Move your chair into the circle: Indigenous women’s political participation in Guatemala

Raising Her Voice works in 17 countries to promote the rights and ability of poor women to increase their influence and ensure their voices are heard so by those in power – from village leaders to politicians and lawmakers. Jenny Enarsson (right) reports on an RHV meeting in Latin America. This post first appeared on Oxfam’s Policy and Practice blog.

Bertha Zapeta from the indigenous Guatemalan organization Makatitlan is presenting the socio-economic situation in her country. She starts by projecting a linguistic map of Guatemala, indicating where in the country the different indigenous groups live. On top of that map she then projects a poverty map that identifies the most economically marginalized areas of the country. These are almost exactly the same as the areas highlighted in the first map.

The next slide points out where in the country the main massacres have been carried out. The dots coincide with the areas for poverty and indigenous population. Finally she shows a natural resource map identifying the main underground riches in the country. These too are located in the same areas.

“They say that the indigenous peoples of Guatemala are poor.” Bertha looks at us. “Really? Are we poor? Or is it that society impoverishes us?”

After the session, I ask Bertha how her political work and activism got started. “It’s not activism,” she says, “it’s my community service. My family breaks the paradigms in that we women study. My grandparents were adamant that we finish school and go on to university. They decided that when I went away to study I should wear trousers and a shirt and I should speak Spanish – because in a racist society, our traditional dress and our language are obstacles.

“So I got an education, but there was always an emptiness inside me. Finally at the age of 18, I decided to start wearing my traditional dress – as a political act – and speak my language. You can travel far away from home, but in the end something pulls you back to where you belong.”

“I started getting involved in community politics and working in organizations. There, with the women’s groups, is where I learnt what it really means to organize. (They teach you about organization at university, but it’s not the same.) I learnt about politics from the elders, the ancestral authorities.

“In the meetings, it was all men and then me, little Bertha. My chair was in the corner, outside their circle. I sat there and listened in meeting after meeting, wondering when I would be invited to speak.

“After a whole month had passed by without my saying a word, I finally went up to one of the leaders and asked him when they would let me contribute. He said ‘Bertha… you have had a whole month to move your chair into the circle..!’

“That was my first lesson in politics: I learnt that not only can I not let them exclude me – I mustn’t exclude myself. They put my chair in the corner, but it is up to me to move it – both literally and politically speaking.

We need political education. Otherwise, once we manage to get into those spaces for dialogue and they start talking to us about things like municipal budgets, it’s like jumping out of a plane with no parachute. If they are talking about infrastructure, I have to know about infrastructure. If they are talking about territorial rights, I have to know about territorial rights. That is how you move the chair.”

Mérida Cacao joins Bertha and me. She is a communicator with the organization Ixqik in the Petén region of Guatemala. I ask her how she came to this work.

“My father always said that women shouldn’t study, but my mother wanted me to learn what she hadn’t been able to. I started school at the age of nine, but left after two years. When I was 15, I told a friend that one day I wanted to know how to use a computer. He looked at me and laughed “You think you can learn that? It’s impossible! You’re a woman, and you’re indigenous.” I told him I would show him.”
“I started taking literacy classes and that sparked my interest in getting involved and learning things. It gave me the opportunity to be something. I went on to lead youth groups. It made me feel important when I came to a meeting and had lots of people listen to me. They were young people with the same dream as me – to work and participate.”

“I know that I won’t just be given space – I have to take it.”

Bertha Zapeta and Merida Cacao

Says Bertha, “Our political participation may look modest, but you have to understand the effort it takes to do what we do in a context where we are discriminated against, in economic crisis, with a lack of education and health services. We live in a state that is not our state. They ask us to create democracy and govern, but how are we supposed to do that when the very people who are asking us to do this built their wealth on the wealth of our people? They ask us to incorporate ourselves in a capitalist society, when that system has collapsed. Or in a socialist system, when that has collapsed too. Why would we want to do that?”

“When you participate in political issues you will grow and you will change, and that is important. But the most important thing you can do is to ensure that those who come after you can change too.”

Jenny Enarsson is Oxfam’s regional gender adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean

Guatemala v Honduras: comparing prospects for change

[This post is published in Spanish on the 3500 milliones blog]

From Honduras, I went to Guatemala for a couple of days. Didn’t have time to get out into the countryside, which is a real shame since rural Guate has to be one of the most amazing places to visit in Latin America. But a series of conversations with NGOs and academics raised some really interesting contrasts with Honduras. Apologies for these gross generalizations based on such a short visit – feel free to put me straight:

What’s more positive in Guatemala? Compared to Honduras, the legal and institutional panorama feels much more promising – the Peace Accords of 1996 that brought an end to Guatemala’s bloody civil war have left a legacy of institutions such as local ‘development committees’ bringing together civil society and local government, with some access to (or at least influence over) spending decisions. Previous governments have passed a Food Security law, and approved a policy (falling short of a law) on ‘integrated rural development’ (IRD, but nothing like the discredited IRD approaches of the 1980s) that has been endorsed by the new president, Otto Perez Molina, despite his position on the right and as a former general. Some activists reckon these laws and ‘invited spaces’ just suck the energy out of social movements and their allies without actually delivering anything, but most people think they exert some traction on government policy and spending priorities, as well as influencing public attitudes on issues such as indigenous rights (Guatemala’s population is majority indigenous, but anti-indigenous prejudice is rife among the white and mestizo elites).

There were interesting divergences in analyses of the new government, with some (including big aid donors, apparently) seeing it as a step forward because, for all its right wing views, it brings a military discipline and a willingness to face down Guatemala’s overweening private sector – a fiscal reform passed in the government’s first two months, closing down some tax loopholes, seems to bear that out. Guatemala might just be on the way to acquiring an effective state of sorts, although once the honeymoon wears off, my bet would be on it returning to incompetent/corrupt business as usual (the finance minister resigned while I was there after opposition attacks on the fiscal reform).

The legacy of the Peace Accords is linked to a second point – there seems to be lots of appetite for engagement at municipal level, from both state and social movements, whereas in Honduras, the peasant movement seems to feel that only the national state is worth engaging with. Currently, one area of real energy is a semi-spontaneous series of ‘popular consultations’ at local level on mining and big hydro projects involving hundreds of thousands of people across the social spectrum in rural areas (not just campesinos), and an overwhelming vote against the big projects. The protest votes are often supported by local mayors. The process is not legally binding, but it is galvanizing opposition in the countryside.

The subnational focus has also softened the polarizing rhetoric on expropriating/redistributing land by adopting a ‘territorial’ focus in the discussions on IRD that includes water, indigenous rights, ecosystem services and talks in general terms of the ‘democratization of land’. This reportedly makes it much easier to talk to different groups than the over-riding emphasis on land redistribution that dominates (and polarizes) debates in Honduras.

What was similar between the two countries? The rural-urban divide seemed just as great, with peasant movements showing little interest in finding allies in the cities, and a lot of urban prejudice against the peasants. There are few signs of the peasant movement and its NGO allies adapting its language or tactics to build bridges with the cities (about half of the population and rising), e.g. by focusing on urban food prices as well as farmgate prices for small producers.

What’s worse in Guatemala is the additional component of racism, although interestingly, ILO Convention 169 (on indigenous rights) seems to have had some influence in terms of attitudes and policies, as well as promoting indigenous assemblies that have become an important source of social organization. The Convention was drafted by an old Guatemala hand, Roger Plant, so he should be happy (but probably isn’t – meeting a happy human rights activist is about as likely as a farmer telling you they’ve had a good year………)