THE MAYAN CONNECTION - LOS CIMIENTOSALLIANCE

History

ORIGINS

The ancestors of today's Los Cimientos Maya K'iche community moved to the land known as Los Cimientos in the late 1800s. Situated in the municipality of Chajul, in the department of Quiche, in the Cuchamatanes Mountains, the land is rich and productive, allowing for a traditional highland Guatemala agricultural life. After suffering military oppression dating back to the times of the conquistadors the community decided to try and find a safe place to settle in the mountains Cuchumatan Mountains, where they engage in subsistence agriculture rather than work on Latino owned plantations.

So as to avoid potential conflict with the neighbouring Maya Ixil people, community leaders approached the Maya Ixil council in Chajul to ask if they could move their families to an area of land that was then uninhabited. The Ixil elders gave them their blessing along with a document from the Chajul Town Council that gave the community of Los Cimientos the right to settle on the land. The people of Los Cimientos began to rebuild their community while living peacefully with their Ixil neighbors.

In 1900 the president of Guatemala, Manuel Estrada Cabrero, initiated a process of giving land titles for those areas of land outside municipality holdings. In 1909 an elder on behalf of the community of Los Cimientos received title to the land from the president. This title was inscribed in the Second Registry of Property in Quetzaltenango. In the mid 1930s Diego Itzep Rojop, a respected leader, inherited the title to the land from his father. In 1973 he decided to give land titles to a further 65 members of the community. Each of these titles were registered with the Registry of Property in Quetzaltenango.

MASSACRES IN THE MOUNTAINS

After the 1954 coup which overthrew the democratic government of Jacob Arbenz, Guatemala suffered a string of military dictatorships and civil war against revolutionary liberation movements. In the early 1980´s the dictatorships of Lucas García and Rios Montt engaged in widespread massacres of indigenous populations in an effort to eradicate the social support for the rebel movements. The people of Los Cimientos were not spared.

On May 24th 1981, fifteen members of the community went to the market in Finca San Francisco to sell produce. On that day the army surrounded the market and slaughtered many of the innocent men, women and children, including fourteen residents of the Los Cimientos community. The only survivor from Los Cimientos was a nine year old child who had been hidden under the bodies.

Shortly after this attack the army invaded Los Cimientos and accused the people of being sympathizers with the guerilla. The army found two elders, Mayan priests in their 70´s lighting candles and praying in the cemetery. The soldiers brutally killed them in front of the rest of the community. The families of the community were told by the army to leave before they were killed by the bombing that would shortly commence. The community fled their land and headed through the mountain paths witnessing friends and neighbors being tortured and burnt as homes and villages were destroyed.

The Los Cimientos families only managed to take a handful of personal belongings with them. Some families later returned to their land to try and salvage what they could, but they found everything burnt to the ground. The community thus began a stretch of thirteen years living as refugees while being exploited as a cheap source of labor in the surrounding fincas-large export oriented plantations.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND

In 1985 the people of Los Cimientos presented a petition to the Guatemalan President Venicio Cerezo. He referred the case to INTA (Instituto Nacional de Transportacion de la Agricultura) and after an investigation that organization concluded that the people of Los Cimientos were the rightful owners of the land. However, INTA lacked the apparatus to enforce such a finding and thus referred the case to the Court of First Instance in Santa Cruz de Quiche.

In a terrible reminder of the illegal influence of the military over the Guatemalan judicial system during that era, the court found that, due to the role of the military within the armed conflict the courts had no power to order the return of the land. Again in 1987 and 1989 the owners of Los Cimientos presented petitions to the President only to be referred again to INTA and the Court of First Instance and to be given similar responses.

In 1989 the community was told by the government that they could return to their land. The community returned to visit their land to find that their ancestral cemetery had been destroyed, and a army base had been built on that sacred site. As part of a widespread plan to bring indigenous communities under government and army control, the army had resettled fifty Maya Ixil families to live in Los Cimientos. They created a village on the former cemetery in 1989 that is known today as Xeputul. These families were part of the Civil Patrol, meaning they were armed and participated, without pay, in military patrols of the area. They were originally residents and land owners near the town of Chajul.

The original Los Cimientos Maya K´iche community persevered with their efforts to reclaim their land and hired a lawyer in 1990 who initiated a lawsuit in the Court of First Instance in Quiche. Again they received the same response that their titles to the land were valid but the court couldn't enforce their claim against the Minister of Defense. Later in 1992 representatives of the community approached CERJ (the Council of Ethnic Communities) one of the leading human rights organizations in Guatemala at that time. CERJ organized several meetings that were attended by all the relevant parties. In July 1992 INTA stated that the land was registered in the community members' names but that the involved parties should resolve the issue through the court system! CERJ continued to hold meetings with governmental agencies, the Ixil and the K'iche.

