages. This myriad of languages, in the eyes of the official government, was perceived as a threat to national unity, and “caused significant damage to the project of transforming monolingual Mayas into literate Spanish-speaking Guatemalans” (French, 2010, p. 49). French also praises two linguists of another major Mayan language, Kaqchikel, for their groundbreaking work. For French, Lolmay García Matzar and Demetrio Rodríguez Guaján, are the “guardians of the Mayan culture” because “they underscore the importance of Maya culture in Guatemalan national discourse” (French, 2010, p. 19). These initiatives to strengthen an indigenous identity are regularly thwarted by the Guatemalan state, which pursues a homogenous identity, using violence if necessary, because the state becomes the agent of language policy by which, “the acquisition of Spanish is understood to be obtained at the expense of indigenous peoples’ first languages” (French, 2010, p. 21). For indigenous groups in Guatemala, to become monolingual is experienced not as an enrichment, but as a loss. The opposite happens for the Guatemalan government, as it considers indigenous languages detrimental to a supposed national unity.
The factor of language is deeply intertwined with democratic ideals in Guatemala, where cries for a more democratic political representation often come from indigenous groups whose language and costumes are scorned. The large economic, public service, and educational gaps that exist between the urban elites and the rural indigenous groups are often exacerbated by the lack of respect for a culture that is socially derided. This social inequality has led to perennial poverty, and has been continuously enhanced by the governmental policies utilized by those at the top interested in maintaining the status quo. As the powerful continue to control the political apparatus, the rights of these marginalized ethnic minorities in the country get pushed aside. The higher classes continue the oppression of indigenous groups, allowing a wealthy fraction of the population to take advantage of those with no political power.
There has been little change among the ruling elite, as indigenous people fail to gain any political recognition. Unfortunately, a difficult task is at hand as they enjoy little to no support from the government who condones these acts of the wealthy. Eventually, oppression from the government would take a large toll and the lack of democracy would lead to social and political mobilization. According to Neftalí López Miranda (2016), a member of land laborers association located in southern Guatemala called CODECA (the Committee for the Development of Farmworkers), the economic policy that is promoted by the state is defined by an intense mercantilism that prioritizes the economic privileges in favor of the powerful groups at the top, such as CACIF (Comité Coordinador de Asociaciones Agrícolas, Comerciales, Industriales y Financieras), which favors the expansion of single crop cultivation, oil drilling, hydro-electric projects and mining, and attempts to get rid of the farming families utilizing those lands. López Miranda states that, the Guatemalan state is the main guarantor of these big corporations “en detrimento de la producción agrícola de las familias campesinas y del medio ambiente” (López, 2016, p. 55). This disregard for the indigenous land laborers and the environment is related to the neoliberal policies adopted by Guatemala in the 1980s, eschewing legal concerns and directly persecuting those who protest these unjust measures. According to Neftalí López, this has led to criminalization of organizations such as CODECA just because they “fight for the Human Rights of peoples such as education, health and social security, decent housing, drinking water, electricity, defense of territories, access to land, right to work, Food security, justice and in general the defense of public and natural assets” (López, 2016, p. 56). The Guatemalan government has a history of implementing a type of autocratic government that scoffs at equality and inclusion and discriminates against the cultural expression of its indigenous populations. This is why, according to López, the state “invisibiliza y deslegitima las demandas”-- in other words, it delegitimize and makes invisible the people’s demands. (López, 2016, 70). Groups such as CODECA underscore the importance of urging the passing of laws that promote rural development that include the participation of indigenous input. In fact, on their webpage, CODECA defends the land interest of a population where 95% are rural families that work lands they don’t own or are forced to emigrate. Political demands are inevitably intertwined with land rights through what they call “Programa de Tierra y Desarrollo” (Program for Land and Development), which advocates to promote local empowerment by asking for the inclusion of indigenous voices in the process of social and economic transformation. However, for CODECA, the programs of demands they formulate always include a “Programa de Promoción Multicultural” (Program for Multicultural Promotion), as the preservation of Mayan identity by valuing indigenous languages and costumes are crucial in the framing of other important demands. This can be explained because “land tenure can be singled out as one of the driving forces behind Guatemala’s civil war. Indigenous Mayan communities, who make up roughly 60 percent of the country’s population, have maintained cultural ties to their land” (Rodríguez, 2016, p. 245). This link between land demands and cultural respect arises from the need to live according to traditions that respect the land and the people who cultivate it. In reality, the indigenous communal lands have been expropriated and land ownership among them is drastically declining. With the new neoliberal programs, the indigenous people have been exploited and forced into seasonal labor in a system sadly reminiscent of colonial times, which has been aggravated by the bloody forty year long military conflict of the civil war. The return to democracy and the peace process instilled great hopes for real change in many civil society organizations, including the Maya movement. Through their participation in national commissions, many of their demands were included in the Peace Accords of 1996.
