Voices and images: Mayan Ixil women of Chajul
Chapter Four: Association of Maya Ixil Women (ADMI) – New Dawn
9. Life stories of the authors*
*The names that appear in the life stories of the authors are pseudonyms chosen by the women.
When the women first took cameras into their hands, they were quite frightened because they thought it might be very difficult to take a photo. They were embarrassed when they went out into the streets to take photographs because the idea of a woman photographer was very strange. Their photos didn’t come out well. The feet and heads of the people in them were cut off. But gradually, the women lost their fear and their photos started to come out better.
Isabel
When I was 14 years old, I took charge of making the preparing meals for my brothers and also for my father when he would go out on patrol. I would go out and find corn to give my brothers because we were left without anything and my mother was sick. She couldn’t do anything and so I said, “what am I going to do!” I felt sad and I worried about my father because going out on patrol was very dangerous. I couldn’t study because of all the things I had to do. Another thing was that the guerillas used to come to shoot at the soldiers and they would shoot at the school where I was taking classes and I was even more frightened. That’s why I quit studying.
Ana
During la violencia I was always very frightened because I saw that some soldiers tried to rape a young woman who was 20 years old, and, besides that, I didn’t understand what la violencia was.
But after la violencia I managed to study three years of básico (middle school) while I was also working, because I couldn’t keep studying unless I worked at the same time.
Teresa
My mother didn’t allow me time to study anymore. I saw that my friends were getting ahead in their studies, but I only made it to sixth grade of primary school and this doesn’t help me find any sort of job. And I couldn’t take part in the meetings, and that made me feel bad. But now my mother does let me have time to participate in the meetings and I’m always grateful to her for this.
Ana
I grew up in the village of Juil and I had a lot of fun playing outside with my sisters and girlfriends. I liked to go into the woods to pick blackberries and I would climb the trees looking for eggs in bird nests. When I was 12 years old I went to Chichicastenango to study for three years and that’s where I finished primary school. I came to Chajul and worked in a health clinic. I was studying nursing through a correspondence course when the persecution, the war, and the kidnappings began. I went with my parents to take refuge in the mountains. Six months before this they had persecuted my husband. After nine years in the CPR of the Sierra I came back to the town and one month later I started to work with the state literacy program, CONALFA, as a literacy worker where I remained for almost three years. After that, I worked for four years as a member of the Directorate of the Asociación Chajulense. Then I was put in charge of weaving project. Following this, I began to work on a committee of women we have now formed as the Association (ADMI). I am very happy working with ADMI because I realize that we women are capable of working and organizing ourselves.
My most negative experience was the nine years I lived in the CPR of the Sierra because then I was persecuted by the army. I was beaten with the butt of a rifle by a soldier and I still suffer as a result. My husband joined the guerrilla and I was left alone, with four children, living in the resistance [CPR]. I was together with another man with whom I have three children. Altogether, I have seven children and it’s very difficult for me to support them, but I’m doing what I can for the future welfare of my children, because even though their father doesn’t think of them anymore, I’m here to support them and I play the role of both father and mother.
María
My life has been sad because as a little girl, my mother died, and I grew up as an orphan with my two little brothers. My grandma raised us because we were so little. During the war I was left alone. My parents had gone into exile in Mexico for twelve years during which time I didn’t know anything about them. That was such a sad time. The army murdered one of my brothers in the hills of the Ixcán where they were being pursued by army troops. To this day, my other brother and I have not seen each other. I wouldn’t recognize him or him me. This is what the war left me. It changed my whole life from the time I was a very little girl. This is the sad story of my life.
But this year I feel quite happy because I have learned many things and have gotten new ideas because of this PhotoVoice project. I have also learned beautiful things about other people. Now I know how to take part in any kind of meeting or training workshops offered by the different organizations. I work with a women’s group concerning women’s rights and also ecology. I like to go out for a change of pace instead of being alone taking care of the house and the children. Instead, I like working together with others and learning new things in life so I can make a better life for my children and for others. As a woman, I ought to fight for a better future.
