From Guatemala, Amar La Tierra, A Story of Hope!
by Mary Davis, Editor of Mythic Passages, MII Publications Chair

Introduction:

Guatemala is one of our neighbors to the South in Central America with a population of approximately 14.6 million people, 75 per cent of whom live in poverty. The people of Guatemala have endured a turbulent governmental history, winning independence from Spain in 1821 and becoming an independent nation in 1840. Just ten years ago in 1996, formal peace agreements were signed to end a 36 year guerrilla war during which more than 100,000 people died and one million refugees were created.

Guatemala is also a nation in which the ancient Maya civilization flourished, and it is still home to many descendants of that civilization, an estimated 43.3 per cent of Guatemala's current population. Spanish is spoken in Guatemala, and as part of the 1996 Peace Accords, Guatemala also officially recognized 21 spoken Mayan languages.

Much is unknown about the ancient Maya, in part because most of the ancient texts, including an entire library, were destroyed by a Spanish priest in 1562, soon after the Spanish Conquest. Scholars have found evidence of Maya civilization dating to approximately 1000 BCE and believe that early Maya complexes had been constructed circa 600 BCE, although the years 250 - 900 AD constitute the era considered by modern scholars to be the Classic period of the Maya civilization. Remaining evidence indicates that this civilization was highly skilled in astronomy, written language, city building, mythology, philosophy, cosmology, and mathematics (including the development of the concept of zero), at least rivaling the other great civilizations of the world.

This is the background for a remarkable story of hope for today's Guatemala. Michael Karlin asked me to interview Andrés Botrán, whom Michael knows from their joint work with the Alliance for a New Humanity, a Mythic Imagination Institute Partner. Andrés is an integral part of this success story and he will be a presenter at Mythic Journeys 06 this June in Atlanta, where Mythic Journeys attendees will receive a woven container for their conference materials, made by the weavers of this story!

I met Andrés Botrán and began the interview in December at the Alliance's Conference in Puerto Rico. I also interviewed another key participant in the story, María Pacheco and talked with María Del Transito Lopez Diaz and Rosalia Lopez Diaz, two Chortí Maya women, as well as with Freddy Manoquin.

Amar la Tierra:

In 2001, a mutual friend introduced Andrés Botrán to María Pacheco.

María Pacheco , a Guatemalan woman, is a biologist and an organic farmer. In 1993, María was approached by a group of villagers from a war-torn village who wanted her help in finding a way out of poverty. Ten farmers started the project, and with María's guidance and assistance, worked on reforestation and helped the land recover, eventually developing products such as wooden educational toys for sale, developing markets, and finding financial assistance.

Then, in 2001, María was asked to help another group of villages in Jocotán near the border with Honduras, a community of Chortí Maya. (In prehispanic times, the Chortí Maya were the weavers of the rugs, the mats on which the kings sat. The fibers held together and represented the overlapping of time, the interweaving of space and time. The Chortí language is also the Mayan language believed by scholars to be the closest to the ancient Maya glyphic writing found on the inscriptions from the Classic era at sites in the central lowlands. )

This area was suffering from a major drought and famine in 2001, as well as from the collapse of the coffee market which left many entire villages without income. Doña Santa, a Chortí Maya woman, was found with two of her children on the floor, sick with fever. When asked why she didn't take her children to the doctor, she said, "If I spend this $2.50 (the earnings from her week's work) to save these two children, I won't have enough money to feed my other six children." María Pacheco believed that a mother should not have to choose which of her children will survive.

The goal was immediate relief from the hunger, plus the long term reclamation of the area's land and water resources via reforestation and conservation. Families were taught to develop irrigated organic gardens, in order to improve their nutrition for the future, but the crisis was immediate - people were dying. So building on the traditional weaving skills of the women and on the plentiful supply of weaving material, the royal palm, María and her group, El Kiej de los Bosques (named from the Mayan belief that the kiej, the deer, is the protector of the bosques, the forests) together with the villagers devised their strategy. But they needed markets, purchasers for the weavings!

