This accord was signed between the government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity - URNG - on the 23rd of June 1994.

In the mandate of this accord is the creation of a commission for Historical Clarification , to be formed by three people. The mandate of the commission includes:

1. The equal, impartial and objective clarification of human rights violations and other events of violence.

2. The completion of a report containing the results of the investigation of the events.

3. The formulation of specific recommendations directed toward the fostering of peace and national reconciliation in Guatemala.

The Commission for Historical Clarification was constituted of various offices throughout the national territory. The work of these offices was to receive testimonies, interview victims and families of victims of human rights violations and of the rights of the Mayan People.

At present the Commission is putting together its final report containing the recommendations for the policies of the Guatemalan state and the recommendations for Guatemalan society in relation to the advancing and achievement of peace and national reconciliation.
 
 

Since the establishment of the Commission, the majority of organizations that are based in the Departments that were affected most by the massive and selective repression carried out above all in the 1980s - like Quiche, Huehuetenango, Solola, Alta Verapaz, Baja Verapaz, Chimaltenango, Quetzaltenango, San Marcos and others - have been cooperating with the Commission. For example they have assisted in the compilation of statistics and testimonies, the location of clandestine cemeteries and have taken part in interviews and visits to the communities in the said locations.

At the same time, various communities and organizations aware of their role in formulating recommendations to the Commission for Historical Clarification (to be incorporated in the Commission's final report), initiated consultations over diverse themes and aspects that they considered fundamental and critical to the strengthening of democracy and peace. Within these themes are recommendations to compensate the victims of violations and the creation of mechanisms that make possible the reconstruction of the social and communal fabric of our peoples.

Because Indigenous people make up 70% of the total population and because they were the most affected by the repression, the National Coordination of Widows of Guatemala - CONAVIGUA -, the Communities of Population in Resistance - CPR- , the Consultative Assembly of Displaced Peoples - ACPD- , the Maya Coordination Majawil Q´ij, and Defensoria Maya have put together recommendations to the Commission for Historical Clarification, with the aim of ensuring that Indigenous Peoples are not forgotten once again.
 
 

In the long and short term history of Guatemala, the Mayan People have been the most affected group of the population. Diverse forces and forms of destruction have developed and emerged in our communities since 1524 until now, and in the recent 36 years of armed conflict. We haven't only lived through massacres and scorched earth policies, kidnappings, assassinations, tortures, disappearances, violations and sexual abuse against women, humiliation, contempt and discrimination amongst other things. In addition, the state and its institutions have used a systematic and permanent policy of exclusion and extermination against our People.

The discrimination has been of every type; legal, political, economic, social, constitutional, cultural - as much through omission as through event. Many peoples would have succumbed and been destroyed. But our ancestors have had the knowledge and instruments to be able to maintain themselves, and this is what gives us the force and energy to get to grips with some of the profound aspects necessary for the recuperation of many of the elements and values of our People. Our cosmovision demands to contribute to the new political, economic, social and cultural forms which are necessary for Guatemala.

To carry on recuperating and strengthening the Maya People, it is necessary that the report soon to be published by the Commission for Historical Clarification, reflects specifically and clearly the material, physical, mental and cultural, as well as the socio-economic destruction of the Maya and other Indigenous Peoples. At the same time it is critical that in its recommendations and report, the Commission reflects what we have presented as the Mayan People.

To speak of the specific rights and necessities of the Maya, Garifuna and Xinka Peoples is not to privilege them. Rather it is to give a just dimension and focus to the pluricultural and plurilingual history and reality. In modern national and international instruments, such as the United Nations and the Organization of American States, the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples are recognized. This consequently guarantees that we are able, indeed that we are obliged, to speak of the rights of the Indigenous Peoples of Guatemala.

We are very confident that the CEH will have the lucidity necessary to reflect the national reality in its report.
 
 

After having made an analysis of the consequences of the massacres, scorched earth policies, assassinations, kidnappings, tortures, death threats, intimidation's, systematic persecution, clandestine cemeteries and other events that wound and have destroyed a large part of the Maya People, Defensoria Maya makes the following recommendations and petitions to the Commission for Historical Clarification:

 1. That in its report, it focus on the events of genocide and ethnocide against the Maya People, placing direct responsibility on the state, pointing out its institutions like the army and other repressive apparatus that were created for this end.

 2. The conferral of responsibilities to the state and its institutions, including the army and the police, for the systematic, permanent and persistent persecution against the life, security and integrity of the population.

 3. That it lists the names of those responsible for the violations of human rights and the rights of the Maya People that took place during the armed internal conflict. We understand that the mandate of the CEH means that it cannot judge nor punish those responsible, but it is however important that those civil and military actors implicated in the pain and death in Guatemala are known.

 4. That it recommend to the Guatemalan state, principally to the executive organism, that it make a public investigation of the main actors in the public administration in order to identify those who are related to the violations of human rights. It should follow this up by suspending those implicated immediately from their posts, whilst in addition not accepting in future those recognized as having responsibility over violations.

 5. Confirmation of an international tribunal to judge institutionally the army and individually the members of this institution for the events carried out against the Maya people.

 6. To solicit the presence of an in site visitor visit and the investigation of the events by experts of the Sub Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination Against Minorities of the United Nations. The follow up to this will be the presentation of the report of their investigations to the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations and to the Secretary General of the said organism. This investigation could be developed during the first seven months of 1999, so that the report can be produced in the session of the Sub Commission in August 1999.

