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00:21:30
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00:21:30
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Transcription: [00:21:30]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 1"}
[[inaudible]] associations. As you've shown tonight, the Mayans are really an ethicist organization, not communist, but still the suspicion remains.
[00:21:41]
Given the fact that the communist are, like, ethnic [[??]] Jewish or Ukranian have verified, how do the Mayans justify their, their uh willingness to deal with the Communist for the sake of gaining more power in this piece of government?
[00:21:59]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"}
Well I don't think that they do that um maybe Geronimo can talk about the relationship between the Guerillas and the majority of the Maya people. He's the appropriate person.
[00:22:09]
{SPEAKER name="Geronimo"}
[[laughs]] The last few years the people started having some kind of development in corporate [[??]] and helping themselves in the seventies.
[00:22:24]
So that kind of activity was some kind of separation in the view of the government, so the government just persecuted [[??]] and killed including Indians
[00:22:36]
So the Indians didn't have any other choice, and went to the mountains during the Guerillas to, to be themselves because their brothers and sisters and parents were killed. That's only, you can explain very briefly.
[00:22:50]
{SPEAKER name="Speaker 2"}
Yes. But, and in this, there was no, any sense of, uh, accepting some foreign outside ideology. Those Indians who joined with other armed opposition forces did so usually out of defense of themselves or out of being the only survivor of a massacre or things of that sort.
[00:23:11]
Their intentions are not, and it's very clear talking with someone like Geronimo, their intentions for how their society would be if they were able to control it, are very very different than those of the traditional, even Latin American Left
[00:23:24]
Because the Left has a great deal problem recognizing, as you point out in your question, have a great deal of recognizing the importance of Indigenous Rights, of aboriginal rights to self determination over your own culture, over your own life
[00:23:40]
and as Geronimo was saying to me last night it would be a danger by supporting an opposition occidental force of other invaders against some invaders of just, as he said
[00:23:53]
"dando la tracada del tortilla" - turning the tortilla over and showing its other side rather than something that truly represented the interest of the Mayan majority
[00:24:02]
Now, but right now, those are even luxuries to think about those things. Right now, what the Maya are focusing on is survival as a people. And, uh, I think some of the reason why they've wanted to be here is to allow people here to appreciate their culture and to think about that the Maya didn't die with a classic Maya collapse, but are very much alive and to the tune of about four-and-a-half million people in Guatemala and another half-a-million outside of Guatemala.
[00:24:31]
And that they be concerned about that culture continue, that culture continue to live and that through your own lives, and your own individual ways of influencing how our country is that we be sure to help that culture continue to live.
[00:24:46]
I think that's where we have to end. I'm getting the high-sign here. But, if anyone wants to talk to any of us apart afterwards about this, we'd be more than willing to continue talking. Thank you very much, thank you Geronimo
[00:24:59]
{SPEAKER name="Geronimo"}
Thank you