Manuela
The war was going on when I was nine years old. My older brother had gone into the mountains with the guerrilla. Then my father joined them and abandoned us and my mother, who was then expecting a baby. Since the soldiers found out that my father and my brother had joined the guerrilla, they came after us and we had to escape, hiding in the mountains so that the army wouldn’t murder us. We were living in the mountains without food, without clothing, and without shelter, and if we came across a village as we moved from place to place, the people did not want to help us for fear that the army would kill them on account of us. But in one village where the people did receive us for a time, the soldiers came looking for us but the people told them that they hadn’t seen us at all. And that’s how it came about that we never knew anything again about my brother and my father, because they never came back. Maybe they died.
We were hiding in the mountains for nine years. Then the soldiers found us and brought us to the military base where the captain detained us for 10 days. They interrogated us and we kept saying the same thing, that my father had left us. Then the captain realized that we were not to blame and he let us go free.
When I was 18 years old I married my husband in Chajul and I had two daughters. However, I lived with him for only 11 years, because he had an accident. He climbed up a tree to cut the tree’s branches, but a branch fell on him, he fell to the ground, and he broke his back. He had to go to the hospital, but he didn’t recover. He suffered for a year and then died. This was the most difficult thing for me.
Juana
I was twelve years old at the time of la violencia and we were experiencing terrible suffering. I remember that my mother said we should hide ourselves because the army was going after women and I went to hide myself in the corn fields. My father could not come out of hiding since the soldiers were murdering many people. But if he came out, we would be able to eat, and if he didn’t come out, we would not be able to eat. We suffered hunger because of the war. It was a dangerous and sad life during those years.
One day we went to the market to buy some things. My brother sent me to fetch something and he stayed waiting for me, but the soldiers grabbed him and then I didn’t see him. They told me only that he had been kidnapped. When I heard this I went walking under the soldiers’ sentry posts and I saw that they had my brother. One soldier saw me and told me not to let my parents know the truth and he threatened that if I said anything they were going to kill me in that very moment.
When I returned to my house, I told my parents what I had seen. On the following day we went to demand the release of my brother but the soldiers said that they hadn’t kidnapped him. Instead they blamed the guerrilla, saying, “maybe they had taken him or maybe he went off and joined them.” I responded that he wasn’t a guerrilla. One of the soldiers who was from Nebaj spoke to me in Ixil and threatened me since I had told my parents the truth, but I told him that I had to tell the truth and if he wanted to kill me, that he should do it right away because I didn’t have anything to do with the guerrilla. He told me that yes, he was going to kill me and at that moment, the captain arrived and he pulled me away because I was very young.
My parents tried to get information from the captain but they continued to deny everything and we never found my brother, because the army had indeed murdered him. It filled me with sorrow. We never knew what they did with him, whether he was shot or what. We always remember our brother and the sadness is so great that once I even became ill from grief. At times I get to thinking that it has been so many years that my brother disappeared.
The hope I have for my daughters is that they keep studying, even though it’s difficult to get the money for this, and that they marry later in life than I did, since I was married when I was 15 years old. Things today have changed for women and so I now think that I was very young when I married. Before women would have many children, but now I go to the clinic and they tell me how not to have so many children. For me it’s better to plan pregnancies. The way it was before, women didn’t have any rights. Even their husbands humiliated them and they could not participate in groups, but now I am participating in ADMI and in the women’s groups in the church. This has been important for me because before this I hardly knew how to think, and now I am thinking a lot and I feel important. You learn this with other people, just like daughters learn how to weave by watching others. This is the way that we learn. And I would like everyone to live in peace. My daughters and I speak about peace and in my family, in my house, we have peace.
Manuela
I was three years old when the guerrilla murdered my father. I hardly remember it. My father had a premonition about his death because he put my older brother in charge of taking care of us in case something were to happen to him. My brother was 18 years old and he took charge of us and we lived with him in his house. But it was very sad because I didn’t have my father and I was alone since my mother married again and we stayed living with my brother.
When I was older it made me very sad not to be able to go to school, but my brother consoled us by buying us clothes and we had food, but for me, it wasn’t enough. What I wanted to do was study, but since we were so poor, we had to work a lot to help my brother. We would go into the mountains to collect firewood.
