猫咪社区

At an elevation of nearly 4,000 meters above sea level, Comitancillo, a province in northwestern Guatemala, was a formidable place to farm. Maya-Mam communities had lived on these barren slopes in northwestern Guatemala for nearly 500 years. The Mam were one of 24 indigenous cultures in Guatemala, a country where although nearly 50 percent of the population were indigenous people, the country had never elected an indigenous president. The mestizo elite owned politics and power in Guatemala. Marginalized to the mountains in the northwest, the Mam survived on growing food and grazing livestock.

Looking down the mountainside, I witnessed how the Mam adapted to live on their mountain fortress: They鈥檇 carved steps into the mountainside, thousands of terraces that cascaded down to the bottom of the valley. I was awestruck by such architecture. Milpa was a Spanish word that summed up the three crops that had sustained the Mam for centuries: maize, beans, and squash. Planting all three crops together formed a sacrosanct principle of Mam farming.

The air was thin and cold. 鈥淥ur seeds are hardy and meant for these mountains. The seeds people try to sell us don鈥檛 do well in Comitancillo. They grow and the wind breaks them,鈥� Rosa told me.

Years of living on the mountains had also ground Rosa into a hardy woman. The 50-year-old woman barely reached 5 feet. She wore a striking turquoise blue huipil, a traditional blouse, embroidered with magenta flowers. She parted her long black hair in the middle and braided it down her back in a single rope. Rosa was a widow. Her husband had died 12 years earlier after falling from the rickety scaffolding on a construction site and quickly dying of his injuries. He鈥檇 been working as a migrant laborer in Xela, a city situated in one of the valley flats.

Rosa didn鈥檛 learn of her husband鈥檚 death until five days after it happened. His body came home in a crudely constructed casket, and she buried him behind their home, marking his grave with a small wooden cross. A green plastic rosary dangled from the cross and shook in the cold wind that whipped over the mountain and stung my cheeks.

Alone on the mountainside, she raised five grandchildren. She lived in a two-room house made of mud bricks. The fa莽ade was rounded and smoothed with mud and mortar, and white-washed with a mixture of lime, ash, and water. Her recent maize harvest hung on a rope from below a roof made of iron sheets. The maize colored her home with spectacular shades: eggplant purple, indigo blue, crimson red, orange like a dusky sun.

鈥淚 grow food for survival,鈥� she said plainly. Rosa didn鈥檛 sell her food in the market, and even if she did sell, the return for small-scale farmers in Guatemala was marginal. It was the sad absurdity of being an indigenous farmer growing ancient maize: They grew their staple food, preserved for hundreds of years on these hostile slopes, sold it for mere cents, and bought back the imported GMO varieties for 300 percent more than the regular price. The market laws that promoted subsidizing and dumping imported grains from the U.S. Midwest in Guatemala punished poor, indigenous farmers. How could they compete with the mechanics and productivity of multinational farming operations? Even so, Rosa loved to farm. When she planted maize, she remembered brighter days and memories of the past with her husband. He was a good man, she said, and also a farmer. Together they gave birth鈥斺��dar a la luz鈥� she said in Spanish, which meant 鈥済ive light鈥濃�攖o six children.

While she was born in Comitancillo, Rosa didn鈥檛 grow up on the land. She spent most of her childhood working on coffee fincas, plantations along the humid coastlines in western Guatemala. The government forced Mam and Maya farmers in the northwestern highlands to abandon their milpa fields and travel to the plantations to work as laborers. Rosa鈥檚 family were amongst those relocated farmers. The practice traced back to the policies of the Spanish colonial regime in the 18th century. Not until 1947 did all forms of forced labor become illegal, with the foundation for basic workers鈥� rights in Guatemala. But the Mam population was so poor and downtrodden that many farmers continued to seek low-wage employment on the coastal plantations, including members of Rosa鈥檚 family. Over 100 years of forced labor had disrupted the Mam鈥檚 agricultural productivity. It had severed the flow of knowledge from Rosa鈥檚 mother and father to their daughter.

