Promoting the indigenous struggle for dignity
by Brenda Norrell
TUCSON, Ariz. - Deep in a cave in Mexico, a candle burns for each of us. It is tall when we are born and carefully tended. But then our choices determine how long our flames will burn, said Yoeme (Yaqui) storyteller Herminia Valenzuela.
Sharing one of her favorite stories during a celebration of solidarity with the struggle in Guatemala, Valenzuela was joined by writer Byrd Baylor, reading her poetry of green parrot clouds, coyotes and all that is life in the borderzone.
Valenzuela and Baylor shared stories and poetry during a night to honor 11 years of the St. Michael's Guatemala Project, delivering health products and hope to the Quiche region of Guatemala. With a feast of red chile stew, calabacitas (squash) and tortillas prepared by Maria Garcia, the event was held as volunteers prepared for another trek by foot to backpack health supplies to the remote region.
Valenzuela begins her story, describing an old man in the village who searches for someone to serve as the Godfather for his 13th child. Finally, desperate, he vows to ask the first person who comes down the road, but the first man is “El Diablo”, the devil. He declines the devil’s offer and the next man who comes along, is Death.
Death agrees to be the Godfather, but under one condition, that he be allowed to take the boy away at the age of 9 to become a great healer. So, it comes to pass that the boy does become a great healer. Death tells him that there will be choices, people to heal and others to send on.
As a healer, the man is not tempted by wealth, but he fails at the temptation of the offer of a young bride. He tries to trick Death and allow an ailing man to live. Then, however, Death takes him to the cave, the cave where a candle burns for each person, and here he must face his punishment. When the man asks to see his candle, Death shows it to him; it is very tall and bright. But because he has failed to do as he was told, his candle is blown out.
“It is the same for each of us”, said Valenzuela, adding that her third grade students in Tucson and Guadalupe understand the story, the power of choices and the force of living a good life.
“We come to this life for a great journey”, she said.
Valenzuela, who grew up in a village near Casa Grande, Ariz., said Yoeme from the villages of Rio Yaqui in Sonora, Mexico, walked all the way to the United States and settled in Tucson and other communities, as far away as Kansas. Pascua Yaqui became a federally-recognized Indian tribe in the United States in 1978.
“We have had a struggle and we are still struggling”, Valenzuela said. In the 1940s, an anthropologist predicted that the language and culture of the Yaqui would die away.
“We are still here, we are still speaking our language, and the anthropologist has gone to heaven.”
Author of numerous books of Yoeme stories, Valenzuela wrote “Yoeme: Lore of the Arizona Yaqui People”. With her husband Felipe S. Molina and author Octaviana Salazar, Valenzuela coauthored “The Yaqui: A People and Their Place”.
While caring for a young grandson, Valenzuela was inspired to write poems. In just one year, she penned 2,400 poems. One night, while her husband was away on travel, she wrote until dawn and the crow of a rooster broke the silence.
With Avertano Olivas and Rebecca Tapia, Valenzuela and Molina interviewed Yaqui from the village of Old Pascua in Tucson for their book, “Wame Vatnataka Im Hohhoasukame - The Ones who Lived Here in the Beginning”. The couple and David Shawl coauthored, “Yoem Noki: Standard Yoeme Dictionary”. The couple recently completed “Yoeme Ethnobotany”, coauthored with Dr. Richard Felger, and is seeking a publisher.
During the evening of storytelling, poetry, authentic border food and photography, Ila Abernathy of Tucson, coordinator for the Guatemala Project, prepared to leave for Guatemala and visit remote indigenous health workers.
With a photography exhibit of her work on display during the celebration, Abernathy said the Guatemala Project has endured. “It was supposed to be a temporary project. I had no idea we would still be delivering health products more than 10 years later.”
The Guatemala Project promotes the indigenous struggle for dignity, working with local Maya and delivering health products, health education and encouraging advocacy for arts and culture. Emphasizing cultural exchange, indigenous self-determination and self-sufficiency, the project works in cooperation with Ixil and Quiche Maya farmers from the Ixil area of northern Quiche, one of the areas hardest hit during Guatemala’s violent civil war in the 1970s and 80’s.
The Guatemalan Army, by its own account, destroyed 440 Mayan villages. Over 200,000 civilians were killed or “disappeared” during the scorched earth campaigns that ravaged rural Maya communities. In the Ixil area, displaced families fled to the most remote mountains, where they began to organize “communities of population in resistance” or the CPR-Sierra.
