The Guatemalan Indians in the Fight Against Imperialism
(The following article is from an issue of Companero, the theoretical journal of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor, the EGP, one of the main Guatemalan guerrilla organizations. It appeared early last year. The translation is by IV.)
For more than a half century, Guatemala has held a sort of fascination for foreign visitors, whether they were researchers, artists, tourists, or businessmen. In our country, archeologists, ethnologists, and linguists have discovered old Mayan cities, little societies with pre-Colombian features, a living laboratory of Mayan languages. Artists have been enchanted by the colorful markets of the altiplano (the uplands) with their singularly beautiful fabrics and craft products.
Ordinary tourists could amuse themselves and relax in the midst of this Indian local color, without realizing what lay hidden behind this travel agent's scenario. Many young people imagined that they had found a paradise of simplicity and calm among the Indians, and went to live in the villages.
Businessmen, with more pragmatic concerns, found favorable investment conditions, in the tourist industry, among other things.
All these visitors took back to their countries new experiences, a certain inspiration, and plans. The tourists went home with stories to tell and luggage filled with gifts, without realizing that the travel agencies had sold them a watered-down product, a deformed view of the Indian element in Guatemala.
In recent years, however, the more perceptive travelers have returned to their countries with a lot of questions and with serious concerns about the Indian population in Guatemala, about its living conditions, its role, its future.
More recently, the hotels in such cities as Antigua, Panajachel, and Huehuetenango have begun to empty of tourists. Archeologists and other foreign researchers have become more scarce. Businessmen have stopped investing in the countr. And the youth who were hoping to find peace, have come to realize that the countryside is in a state of war.
A year ago, on January 31, 1980, the atrocious massacre of thirty-six people in the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City was on the front pages of newspapers around the world. The repressive forces of General Lucas Garcia turned the building into an inferno. Of these thirty-six persons, twenty-seven were staging a peaceful occupation of the embassy. They did so as a last recourse to draw the attention of the civilized world to the genocidal repression that the army was carrying out in the northeastern part of the country. Among them were twenty-three Indians from the Quiche, Ixil, and Cakchiquel groups--all peasants from the areas devastated by a depraved soldiery.
In May 1978, in Panzos, a village near mines run by the International Nickel Company (INCO), a multinational centered in Canada, more than 100 Kekchis were slaughtered by the army in the public square, where they were protesting the theft of their lands. Every day, in this area, more Indian families are driven from their plots.
These two events are only two of the more publicized examples of the struggles of the Indian people in Guatemala, and of ass Burial In Guatemala. (DR) the criminal way in which the government responds to any expression of discontent.
There has Been much less talk about the work stoppages and strikes by the agricultural workers and cane cutters, by the coffee and cotton pickers, a majority of whom are Indians. Alongside the non-Indian workers, these Indian laborers are demanding respect for their rights and they are organizing and mobilizing for struggle.
Likewise, little is known abroad of the temporary occupations of villages or plantations by armed Indian guerrillas who are spreading the ideas of the Guatemalan revolution in the Quiche, Ixil, Mam, Kanjobal, and other languages. Still less is known about the battles being fought by Indian guerrillas across the length and breadth of the country.
What has happened, and what is happening? How can you explain the contrast between the deceptively peaceful picture of a market day in Chichicastenango or some other place on the altiplano, and that of thousands of cane cutters--mostly migrants from the mountainous regions of the coun try--gathered at a crossroads somewhere along the southern coast, demanding a fairer wage with their machetes in their hands?
What has transformed the taciturn sowers of maize in the provinces of Quiche and San Marcos into determined guerrilla fighters? What has turned the hands of quiet Ixil, Mam, or Kanjobal women weavers from their looms and made them take up guns to fight against the oppressors of their I peoples?
THESE MINORITIES ARE A MAJORITY
Of the seven million inhabitants in Guatemala, four million are Indians, descendants of peoples who lived in Guatemala at the time of the Spanish conquest, who were in turn descendants of the older Maya-Quicke stock.
In 1524, these peoples, of which the most numerous were the Quiches, the Mams, the Cakchiquels, and the Kekchis, were nationalities. They were related by their common origin. But their languages and customs had to a certain extent diverged. They were contending for territory and dominance.
