Hi, and welcome to the third episode of Safe for Democracy.
Which is the second part of the Aftermath, which, in four shows, is the second part of our overarching series on Guatemala.
Simple.
Last time we worked our way from the coup against Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 through the repressive regimes of Carlos Castillo Armas and Jose Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes and how they provoked the creation of a guerrilla movement and the way the State and the guerrilla came together in a conflagration of violence—in which the rebels got much the worst of things—towards the end of the 1960s.
This episode’s a little less dark.
Violence in Guatemala was cyclical: State repression provoked demonstrations and organizing on the part of the populace, which invited greater repression that tended to wipe opposition out. And in the lull after the greatest waves of violence gave Guatemalan society time to begin rebuilding itself, time and again.
Today’s show covers the last such lull that Guatemala would have for a very long time.
This time we’re looking at the growth of Liberation Theology and radical social Catholicism in Guatemala and the parallel and related growth of the pan-indigenous movement that gave Maya Guatemalans a commanding, national voice for the first time in centuries.
I hope you guys aren’t tired of these two maps, and that they’re helping you out if you need them.
A crude map I drew to help myself out
And here’s another much larger, much more detailed, actually accurate map for reference. Click to see it full size.
As promised in the episode, here are some of the pictures from Pensemos Juntos, Let’s Think Together, a book that the Catholic Action radio schools put together to do liberation education in the countryside, designed along the lines of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
From Pensemos Juntos, reproduced in Betsy Konefal’s For Every Indio Who Falls
“…this lesson included the text of Guatemala’s minimum wage law. Participants would then study the image and discuss it, considering questions like these: Who goes and who does not go to work on the coast? Why are they all crowded in the truck? What is going to happen? How does the labor contractor treat the people? How will they be treated by the owner and overseer on the finca? Why do people have to go? What can we do to avoid having to go? ¿Qué pensamos nosotros? What do we think?”
Likewise
“Why are the two men dressed differently? What differences are there between the two women? Can the indigenous woman sell well if she doesn’t speak good Spanish? What does an indigenous man think when he sees an indigenous woman speaking Spanish? How does a Ladino treat an indigenous customer? How does an indígena treat a Ladino customer? What are the differences between Ladinos and indígenas? Who has made Ladinos and indígenas different? Why do indígenas respect Ladinos so much? Why don’t Ladinos respect indígenas? How can the treatment of indígenas and Ladinos become equal? What do we think?”
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