Enter Andrés Botrán! Andrés is a Guatemalan man whose maternal and paternal grandparents immigrated from Spain, beginning their new lives in Guatemala as poor young people. His paternal grandfather initially slept on top of coffee bean bags, but eventually earned enough money to purchase a rural store, and his maternal grandparents bought a bakery, eventually becoming deeply involved in local development and community issues. Their businesses became profitable, and Andrés thought of himself and his family as comfortably middle class. The oldest of four children, Andrés attended the American school (high school), was a good student, and a member of the national swim team.

However, when Andrés was 13 years old, his father was kidnapped! Guerrillas kidnapped his father to exchange him for money for their war effort. Then, Andrés realized that his family was wealthy and that they were targets, and his life changed.

He later attended Boston University, majoring in manufacturing engineering with a minor in math, studying through the summers in order to hurry back to help his father in the family businesses, which by this time included sugar, liquor, coffee, and finance. But his father, whom Andrés describes as the "glue," the "anchor" of the family, died just six months after Andrés' return to Guatemala. The next year, Andrés moved to New York City, where he worked for a French based sugar trading firm. There he met Anna, a woman from Puerto Rico, a Princeton graduate who also has a law degree. Andrés says his greatest loss (the death of his Dad) sent him to New York City where he found his greatest blessing, Anna, who became his wife in 1990.They have two children.

After returning to Guatemala, he became involved in real estate as well as the family businesses. Again there was a big health issue in the family, and Andrés says he was hit with the realization that our time on earth is precious and we have to make it worthwhile.

Andrés became more involved with civic issues, becoming involved with the Chamber of Industry, becoming more and more concerned with where Guatemala was going as a nation. He realized the whole country was divided. In Andrés' words, "In three months, between August and October of 2000, I can't pinpoint an event, but my lens went from telephoto to wide-angle! I could see more, I could feel more, I could detect more. I could see things in my country that I did not like - the division, the conflict, the extreme poverty. I could see before, but I did not feel !

"I started to feel shame that I had not done enough to ameliorate the conditions. I realized millions of Guatemalans were lacking food and water. Fifty per cent of Guatemalan children were chronically malnourished and may not have the capacity to be good citizens. I also realized my blindness was shared by my peers. Everyone is co-responsible for their environment, either by commission or omission. I then became more involved in social issues than in commerce, trying to unite and integrate the sectors dealing with hunger and malnutrition, to generate trust and dialogue. Then, in 2001, I met María Pacheco."

At that point, Andrés' family rum business, Industrias Licoreras de Guatemala, was about forty years old. They produce a premier, world renowned rum, Ron Zacapa Centenario , which includes weaving (woven sleeves for the rum bottles) in its packaging. During the guerrilla warfare in Guatemala, it became impossible to obtain the weaving in Guatemala.

Then in 2001, when their mutual friend introduced María Pacheco to Andrés Botrán, she told him that she was working with a community of women who were traditional weavers and needed help, needed a market for their weaving. Andrés said that if the quality, cost and the need for reliability were met, he would say, "Yes!" He says that it was "serendipitous, an alignment of the stars." María, with the help of Freddy Manoquin who is an agronomist and biologist, worked with the Chortí Mayan women to develop an organized effort which includes quality control.

They began with 30 women and now 400 women weave 30,000 units per month for Ron Zacapa Centenario. Now, women who were making less than $6 per month are earning at least $50 - $60 per month, and sometimes as much as $150 per month, and their children are not dying of hunger. The women are learning to read and write. Auxiliary small businesses are developing in their villages. The weavers have formed an organization, Industrias de Fibras Nativas, and are becoming a political force. They now have contracts to produce woven materials for another five clients, including a bread company, but Ron Zacapa Centenario is their largest client.

I spoke with two of the women who are Chortí Maya women and weavers. They live in Pinalito, Jocatan. Rosalia Lopez Diaz told me, "We didn't have a job before. Now we have work. The kids were starving. We are very happy to have a job and work which we can sell." Rosalia is 23 years old, not married yet, and she helps her mother. María Del Transito Lopez Diaz , who is almost 30, married with two small children, said, "We are happy because we have a market. We can buy food, clothes, and shoes for the children. I have learned to read and write!" Then, she proudly wrote her name for me! She said they are learning self-esteem and building their community.