At the time of the conquest, the MayaQuiche peoples were undergoing processes
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of transformation and generalized conflicts. They formed socially and politically wellstructured groups. They were skilled agriculturalists. They were familiar with architecture and astronomy, as demonstrated by the Maya calendar that they used. They had varied and complex forms of cultural expression, centering around the cultiva-
Their military defeat at the hands of the Spanish was followed by the expropriation of their land, and their subjection to laws and institutions that reduced them to serfdom. A religion and a culture were imposed on them. Spanish domination was total--military, economic, political, and ideological. The Maya-Quiche people were totally subjugated.
In the beginning, they were reduced to slavery and their numbers dwindled drastically. Later, they were subjected to other forms of exploitation. They were divided up among the various conquistadores, along with their lands. The conquerors got the ownership not only of the soil and the subsoil but of the labor of men, women, and children. The Indians were obliged to pay a whole variety of tributes.
Throughout the three centuries of the colonial period, the Spanish imposed forms of supervision and segregation that fragmented the Indian population, already divided into different ethnic groups with their own languages and customs. The Spanish regrouped the Indians into small communities, which are called "Indian villages," and they forced the inhabitants of these communities to wear clothing that distinguished them from the others. is, they split each ethnic group into small concentrations. The Indians were obliged to go where the Spanish wanted them, and they were forced to work on the estates of the conquistadores, in accordance with the need for labor.
It was with the forced labor of the Indians that the cities, roads, bridges, and aqueducts were built. On the basis of this system of exploitation and in order to justify it, a conception developed that the Indians were inferior beings, full of faults and incapable of governing themselves--in short, people who in no way could be entitled to the same rights as the conquistadores. The end of the Spanish colonial system in 1821 and the independence of Guatemala brought no change for the Indians. They continued to be oppressed, exploited, and to suffer racial discrimination.
The concentration of the land in the hands of a few landlords--the latifundistas--accelerated with the growth of capitalist agricultural enterprises that began after the liberal revolution in 1871.
For a long time, the Indian peasants of the altiplano, where large reserves of land still existed, were obligated by law to come down to the coastal regions for the coffee harvest. As land became scarcer, owing to expropriation, exhaustion of the soil, and the growth of the Indian population, the smaller and smaller plots became insufficient to feed the families that de-
Then, poverty and necessity did the job of the old laws and forced the Indians to seek seasonal work on the coffee plantations. Many communities, however, resisted this, and to avoid having to come down to work on the big plantations, they began to clear land in the still more remote wooded areas, or to cultivate marginal lands, such as steep slopes. As the available land shrank and the needs of the impoverished Indian population increased, whole families, including women and children, had to come down to the big
Since then, the poor peasants, the "minifundistas, "have had no other way out--if they want to survive--but seasonal migration to the coastal regions. one aspect of the interrelation between the latifundia and the minifundia. The other is the need the big landowners have to be able to count on this labor power, and the need that they have therefore to keep the
This system, which requires the hiring of additional labor at harvest time, increased the mobility of the Indians, who were forced periodically to move to the coastal regions. This phenomenon, combined with the development of trade, expanded the contacts among the various communities and ethnic groups, and this in turn promoted a greater common Indian consciousness.
In the framework of this process of capitalist transformation, the Indian peasants were converted into wage workers for a part of the year, into semiproletarians. This rural semiproletariat, which grows every year, is now estimated to include at least 650,000 Indian families. It makes up the basic workforce in the agricultural enterprises that produce for export, which are the backbone of the country's economy.
THE PRESENT SITUATION OF THE
INDIANS
In becoming agricultural workers, the Indians came to know a new way of life.
They learned about an exploitation quite saline on the fine
different from the poverty that they extime, they were working for someone else, the landlord, the boss, and for insufficient
At the same time, they could see with their own eyes the sumptuous homes of the landlords (since they lived on their estates and not in the towns, unlike landlords in
The Indians could see fancy cars, private airplanes, machines.