Later I went to live with my stepfather, but since he wasn’t our true father, he used to beat us and my mother a lot, since he was a big drunk. My mother had a daughter with him but he kept her very poor and he was very bad and wouldn’t give my mother permission to come see us at my brother’s house. He also didn’t want to see us in his house.
Later my mother separated from him and came to live with us for a while. After a year and a half, she got together with another man, and I went to live with her for a little while but only while she taught me how to weave and embroider huipiles. Once I learned how to weave, I came back to live with my brother. This was how we lived in poverty and how we experienced the separation from our parents.
A man helped me with school supplies so that I could begin primary school, but later I had to quit. Now I want to study, but it’s difficult since I have a lot of work in the house besides my weaving. But I haven’t lost hope that this dream will come true some day. I will overcome the obstacles because it is so important to me, given that an education provides the foundation for our being able to communicate in Spanish and for finding work. You don’t earn much selling weavings and weaving takes a lot of time.
Rosa
I remember when my mother told me about the death of my father, although I never had the opportunity to know him since she was pregnant with me when they killed him. Nevertheless, this shaped my life in many ways. I wasn’t able to study. When I was 14 years old, I used to look at his photo and think about him and I would ask my mother, “why did they murder him?” The guerrilla had killed him and I felt so sad because I grew up alone, because my mother went to live with another man, leaving me to live in my brother’s house.
When I was a little bigger I would watch the planes bombing outside of town and it would make me so sad because the death of my father was always present in my heart. And when I sit down to weave I always think of him. But now I will work hard to sell my weavings and to meet a good man, who respects and loves me, who believes in God, and thinks things through. Everything would then be better because my mother and I have suffered a lot and I don’t want to suffer any more. I hope for a better life and I have great faith in God, because he lessens our suffering and I also look to my friends to help ease our troubles. This is my struggle to survive.
Rosa
When I was a girl, my parents and I led a very poor life. I used to go barefoot, dressed in old clothes. Sometimes I used to wear my mother’s corte because we didn’t have enough clothing to go around for the five women in my family. My mother used to work and in exchange for her work the people used to give her old clothing that they no longer used. My father was disabled because he had injured his knees with an axe. He was bedridden for three years and my mother had to support all of us all on her own. When I was ten years old, some friends and a teacher encouraged me to go to school and my mother finally gave in. I was happy because I wanted to learn how to read and write. Since my mother couldn’t afford to buy our school supplies, I had to quit school. I felt sad and worried because I could only speak Ixil.
I remember when the killing by the guerrilla began. They pulled people out of their homes, they stole animals and killed them. This began in the ‘80s. The guerrilla were being run out by the army and so the conflicts began. We were quite frightened that they were going to kill us. The army kidnapped my father. When I was 17 years old a man courted me and I accepted him and went with him. Although I wasn’t aware that he was connected to the guerrilla, other people knew. So these people went and told the army that my father had a daughter who had joined the guerrilla. The army kidnapped my father, tied him up and carried him to the edge of town to hang him. They had left him there for three days, tied up and dumped there, when somebody found him. So he didn’t die. My husband, however, wasn’t even explicitly a guerrilla member, he just used to give them food. Later we separated and I remained unmarried for eight years, though I already had a son by him. Then I found another man who proposed marriage and I married him. He turned out to be an alcoholic, although I lived happily with him for six years. My hope is that my children will go to university so they can get an education and succeed in their studies.
Rosa
As a girl, I used to work very hard grinding corn with a grinding stone and I couldn’t go to school because there were many of us and there wasn’t any money. My mother dedicated herself to weaving huipiles, something I never even learned how to do. I was married when I was 18 years old and I now have eight children. While the war was going on, we used to stay shut up inside the house, unable to go out because we were afraid of the army’s bombs, which we could hear close by, and of the guerrilla presence in our town. You couldn’t go out to work or to gather firewood because they would murder or kidnap you.
When the guerrilla attacked the army, the soldiers would get so angry they would search the houses. Some of the people organized and joined the guerrilla, who used to tell them that they were going to turn the tables on the rich and that they were going to help the poor. A woman’s life at that time was such that she couldn’t leave her house because soldiers used to grab women and hurt them, but thank God that time is now past.