But Rosa didn鈥檛 want to talk about how the past had imprisoned her parents on the plantations. Rosa wanted to talk about the present moment, and about what was under her feet. She wanted to talk about what every woman in Comitancillo wanted to talk about. She wanted to talk about the owners of the mine who had blasted open the mountainsides and whose destruction of the mountain was creeping closer to her land and livelihood every day. She wanted to talk about how the mines had already changed everything for the Mam.

Like many women I鈥檇 come to meet, Rosa deeply feared the loss of her farmland, terrified that the Goldcorp Corporation, a Canadian-owned and registered mining company, would come knocking on her door and issue an order, legitimized by the Guatemalan government. 鈥淵ou have no other option; you have to sell your land. You must go,鈥� they would threaten her. With force, they could remove her from the land; they could take the land out from under her feet. 鈥淲hen I think about my land and the little I have 鈥︹�� her voice trailed off. 鈥淚f the company takes it, what am I going to do? Where will I go?鈥�

Mam women in Comitancillo waited anxiously for that sudden knock on the door, for the government鈥檚 orders, armed with weaponry and authority, to leave their ancestral lands. Fear grew in the fields. Uncertainty of what was to come hung in the cold mountain air. Women knew that, while they planted the milpa on the surface of the Earth, it was what lay beneath that mattered. The mountain was a body filled with veins of gold and silver.

With recent extreme weather and reduced crop productivity, the women also worried that the mines were drying up the mountainside. While Goldcorp鈥檚 mines in Comitancillo consumed an enormous quantity of groundwater, upwards of 250,000 liters of water an hour, they weren鈥檛 paying a cent to the Guatemalan government.

And then there was the pollution鈥攖he cyanide used in gold mining that Physicians for Human Rights also believed was connected to violent rashes and respiratory effects in children in villages downstream of Goldcorp鈥檚 mining activities.

In 2010, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, acting on behalf of Mam communities in San Marcos, demanded that Goldcorp and the Guatemalan government respond to the issues of the overconsumption and contamination of water by providing nearby communities with sufficient, safe drinking water. But both Goldcorp and the government denied reports of poor health among the Mam and the mine鈥檚 environmental impact on the land. They ignored the commission鈥檚 order.

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Amelia drew no boundaries between her home and the land that fed her. The balance of her work as a farmer in the fields and a caretaker in the home ebbed and flowed as the sun and moon tug at the sea. I sat outside Amelia鈥檚 home in Tuixcajchis, a village located less than 10 kilometers away from the Goldcorp Corporation鈥檚 newest silver mine in Chocoyos. The sounds of dynamite shattering rock echoed too closely to home for Amelia. The mine was on her doorstep.

Amelia moved about the land with the rhythm of a honeybee. She scattered maize for the birds and removed the sun-and-starch-stiffened laundry from the clothing line. She emerged from the kitchen holding a red washing basin full of large, oval, tangerine, and purple frijoles and spread them on a wooden table to dry in the sun.

I watched young chickens scurry in and out of the kitchen, hunting for fallen maize kernels. A gargantuan male turkey made a regal show of promenading across the patio, opening his black and white feathers like a fan, making a dramatic whooshing sound. The white and red and purple milpa harvest hung under the roof awning to dry. She had piled up the season鈥檚 harvest of ayote, a watermelon-sized indigenous squash, beside the kitchen. At my feet, month-old puppies somersaulted about in happy play and a pied-colored pup tugged at my shoelace.

Amelia was dressed in a navy blue skirt and red embroidered blouse with a black belt, the traditional colors of the Mam. The 35-year-old woman had grown up under starkly different circumstances than some of the older women I interviewed. Her parents allowed her to walk two kilometers every morning to take classes in the single-roomed school. Amelia never graduated past primary school, but she knew how to read and write and speak fluently in Spanish, an anomaly in the isolated highlands where government services lagged behind, resulting in the lowest literacy rates in Guatemala, particularly amongst older women.

