THE PARTICIPATION OF THE INDIGENOUS WOMAN: INES' STORY
I am Quiché, from a municipal capital of El Quiché. I'm sixteen years old.
When the organization came, the Guerilla Organization of the Poor, I was with my parents. They were already thinking revolutionarily, they wanted to help the poor, but we didn't know where the Organization is. We already knew through the radio that there was one, there was also propaganda from the CUC, we would read it and we could see that everything it said was true.
My parents are Christians, they saw what the Holy Bible said, and also a priest came who would say things that were true. He gave a very good mass, he had photos of the fallen priests, the people would look at the photos and make their confessions. That's how we began to take up revolutionary ideas. My father met with the father, he was one of the first to organize for the Bible. He joined the whole family. The Ladinos said that it wasn't good, because before the father would give three masses a day in the town, then they said he was a communist because he only met with the Indians.
My father was from the CUC, he would carry out tasks, he would tell us many things about the justice that they're doing. He was working in the United States before, because we didn't have money or clothes. He was there five years, when he came back we were already aware, my mother told him that there were injustices, that was Lucas did was not good, and he said that it's true.
I realized how they discriminated against us Indigenous kids in school, how there were only a few of us there, they would hit us and push us down. That's how we started realizing the discrimination against us.
My mother would say that all the evil they were doing wasn't right. Like the mayor, who when the earthquake happened made the people work to get back what they had given to people from other places. My mother would say that guerrillas, they do good things, they help the poor and fight for them. She would say in Nicaragua the rich are fighting the poor. We saw that they were killing people, that the comrades there were fighting too. Sometimes my mother would cry, she would say that those things are done here too. That's how our eyes began opening.
The army wasn't there yet, it was more in the North, but it wasn't with us yet because there weren't many guerillas, we were organized but it wasn't visible. My cousin made flyers, he would hand them out in the town. The Ladinos who knew how to read the best got a little scared, then some of them became government spies, out of fear. Some indigenous people too, they became spies because of love for money. When they passed out flyers, they wouldn't bring them to the indigenous people, they wouldn't say anything, they would just keep thinking the same way, how you couldn't talk to just anyone.
They wanted to throw the father out of there, motorcycles and cars went by every little while to kidnap him, but he was already taking action, he was defending himself and we were protecting him too and we took action. Then the father left, we were sad, something that had been happy was fading.
After a while a comrade who was sick came, he was on his way to the North, he stayed with us. He taught us to put together and take apart guns, before we were afraid of guns, even worse they had had us the indigenous so deceived, we saw the gun as something very big, we didn't know.
Other refugees from the repression were coming, we helped them with corn, beans, keeping things in the house. My father was handing out flyers and organizing, we didn't find out because it he kept this separate.
I was already thinking about my enlistment. The comrade told me — that I should prepare, that I should enlist. I would look at the people who were suffering a lot, I had my house and my studies, but I thought that not only I should be happy when some of my people are sick, that some don't even have anything to eat, that it wasn't fair. I thought a lot because I didn't want to leave my studies, but I thought now it is the time to fight — that there was a lot of inequality and there should have been equality.
My mother said that it was OK for me to enlist, but my father doesn't want me to. He said that women couldn't fight, they can't take it, you have to suffer hunger and rain. He said that the suffering was a lot for a woman, better afterwards when there are more opportunities. I knew that I could take it, that the comrade says women can take the gun too, I said I'm still young, I don't have a child on my back. My father didn't want to let me come. The day I left he was in a meeting, I made my decision myself. Then my parents found out that I had made up my mind to join the struggle, and little by little they understood. I joined in September of 1980.
In the first camp I saw all the comrades with their pants. I felt content, amazed to see so many guerillas, I was very happy to know that I was fighting for my people and that I was going to have my gun to fight. Then they gave me a gun and a uniform.
We went to take Zacualpa and Joyabaj, we handed out flyers and had a rally. Some ran away, they got scared, a ton stayed too, they shouted and gave us money, they picked up the flyers, so that each person could have one. They followed us until the exit. On the roads we found people who would give us oranges. After that the people brought a lot up, and now food was coming for us at the camp.
Then I ended up the only woman at the camp, the comrades from before were scattered and there were all new ones. It feels sad when there aren't more women, even though the men treat you the same. Even though I was a woman I always had my decision to fight, I always participated in the battles. Now there are lots of women comrades again, so I feel happy.