I wasn’t able to learn to read and to write. That’s why I have sent my daughters to school, which was an agreement between my husband and myself. For me, it’s important that they study since this is the way they will find better and less taxing work, not like campesino work which is harsh, involves a lot of suffering, and pays nothing.
Engracia
When I was ten years old, we lived in the lowland region, but when the war began, we moved into town. This was very difficult for us because in our village in the lowlands we used to have everything we needed whereas in Chajul there was nothing and this made life hard. My father sent me to school and I made it through the 5th grade in primary school.
I fell in love when I was 15 years old and my boyfriend wanted to ask for my hand, but I didn’t agree since I thought my mother was going to oppose our relationship. So we talked about it and I decided to go live with my boyfriend, and I quit school. I was living in his parents’ house for three years, but he went to do his military service and now I am living with my parents.
My life with him is happy. He gives me money for household expenses, we have a four year old son, and we can have more children. Now a woman can work outside the home, her worth and intelligence are recognized, and women are doing first-rate work in ADMI. When I was 14 years old I took part in the weaving project and I learned a variety of different things. And I continue to take part because there is so much to do to lay the foundation for improving our town of Chajul.
María
My mother sent me to school to study when I was eight years old and I liked studying a lot. When the school year ended, I put all my notebooks and certificates away in a cardboard box. When la violencia began, however, I was afraid, because the soldiers would search the houses so I took the cardboard box down and burnt everything inside including my school papers. When the war ended I was 15 years old and I wanted to go back to school but I couldn’t because I no longer had my certificates, since I had burned them out of fear, something I regretted a lot on account of my studies.
When I married my husband I found a job with children. I had learned how to write in Ixil at the Summer Institute of Linguistics and I began to give classes to children. My idea had been to wait until age 25 before marrying so who knows why I got married when I was 19. I suppose that God was the one who so disposed my heart. My husband was first my friend and later became my boyfriend. I lived with him for 13 years. He died six months ago. I have four children, but his absence still makes me feel sad. What consoles me is that I loved him and he loved me. I looked after him with great love and my memories of him are happy. My role now is to care for my children and to support their education, so that they can achieve whatever they want.
Petronila
When I was 12 years old, I was living with my parents. Since we were quite poor, we would go the fincas on the coast to earn our living. We would travel to lowland areas to buy corn and to work harvesting coffee but you earned very little. I began weaving when I was 15 and when I was 18 years old, I started living with my boyfriend, but he died of an illness a year and a half later. I had not, however, had a child with him and when I was 21 years old I married my second husband. My life with him was very good and we had many children. He was a good man who supported his family, but when the war began, the guerrilla murdered him.
In order to support my children, to survive, I went to a finca, but I couldn’t take them with me since I had to work so much. I left my children in the care of their older brother, but there was so much poverty. The war was raging and you couldn’t work. You weren’t free to bring a charge about who had been responsible for murdering my husband. I knew who the guerrillas were but I couldn’t say so because I had received death threats from someone whom I couldn’t name because if I told the truth, they would kill me and my children.
That is what the guerrilla did to a woman whose husband they had killed. Later when she accused them, they broke into her house during the night, raped and then killed her. Because I was fearful, I said nothing and that’s when I went to the southern coast with my older children, but I lived in great misery. Now I live with another man, whom I’ve been with for eight years. My children are now grown and we are struggling for our future.
Juana
I was living in the village of Xix when I was 10 years old and the war was raging. Many planes would come and bomb the surrounding mountains and soldiers would frequently come to the town. Some people joined the guerrilla and others stayed in their homes, but the soldiers burned the homes with the people inside of them.
In the afternoon, the soldiers would leave and my father went and collected the pieces of bones to bury them in the cemetery. My mother told me that the soldiers would come back the next day because they had threatened my father. The soldiers came and they assembled us all in the village soccer field. They interrogated my father concerning the whereabouts of the guerrilla. They thought since we lived on the outer edge of the village that we provided the guerrilla with food. My father told them that he was a merchant, that he didn’t have any weapons, and if the soldiers wanted to kill him that they should do it along with his children so they wouldn’t be left suffering. The soldiers didn’t believe him and they were sharpening their machetes and their axes to kill us, and they were aiming their weapons at us. But the captain said that perhaps it was true that we were innocent and he told us to go turn ourselves in at the military base in Chajul.
