Guatemala

During the first United Nations International Decade on the World’s Indigenous People (1995-2004), there were a number of positive developments for the world’s indigenous peoples. Many countries adopted legislation concerning land, resources, culture, language, education, justice, intellectual property rights, and in some instances, legal pluralism, autonomy, and self-governance. In 1989, just before the decade began, the International Labor Organization adopted Convention #169 on indigenous and tribal peoples, and since 1996 the U.N.

As the president of La Voz Que Clama en el Desierto, I direct the cooperative’s business, meetings, work plans, and employees, advise the small coffee growers, and watch to see that everything ends to the benefit of the community. I have been involved with this group of farmers for 26 years, and we have been a fair trade cooperative for 14 years.

La Voz became involved in fair trade because we had problems relating to the world commodities price of coffee.

I have been working in the main office for the past five years.

A former crafts fair trader shares the lessons he learned when he mixed business and social justice.

I entered the coop in 1985. I have always had my plots and I run them in a natural way. Since I entered the coop with the organic technology, I have earned a better price and I was able to buy my house and my children have achieved a higher level of education.

My children and I get up early to gather firewood before they go to school and I go to the fields. I work during the whole year. The crop changes depending on the season. If a coffee plant dies I plant another. The coop is composed of 18 members who are on the junta directiva. I am one of the leaders of the coop.

Indigenous farmers and crafters told Cultural Survival about their experiences with fair trade and what the movement needs to do to achieve its goals.

About two years ago, Willie Foote from Ecologic, a microfinance company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, came into the Cultural Survival office to ask if we had done any research on how fair trade impacts indigenous peoples. It was a logical question, based on Cultural Survival’s trade relations with indigenous people through the now-defunct Cultural Survival Enterprises and our ongoing indigenous crafts bazaars.

A Guatemala fair trade weaving cooperative enables civil war widows to stay home and maintain their Mayan culture, but the coop struggles to survive in the global marketplace.

Fair trade has allowed indigenous coffee producers to improve their lives, but some farmers' experiences show that this social movement must go beyond charity.

The clicking computer keys can be heard on the dusty steep slope of Sixth Avenue in Sololá, in the mountainous southwest of Guatemala, overlooking the scenic Lago Atiitlan.

With basic equipment, Guatemala’s Maya are using the radio to keep their communities informed and to strengthen a fragile democracy.

The upbeat notes of marimba music fill the air early on a February morning, emanating from households throughout the town of Concepción Chiqurichapa, Guatemala, who are listening to Radio Mujb’ ab’l yol. Between songs, the voice of a young disc jockey announces the community news in Mam, the local vernacular.

The radio operator is Juan, an eight-year-old boy.

On August 6, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court ruled against the creation of a United Nations-led International Commission to Investigate Illegal Bodies and Clandestine Security Forces (CICIACS) to investigate crimes that have mostly tar

Edward F. Fischer and Carol Hendrickson’s new ethnography, Tecpan Guatemala: A Modern Maya Town in Global and Local Context, transcends the boundaries of traditional anthropological case study. They craft neither a romantic story of a victimized Maya progeny nor an esoteric and completely case-specific study.

In 1996, Peace Accords ended 36 years of civil war between a coalition of four rebel organizations and the Guatemala army and government.

James D. Sexton (Translator)

University of New Mexico Press, 1999

ISBN: 0826321046 (Paperback)

For many centuries, people have been using myth to explain everything from the world's most universal lessons to practices and standards that are particular to a single culture. As Bill Moyers writes in his book, The Power of Myth, "We tell stories to try to come to terms with the world, to harmonize our lives with reality."

The book under review is a colorful mélange of myths gathered from the 14 towns in the region surrounding Lake Atitlan in Guatemala.

The village of Cantel is located in the western highlands of Guatemala, in the department of Quezaltenango, 150 miles west of Guatemala City.

The World Commission on Dams' Process

Endangered languages have received considerable attention in the last decade, as it has been shown that a majority of the world's languages are facing possible extinction in the near future.