They discovered that the money they got in exchange for their labor was not enough to buy the necessities. This was true both on the plantations, where the food rations were inadequate, as well as afterward in
These meager wages offered even less possibility to pay back the debts they acumulated to buy medicine, and seed. The Indians saw that they were badly treated at work and were cheated. There were abuses in the assignment of jobs and in weighing the produce harvested. They had to put up with constant surveillance and violence from the repressive bodies of the landlords and the government. They realized that such exploitation was also the lot of the poor Ladinos (Spanishspeaking people of all, or part, Indian blood), who were also robbed of land and forced to work as day laborers on the big
The Indians' view of the world became transformed, and the way they looked at themselves and others changed as they incorporated into their daily lives a series of elements that were unknown before or had been interpreted differently. Even their concept of time and how it should be used was altered since the long hours they spent in the fields left them little time for their religious rites and craft work.
Furthermore, their crafts tended to be drawn into capitalist relations, becoming a cottage industry dependent on local commercial capital in the first instance, then on national capital, and even international
In the villages, a process of proletarianization developed. In the provinces close to the capital, Guatemala City, thousands of Indians come into the urban area every day in search of some cash income, since land is scarce. They try to find marginal -jobs, some for an hourly wage, others in
The majority of these Indians do not give up the peasant life, since they return regularly to their communities, or some members of the family continue to cultivate land that belongs to them or which they
The proletarianization of the Indians has been a violent process, marked by abrupt starts and stops and by suffering. It is a doubly difficult one for the Indians because it has been accompanied by racial discrimination. In fact, it is in the context of this process that many Indians have become conscious for the first time of the discrimination against them as individuals and a people. While this exploitation brings the various Native ethnic groups together as Natives, it also brings them closer to the Ladino workers as workers.
### ETHNIC AND CULTURAL
OPPRESSION
The ethnic and cultural dividing lines that exist between the Indians and the
Ladinos do not represent racial distinctions, since there is Indian blood in the veins of the majority of the Guatemalan population.
In Guatemala, the name Ladino was given to the descendents of the mixed-blood people who developed in the colonial period--the children of Spanish fathers and
Indian mothers. At that time, the mixedblood people were also subjected to discrimination by the Spanish and their descendents, the Criollos, that is, people of pure
Spanish blood born in Latin America.
Later on, the name Ladinos was also given to Indians who adopted the language and customs of the Spanish.
between Indians and Ladinos is thus largely one of culture. Indians are those who speak Indian languages, and dress and live in the traditional Indian way, and also those who while they do not do this still consider themselves Indians. Ladinos are those who speak Spanish and dress and live in the European manner, even though they may not be--in a biological sense--a product of mixing between Spanish and Indians. With time, the racist attitude toward the Indians became part of the ideology of the
Ladinos. The Indian culture became a culture of the oppressed, looked down on even by the Ladinos, who themselves
This ethnic and cultural contradiction is rooted in the domination of the Spanish over the Indians of Latin America. It was later reinforced by the ideological mechanism that the Conquistadores set in motion to justify their oppression of the Indians. Today, the racist aspect of this contradiction has been moderated by the extent
Nonetheless, an ethnic and cultural contradiction subsists, as a result of the old ideological mechanisms, even though the forms of domination have been transformed. Moreover, the ethnic dividing line between the Indians and Ladinos no longer corresponds to the class structure of Guatemalan society. Despite this, the present system of exploitation utilizes the cultural oppression and discrimination that developed in times previous to the development of capitalism.
The culture of the Indian peoples today is the product of four centuries of a way of life centered around communal maize growing, and of the interaction of this way of life first with the Spanish world and then the Ladino one. It is also combined in a peculiar way with elements of European culture, in particular Christianity.
There are differences in the level of development and vitality among the cultures of the various ethnic groups. At first, the sense of identity was linked to the ethnic group itself--the conquered nationality--Quiche, Cakchiquel, Mam, or Tzutuhil. Later, it became linked to a smaller community, the "Indian village, of the Spanich colonial period--Chichicastenango, Nahuala, or Patzun. The conditions of capitalism are breaking down the barriers between the local communifies and opening the way for the development of common feeling among all Indians, an affirmation of the "Indianness" in a broad sense, without wiping out the special identity of each group.
