Interview with a Centenarian?

I'm coming up on the half-way point of this trip, and I've still got so much to write about.

I was in Cahaboncito this afternoon for a sit-down with some community elders. This was a big deal for me because for some of these communities, the only claims they have to their lands is through oral history and the memory of those that came before them. When I heard that the meeting was a go-ahead, I was excited to hear what they had to say.

Don Pedro looked incredibly old, but acted like a man 3/4 of his age. When I asked him how old he was, he couldn't remember...so he pulled out his papers.

Puchica Vos! It says 18 calculado 1920! A debate ensued: I though this meant he was born in 1920, and he was 18 when then back calculated his age. Although no one was certain, many thought this meant that he was 18 years old IN 1920, which would then make him born in 1902. The third perspective was that it wasn't exact either way, so we shouldn't spend to much time talking about it. I found it hard to explain my reasoning in spanish, so we decided to move on. Regardless of who was right or wrong, the man was somewhere in between 90 and 108 years old. I can only guess as to what some of the things those eyes have seen.

Among his stories included his survival of the Panzos massacre of 1978. Community leaders and citizens of Panzos were called to meet in the town square to hear a decree by the mayor and the regional head of the military. When the mayor gave a signal, the military surrounded the square and opened fire. The exact number of dead is still unknown, some reports place it at 58, although Don Pedro swears it was in the hundreds. Neither the intellectual or the material authors of this crime have ever been brought to justice. So it goes.

Their stories will hopefully be going into a feature article about the history of Lote 8, and the claims that they are making of the land from which they were driven.

More to come...

Limits of Empathy?

Raul tried to call me just after 5:30am on the morning of July 5. I got another call from Grahame in the mid-morning. And I had been able to get through to Maria by the early afternoon. We decided to have a meeting around in the evening.

When I heard that she had been killed, I was stunned. I thought to myself ' There is a dead woman in Polochic', but on another level it never really registered, it still seemed so distant. My thoughts were set into a flurry: That explains the call in the early morning... I wonder if Maria is OK?...Are we still going to Polochic?

As planned, I got to meet with Maria and Raul after things settled down. My attention was almost totally focused on Maria, as I heard that she was most shaken. She was composed, but spoke very quietly. I asked her how she was holding up, “terribly” she said in a long sigh as she started to walk to the table.

We took our seats and Raul was the first to speak, launching quickly into the few known details. Maria was looking through the table, a blank stare. She had never struck me as one to fidget, but she was spinning her phone around incessantly. Raul continued to talk, describing where he was and what he had been doing during the morning and afternoon. Maria checks over her shoulder, then with deep sigh, sinks deeper into her seat. The question of ‘What must she be feeling and thinking right now?’ was constantly running through my head. I scribble down a question in my notebook: What are the limits of empathy?

As I make sense of it, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. But how much can we really know about someone else’s suffering without experiencing the same loss, or the same pain associated with it? I think the answer is obvious…I couldn’t even come close. At the same time, I started to realize that maybe that is not what empathy is about...

After hearing the news, I was feeling most upset for Raul and Maria. I was worrying most about their thoughts, their worries and their fears. As a bit of time passed, the scope of my concern widened and I started to think about the fears and pains of the husband and the children that she left behind. Wider still, about the disturbance this would have created in her community. My empathy wanes for every increase in the broadness of its scope, until there is little feeling or understanding left in my thoughts.

It is of little wonder that many people seem to able to process international news so casually. “Earthquake in Haiti you say?! Thousands dead?! That’s a bloody shame that is, my goodness.” Later that morning, the focus might have moved to something more trivial and lighthearted, such as Weiners’ Weiner or hating on Rebecca Black. Is this quick slide away from the darker news of the day inexcusable, or is it a necessity? Should we be dwelling and longer, and more seriously, or should we move on as soon as we are able?

Consider the opposite of cavalier - Imagine if each tragic event we hear about was to move us on a profound level – to strike our hearts down to the depths of our spirits. I can only imagine that it would be hard to get through a single day without a breakdown. The emotional and mental stress would be crippling, most certainly producing some unpleasant physical symptoms like hypertension or insomnia.

I've never had to deal with a death on a first hand basis. My great grandpa died when I was young, but I didn't cry, I barely knew him. I've been fortunate to have this as the only death in my family. But the result is I'm pretty inexperienced when it comes to mourning, and comforting those in mourning. Near the end of our conversation, we were all staring off into the distance in silence. During my efforts to feel my own sense of pain from Maria's death, I was confronted by my own strangeness to the situation, the reality of being a transient presence with a return flight to Canada. So I tried to feel even more upset to compensate, which could have seemed petulant in retrospect. I was afraid I would seem callous if I was not impacted...

