Modern exodus
Mayans flee their homeland
From their highland village in
Central Guatemala, the Mayans
descend by foot into the Lacon
don jungle of southern Mexico,
following the Chahal and Ixcan
River valleys.
While still in Guatemala they
cannot build fires for warmth,
cooking, or to sterilize their water,
because the light and smoke
might betray them.
These are people in flight from
genocide, and while amoebic
dysentery, typhoid, malaria,
malnutrition and heat and humidi
ty will be their constant compa
nions, the Mayans consider these
hosts more benign than the
Guatemalan government. They
would rather die in Mexico, they
say, than return to Guatemala.
This is part of the picture in
Mexico as painted by Ron Spec
tor, a Canadian herbalist who liv
ed and worked among
Guatemalan refugees this past
March and April.
Now, he says, he can only
marvel at their ingenuity and op
timism, especially in a camp he
knew best — Puerto Rico.
They used jungle vines to lash
things together, Spector says.
"The people had very few tools —
not every man had a machete and
an axe. They went into jungle rain
forests and built homes for 4,000
people without hammers or saws
or axes."
"And then," he pauses, shaking
his head in disbelief at the list of
projects, "they built a school, an
outdoor children's dining hall, a
clinic and a church."
Story by Brooks Dareff
Photos courtesy of Dave Beers
Photographer Dave Beers took these pictures while visiting a
Mayan refugee camp in Chajul Mexico. The Mayans left their
home in Guatemala to escape persecution by their government,
according to a local herbalist who visited refugees in the Mex
ican camp of Puerto Rico. Conditions in the camp are primitive,
but the native Guatemalans hope eventually to build a strong,
and modern, society.
About 100,000 of the more than
200,000 Mayan refugees have fled
the present regime in Guatemala,
running from "terror and
massacres/' Spector says.
Thirty Years of Persecution
Guatemala's Indians have been
the object of persecution for near
ly 30 years, Spector says, ever
since 1954 when the CIA over
threw the democratically elected
government of Jacob Arbenz,
which had attempted to buy back
and institute land reform on
reserve land unused by United
Fruit.
Many of the Indians in
Guatemala — about 3.5 million in
a country of 8 million, — migrate a
few months every year to the
coastal lands to work in the cof
fee, sugar, cacao, banana, or cot
ton plantations, where, Spector
says, they are subject to the
hazards of pesticides not allowed
in this country.
"In fact we find (in
Guatemala). . the highest level of
DDT found in mother's milk in
any country in the world.''
The Indians migrate to the
coast, Spector says, because they
do not have enough land to pro
vide the neccessities of life for
themselves. After all, he says,
about 2 percent of the population
controls about 80 percent of the
land.
''It has been a continuous pro
cess on the parts of the rulers to
seize and erode the land title of
the people," to at once secure
land presumed rich in oil’ and
minerals, and at the same time
maintain a cheap source of labor
for corporate agriculture.
But the tyrannies of previous
dictatorships pale beside the
recently deposed regime of Rios
Montt, Spector says. Between
March 1982, when Montt assumed
power, and March 1983, (the latest
period documented by Amnesty
International), Al reports that
more than 10,000 civilian non
combatants were killed as a result
of the Guatemalan government's
“scorched earth" policy. This, ac
cording to Spector, includes burn
ing and massacring entire villages.
“A sort of 'final solution' " to the
Indian problem, he says.
And as the terror escalates, so
does emigration. Spector says that
while refugees have been filtering
into Mexico from Guatemala for
the last three years, the major in
flux occurred between August,
1982 and January, 1983.
The Land that Time Forgot
The refugee camp at Puerto Rico
is situated 700 meters from
Guatemala, in the region of
Chiapas, along the Lacutan river.
It is the biggest refugee camp in
Chiapas, home for more than
4,000 refugees. It is one of three
camps Spector visited in Chiapas.
The very first thing the refugees
built in Puerto Rico was an airstrip
because they knew it would be
the most expedient connection to
relief agencies bringing in food
and medical help, Spector says.
Spector says the Mexican
government consistently has ban
ned international or^inizations
from directly providing relief to
the Mayan-Guatemalan refugees.
Therefore, three local agencies
have been their princple benefac
tors; Cargua, consisting primarily
of a Mexican man and a German
woman; Comar, the Mexican
governments official commis
sion, the official executor of about
$6 million in U.N. aid; and the
local Catholic diocese, which
Spector says has flown diseased
and malnutrioned children out of
the jungle to hospitals.
“The problem," Spector says,
"is not so much food, as getting
food in." Spector says much of
the U.N. funds are grafted by the
Mexican government. A family of
six receives about nine kilos of
corn and one kilo of beans every
Continued on Page 8
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