A Special Message...

Before I forget. This is a letter written by Maria, one of the women that I work with. She wanted to share, in her own words, a bit about what we have been doing with those that read my blog. Sorry if your spanish is rusty, google should get it to a point where you can limp through:

Se saluda la OSITA NEGRA, desde el ESTOR, saludos para uds.

Agradecemos el apoyo al compenero RAUL CAAL COC, en un momento enviare un pequeno resumen del trabajo que hemos realizado con el apoyo de ustedes. Con el caso de la CICIG no se que decirles porque ANGELICA dice que se encuentra muy ocupado en su trabajo. Creo y pienso que llevar estos casos y este trabajo es de mucho analisis, el trabajo nuestro es muy arriesgoso ya no vivimos como antes, hay mucha persecusion, temor y por otro lado nuestra familia nuestros hijos DONDE QUEDARAN Y QUE VERAN EN EL FUTURO. El companero MARC ha visto lo riesgoso del trabajo. Muchos compeneros de las distintas comunidades siguen clamando sus voces para que alguien los escuche. Veremos que tenemos que hacer, necesitamos descanzar y acomodarnos la vida que nos han puesto en el camino siento que hemos vuelto en el CONFLICTO ARMADO porque tenemos que escondernos. HAY QUE SEGUIR CAMINANDO, SIRVIENDO Y LLAMANDO A LOS DEMAS AUNQUE CUESTE SACRIFICIO, PERO ESTE ES NUESTRO JUICIO.

14 de febrero del 2008 capturan a mi hermano RAMIRO CHOC, PRESO POLITICO DEL ESTADO.

27 DE SEPTIEMBRE DEL 2009 MATAN A MI CUNADO ADOLFO ICH CHAMAN, barrio la union el estor.

16 de marzo 2011 asesinan al companero ANTONIO BEB AC MIRALVALLE, PANZOS A.V.

21 de mayo 2011 asesinan al companero OSCAR REYES de la cooperativa SAMILA PANZOS A.V.

4 de junio 2011 asesinan a una buena amiga y excelente lideresa, de la comunidad de PARANA PANZOS A.V. a eso de 11:45 pm en el interior de su casa, ella es MARIA MARGARITA CHUB CHE, cuanto mas tenemos que ver y recoger para ayudar a mi pueblo indigena atropellado por las injusticias de los terratenientes. Es todo lo que nos tiene enfermos y temerosos nos siguen despojando de nuestras tierras. DONDE MAS NOS REFUGIAREMOS.

ESPERAMOS QUE TODAS Y TODOS LOS GUATEMALTECOS RECUPEREMOS LO NUESTRO. LES ESCRIBIO LA OSITA NEGRA DEL BARRIO LA UNION DE EL ESTOR IZABAL.

Beware the Roads...

I'm working on a big blog post, but it's not ready yet. I hope to have it up day after tomorrow.

The work over the past two days has had me talking to survivors, elders and other members of the communities around El Estor and Panzos. I'm starting to get a much clearer picture of what is currently going on, mainly through a deeper understanding of the complexities of what HAS been going for many years. Which is great considering my writing goals. So, I need to start on this history of Lote 8 article, as there is a lot of info to get through, and there will probably be more information to try to find.

In other news, we had another meeting today were we discussed the potential trip to Guatemala City. The details are still up in the air and I'm still waiting eagerly to find out if I can go or not. I will hopefully have a better idea come tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime, i've been doing photo work. Mostly organizing, and small edits. My iPhoto library was to big to import into Aperture in one go...so I had to do it manually, which is obviously a bit more time consuming, but the final organization is ALOT cleaner. This is going to be a huge time saver when it comes to making presentations and some DVDs down the road. In fact, I hope to have some photo-DVDs out by mid-July, and maybe do an informal talk and screening somewhere in Guelph with some friends...too far away at this point.

In other news, I may do the Summer Solstice 24 this year! Thats two days after I get back, and I don't even own a MTB. We'll see how that goes.

Lightning Storm!

I personally dislike text-heavy blogs, and I LIKE reading, so I'm always trying to up the photo content. After all, if people wanted to read a book, well...that is why books exist. So, without any more text, here are some pictures of a storm that I was chasing from the comfort of my terrace.

At the time, the power was out, so i put some candles out for some mood lighting.

With the same settings, tried to capture the lightning strikes. It was pretty bright!

As the lighting streaked across the wind night sky, thunder-rolls shook my chair.

All in all, taking pictures of lighting is bloody hard. I'll try manual focus next time, and maybe a $3000 camera, and then I might get captures like this...

Mind the Shipwrecks

I was reading Open Veins again during breakfast, when the wind stole my page. As I began to leaf my way back, I was grabbed by a title a bit later on. It was the header of the next section.

Part II: Development is a voyage

with more shipwrecks than navigators

Upon reading this, I was taken back to my development econ class with (retired) Professor Southey. Now this old man is sharp as a tack when it comes economics. On a sabbatical year during his youth, he went to Harvard to sit in on the lectures of Amatya Sen, only to act the gadfly by challenging and questioning Sen at every turn that he was able. I recall him saying something to the effect, “[Sen] might have even docked me one if he wasn’t such a perfect gentleman.”

During one of his first lectures to us, he had a memorable little speech. This is a paraphrase: “In all my years, in practice or in study of economics, there was never once was a time where I was able to do something that was good. However, there were countless times where I helped stop something that was thoughtless, ill-formed, unfounded and otherwise terribly stupid from being allowed to go forwards. That has been, and continues to be, the source of my greatest satisfaction...”

This echoes some thought I’ve been thinking about politics and development. A great deal of what I study as a student of political science is the long history and current developments of a region, punctuated by important moments and events, which are products of the avarice and barbarity fostered between nations [or within a nation]. That is, colonialism, neo-colonialism, coups, invasions and occupations. In regard to development studies, I’ve noticed that it is often the case that an initiative or program may have had positive intentions, but it often lead to negative consequences. Case and point, USAID food programs. So...

So perhaps, I guess what I'm trying to say is, any optimism that I may have once had as to making positive net gains have been chilled. Instead of jumping in and trying to make the world a ‘better place', perhaps its better to try to stop conditions from getting any worse. I may not be a navigator, which is probably for the best, but I sure hope I get a chance to avert a shipwreck at some point or another.

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.