Raul broke the silence. “So, The question is ‘what are we going to do?’ We can sit here with crossed arms, or we can chose to continue on. I say, we figure out what we are going to do tomorrow.”

That snapped me out of it. I may not have been as deeply impacted by the death of Maria Margarita as others in the community, but that is only natural. I can certainly say that I was impacted most by Marias’ and Rauls’ strength and character. As Grahame had said near the beginning of this experience, that they are great examples of people who are working to change their world, one day at a time. And often times, from what little I’ve seen so far, the hardest part of that work is to get up in the morning, dust off the shoulders and keep working, just keeping on trying to move things forwards.

Sure enough, three days later, we went into Polochic valley. I saw their trip as an act of defiance, flying in the face of the companies tactic of fear and repression. I saw my trip as a way to not get lost, trying to empathize in suffering, and that empathy also can strengthen feelings of solidarity, and the drive to keep going.

Here's to moving forwards, an! Adelante!

June 5, 2011 gets even bloodier...

In the same article as the last post, I came across two developments that occurred shortly after the assassination of Maria Margarita.

At dawn on June 5, 2011, guards, police and members of the army attacked the campesino Enterprise, La San Isidro, on land for which procession is legally disputed by Miguel Facusse...At 10 in the morning the same day the campesinos José Recinos, Genaro Cuestas, and Joel Santamaría, were assassinated. They were traveling in a vehicle near the palm fields in Suyapa where they were ambushed and their lives ended.

For those keeners seeking more detail, there is a feature article here.

What was going on in Aguan?

My mind has been drifting back to Honduras, but it had been a while since I had followed the developments or news. As I was brushing up on what has been going on in Honduras in the meantime, I came a cross a great article that was but up a couple of days ago. It is a denunciation created by the FNRP, put up by FIAN in regards the the violence and repression that has been experienced throughout the Aguan region over the last several months.

You can access the full article here.

This provides great detail as to exactly what was going on during our group visit to the area. we arrived in Tegucigalpa on the May 15, then to Trujillo on May 19. The trip ended on May 25, 2011. It should be mentioned that another campesino was killed in Aguan four days prior to our arrival in Teguc. Furthermore, the May 18 killing of Sixto Reyes should be familiar to readers as our group visited his community on May 22, 2011.

3. On May 15 of this year, the campesino, Francisco Pascual Lopez, of the campesino movement of Rigores, disappeared; his 10-year-old son who was with him testified to the community that the security guards from the plantation of Miguel Facusse fired at his father. The assassins sent a photo of the assassinated peasant to the Web but his body has still not been found in Aguan.

4. On May 18 the compañero campesino, Sixto Ramos of the MCA was assassinated when he walked to his work in the fields; he was fired on from a double cabin, black vehicle with armed men wearing ski masks, with high-caliber weapons.

5. On May 19, 2011, peasants traveling in a vehicle from the community of Honduras , Aguan towards the municipality of Sonaguera were followed by a grey vehicle loaded with security guards and elements wearing the uniforms of the Cobras, the National Preventative Police, ending when the vehicle of the guards overturned on the side of the road. As a consequence, one of the Cobra police fractured a leg.

6. On Sunday, May 21 of this year, 2 campesinos disappeared: Olvin Gallegos, 17 years old, of the campesino group, Despertar of the Authentic Revindicative Campesino Movement (MARCA) who was on his way to the plantations of Reinaldo Canales and Rene Morales, together with the campesino Secuindino Gomez, 48 years old. Only the bicycle on which they had been traveling was found. To date their whereabouts is unknown.

As I kept reading, I came across some more news about June 5th, 2011 that makes that day even more tragic...

More on Maria Margarita

Forgive the lack of posts, it hasn’t been for lack of material. I have my hands more than full enough with what is going on, on a daily basis.

At the most basic of levels, the violence and unrest ongoing in Polochic is the product of almost 500 years of pillage and oppression. As throughout history, the current state of affairs situates indigenous communities on one side, opposed by large industry and landholders on the other. Through trickery or force, many communities have been divested of ancestral lands. In recent times, when they challenge this marginalization, they are met with bullets and machetes of private security forces, which seek to wipe them out. Meanwhile, the State looks away, or worse, lends a helping hand to these landed interests. Although this is indeed an oversimplification, it is with these same broad strokes that many histories throughout the Americas have been painted in kind. I need only leave my hotel room and venture into communities around El Estor to see this reality.