RETURN COME WHAT MAY

In August 1994 after receiving government approval the people of Los Cimientos took the decision to re-occupy their land, and take the risks involved in facing the hostility of the Ixil Civil Patrol. They returned and occupied approximately one-third of their rightfully owned land while the Ixil continued to live on the other two-thirds. This quickly led to government response, and by August 7th the army, two governmental agencies along with the K'iche and Ixil signed an agreement that a final study of the facts would be made and those who were not the legal owners would leave the land peacefully. The governmental agencies would purchase land for the non legal occupants to settle elsewhere. In February 1995 a presidential commission studied all documentation and published a report that again confirmed the legitimacy of the K´iche titles. The K'iche were to return to their legally owned land.

The government, however, continued to support the Ixil and refused to aid the K'iche, leaving them to petition again. The result has been incessant conflicts between the two ethnic groups, with the Ixil taking a variety of illegal and violent steps to stop the K´iche community from taking posession of the entirety of their lands. The Ixil have destroyed food crops, killed their horses and installed a water system that cut off the K'iches water supply. Moreover, the Ixil community has been able, through access to envangelical religious groups and donor organizations such as US AID, to strengthen their own infrustructure and power positions at the expense of the K´iche community. None the less, the K´iche community of Los Cimientos continued to live on the small part of their ancestral lands that they could.

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

On the 25th June 2001 the K´iche families of Los Cimientos were awoken at dawn by a group of men armed with machetes, guns and sharpened sticks the size of baseball bats. The community was told they had two hours to leave Los Cimientos or they would be killed. So as to reinforce this point, the armed men raped at least two K´iche women in front of their young children. Once again the K'iche landowners were forced to flee their homes and their land, leaving behind their possessions, food and crops, and becoming once again impoverished internal refugees.

The community fled to the lands of Xeputul II near Cotzal, a village of 29 houses which is on colder land, and not sufficient in size for the 230 families. Moreover, they were subject to further human rights abuses there. On December 29, 2001, the community again moved to Batzula Churrancho, Cunén, also in Quiche, where they are safer.

Police reports have been filed but to date the police have made no arrests nor helped to return the community to their land. This is even after the leaders of the Ixil community during negotiations admitted that they were responsible for the crimes and that the K'iche are the legal owners of the land. The Ixil continue to threaten further violence if the K'iche families of Los Cimientos try to return to their land.

The government response is that they are powerless to enforce the rule of law, and cannot move the Ixil from the land. The Government is now offering to buy other land for the K'iche. However, high population pressures make fertile land in Guatemala difficult to find, and lands of the beauty, fertility and value of Los Cimientos are rare. Since the attack in June the community has offered to sell part of their land to the government for a fair market price (estimated at US $7,500,000 based on similar property sales). However the government refuses to consider buying the land and insists that they accept other land in exchange. The lands that are being offered to the community are between ten and twenty times smaller than their own land.

CONCLUSION

Today's Los Cimientos community consists of 230 Maya K'iche families who are again living as internal refugees within Guatemala. The community's leaders attend what seem to be endless resolution/negotiation meetings with the government and plead with humanitarian organizations to continue providing survival rations. While they are able to find some legal help with respect to their case before the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, they are severely lacking in resources to hire lawyers for help within the Guatemala legal system. The lack of education and Spanish fluency makes negotiating with the Guatemala government and with aid organizations difficult.

UPDATE - RECENT EVENTS: 2002 - 2004

On December 8th, 2002 Los Cimientos families abandoned all hope of returning home to their fields in Los Cimientos and relocated to new land in San Vicente. Forced by hunger, inadequate housing in a freezing climate and the prospect of being forcibly driven again from their tenuous refugee site, community leaders accepted the new land exchange offered by the government of president Alfonzo Portillo. The community sacrificed Los Cimientos (6000 acres with 5 pure water rivers, producing 3 to 4 harvests a year of a wide variety of organically grown crops) in trade for San Vicente (about 2000 acres with one polluted river and 2 to 3 harvests a year possible with the use of agricultural chemicals).

The government of Guatemalan president Portillo proclaimed this land exchange to be a great victory for the government's resolution of the Los Cimientos case - citing it as second in importance to the peace accords. This governmental communications ministry announced around the clock on national T.V. that this was a reconciliation between the K'iche and the Ixil. In legally signed agreements, the Guatemalan government promised to give the community food support until their own food crops were established and on-site health care. The promises also included infrastructure and houses to replace those lost in the Ixil attack on Los Cimientos. All these promises remain unfulfilled - though government word games try to make legal channels believe they have fulfilled the agreements. Children have died from malnutrition and suffer from malnutrition-related illnesses. There are no medicines available.

On January 15th the newly elected government of Oscar Berger came into power. Now, the Berger government assumes responsibility for a Guatemala with an staggering legacy of problems on all levels, among them, the promises made by Portillo and his representatives to resolve the Los Cimientos land case justly and with dignity.

The Mayan Connection - Los Cimientos Alliance invites you to become part of creating a positive resolution that helps fulfill the vision of the Guatemalan Peace Accords of 1996. Join us as a volunteer or send a tax-deductible donations to the Los Cimientos Alliance.

More Information:

• For events up to March 1st, 2002 refer to: "Timeline"
• For a better understanding of the relationships of the various organizations and people involved in this case please download and review the powermap: "powermap.doc" (23kb)