For years, they were bombed and targeted with artillery attacks and crop destruction. About one-half died of hunger, bombardments, massacres, treatable diseases and exposure. Although the mountains were their cultural home, they lacked title to the land. Under the Guatemala Peace Accords of 1996, they were entitled to recognition as peaceful, self-governing indigenous peoples. They were also entitled to land settlements and development options as people internally displaced by the conflict.
From 1998 to 2000 the CPR-Sierra were relocated to distant sites, including the hot and disease-ridden Pacific coast near Champerico, Retalhuleu. Today, the people live in four different geographical sites and 14 small communities. The remnant mountain communities are weakened, isolated and extremely impoverished.
Today, as Guatemala struggles with economic problems and violence in the aftermath of 36 years of war, there are 1,800 CPR-Sierra families in remote regions, including the mountains of Ixil and communities of Nebaj. The Guatemala Project is an informal, non-sectarian partnership with CPR-Sierra that began in 1993, at a time when communities were still blockaded by the Guatemalan army.
The project has delivered 4-wheel drive vehicles and supplies, brought Maya to the United States and arranged for a display of handmade crosses, “A Nuestros Martires”, at the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies in Philadelphia, where it won “Best of Show”.
Currently, the project seeks to improve primary health care by making small monthly incentive payments to indigenous health care workers who serve isolated communities as volunteers. When there is enough money, the project provides medical transportation for those who can’t be treated locally, pays for training for workers and helps purchase medicine and low-tech medical supplies.
“They continue to seek 'vida digna' (life with dignity) as promised by the Peace Accords”, Abernathy said.
For more information, contact Ila Abernathy at (520) 623-3063 or ilaa@mindspring.com.
Brenda Norrell
http://bsnorrell.tripod.com
other links:
http://www.brendanorrell.blogspot.com
Brenda Norrell is a staff writer for Indian Country Today
http://www.indiancountry.com
and a Contributing Editor for the U.N. OBSERVER & International Report.
Please also see:
Guatemala and the Forgotten Anniversary
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0406guatemala_body.html
Report of the Secretary-General on the preliminary review by the Coordinator of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People on the activities
of the United Nations system in relation to the Decade
http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/indigenous/docs/e2004-82.doc
by Brenda Norrell
TUCSON, Ariz. - Deep in a cave in Mexico, a candle burns for each of us. It is tall when we are born and carefully tended. But then our choices determine how long our flames will burn, said Yoeme (Yaqui) storyteller Herminia Valenzuela.
Sharing one of her favorite stories during a celebration of solidarity with the struggle in Guatemala, Valenzuela was joined by writer Byrd Baylor, reading her poetry of green parrot clouds, coyotes and all that is life in the borderzone.
Valenzuela and Baylor shared stories and poetry during a night to honor 11 years of the St. Michael's Guatemala Project, delivering health products and hope to the Quiche region of Guatemala. With a feast of red chile stew, calabacitas (squash) and tortillas prepared by Maria Garcia, the event was held as volunteers prepared for another trek by foot to backpack health supplies to the remote region.
Valenzuela begins her story, describing an old man in the village who searches for someone to serve as the Godfather for his 13th child. Finally, desperate, he vows to ask the first person who comes down the road, but the first man is “El Diablo”, the devil. He declines the devil’s offer and the next man who comes along, is Death.
Death agrees to be the Godfather, but under one condition, that he be allowed to take the boy away at the age of 9 to become a great healer. So, it comes to pass that the boy does become a great healer. Death tells him that there will be choices, people to heal and others to send on.
As a healer, the man is not tempted by wealth, but he fails at the temptation of the offer of a young bride. He tries to trick Death and allow an ailing man to live. Then, however, Death takes him to the cave, the cave where a candle burns for each person, and here he must face his punishment. When the man asks to see his candle, Death shows it to him; it is very tall and bright. But because he has failed to do as he was told, his candle is blown out.
“It is the same for each of us”, said Valenzuela, adding that her third grade students in Tucson and Guadalupe understand the story, the power of choices and the force of living a good life.
“We come to this life for a great journey”, she said.
Valenzuela, who grew up in a village near Casa Grande, Ariz., said Yoeme from the villages of Rio Yaqui in Sonora, Mexico, walked all the way to the United States and settled in Tucson and other communities, as far away as Kansas. Pascua Yaqui became a federally-recognized Indian tribe in the United States in 1978.