Thinking back to the case of Maria Margarita – why would something like this happen to a wife and mother of two in a small community outside of El Estor? By all accounts, she lived a life of service for her family, her community and the Q’eqchi people. Those that survive her suspect that it are these last two features that made her an identifiable target. Her role as a community leader extended beyond just Parana: because of the relative isolation of these areas, there is little national or international support. As a result, the affected communities need to rely on each other for resources, strength and support. This also seems to be a potential weakness that the company tries to exploit. If they can divide the communities, and created rifts inside and between them, they can further isolate them in a classic divide-and-conquer scheme. This was a killing that, as many suspect, was politically motivated, a move to further intimidate and divide campesino communities. Her death was not simply a murder, it was an assassination.

Business as usual in the Polochic Valley?

I got a call this morning at around 5:29am.

It was Raul, one of the community leaders in the El Estor region that I had been working with. Unfortunately, I wasn’t awake to take the call. I called him back shortly after 9:00am. He asked whether I had talked to the other community leaders, which I hadn’t. He said to wait for another hour, or for their call, whichever came first. But, no one was picking up, or calling. At 11:40am, I got a call from Rights Action. I was told that there had been a killing during the night, almost exactly 12 hours earlier.

Maria Margarita Che Chub was a 37-year-old Qeqchi midwife and community leader in Parana de las Sierras de las Minas, located in the Polochic Valley. After finishing some chores in the kitchen, she headed out to her pila to bathe. As she started to take off her clothes, she was shot in the back and killed. She is survived by her two children. The Ministerio Publico arrived in the late morning to retrieve her body.

I’m shocked, but not surprised. This assassination fits the broader campaign of fear and repression used against the campesino movement during their struggle, which has been ongoing for a long time in the Polochic Valley. All too recently, Oscar Reyes was assassinated, and three others severely wounded, on May 21st in a conflict with the Chabil Utzaj sugarcane company. I’m meeting later today the leaders from El Estor to discuss what to do next. We had been planning a trip into the Polochic Valley on Monday, but none of us imagined that it would be for a funeral…

Briefing on El Estor

Sorry for the lateness of this post,

According to my previous plan, I should’ve been back in Canada three weeks ago – but I’m still in Central America. After a few days in Copan Ruinas, I was ready to press on towards El Estor Guatemala. El Estor is where I will stay until late June... So, how did I end up where I am, and what the hell am I doing?

During the Guatemala semester, the class went on a delegation with Right’s Action, led by Grahame Russell, to visit a number of communities and sites throughout Guatemala. This was a no-holds-barred trip, starting with the FAGA exhumation process in Guatemala City, to the isolated community of Lote 8, and finally the community of Rio Negro. These sights and experiences combined to create a powerful cross-section of both the contemporary struggles and historical scars that have defined Guatemala. The other thing worth noting is, the resultant definition makes Guatemala both incredibly unique and at the same time, a classic archetype for the troubles that have, and continue to plague other countries throughout the Americas. This trip made Guatemala’s troubled existence real in a ways that reading an article never could.

After visiting Lote 8 with the class, I wanted to do more. At the time, I wasn’t sure what – or how for that matter. Just as in many countries around the world, the problems are discouragingly complicated, even more so when one is thousands of kilometers removed. So, if I was going to try to do anything, the best time to do so would be as I was present, living in it. With that in mind, I changed my plane ticket to buy more time. This allowed me to go on the delegation to Honduras during the end of May, and opened up almost another month after that to do what ever I could get organized through Rights Action.

Well, that covers the ‘how did I get here?’ part, but the ‘what am I doing here?’ part remains. As the Honduras delegation wound down, the final details were set for a placement in El Estor. The work is going to be a mix… part human rights observer, part protective accompaniment and part writer. As a human rights observer, I’ll be doing trips to communities that have been touched by violence and repression both past and present, such as in Polochic. As a accompanier, I will be in close contact with three community leaders from the El Estor region as they continue to organize in their ongoing struggle for land, dignity for themselves and a future for their children. As a writer, I’m going to try to keep up this blog, among more ambitious ventures.

Another basic question is of course the simple ‘why?’ – to that, I would answer ‘why not’. Stay tuned, funny story coming up next.