The Emergence Of Human Rights In The Mayan World: Rural Church And Indigenous Activism In Guatemala, 1943-1983

Abstract

This dissertation uses an interdisciplinary approach of History and Human Rights to discuss the organization and activism of Indigenous Catholic communities that preceded and shaped the human rights movement of the 1980s in Guatemala. By focusing on the departments of Huehuetenango and El Quiche from 1943 to 1983, I argue that the human rights movement in Guatemala that called attention to the country’s deep historical roots of racism and discrimination was the result of the activism carried out by Indigenous communities in connection to the Catholic Church. I use the term “Rural Church” to refer to these communities of Catholics from the departments of Huehuetenango and El Quiche that focused on enhancing the living conditions of the poor and marginalized; since the 1950s members of the Rural Church worked on organizing cooperatives, colonizing new lands, studying the structures of inequality, as well as advancing the teaching of the gospel. By tracing the concept of the Rural Church, this dissertation highlights the importance of rural society and the influence that marginalized and Indigenous communities had on the Catholic Church in Guatemala. This dissertation engages extensively with unpublished archival documentation including the local efforts of De Sol a Sol (“From Sunrise to Sunset”) and Ixim (“Corn” in Maya K’iche) which feature the efforts of Indigenous and local intellectuals to discuss the connections between race, ethnicity, class, and inequality. My archival approach is influenced by the Mayan cyclical view of time which highlights the survival of Mayan people despite numerous attempts of eradication and genocide against their communities.