“We have had a struggle and we are still struggling”, Valenzuela said. In the 1940s, an anthropologist predicted that the language and culture of the Yaqui would die away.
“We are still here, we are still speaking our language, and the anthropologist has gone to heaven.”
Author of numerous books of Yoeme stories, Valenzuela wrote “Yoeme: Lore of the Arizona Yaqui People”. With her husband Felipe S. Molina and author Octaviana Salazar, Valenzuela coauthored “The Yaqui: A People and Their Place”.
While caring for a young grandson, Valenzuela was inspired to write poems. In just one year, she penned 2,400 poems. One night, while her husband was away on travel, she wrote until dawn and the crow of a rooster broke the silence.
With Avertano Olivas and Rebecca Tapia, Valenzuela and Molina interviewed Yaqui from the village of Old Pascua in Tucson for their book, “Wame Vatnataka Im Hohhoasukame - The Ones who Lived Here in the Beginning”. The couple and David Shawl coauthored, “Yoem Noki: Standard Yoeme Dictionary”. The couple recently completed “Yoeme Ethnobotany”, coauthored with Dr. Richard Felger, and is seeking a publisher.
During the evening of storytelling, poetry, authentic border food and photography, Ila Abernathy of Tucson, coordinator for the Guatemala Project, prepared to leave for Guatemala and visit remote indigenous health workers.
With a photography exhibit of her work on display during the celebration, Abernathy said the Guatemala Project has endured. “It was supposed to be a temporary project. I had no idea we would still be delivering health products more than 10 years later.”
The Guatemala Project promotes the indigenous struggle for dignity, working with local Maya and delivering health products, health education and encouraging advocacy for arts and culture. Emphasizing cultural exchange, indigenous self-determination and self-sufficiency, the project works in cooperation with Ixil and Quiche Maya farmers from the Ixil area of northern Quiche, one of the areas hardest hit during Guatemala’s violent civil war in the 1970s and 80’s.
The Guatemalan Army, by its own account, destroyed 440 Mayan villages. Over 200,000 civilians were killed or “disappeared” during the scorched earth campaigns that ravaged rural Maya communities. In the Ixil area, displaced families fled to the most remote mountains, where they began to organize “communities of population in resistance” or the CPR-Sierra.
For years, they were bombed and targeted with artillery attacks and crop destruction. About one-half died of hunger, bombardments, massacres, treatable diseases and exposure. Although the mountains were their cultural home, they lacked title to the land. Under the Guatemala Peace Accords of 1996, they were entitled to recognition as peaceful, self-governing indigenous peoples. They were also entitled to land settlements and development options as people internally displaced by the conflict.
From 1998 to 2000 the CPR-Sierra were relocated to distant sites, including the hot and disease-ridden Pacific coast near Champerico, Retalhuleu. Today, the people live in four different geographical sites and 14 small communities. The remnant mountain communities are weakened, isolated and extremely impoverished.
Today, as Guatemala struggles with economic problems and violence in the aftermath of 36 years of war, there are 1,800 CPR-Sierra families in remote regions, including the mountains of Ixil and communities of Nebaj. The Guatemala Project is an informal, non-sectarian partnership with CPR-Sierra that began in 1993, at a time when communities were still blockaded by the Guatemalan army.
The project has delivered 4-wheel drive vehicles and supplies, brought Maya to the United States and arranged for a display of handmade crosses, “A Nuestros Martires”, at the Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies in Philadelphia, where it won “Best of Show”.
Currently, the project seeks to improve primary health care by making small monthly incentive payments to indigenous health care workers who serve isolated communities as volunteers. When there is enough money, the project provides medical transportation for those who can’t be treated locally, pays for training for workers and helps purchase medicine and low-tech medical supplies.
“They continue to seek 'vida digna' (life with dignity) as promised by the Peace Accords”, Abernathy said.
For more information, contact Ila Abernathy at (520) 623-3063 or ilaa@mindspring.com.
Brenda Norrell
http://bsnorrell.tripod.com
other links:
http://www.brendanorrell.blogspot.com
Brenda Norrell is a staff writer for Indian Country Today
http://www.indiancountry.com
and a Contributing Editor for the U.N. OBSERVER & International Report.
Please also see:
Guatemala and the Forgotten Anniversary
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0406guatemala_body.html
Report of the Secretary-General on the preliminary review by the Coordinator of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous People on the activities
of the United Nations system in relation to the Decade
http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/indigenous/docs/e2004-82.doc