— Inés (Maria Magdalena Pascual Hernández)
People from around the world are sharing their own memories related to Guatemala in the form of videos, art, music, photographs, and audio recordings. Do you have a memory to share? »
Introduction
A companion project, Granito: Every Memory Matters (GMEM) (www.granitomem.com) has been created as an intergenerational, interactive public archive of memories intended to expose further the history of the Guatemalan genocide. GMEM aims to harness the power of storytelling and create an exchange that awakens and restores the collective memory of Guatemala's recent past, which claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people, 45,000 of whom were "disappeared."
Anyone with a memory or story to share can contribute using simple media tools. These memories, when brought together, will form a collective narrative that will combat el olvido -- the purposeful forgetting that bolsters a culture of impunity -- and inspires a more hopeful future. Says Yates, "We hope to begin a conversation across the generations to take away the fear of talking about the genocide."
People from around the world are sharing their own memories related to Guatemala in the form of videos, art, music, photographs, and audio recordings. Do you have a memory to share? »
Filmmaker Pamela Yates takes you behind the development of the original "Granito: Every Memory Matters" outreach project.
GMEM is a project of Skylight Pictures, developed at the BAVC Producers Institute with funding from ITVS, Ford Foundation, The Bertha Foundation, Latino Public Broadcasting and the Open Society Foundations.
Memory: "I Was Fighting For My People"
Pamela Yates' memory of Maria Magdalena Pascual Hernández ("Inés")
March 1, 2012. The darkened National Theater of Guatemala is completely filled with people intently watching the premiere of GRANITO: How to Nail a Dictator. Towards the very end of the film, Inés, a 16 year-old guerrilla, reveals the concept behind the name of the film. She says, "We are making a big effort, each contributing our tiny grain of sand, our granito, so that our country can be free." In the audience that night was Inés' brother Valeriano who hadn't seen his older sister in 30 years and didn't know this footage of her existed.
May 1, 1982. We had walked all night long to meet up and film with the resistance fighters of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor. It was in a clearing in the woods in the highlands of the Quiché in the Augusto César Sandino Front or FACS that I first met Inés. She was one of the few women fighters and so self-possessed, a leader even then, though she was just 16. Her compañeros and compañeras listened closely when she spoke. She was Maya K'iche and, although Spanish was her second language, she spoke passionately about the role of indigenous women in the armed struggle. I could tell she was a well-trained fighter.
March 8, 2012. A week after the premiere in Guatemala City in 2012, Inés' brother Valeriano found me on Facebook. He told me that his sister Inés, whose real name was María Magdalena Pascual Hernández from Zacualpa, had been killed in combat just months after I filmed her for When the Mountains Tremble. Valeriano told me that 2 other brothers were also killed battling the Army incursions into the highlands, one in 1983 and the other in 1989. Then a letter surfaced in my archives -- Inés' story spoken orally and transcribed, sent to me carefully typed on onion skin paper and airmailed in 1982 to my studio in New York. The stamp bore an image from the Popol Vuh.
Inés gave me a great gift - this concept of granito -- how each of us have a tiny grain of sand to contribute to positive change -- and I've carried it with me throughout my documentary filmmaking life, always trying to put it to use. And always remembering Inés.
-- Pamela Yates
THE PARTICIPATION OF THE INDIGENOUS WOMAN: INES' STORY
I am Quiché, from a municipal capital of El Quiché. I'm sixteen years old.
When the organization came, the Guerilla Organization of the Poor, I was with my parents. They were already thinking revolutionarily, they wanted to help the poor, but we didn't know where the Organization is. We already knew through the radio that there was one, there was also propaganda from the CUC, we would read it and we could see that everything it said was true.
My parents are Christians, they saw what the Holy Bible said, and also a priest came who would say things that were true. He gave a very good mass, he had photos of the fallen priests, the people would look at the photos and make their confessions. That's how we began to take up revolutionary ideas. My father met with the father, he was one of the first to organize for the Bible. He joined the whole family. The Ladinos said that it wasn't good, because before the father would give three masses a day in the town, then they said he was a communist because he only met with the Indians.
My father was from the CUC, he would carry out tasks, he would tell us many things about the justice that they're doing. He was working in the United States before, because we didn't have money or clothes. He was there five years, when he came back we were already aware, my mother told him that there were injustices, that was Lucas did was not good, and he said that it's true.
I realized how they discriminated against us Indigenous kids in school, how there were only a few of us there, they would hit us and push us down. That's how we started realizing the discrimination against us.
