FEBRUARY 11, 2005
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER
6a SPRING BOOKS
Understanding the genocide in Guatemala
PARADISE IH ASHES: A GUAnMAUN JOURNEY
OFCOURAGEJERROR,ANDHOPE
By Beatriz Manz
University of California Press.
311 pages. $24.95
Reviewed by MIKE SMITH
The most recent genocide in the
Americas began in 1982 and, for the
next three years, caused the largest
mass migration in the hemisphere of
the 20th century. Himdreds of thousands of refugees, the vast majority
Mayan Indians, poured into Mexico to
escape the genocidal scorched-earth
campaign executed, with the aid of U.S.
armaments, training and dollars, by
the Guatemalan military. Another
80,000 were disappeared or murdered.
Thousands of refugees were settled in
refugee camps in Chiapas, Campeche
and Quintano Roo, Mexico, while others settled themselves on the large
plantations where they lived and
worked as undocumented refugees.
Professor Beatriz Manz at the University of California, Berkeley, has spent 30
years studyii^ a mostly K'iche' Maya
community, Santa Maria Tzeja, in the
remote Ixcan region of Guatemala. Her
fascinating book Paradise in Ashes,
while a portrait of a small village, is also
a landscape of the larger Guatemalan
society. Professor Manz places the genocide and massive flight in the context of
Guatemalan history and economics as
weU as the Cold War.
With masterly brushstrokes, she
portrays two Catholic priests who play
important, although supporting, roles
in this drama.
Although a majority in Guatemala
imtil very recent times, the Maya have
been economically mar^alized by 500
years of repression. Most were either
landless peasants or subsistence farmers unable to feed themselves and their
families by working their tiny and
exhausted parcels of land that often dot
to Impossible heights the steep volcanic
slopes. Trapped in a latifundia (lai^e
landholder/feudal) system that had
changed little since medieval times,
they were forced to chambear (work
seasonally) on the large plantations. At
their mountain villages they were loaded onto cattle trucks and hauled to the
large plantations on the coast, where
for about a dollar a day they harvested
the coffee, cotton and cardamom.
Herded together on these plantations, they slept in bam-like structures,
ate bad food, drank dirty water and
often got sick. Dysentery and diarrhea
were common, and having no latrines,
they had to relieve themselves in the
fields among the coffee plants or cotton.
These fields in turn became fertile
breeding grounds for the armies of flies
that contaminated the food and water.
The workers often spent such lai^e portions of their wages on medicines that
there was little left over for essentials
such as clothes, soap, oil, seeds and
tools to work their own plots of land.
To escape this economic dead end and
the pervasive racism in Guatemala, a
few Mayan Indians, assisted by international groups such as the Catholic
church. Wings of Hope and even the
U.S. Agency for International Development, began to colonize the jungle in the
Ixcan region. Santa Maria Tzeja was
one of the villages founded in the dense
rain forest. The Guatemalan military.
A Guatemalan
woman
displays a
photograph
during Mass in
Guatemala
City last May.
The Mass
was held in
memory of
the thousands
of people who
disappeared
in Guatemala's
36-year civil
war.
-CNS/Reuters
which would soon hold the modem
record for murder, rape and torture in
the hemisphere, disapproved of these
new communities and the independence and dignity achieved by the colonizers. The genocide, when it began,
was most severe in the Ixcan.
In the early 1960s, the Catholic church
sent conservative, even fascist-supportive priests from Spain to Guatemala to
participate in the worldwide s t r u ^ e
against communism. Appalled by the
extreme poverty of the majority of
Mayan Indians, they began to rethink
their worldviews. Many quickly
returned to Spain. Anticipating the Second Vatican Council, others stayed and
new priests came to help the impoverished Mayan population free itself of the
feudal system that kept them in virtual
serfdom. One priest in particular, Fr.
Luis Gurriaran, realized that this situation was a result of colonialism and
racism. He opened schools and taught
the poor to organize and form cooperatives. He helped them to help themselves, and he was a central f^ure in the
foimding of Santa Maria Tzeja.
In 1980, because of the Guatemalan
military's campaign of terror, the bishop of El Quiche, Juan Gerardi Conedera (later murdered by the military
because of his leading role in the
research and publication of Guatemala:
Never Again, Recovery of Historical
Memory Project), closed the diocese.
