http://youtu.be/6uYsZWTdLVk
In the secluded jungle of north-central Guatemala, ten indigenous students from New Mexico State University traveled to the country’s Ixcán region.
There, they spent a week living with Maya community members as part of the first environmental leadership exchange through the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences.
Students toured the lush landscape as they learned about local efforts to protect a vital waterway, the Chixoy River.
Kayla Myers is senior program specialist for Indian Resources Development. Myers, an Eastern Shoshone descendant, said a proposed hydroelectric dam known as the Xalalá is threatening the Maya way of life.
The Xalalá Dam has been a source of conflict since the 1970s. During the country’s civil war, the Guatemalan government massacred thousands to build a similar dam.
If the Chixoy were dammed again, Myers said it would flood communities upriver and deprive other villages access to water and their only way of transportation.
“They would lose access to any water for their crops, for bathing, for cooking, for all of that as well as access to a very important part of their spiritual life, this river. And it’s a beautiful river," Myers said. "That was an amazing part of the trip is watching the students laughing and playing in the river with the community and seeing the real life of it. Because you read about it on paper, but being there and swimming in the river and traveling on it from community to community is such a joy and really magical.”
On their visit, students met with elders and spiritual leaders from at-risk villages to learn about other challenges they face and shared their own struggles. To communicate, Myers said students spoke in English, which was translated into Spanish, then into the Mayan Mam language.
“Seeing them standing up and standing proud and being able to explain what’s happening on Apache land and Diné land and across native America was so inspiring for me and seeing that translated across languages and across borders and realizing we’re doing the same work and we have the exact same hopes," Myers said.
Antonio Garcia, a social work freshman, served as a translator. A descendant of Mexica and Jicarilla Apache people, Garcia said he took part in the trip to learn how to defend his relatives’ sacred sites.
Living with his host family in Guatemala, he said, was a powerful experience.
“I was with a young mother and her two sons. Living with them, you know, every night spending the night there and a different student would accompany me to that home. And translating and hearing the stories and eating meals with these families was just really powerful. Hearing about their experiences and what life is like living in that community," Garcia said.
Students also visited the Casa de la Memoria, or House of Memory, an interactive museum that takes visitors through the country’s indigenous history.
That’s significant to Antoinette Benally, an agriculture senior from Farmington. Benally is a member of Navajo and Kiowa tribes. While she saw similarities between her tribes and those she met, Benally said there’s a disparity in how they pass down their traditions.
“The elderly have stories to tell the younger generation and it’s nice that the younger generation listens to the elders and their language and they carry on the traditions that their elders taught them," Benally said. "And back home, our elders, we can’t really communicate with them because we don’t know our own native language and I don’t know my own native language and I don’t know the culture and it’s really hard communicating with my grandparent, with my grandma I guess.”
But Benally said she’s starting to learn Navajo with help from Rosetta Stone.
On their journey to find common ground overseas, Myers said she hopes students find value in getting to know people from a country at the center of the border crisis.
"This is a very critical moment in our history especially here in the Borderlands and especially here in our community where we have thousands of migrants who are passing through," Myers said. "And it is so important for young people to have this kind of exchange so that they can put stories to faces and learn the history and the actual lived context of the people who are coming here."
As those tens of thousands of Guatemalan and other Central American migrants seek asylum in the United States, Garcia said it’s important to remember the person, not the terms used to describe them.
“We hear 'illegal.' We hear 'undocumented.' We label these people when really what they are is human beings and really what they are is indigenous people and how can anybody be illegal on stolen land?" Garcia said. "This land belongs to indigenous people so our migration patterns have long past existed before these borders. And understanding personal struggles, understanding these people as people, as human beings, it humanizes them in a sense to where we can relate to them.”