My mother would say that all the evil they were doing wasn't right. Like the mayor, who when the earthquake happened made the people work to get back what they had given to people from other places. My mother would say that guerrillas, they do good things, they help the poor and fight for them. She would say in Nicaragua the rich are fighting the poor. We saw that they were killing people, that the comrades there were fighting too. Sometimes my mother would cry, she would say that those things are done here too. That's how our eyes began opening.
The army wasn't there yet, it was more in the North, but it wasn't with us yet because there weren't many guerillas, we were organized but it wasn't visible. My cousin made flyers, he would hand them out in the town. The Ladinos who knew how to read the best got a little scared, then some of them became government spies, out of fear. Some indigenous people too, they became spies because of love for money. When they passed out flyers, they wouldn't bring them to the indigenous people, they wouldn't say anything, they would just keep thinking the same way, how you couldn't talk to just anyone.
They wanted to throw the father out of there, motorcycles and cars went by every little while to kidnap him, but he was already taking action, he was defending himself and we were protecting him too and we took action. Then the father left, we were sad, something that had been happy was fading.
After a while a comrade who was sick came, he was on his way to the North, he stayed with us. He taught us to put together and take apart guns, before we were afraid of guns, even worse they had had us the indigenous so deceived, we saw the gun as something very big, we didn't know.
Other refugees from the repression were coming, we helped them with corn, beans, keeping things in the house. My father was handing out flyers and organizing, we didn't find out because it he kept this separate.
I was already thinking about my enlistment. The comrade told me -- that I should prepare, that I should enlist. I would look at the people who were suffering a lot, I had my house and my studies, but I thought that not only I should be happy when some of my people are sick, that some don't even have anything to eat, that it wasn't fair. I thought a lot because I didn't want to leave my studies, but I thought now it is the time to fight -- that there was a lot of inequality and there should have been equality.
My mother said that it was OK for me to enlist, but my father doesn't want me to. He said that women couldn't fight, they can't take it, you have to suffer hunger and rain. He said that the suffering was a lot for a woman, better afterwards when there are more opportunities. I knew that I could take it, that the comrade says women can take the gun too, I said I'm still young, I don't have a child on my back. My father didn't want to let me come. The day I left he was in a meeting, I made my decision myself. Then my parents found out that I had made up my mind to join the struggle, and little by little they understood. I joined in September of 1980.
In the first camp I saw all the comrades with their pants. I felt content, amazed to see so many guerillas, I was very happy to know that I was fighting for my people and that I was going to have my gun to fight. Then they gave me a gun and a uniform.
We went to take Zacualpa and Joyabaj, we handed out flyers and had a rally. Some ran away, they got scared, a ton stayed too, they shouted and gave us money, they picked up the flyers, so that each person could have one. They followed us until the exit. On the roads we found people who would give us oranges. After that the people brought a lot up, and now food was coming for us at the camp.
Then I ended up the only woman at the camp, the comrades from before were scattered and there were all new ones. It feels sad when there aren't more women, even though the men treat you the same. Even though I was a woman I always had my decision to fight, I always participated in the battles. Now there are lots of women comrades again, so I feel happy.
-- Inés (Maria Magdalena Pascual Hernández)
People from around the world are sharing their own memories related to Guatemala in the form of videos, art, music, photographs, and audio recordings. Do you have a memory to share? »
Memory: "It's My Turn To Give Back"
Fredy Peccerelli is the Executive Director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG) and leads the team at La Verbena cemetery in excavating the mass graves of Guatemala's generation of disappeared.?Through a process of comparing DNA samples, bodies continue to be identified by FAFG.
After his father received death threats, Fredy and his family were forced to leave Guatemala. He describes what it was like to be uprooted from Guatemala and to grow up in the Bronx. He vows never to leave again.
Transcript
I grew up in New York. My family left in 1980. My dad left in September of 1980. My mom and my sister left in October of 1980 and my brother and I left on November 24th 1980. It was thanksgiving I think when we got to New York. And it was probably one of the worst days of my life. Everyone was happy there, but I was miserable. Miserable because we didn't know if we were coming back, miserable because I just felt like I was ripped out, miserable because we lived with my grandparents and I knew I wasn't gonna see them any more, I wasn't going to see my friends any more. But my father had gotten some death threat letters and although he didn't want to go, everyone else that he knew was being killed all around him. All of his friends at the university were being killed. So, he was given an opportunity, somebody gave him an opportunity to leave. So they sent him a letter in red ink and my mother pretty much forced him to go. And after he left, my mother received a letter saying we know Fredy has left and the day he sets foot in Guatemala, we'll kill him. So then my mother left. And eventually I finished school, my brother and I just finished the school year. My uncle also left. My mother's brother left to Nicaragua. And after that we left and we went to the Bronx.