In the fight against the mine, Amelia used language as a weapon. Her words were bullets to fire back at the company, who communicated their every move in Spanish. They facilitated community meetings in Spanish. They prattled off news and updates on the radio in Spanish. Amelia鈥檚 efforts to understand, interpret, and defend the Mam doubled as her mind searched for words to translate cultural meaning. The sound of Spanish came from the tip of the tongue, whereas Mam grew from the back of the throat. Often, she struggled to find the right word, the bullet that would penetrate. Spanish lacked the diversity of the Mam鈥檚 lexicon for understanding the intricacies of land. But Amelia鈥檚 literacy gave her power in her community. She was the president of the Tuixcajchis Women鈥檚 Association, a group of 30 women who met weekly to discuss their issues at home and on the farms. They hosted agricultural training workshops to help women diversify crops and apply new techniques to prevent drought and erosion. And, with the new silver mine at Chocoyos only a short distance away, they were actively organizing and collaborating with other women鈥檚 groups in San Marcos to protest against the mine.

The radio crackled and blared a Mexican ranchera song. The singer鈥檚 voice whined of lost love and failed crops. When the song cut out, the radio DJ鈥檚 voice began speaking in a fast current of Mam. I couldn鈥檛 understand, but I saw how Amelia react to his words. Her body bristled and she clucked her tongue in disapproval.

鈥淲hat did he say?鈥� I asked.

鈥淗e鈥檚 talking about a new program that鈥檚 supposed to help women living on less than a dollar a day. The government is promising to give allowances and seeds to women鈥攁s if that鈥檚 going to really help,鈥� Amelia said. Her voice was bitter, sharp as a machete.

She had grown weary of the government鈥檚 tactics intended to sway the Mam into surrender. Government officials journeyed eight hours from Guatemala City to host rallies and deliver boisterous speeches in Comitancillo. They paraded through the surrounding Mam villages, handing out sacks of GMO maize seeds with empty promises of building schools and health facilities bouncing off their tongues. Many women planted the maize seed, hopeful. But the cold mountain winds in Comitancillo were too much for seeds that were modified to do well within specific conditions and applications. Women couldn鈥檛 afford the expensive synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that the GMO maize required. Usually, the maize stunted, bent, and broke in half. Women watched their entire fields collapse and felt the strain on their family鈥檚 food stores, their savings, their means of survival. Yet these ill-suited government solutions, these cheap gifts, at best, continued in Comitancillo.

鈥淭hey鈥檙e trying to buy our support for the mine,鈥� said Amelia. Only a few months earlier, Amelia received visitors, two mestizo men, who worked for the mining company. They wanted to talk with Amelia and her husband about the benefits the Chocoyos mine would bring to Tuixcajchis and other nearby villages. 鈥淣ew schools,鈥� they said. 鈥淣ew health centers and pharmacies,鈥� they promised. 鈥淛obs,鈥� they added enthusiastically, nodding at Amelia鈥檚 husband. She asked them to leave.

鈥淲e鈥檒l never work for the mine,鈥� she said defiantly. 鈥淭he majority of men at the mine aren鈥檛 Mam, they鈥檙e mestizo men from Xela. Thee engineers are all from la Ciudad, the capital city. The Mam aren鈥檛 working in positions of leadership鈥攖hey only do the physical labor. It鈥檚 dangerous, and the pay is very low.鈥�

In defiance, Amelia strove to make her land as productive as possible. She refused to be bought out by the government. She wanted her daughters to inherit the land and grow older knowing, deeply, what it meant to be a Mam woman. She was teaching them to feel, see, taste, and understand the satisfaction of being a farmer, how to eke from the Earth different shades of cultural sustenance鈥攖he ancient maize of a thousand colors, the tangerine and purple fava beans, the seeds of ayote, the foraged herbs like epazote.

Amelia showed me around the farm. Though it was only an acre of land, every inch of the place was under cultivation. She collected pig manure, vegetable waste, and dried maize stalks in giant heaps where she turned it weekly as the material transformed into black organic soil. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a solution to the productivity problem we鈥檙e facing today,鈥� she said confidently.

