GUATEMALA CITY, Mar 9 (IPS) - The Mayan people's drive to recover their
''Mother Earth'' and their cultural roots has emerged as a strong
political campaign this year in Guatemala.
The issue has become prominent in recent weeks with a series of unresolved
labour disputes - including job descriptions, wage increases, and social
benefits - and indigenous people's claims for ancestral lands they have
lost over the years.
''We have begun the fight for our ''Mother Earth'' invoking the Heart of
the Sky and the Heart of the Earth,'' said members of the National
Indigenous and Farmers' Committee (Conic).
The Conic campaign is based on the sacred Mayan text, the Popol Vuh, or
Book of Advice, which contains religious and cultural statements such as:
''Do not forget us, do not rub us out of your memory. Do not lose us,
first look at your land. Look after your organisation. Establish
yourselves and multiply, our grandparents told us.''
However, the private sector discards the religious and cultural roots of
the struggle, arguing that the movement is a political manipulation of the
rural population in order to incite instability.
The statement from the Popol Vuh has been interpreted as a veiled
declaration of war, with the indigenous population seeking to recreate the
old Mayan empire - in 1994 some 100 rural estates were occupied.
''The protesting groups must use legal methods to assert their demands,
and not behave illegally by invading estates and holding their owners
hostage,'' say business leaders.
''We have not organised land takeovers, we have simply given the land
back to its rightful owners,'' said Nery Barrio s of the Popular Union
(UASP), the core Conic member which led the occupations.
''This is a worn out excuse the private sector rolls out every time they
want to repress the population,'' said Conic leader Juan Tiney.
The organisation claims the 41 occupations they have led in the fight for
land are ''just, necessary and legal'' both constitutionally and legally.
''We believe this problem stems from 500 years ago, when the Mayan
peoples were thrown off their land en masse, and from 1871, when President
Justo Rufino gave the landowners exclusive rights to the land, leaving the
Mayan population landless,'' he said.
''There are lands that were taken from the Mayan peoples only 50 or 100
years ago. These people have documents to prove the seizure. What is more,
they still have living witnesses,'' Tiney added.
CONIC said that recent ''neoliberal policies'' have worsened the land
situation, an opinion supported by United Nations BChildren's Fund
(UNICEF) figures.
''The Guatemalan development model created structural insufficiencies
generating inequalities in land distribution (2.2 percent of the
landowners possess 65 percent of the farmable land), and income
distribution (10 percent of the population receives 44 percent of the
income),'' read the report.
As a consequence, 76 percent of all families (62 percent of the rural and
indigenous) currently live below the poverty line - a situation which
needs urgent attention if social conflict is to be avoided.
''Stopgaps or short term solutions will not defuse the bomb which is
ready to explode in this country. Attention must be given to the
agricultural situation today. If not, the country will become involved
in a larger scale conflict,'' said social analyst Miguel Albizures.
Fear of indigenous uprisings has led to dozens of proposals, varying from
radical agrarian reform - desired by rural workers organisations and the
guerrilla groups - to the offer of alternative lands for development -
from the business sector.
However, while accepting that the land problem is related to structural
deficiencies, Guatemalan President Ramiro de Leon proposed prison
sentences of one to three years for people invading land or taking over
public buildings.
''Though repression is not the way to resolve the problems, we were
lacking a coercive measure to deal with this type of behaviour,'' he
said.
Hopes for a solution are now pinned on negotiations between the government
and guerrillas to end the 35 year civil war, where the socioeconomic and
agrarian situations are presently being discussed along with the Mayan
cultural identity. The organised indigenous groups are united and
determined to succeed, supported once again by the Popol Vuh: ''We must
all rise together, everyone must be called, so that no groups amongst us
are left behind. Until our peoples have peace, lasting peace.''
(END/IPS/tra-so/ff/dg/pr-np/sm/js/95)
Origin: San Jose/MSG093G/01E GUATEMALA/
----
[c] 1994, Inter Press Third World News Agency (IPS) - all rights
reserved. This information is for personal use only. It may not be
reproduced, reprinted, resent or posted to any system without
specific permission from IPS. For information about this copyright,
e-mail to <ips-info@igc.apc.org>.
IPS is the developing world's largest news agency. In the United
States, it is available from PeaceNet. The entire IPS feed is available
at *no additional charge* to users of PeaceNet and EcoNet (e-mail to
<peacenet-info@igc.apc.org> for more information). You can also have
IPS delivered to your e-mail box every day. For information on that
service, e-mail to <pwn-info@igc.apc.org>.