Many problems have continued to impact these indigenous communities, as they have faced political oppression from the government on one side, and armed conflict with the military on the other. For one, the government has historically excluded indigenous communities from political expression. Forced to create its own political awareness, a reformist party in 1970 known as the “Christian Democrats” promised many changes within the indigenous communities, but did not fulfill those promises, leaving many hopeless (Prevost and Vanden, 2015, p. 546). Additionally, when the army increased repression against indigenous communities in the late 1970s, their initial plan was to terrorize the Mayans into compliance, but many natives saw this as a chance to take arms in an act of “self-defense”. The influence of the Catholic Church also played a key role in the turmoil experienced by the Maya. They mobilized into rebellion against the army, and the rise of Christian based communities became part of a new ideology adopted in the community. Just as it occurred in El Salvador, many members of the Catholic Church took the side of the indigenous communities against the blatant discrimination perpetrated by the Guatemalan government. After a massacre of “three dozen indigenous protesters” in 1980, within the chaos of the insurgency, the “Comité de Unidad Campesina” (Farmers Union Committee), a national peasant organization, staged a massive strike of workers on sugar plantations that would greatly cripple the landowners and army (Prevost and Vanden, 2015, p. 547). The goal to reach political recognition continues to this day as the past periodically creeps into the present.
Leaving aside the boisterous issue of the lack of political representation in Guatemala for its indigenous population, one of the thorniest issues affecting relations in this Central American country has been land disputes. Illegitimately taking over the rights of the land from the indigenous group has “wrought significant changes in the lives and livelihoods of these Indians, who watched many of their communal lands pass into the hands of Ladino landowners” (Wasserstrom, 1975, p. 447). This problematic policy has proven devastating, as many of the native population who were forced to move into the larger cities have not assimilated culturally or financially into the Ladino world, which would come to “reinforce their defense of ethnic and cultural identity” (Prevost and Vanden, 2015, p. 546). Language and cultural validation play a significant role for these traditionally minded Mayans, and utilizing the land according to their customs is crucial to their cultural and financial survival, as they are accustomed to rural life and growing their own food with their conventional systems. However, the government incessantly ignores their pleas to not encroach in their territory and continuously restricts the rights of the land from them, which has led Mayan organizations and activists to “claim that indigenous peoples have a right to control the territory on which they live” (WPR, 2016). Obviously, this is a claim highly contested by the conservative elites. In Guatemala, in fact, most collective rights are perennially under attack. As a result of these policies, the community has sought “to create organizations more responsive to indigenous communities and concerns” (Yashar, 1998, p. 26). This careless approach to the “indigenous problem” has created whole areas in the countryside that lack the ability to survive financially. Since it no longer was profitable to live there, the growing frustration of the population led to the adoption of revolutionary ideologies, which has caused civil war and international migration, and will likely continue to cause such issues.