In a rectangular garden with a fence made from sticks, Amelia let the vegetable crops go to seed. She collected a handful of thin seeds from a kale crop and tucked them into the tiny cloth purse she wore around her neck on a string. She pointed to her medicinal plants and counted off the number of illnesses they鈥檇 treat: stomach flu, menstrual cramps, sore throat and colds, skin infections, and minor cuts and wounds. In order to reach the pharmacy in town, women had to walk three hours down the winding dirt road and three hours back up. 鈥淲e鈥檙e resurrecting the knowledge of our Mam ancestors to treat what we can, to tend to our health in the ways that we can,鈥� she explained.

Before I left Tuixcajchis, I accompanied Amelia to one of her meetings with the Tuixcajchis Women鈥檚 Association. We reached the meeting on foot, walking a kilometer along the mountain on well-trodden footpaths that cut through the empty fields. The dried maize stalks fluttered in a slight wind. A few sunken squash had been left behind. They deflated into the Earth, slowly rotting and returning to the soil where they had started as seeds.

鈥淟et us plant trees and grow old on our land. Let us live in peace.鈥�

The trail led into a tightly knit forest of pine and cypress trees. The pine needles stung my nostrils, the smell provoking memories of my childhood in northern Alberta. I felt a strange sense of protection offered by the trees. I felt comforted by the familiarity of the smell.

We reached a small clearing where a group of 20 women had gathered on the hard-packed earth. The topography of their skin revealed their age or their youthfulness: the older skin full of the lines of tributaries, the young skin dry and tight as desert. Some of the women bounced babies on their laps and others wore colorful slings that held sleeping babes on their backs. Toddlers waddled about and older children played a game of tag while the women talked and laughed together. They greeted us, one by one, with a gentle touch to the forehead, the Mam鈥檚 traditional greeting.

Women gathered beneath these trees every week to visit with one another, to speak in Mam, to give voice to the experiences of farming, of protecting the land, of being women. Beneath the large, protective branches of the trees, the women kept a nursery for tree seedlings. Beneath the trees, women planted the seeds of pine, cypress, and avocado in tiny black biodegradable bags of soil. They watched the seedlings over weeks, from germination to seedling. I estimated around a thousand seedlings, maybe more. When the rains returned each woman would go home with the seedlings and plant the trees on her land, acts of reforesting the barren mountains. Trees would bring back and hold the rain, they said. They鈥檇 provide food, forage, and fuel to keep the Mam alive on the arid slopes.

鈥淭he streams that flowed here before are dying. Our harvests were once plentiful, but today there鈥檚 only desert,鈥� explained an elderly woman holding a moon-faced baby on her lap. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 want our children and grandchildren to inherit this reality.鈥�

Only 10 days earlier, she and other women of the Tuixcajchis Women鈥檚 Association marched ten kilometers, joining hundreds of women from surrounding villages, to protest against the silver mine at Chocoyos. They linked arms and chanted 鈥�隆D茅janos en paz! D茅janos en paz! Leave us in peace! Leave us in peace!鈥� The Guatemalan military stood between the women and the road that led to the mine, armed with AK-47s. After five hours, a mestizo employee spoke with protest organizers and agreed to sign a letter that stated Goldcorp would cease all mining activities within two days, but nearly two weeks had passed and they could still hear the blasting of rock in the distance. They realized later that the agreement had been a hoax, a move to placate the women鈥檚 anger and demands that Goldcorp never had any intention of honoring. Undeterred, Amelia and the women were continuing to organize and strategize against the mine. It had been 10 long years of fighting, but even a decade wouldn鈥檛 age or persuade the women to put down their stones, or to keep Amelia鈥檚 tongue in her mouth, to silence her words in a language that wasn鈥檛 her own.

鈥淟et us plant trees and grow old on our land. Let us live in peace,鈥� said the old woman. 鈥淵ou tell that to the world.鈥�

This edited excerpt is from the book Women Who Dig: Farming, Feminism and the Fight to Feed the World by Trina Moyles with photographs by KJ Dakin, copyright 漏 2018. Reprinted by permission of .