It was horrible, at first. I guess initially, the first couple of years, I was too busy being sad and just not understanding the whole situation just made me miserable. I just wanted to come home. And I didn't really fit in. We lived in a building that was mostly Hispanic and across the street there was a building that was mostly African Americans and they'd fight. They'd like throw rocks and bottles at each other and I just didn't get it. And I was caught up in the middle of all this racial tension in the Bronx in those years and graffiti and gangs and... I was used to being in the street all day playing marbles and throwing my top on the floor. Although Guatemala was very dangerous in other ways I didn't have that to deal with.
I grew up with New York problems not with Guatemalan problems. So that marked me later. I sort of felt, you know when I got older I sort of felt like I had the opportunity to not be here during the worst times and that now that I can do something about it, well, now it's my turn to give back. It's my turn to contribute, because I had the opportunity to survive it. Not that it didn't affect me. The conflict affected me directly and changed my life forever. But, it did I mean... How's it marked me? Well it made me a New Yorker.
There was a time when we had really serious death threats and my mother asked me to leave. I said I'm not leaving. I just said I'm never leaving again. If I ever leave it will be because I want to leave. Not because I have to. I've done that. It didn't work. Or maybe it did work, I don't know, but I'm not doing it again. I believe that I should be free enough and safe enough to do work that's so important to so many people. And I won't be scared or pushed into leaving, it's not gonna happen.
People from around the world are sharing their own memories related to Guatemala in the form of videos, art, music, photographs, and audio recordings. Do you have a memory to share? »
Memory: "My Father Vicente"
Rigoberta Menchú, the storyteller in Pamela Yates' film When the Mountains Tremble, is the first indigenous woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Menchú's mother, father and brother were all killed by the army during the era of dictatorial regimes. In exile she began her international campaign to stop the violence in Guatemala. After the peace accords were signed, Menchú returned home and started the political movement WINAQ that is now working to achieve a more inclusive and democratic Guatemala.
This interview was recorded in June 2012 for the Granito: Every Memory Matters project.
Menchú: Greetings to Pamela, I wish great successes to Pamela and Granito and to everyone.
Interviewer: Thank you very much. Pamela wanted to ask you: What memories do you have of you father, especially of his teachings?
Menchú: My father was a leader. He had a lot to teach. Teachings that I carried throughout my life.
He was a man of faith, for example. He always believed in what was possible. Everything he proposed he set out to do. I believe that he accomplished many goals. Goals of his rural organization, goals of planting crops on our own land... the trees that I see now in (Chimil) are the ones my father planted.
He left footprints (a legacy). More than anything, I remember him as a sincere man, a peasant, humble, someone who set out to achieve what he knew he had to do.
I don't know... my dad... he was an early riser, he would do everything, he'd cheer people up. Maybe he passed that on to me. I always try to rouse people wherever I go, because I know that people are important allies in our own personal struggles.
I always remember his sense of humor - he was rarely sad. He would always make up his own jokes and his own stories. What I remember most about my father is his positive attitude. When I feel stuck in what I am doing, I remember how my father would inspire me to find a solution. I believed in him.
The passing years have made it possible for me to really get to know him. And now I know him from new angles, perhaps now, I also understand the more serious side of him.
My dad didn't like to talk about politics or about organizing - he didn't like to bring external problems into our home, which is why I try to do the same. I try to leave all of my problems outside the door.
Yes, I believe that my dad always tried to keep his ideas and actions separate from us, unless it was a natural process to include us in it. We were never obligated to think the way he did, nor to repeat his ideas.
We also knew that he dealt with many external issues. People around us were sometimes violent; there were many accusations, persecutions. But within the house he was nothing more than a sincere humble man, a father.
He would ask, "Hi, how are you? Everything is fine, thank you," - that was all. That is to say, he was very careful to keep us from mental illness or psychological harm. He kept us from the irrational "illness" of adopting ideas that weren't our own. It is part of his spirituality.
People from around the world are sharing their own memories related to Guatemala in the form of videos, art, music, photographs, and audio recordings. Do you have a memory to share? »