1960 – 1996
The Maya today
About seven million Maya live in Guatemala, southern Mexico, Belize and parts of Honduras and El Salvador at the start of the 21st century. Most identify first with their own people, such as the Yucatec or the K'iche', and also with a shared Maya kinship. The thirty Mayan languages have more than six million speakers. K'iche' is the largest with about a million, followed by Yucatec Maya and Q'eqchi' with about 800,000 each and Mam with 478,000. Tzotzil and Tzeltal in Chiapas have 265,000 and 215,000. Guatemala recognises 21 Mayan languages by name in 1996, and Mexico recognises eight.
Ixil Maya women in Nebaj, El Quiché, Guatemala, 2007Wikimedia Commons, AmaretoCR, CC BY 2.0 (Mujeres Ixiles de Nebaj.jpg)
From 1960 to 1996 Guatemala is at civil war. The UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission collects 7,338 testimonies and documents 42,275 victims of human rights violations. Of the identified victims, 83 percent are Maya and 17 percent Ladino. State forces commit 93 percent of the violations, including 92 percent of the arbitrary executions. Of the victims, 91 percent die between 1978 and 1984, and 48 percent in 1982 alone. In its final report in 1999 the commission concludes that the armed forces committed genocide against Maya groups.
Q'eqchi' Maya carry the remains of their relatives after an exhumation at Cambayal, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, 2012Wikimedia Commons, Trocaire / CAFCA archive, CC BY 2.0 (Exhumation in the ixil triangle in Guatemala.jpg)
Rigoberta Menchú, a K'iche' woman born in 1959 at Laj Chimel in El Quiché, loses her brother and mother to the army in 1979 – 1980. Her father dies in the burning of the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City in 1980. Her testimony I, Rigoberta Menchú appears in 1983, and she receives the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. The government and the guerrillas sign peace accords in 1996.
Rigoberta Menchú at a march in Guatemala City, 2009Wikimedia Commons, Surizar, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Rigoberta Menchu 2009.jpg)
Sources
- Historical Clarification Commission, Guatemala: Memory of Silence (1999), pp. 17 to 23.
- Rigoberta Menchú with Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, I, Rigoberta Menchú (1983).
- Ryan Bennett, Jessica Coon and Robert Henderson, Introduction to Mayan Linguistics, Language and Linguistics Compass (2015).
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