Andrés Botrán talks about the importance of women's having power, that women are the change agents in the family. He speaks of the tumultuous past of Guatemala, that Guatemala has less than 25 years of democracy. He notes that during the many years of military coups d'etat, there were constantly shifting alliances with no security and no trust, even the lack of capacity for trust. "You never knew who would turn on you, and then you'd be shot."

"So, what we are trying to do is to promote more inclusiveness in national policy, to rebuild trust. After I met the President of Guatemala, I started as a Commissioner for the Front Against Hunger. We asked people who knew. I talked to campesinos, unions, civil society, government officials, academics, national and international corporations. The President created a position in the Cabinet in December of 2004, and although it was a sensitive issue, Guatemala officially recognized the problem of hunger for the first time.

"We realized that the problem of hunger is not just a governmental issue, it must be tackled by all sectors, it must include all of our society. So, we worked to develop a food security policy . This includes salaries - people must earn enough money to buy food; the roads, the infrastructure must be available to transport the food, the food must be grown with good sanitation practices, the people must be educated about hygiene (like the importance of keeping flies away from food) and about consumption habits (what foods are healthy)."

Andrés is now the Secretary of Food and Nutrition for Guatemala. This is the Cabinet level post, and he has a staff of sixty persons working with him to abolish hunger in Guatemala. Now that an institutional process has been created, the need is for sustainability. He says they are definitely making progress, both against hunger and in building trust . The private sector has opened a food bank and both national and international corporations are helping.

He says he has "4 C's" to insure an open and trustworthy process:

Conocimiento -	knowledge in depth of the people, including knowing the stakeholders at the local level
Comunicacion -	staying in touch, communication - to create change, you must communicate. "To communicate, you must give and take, and listen generously to words, meaning, body, and heart."
Confianza -	trust
Compromisos -	commitments and keeping commitments

"Plus co - responsibility!"

Andrés Botrán talks about the synchronicities, "The universe conspires to help you if you are doing something profound and helpful. Doors open. There have been an amazing series of coincidences. This voyage has been life-changing for me. It teaches you, lets you know you can change the world. I feel blessed to be a part of it."

And María Pacheco, says ,"I dream of a world in which the sound of wings against trees, the songs of birds from their nests, the jump of a lizard from one twig to another, the footprints of a tiger in the soil, the breeze of the spring in the home, and peace between brothers and sisters will be everyday events. But living in Guatemala, we are far from this vision. I chose to work with rural indigenous communities, especially women, since they are the groups that have incredible potential, but are disconnected...I also decided to work with them because when I had my third child, he was born in intensive care and I also ended up there...if I had been a rural woman, Nico, my son, and I would be dead. I have always believed that we all deserve the same opportunities, beginning with the opportunity to live." Her company, Kiej, continues to connect rural productive groups with national and international buyers. "Once people have income and can feed themselves, buy clothes, medicines, they start believing that other dreams can come true and then a simple market becomes part of the wings communities need to fly...Kiej's vision is a big world for everyone. Kiej's mission is to unite worlds...believing it is the only way to development."

As I write this, I glance to the side of my computer at the little cloth rabbit given to me by María. This bunny was made by the Mayan women of Guatemala, and it wears a red button, "Amar la tierra..." Love the earth, love the land! In Mayan folklore and myth this rabbit means abundance and prosperity, and the power of alliances. María says this bunny also represents that wildlife now have more forests to provide their shelter and home. María says she is glad the bunny is here with me! And I am glad that I have my abundance bunny as a reminder of this remarkable story of dreams that are coming true, of hope for this world.

Suggested Readings:

Most bibliographies recommend the works of Linda Schele, especially:
A Forest of Kings, The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya by Linda Schele and David Freidel

In my own library, I have enjoyed:

The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Sun, A Mayan Tale of Ecstasy, Time, and Finding One's True Form by Martin Prechtel (who has written three other books based on Mayan tales)

Popol Vuh , translated by Dennis Tedlock

Secrets of Mayan Science/Religion by Humbatz Men

The Mayan Factor, Path Beyond Technology by Jose Arguelles with Foreword by Brian Swimme

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