 7. That the material and intellectual civil and military authors of those events committed not only against the Maya People but against all the Guatemalan population are investigated and judged in the appropriate courts.

 8. That it solicits the Guatemalan state, represented by three organisms: executive, legislative and judicial –

• To hand over immediate control of the lands usurped by landowners during the last 100 years.
• To hand over immediate control of the community houses, schools, usurped lands, and other estates of the Maya People evicted by the army during the armed conflict.

 9. Official recognition on the part of the government and state of Guatemala of a Committee of the Mayan People for Historical Compensation, formed with the direct participation of the Maya People according to their norms and procedures for the selection of authorities. The committee will function for twenty consecutive years, beginning vigorously in June 1999 and will finish its mandate in June 2019.

 10. The Committee of the Maya People for Historical Compensation will develop the following activities:

•  Creation and design of educational centers of cultural recuperation for adults and adolescent orphans.
•  Creation of educational centers for the imparting of universal culture understood as public schools.
•  Creation of centers for the reconstruction and development of the identity and rights of the displaced Mayas, refugees and returnees, both in the cities and in the rural areas of Guatemala.
•  Creation of health programs applying the system of Maya health. These will create an infrastructure of community houses (Nimja), designed by the Maya People to develop the importance and self-esteem as a base for all types of development seeking to be initiated in the country.
•  Creation of houses for the application of Maya law with the application of the Maya judicial system.
•  Creation and initiation of community programs for the reinvigoration and self-esteem of the Maya woman as a fundamental and complementary subject in the development of the cosmovision and culture of the Maya People.
•  Creation and implementation of programs for the recuperation of the historical memory of the Maya People, to be valid for five years.
•  Programs for the recuperation and consolidation of the economic, political, social and cultural systems of the Maya People.
•  Creation and initiation of economic and social Development Programs of the Maya People, stemming from their cosmovision and conception.

11. To demand to the Congress of the Republic the awarding of 20% of the National General Budget during the next twenty years for the recuperation and development of the Maya People; the execution, design and administration of which will be in the hands of the Committee of Mayan People for Historical Compensation.

International Solidarity

The Defensoria Maya would like to Acknowledge the importance of International Solidarity. International pressure and lobbying from outside organizations and individuals has helped to open important spaces for Indigenous participation in the construction of a Pluricultural and Plurilingual Guatemala. We would like to thank these groups an individuals and ask that you stay informed on the advances and struggles currently taking place for constitutional reform in order to legally implement the Peace Accords and make this construction whole. We must ensure the history we are creating will not continue to repeat itself and remain one of conquest and exploitation, but one instead one of Mayas, Ladinoes, Garifunas and Xincas who respect and wish to protect one anthers cultures and rights. As People who  value and defend social justice, we will continue to stand together to ensure a true and lasting Peace in Guatemala.

The creation of this web site is also one for all Indigenous Peoples resistance. So that we can create links with one another, learn from our experiences and strengthen our movements in achieving self-determination for the advancement of our people. This summer we hosted Rebeka Tabobondung, Ojibwa, from Wasauksing First Nation Canada, who came to learn about our experience and current movement as a way of fostering Indigenous Solidarity with Canadian First Nations.
Indigenous Peoples of the world share many of the same experiences of colonization and have much to learn from one another in our approaches of resistance and economic and social advancement. From cultural exchanges to community and education development to international petitioning, we hope to continue to build relationships with Indigenous groups throughout the world.

We would like to acknowledge the support and assistance of Roddy Brett, from England, who through his independent research has become a friend and compañero. We would also like to recognize his contribution of many hours spent understanding and piecing together our stories.

Presented to: the Commission of Historical Clarification in Guatemala.

Introduction:

Defensoria Maya, an organization that watches over and works toward the full exercise of the rights of the Maya people, wishes to contribute to the theme of national debate surrounding Truth that has to prevail over what has occurred in the last 36 years of internal armed conflict that Guatemala has lived through as a country.

This contribution reflects two histories that the Maya People have experienced in the flesh: These histories can be distinguished as a long term history and a short term history. The long history refers to the period from 1524 to 1998. The short history from 1960 to 1996.

Our intention is to contribute in the following ways:

a) An in depth analysis of why the Maya People have invested the most blood into the history of the country.

b) A contribution of the vision of the Maya People in relation to the national political focus.

c) Recommendations and requests to the Commission for Historical Clarification.

Defensoria Maya does not present statistics nor do we try to quantify the events, because we believe that there are various institutions and organizations that are addressing these issues, such as the Project for the Recuperation of Historical Memory of the Catholic Church through its report Guatemala Nunca Mas¨, similarly the report of the Mayan women published by the National Coordination of Widows of Guatemala and furthermore the Truth Commission named the Commission for Historical Clarification. These organizations and institutions have carried out a praiseworthy task in compiling statistics, testimonies and similar information which will, without doubt, contribute toward the creation of a climate of peace in the country and toward the consolidation of communal, regional and national conciliation.

Our intention is to contribute toward the analytical framework of the past events and to analyze the different levels of political, economic and cultural destruction of the Maya People, whilst presenting viable and necessary proposals for the Historical Compensation of all society and principally of the Maya People.
 

 K'astajnel, Tzujnel, Tob'nel