And so this is how we arrived, without any clothes or food. My father went to speak with the captain, who insulted us and accused us of being guerrilla, but he didn’t kill us. He told us to stay in the town, but we didn’t have a house there and we didn’t know how to speak Ixil, only k’iche’. But we met up with four men from the village of Batzul and took refuge there. We arrived without any possessions and they let us stay in the school for several days and fed us, but my little brother and I were dying of thirst since there was no water. My father bought a piece of land and built us some shelter; he rented land to plant some corn; and we were there for three months, with my father’s only thought being to support his family.
However, the guerrilla resented this since they wanted him to join them, but he didn’t want to go off to the mountains and he told them that he didn’t agree with them. So they threatened to kill him. In the morning the guerrilla arrived, dressed as soldiers, telling the people that they needed civilians to come help some soldiers who had gotten caught in an ambush. They gathered the men of the village into the school and, once they had them lying face down, they cut the throats of 18 men, killing them with machetes. They shot a young man who escaped.
One woman was wounded and we, the children and the women, fled. They were shooting after us and bullets whistled over our heads. The blood of the men ran like water over the floor. The guerrilla wiped out that village of Batzul. My mother was killing herself with so much crying and we all felt we were going to die of sorrow and fear. We were all sick and didn’t have anything left. We almost died of hunger. We didn’t have clothes, we didn’t have a place to live, and went from house to house asking for a place to stay.
When I was 11 years old, I went to work as a servant in Santa Cruz, but I didn’t speak Spanish and, I was discriminated against since I was an indigenous person. I wanted to learn how to read and to write Spanish so I could escape that misery. When I was 21, I left that house and went to work in Guatemala City. I earned very little and the owner of the house had no respect for my labor rights as an employee. I suffered a great deal and even became sick working for ladinos.
Now my life is very different. I’m fighting for a better future, working in ADMI, and I’m studying at the next level beyond primary school. After so many years of wanting to study, I now have that opportunity and I’m taking advantage of it, because there are no age limits when it comes to education. I have to be successful in my studies so that I can help the community to succeed.
María
My childhood memories are of living with my parents, but they were quite poor and I wasn’t able to go to school. One day some men came by the house to take us to school, but since I wasn’t able to go, I went and hid myself in the temascal. Now this is very painful for me because I realize that I don’t know how to read and to write.
I got married when I was 17 years old. I lived very happily and I had many children, 11 who lived and five who died. At the time of la violencia, my children were quite small and I had a baby one month old. The army was going around looking for my husband, accusing him of being a guerrilla. One night my husband went out into the street and the soldiers seized him and tied him up, but he managed to escape their clutches and went into hiding for a year.
He went to the yearly festival of Chiantla in a truck. The police signaled for it to stop, but the truck driver didn’t want to stop and so kept on going. When the police saw this, they shot at the truck, hitting my husband rather than the tire, and my husband died. Since they buried him right there, I wasn’t able to see him again or even know anything more about him. And since the war was raging here, I was too frightened to go out to see him. I only heard the news that there had been an ambush by the guerrilla and they said that my husband died because he was shot by the guerrilla. But that was a lie. Because the driver was a witness to the truth and he gave an account about what the police had done and about their lies in the news that was circulated.
When I heard the news of his death, I sat down and cried with my children. My suffering was overwhelming because I had to find a way to support my children. What helped me a lot was that my husband left me two mature cows, that had and I sold them, using the money to grow my crops and to support my family. It’s been 20 years since the war began and since I was 17 years old, I have lived in poverty.
Now I feel happy because, even though my husband is no longer alive, my children are now grown. I would like life to go on just as it is for us now, in peace, without war, with our looking for the way to get ahead. What I want is for my children to receive an education so that they are never without work. I know that they will be different, because they know how to read and to write, and only that way will the life of the people of Chajul keep changing. Before, we women didn’t have the right to work of our choosing.