When ttie diocese reopened in 1985, the
government did not permit Fr. Gurriaran to return. He then lived and
worked with the Communities of Populations in Resistance; the communities
who remained in hiding in the jungle.
Instead, Fr. Tiziano Sofia was the first
priest sent back to the Ixcan. Fr.
Tiziano was an autocratic, top-down
figure. He came to be weU known in the
Ixcan for his eccentricities as well as
his combative spirit. While he did not
inspire love in the people, he did
inspire respect because he stood up to
the military. As Professor Manz states,
"Despite his pronoimced idiosyncrasies, Tiziano may have been the
right priest for that period. His combative spirit and willingness to test it,
gave the people some confidence.
Tiziano made it clear to the officers that
he had no problem with the military
ordering soldiers, but civilians fell
under his purview."
On Feb. 13, 1982, the Guatemalan
army invaded Santa Maria Tzeja. In a
beautiful piece cJf writing. Professor
Manz foreshadows this event early on
in her book:
Near the Mexican border a serpentine path meanders through
the dense, verdant rain forest of
northem Guatemala, skirting tall
mahogany trees and brown hanging vines, traversing the undulating terrain toward the remote village of Santa Maria Tzeja. Landless Maya peasants from the h ^ lands made the difficult weeklong,
150-mile journey to settle the village in 1970, building a new life
with little more than sweat, hope
and a few antiquated hand tools.
Twelve years later ... a long col-
umn of soldiers traveled that
twisted path, weighed down with
combat gear, in the languid heat.
Their feet sank in thick mud. The
late-afternoon sunlight reflected
off their automatic weapons. As
they proceeded, hidden sentries
from the village watched with
deep apprehension.
However, the people of that community were organized and prepared.
They had an emergency plan: The village was divided into sectors and everyone was to flee to certain prearranged
spots in his or her sector when the invasion came. Nearly everyone escaped
the initial onslau^t and hid in the jungle. Several days later the troops found
a small group of women and children
hiding in the jungle. They massacred
all but one who escaped by hiding
under a tree. When they finally finished
riddling these women and children
with bullets from their automatic,
made-in-the-United-States weapons,
they mutilated their bodies.
I^ofessor Manz follows the founding of Santa Maria Tzeja, its organization as a cooperative, the military
invasion and subsequent flight. As the
community hides in the jungle, pursued by the military and Civil
Patroilers acting as guides, they
become divided. Some are captured
and tortured, some give themselves up
and are tortured. Those who survive
the torture return to Santa Maria
Tzeja, which is reorganized along the
model village system developed by the
U.S. Army in Vietnam. Gone are the
freedom and dignity, present are the
soldiers and terror. New settlers
iriuevos) who support the military and
old (antiguos) are hostile to and suspicious of each other.
The majority of the villagers managed to escape capture and remained
hiding in the jungle. A fewfledto other
parts of Guatemala, a few joined the
guerrillas, and, after 13 months of hiding in the rain forest, always hunted,
often nearly captured, many escaped in
a long Odyssey to Mexico.
The last two chapters .of the book,
"Reunification" and "Treading Between
Hope and Fear," teU the equally dramatic story of the return of many of the people from the refugee camps. These retornados (returnees) are organized and
therefore successful in their negotiations with the now civilian, democratic
Guatemalan government (guided by the
military that constantly looks over its
shoulder). Unlike other communities of
retomados, the people of Santa Maria
Tzeja got their land back. They have
formed a cooperative—an organization
always looked upon as subversive by the
military — and have rebuilt their community. However, as the tifle of the last
chapter makes clear, their situation is
still precarioiK. They are like birds busily feeding in the fields, seemingly content but ready toflyat the sound of that
first heavy boot step.
Paradise in Ashes is a good read and
essential to anyone who hopes to understand what we can only hope wiH be the
last genocide in the Americas.
[Mike Smith lives in Berkeley, Calif., and is
director of the asylum program for the East
Bay Sanctuary Covenant, a coalition of
church organizations founded in 1982 to
advocate for, protect and support refugees
and immigrants.]