Indigenous movement in Guatemala

A history of struggle and resistance

Tags: Central America & Mexico, Civil Society Building
Additional tags: Indigenous movements guatemala

The indigenous people of Guatemala have a long history of struggle and resistance for autonomy. What process have they undertaken and what was and is the role of the international community?

Context
The indigenous people of Guatemala have a long history of struggle and resistance. In the 1970s a great period of socio-political mobilisation took place, as a response to two decades of brutal re-pression on the part of the State. This catalysed the movement into allying itself with the guerrilla movement and as a consequence of this the movement became clandestine, its members exiled or sentenced to death.

With the “democratic re-opening” of 1986, the indigenous people’s movement entered a new phase of expansion and flourishing towards the end of the 1980s. The government granted the indigenous people basic cultural recognition and opened the platform for dialogue to their minimal demands for cultural empowerment. This policy was faced with vigorous opposition on the part of sectors which hold economic and political power within the country to this day. The dialogue process was ex-tended until 1996, when the peace treaties were signed.

Presently, the Guatemalan indigenous organisation is very extensive, multifaceted and changing at the departmental, regional and national levels. Indigenous organisations and intellectuals at the na-tional level have assumed a “Maya” identity; what is more, at this level this identity, slowly, goes hand in hand with its appropriation. The principal demands and activities are developed around cultural empowerment, community development, land redistribution and recently, defence of their territory and natural resources. There have always been attempts at alliances amongst indigenous organisations, such as COPMAGUA (disappeared), now WAC’IB KEJ who is an umbrella for over thirty national, regional and departmental organisations, in addition to other minor efforts both at the national and regional level.

One of the principal battles of the indigenous peoples in recent years has been the vindication of their autonomy and right to self-determination as a nation. To understand this struggle it is important to rescue the concepts of nation and movement, this is a constant struggle for recognition as a peo-ple because the intention exists to eliminate this recognition, minimize and disappear nations. These peoples have a structure, organisation and norms which make them a nation, thus the struggles of these last years have been to position and claim their autonomy. On the other hand at the organisa-tional level they have diverse expressions which have resulted in some permanent and some stra-tegic associations of organisations into the indigenous movement.

For this reason it is important to delve deeper into the demands and proposals of indigenous popu-lations. It is also important to see if civil society would be open to incorporating these demands, while also recognising that these demands have organisational features that are particular to in-digenous peoples and often eroded by civil society’s macro-structures. As a consequence, what needs to be identified is the way that indigenous people regard their own participation strategies, they way they seek to demand and implement the struggles that they have been waging to claim their rights.

Objectives:
a) Analyse the struggles carried out by the indigenous peoples of Guatemala for the con-struction of their autonomy since the peace accords.
b) Identify indigenous organisation’s achievements, weaknesses and challenges to the strengthening of their capacity in their struggle to attain autonomy
c) Enable participatory spaces of exchange and dialogue amongst researchers, activists and social movements on indigenous people’s struggle for autonomy.

Key research questions:
• What is the conceptual difference between the indigenous movement and indigenous people?
• What are the roles of the indigenous movement and the indigenous populations to attain their autonomy as a nation?
• What is the process of mobilisation and reflection that indigenous people have undertaken in order to achieve their autonomy?
• What is the role that external actors to the movement, play on the autonomy of indigenous peoples?