The path of development that the capitalist system has imposed on the native groups--from a peasant economy and way of life to selling their labor power for wages on the plantations or in industry, and increasing assimilation into the Ladino life style--offers the Indians no perspective.
Their poverty will increase, and they will more and more lose their culture, as a result of the loss of their lands and the destruction of their communal life. And along with this, racial discrimination will
Revolutionary people's war and the assertion of Indian ethnic consciousness through the spread of this struggle are today the only possible alternative for the
Native people and future solution for the complex ethnic and cultural contradictions
THE ROLE OF THE INDIANS IN
For several years now, Central America has been undergoing a process of revolutionary transformations. The Sandinista people's revolution in Nicaragua is an irreversible advance. The Salvadoran people are now in an open war that is nearing its decisive stage. In Honduras, the people's organizafions are making more and more of an im-
The Panamanian people are determined to force respect for the Canal treaties and to eliminate the North American presence from the heart of their country. The Costa Rican people, in the midst of an acute economic crisis, are joining their struggles to those of their neighbors, with which they are in solidar-
In Guatemala, revolutionary people's war is on the march, and it will not halt until the enemies of the working people fall from power and until the bases are laid for a more just society.
In the midst of this sustained and ascending struggle, Guatemala has a special feature that distinguishes it from the other countries of Central America. In our country, it is impossible to make any revolution without integrating the Indian population into the war, and without its full and equal participation in the new society that the Indians must help build.
The twenty-two Indian groups in Guatemala together form the majority of the population. What is more, the Indians are the fundamental force in the production of agricultural products for export (coffee, sugar cane, cotton) and in the production of food. They represent the bulk of the rural semiproletariat. Their role as producers gives the Indians both power and a right--the strength for war and an inalienable right to participate in the building and leading of the new society.
The Indian and Ladino are fighting together in the struggle against the present regime. After hundreds of hopeless and quickly crushed rebellions and local uprisings, the descendents of the MayaQuiches who have been exploited, repressed, and discriminated against for more than four centuries, have risen up
SUBSCRIBE TO INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT today to fight for clearly defined revolutionary objectives. This development is the central fact in the history of Guatemala today. This is the first time that the Indians have joined in fully in a revolutionary political undertaking that takes account of their most deeply felt demands.
The Indians are not simply participating in the revolutionary people's war, they are assuming the leading role in it that belongs to them. They are the guerrilla fighters and cadres of the revolutionary organizations. It is their integration into the struggle that has made it possible to advance the conceptions, methods and organizational forms of revolutionary struggle.
It is their fighting spirit that has impelled the massive growth of the revolutionary and people's organizations.
In their villages, on the big plantations, and in the mountains, the Indians are fighting and successfully accomplishing the tasks of the war, in conjunction with their
The armed actions that are continually inflicting heavy losses on the army and the other repressive forces--the ambushes, the occupations of villages and big estates, the attacks against enemy military posts-are being carried out by military units made up essentially of Indians, who base themselves on the Indian population in the areas where they operate.
The involvement of the Indian people in all aspects of the revolutionary people's war is a political and military fact. The present incompetent, corrupt, and criminai government cannot deny it or stop this process. It is essential to understand this specific feature of the Guatemalan revolutionary process in order to comprehend the breadth and depth of the revolutionary transformation the country is now experi-
The system exploits and reproduces the discrimination practiced against the Indians by the exploiters of other ages, the ideology that they imposed on the entire people. The system maintains the idea that the Indians are inferior in order to divide the Indian and Ladino workers and to maintain the attitude of submission and resignation in the Indians. It is why eliminating cultural oppression is a central objective for the revolution, and why it is impossible to eliminate it except in the framework of a revolutionary process. The Guatemalan revolution must solve the two-fold problem of the exploitation and cultural oppression inflicted on the Indian ethnic groups, or it will not be a genuine revolution.
In fact, the basis for resolving this problem is already being laid in the revolutionary struggle that today unites the Indian and Ladino workers around the same objectives and against the same enemy. It is in the course of the revolutionary struggle that the Indian ethnic groups will recover their own identity, as revolutionary Indians, as brothers in arms in the war of all the Indians and poor Ladinos, who will build the new society.
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