The government has continuously ignored indigenous claims for land rights that promote equity and cultural preservation. Parallelly, in the midst of this politically charged atmosphere, the issue of the lack of education has remained a seemingly secondary issue in the indigenous organizations’ demands. Nonetheless, the topic is always addressed alongside other apparently more pressing demands included in the political manifestos of the indigenous groups. The educational factor is linked to the matter of cultural identity. To better frame the issue, the linguistic barrier should be considered, since the majority of the indigenous population does not speak Spanish. Thus, for many such groups in Guatemala, the lack of a quality educational system in their language becomes a major contributor to the poverty and crime experienced. Those who are uneducated display low levels of literacy and eventually struggle to participate in and understand the issues in politics. The root of this problem can also be traced to the fact that many children are forced to work in the fields with their parents from a young age, unable to attend school regularly. Additionally, traditional customs keep these groups performing menial jobs that do not generate much income. Also, the lack of assistance from the government through social welfare has created more tension between the rich and the poor. The introduction of the “‘neo-liberal multiculturalism implemented by the government, a project that recognizes certain aspects of cultural difference while advancing economic policies” backfired and would “contradict indigenous rights to autonomy in practice” (Sieder, 2007, p. 214). As a consequence, many of the indigenous households are forced to look for labor outside their communities. They then experience an extreme level of poverty on the outskirts of large cities, enduring constant electrical outages, poor water service, and neglected roads. Unfortunately, these desperate financial circumstances have seen some to even turn to extreme criminal activity, such as kidnapping and extortion.
The disconnect with their language and culture that Mayan children experienced in school until the end of the armed conflict resulted in an unequal distribution of education. This will continue to stratify Guatemalan society for decades and will prevent the extinction of internal social conflicts. This unequal system ignored the needs of half of the population of the country-- the indigenous Mayans. For them, education was experienced as repressive and punitive until a ray of hope appeared after the Guatemalan Peace Accords (PAs) of 1994-96. These laws had been passionately advocated by the indigenous organizations, and placed a heavy emphasis on the transformation of the educational system so that discrimination could be combatted by including indigenous leaders in the conversations. After the peace agreements, these lofty ideals defending integration, cultural pluralism, human rights, and democratization were ratified in the Agreement on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples (AIRIP 1995). The light was shined on developing an inclusive program that preserved Mayan culture and languages in the curriculum and the program was lauded as a working arrangement, whose final details would be later ironed out. The program boasted a multicultural approach with a decentralized system, to promote more indigenous involvement in rural areas in an effort to defend Maya identity and cultural diversity more effectively by backing indigenous community schools. Moreover, it featured an increase in the national budget for education. Also significant was the establishment of secondary education as a right for all. A provision for professional training would be incentivized as well, for those not wishing to continue into higher education. However, some suspected that the implementation of this plan would be challenging, since “a transformation of an educational system towards more social justice, not only needs broadly negotiated and accepted PAs but also the capacity, funds and the international support to counter the traditional forces within the Guatemalan government, powerful elites and the neoliberal educational policies of the World Bank” (Poppema, 2009, p. 403). Since the negotiations were done halfheartedly by the unconvinced right-wing sector, and without the necessary funds to implement the wide-ranging reforms, the ambitious plan was doomed to fail.
The influence of the neoliberal ideals coming from the United States to maximize economic benefits only begrudgingly includes the recognition of multiculturalism as a token to appear to support indigenous causes on paper, while continuing with its business-as-usual attitude in practice. According to Charles R. Hale (2002), the only way to eradicate the pernicious influence of neoliberal ideology in the official policy of “mestizaje,” which promotes indigenous integration by acculturation into the Spanish mainstream culture, is to completely reject a negotiation with it. For Hale, the ideal method to get rid of this authoritarian discourse would be to adopt a notion that could offer a way for Ladinos to express solidarity and alignment. He defines this as “mestizaje from below” which would “highlight the heterogeneity of the Mayan movement. […] It also would encourage critique of neoliberal multiculturalism's investment in neatly bounded categories of cultural difference, each with pre-inscribed contributions to societal diversity” (524). The attempts made by the indigenous groups to solidify their identity have served to strengthen the political demands for self-representation that were finally publicly acknowledged in the “Ley de Idiomas Nacionales” (Decreto No. 19, 7 de mayo de 2003). This official document was ratified by the Guatemalan government and acknowledged that language is one of the pillars that sustains the culture of the Mayan, Garífuna and Xinka people, and is vital to conserve and pass on these cultures’ cosmovision, values, and costumes. It also reiterates that the Guatemalan constitution recognizes the rights of these groups to a cultural identity that matches their values, languages, and customs, making the Guatemalan government accountable for its implementation. Finally, through the implementation of the Decreto Número 65-90, and the “Convenio 169 de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo” (Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization), as well as by referring the Peace Agreement (Acuerdo de Paz Firme y Duradera), (“Ley”, 2003, p. 1-2), the law establishes that Guatemala has assumed the responsibility to preserve, promote, respect, and utilize the indigenous languages of its territory. The document also establishes the principle of national unity and the multiethnic, pluricultural, and multilingual character of Guatemala as fundamental qualities of the nation, a great stride towards reconciliation in the country.