Moreover, the Association, ADMI, is a right that we women have and we are exploring our feelings more, developing our thinking, and expanding what we know. This is a change for women and in this same way there will be more changes in life. Our values and taking part in meetings are important for being able to communicate, for not letting anyone deceive us anymore. Furthermore, we used to remain silent, but we know more now and now we are not so silent. For me, being an indigenous person makes me feel good because I know that we are equal to the mestizos. I don’t want to see what happened in la violencia ever happen again, and even though we women may not know how to read or to write, still, with our words, we can present the stories of our lives so that people far away know about the life of the people of Chajul.
Juana
I was raised in the home of my grandmother because I was left fatherless. My father was kidnapped during the time of la violencia. We were three sisters and we were very small when my father died and we stayed with my mother but unfortunately she did not take care of us. She did not wait for us to grow up with her. She remarried again only six months after the death of my father. They tell me that even so, I went with my mother a little while but returned to live with my grandmother because my stepfather did not treat me well. This was very hard on me because we had already lost my father.
When I was a little older I said to my mother, “Why did you abandon us? How come you never thought about us?” Because I lived the life of an orphan child and this was very sad. And now I think that if my husband were to die, since I have children, and if I met another man, the first thing that I would ask him is if he will take responsibility for my children because the most important thing for me is their well-being, because what we lacked was parental love.
For me women’s rights mean that one can confront ideas and reasons, for example, whatever the situation for me with my husband I have to speak about it, to clarify it with him because he has the same rights as I have. Because if the woman was not permitted her rights then the man would think he was more or would think less of the woman. For me it is good that we have the same rights.
I believe that it’s best if one knows how to read and write. Since people never had the opportunity to study before, there have not been changes here in our town of Chajul. But in the future there will have to be changes because there are many youth who have already completed básico and secondary school; what is lacking is knowing how to communicate in Spanish and reading and writing.
Margarita
In Chajul it was very dangerous because the army thought that everybody was part of the guerrilla, but they weren’t all guerrillas. They said that the entire town was affiliated with the guerrilla but it wasn’t; it was really just a handful of people that collaborated with the guerrilla.
In the home where my mother was living they killed one of my sisters. We had been left alone with my sister because my mother went to bring us back some ears of corn and my father was working on the southern coast. The guerrilla threw a bomb and the bomb exploded in the store that was in front of our house. Then the soldiers thought that that the bomb had been tossed from one of the houses, and they shot at my sister and then she was taken to the hospital but she did not survive. They shot her twice and she was 17 years old.
Now I feel very happy to be taken seriously as an indigenous, because in years past women hardly had any rights but now to some extent they take women into account for some decisions and also with religion. For me it is important to work for myself and for my needs and also for the needs of other people.
Reyna
My father died when we were children and my mother suffered a great deal because she could not help us growing up nor send us to school because we had to help her.
What affected me most was that during the time of la violencia I was very sad when they killed my older sister and came for me. But I fled and they did not catch me. If I had not fled from this death threat I would not be alive. It was the soldiers who ran after me. They had killed my older sister and I was with her taking care of the baby. The soldiers wanted to grab me but I escaped. They burned down many houses and I heard her cries when they killed her. I returned there when the soldiers had left, on the second day, and found many dead. My sister’s baby was without his head and the dogs were eating him. I saw it and was very much afraid and very sad. I slept that night hidden in the bush without a blanket and with another girl. My father and my older sister were killed, then burned by the soldiers. I saw it all from a distance. I was seven years old then but I still feel very sad when I remember it.
What I would like, like Rigoberta Menchú said, that they stop recruiting new soldiers, because there are too many already. I am not in favor of the military governing the country, because, as [President] Portillo says “we have to have more soldiers,” but I am not in favor of this as then a war could begin again. I feel more content now with the signing of the peace as there is more freedom. One needs to be able to enjoy oneself and to work in peace.
The most positive thing in my life is that now we can meet, we can have more freedom. But before we could not, because of la violencia. I want to have new experiences and to learn other things. It might be that we will see the some results from all this in the future. I hope that my children never suffer the way I had to suffer and that they will be able to get an education and improve their lives. I hope that my children will one day be able to read this book that we are making.