Nowadays, the priorities of the indigenous people have not shifted greatly from the past. The importance of owning land as a fundamental way of maintaining their traditional customs remains a significant key point in the indigenous group’s political agenda. In this sense, their plans to control their political destiny in a democratic society clearly conflict with the Neo-liberal financial policies adopted by the government of Guatemala. As poor education and deficient welfare programs continue to plague their communities, poverty and crime will remain a part of indigenous life. Indigenous communities continue to deal with an incongruous government that does not respect their way of life, and they feel that it does not represent their interests. As a consequence of the continued indifference suffered, multiple challenges arise for the Maya groups desiring equal rights and political representation in a state that doesn’t recognize their rights to preserve their Maya languages, costumes, and identity. Therefore, as inequality and a lack of respect from the capital still persists regarding rural indigenous communities, the idea of future conflicts should not be discarded.
References
Armenta Paulino, Nancy, et al. (2019). Indigenous Language and Inequitable Maternal Health
Care Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and the Plurinational State of Bolivia. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 97 (1), 59–67.
CODECA. Comité de Desarrollo Campesino (n.d.) https://landportal.org/es/organization/Comite-de-desarrollo-campesino
French, Brigittine M. (2010). Maya Ethnolinguistic Identity Violence, Cultural Rights, and Modernity in Highland Guatemala. University of Arizona Press.
Hale, Charles R. (2002). Does Multiculturalism Menace? Governance, Cultural Rights and the Politics of Identity in Guatemala. Journal of Latin American Studies, 34 (3), 485-524.
Ley de Idiomas Nacionales. (2003). Diario de Centroamérica. El Vocero de la Paz. Órgano Oficial de la Repúbica de Guatemala, vol. CCLXXI, (75), 1-3.
López Miranda, Neftalí. (2016). Estado y Criminalización de la Lucha Social. Revista de la Escuela de Trabajo Social de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 35, 55-78.
Poppema, Margriet. (2009). Guatemala, the Peace Accords and Education: A Post‐conflict Struggle for Equal Opportunities, Cultural Recognition and Participation in Education.
Globalisation, Societies and Education, 7, (4), 383-408.
Prevost, Gary, and Harry E. Vanden. (2015). Politics of Latin America, 5th Edition, Oxford University Press.
Rodríguez, James. (2016). This Land Is Ours: In Guatemala, a Struggle Over Land and Resources Pits Transnational Mining Interests Against Indigenous Communities.
NACLA Report on the Americas, 48 (3), 245-252.
Sieder, Rachel. (2007). The Judiciary and Indigenous Rights in Guatemala. International Journal of Constitutional Law, 5 (2), 211–241.
Wasserstrom, Robert. (1975). Revolution in Guatemala: Peasants and Politics under the Arbenz Government. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 17, (4), 443-478.
WPR. (2016). Guatemala’s Indigenous Peoples Endure Poverty and Contested Land Rights. World Politics Review, 21 Aug. 2016, www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/19711/ guatemala-s-indigenous-peoples-endure-poverty-and-contested-land-rights
Yashar, Deborah J. (1998). Contesting Citizenship: Indigenous Movements and Democracy in Latin America. Comparative Politics 31 (1), 23-42.
David Gómez is a senior majoring in Political Science (International Relations) and Spanish at Whittier College.He is also a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Scholar.
