Opinion Leaders & Content Creators for Guatemalan Indigenous Inclusion
This section highlights key opinion leaders and content creators for Guatemalan indigenous inclusion. By familiarizing yourself with the work of journalists, videographers, directors, scholars, and activists who have spent careers working to advance indigenous inclusion in Guatemala, organizations can identify projects that already exist in this space, and indigenous partners instead of solely relying on non-indigenous partners. This section compiles a small number of these voices to suggest the types of partners organizations should seek out.
Pamela Yates is the Co-founder and Creative Director of Skylight, a non-profit company dedicated to creating feature-length documentary films and digital media tools that advance awareness of human rights and the quest for justice by implementing multi-year outreach campaigns designed to engage, educate and activate social change.
Her documentary film series The Resistance Saga provides a unique perspective on the Guatemalan Civil War and its aftermath. The Saga is comprised of three films:
Pamela Yates
Andrea Isabel Ixchíu Hernández
Andrea Isabel Ixchíu Hernández is a journalist, community communicator, law student, human rights activist cultural manager, campaign manager, and hacktivist based in Totonicapán, Guatemala. She is a Maya K’iche’ leader and was the youngest woman elected as a tribal leader in her highland community, where, as President of the Natural Resources Board, she was in charge of protecting their ancestral forest of Totonicapán from extractive industry incursions.
While completing her law degree, Andrea developed a national following while writing a weekly column for one of Guatemala’s leading newspapers, El Periódico where she focused on issues of national policy, and analysis of the art, culture, nature , and human rights of indigenous peoples. She also creates a news program from a next-gen indigenous perspective as a member of alternative online networks, Red Tz’ikin and Prensa Comunitaria.
Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj
Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj is a is a journalist, social anthropologist, and international spokeswoman she has been at the forefront of struggles for respect for indigenous cultures. She was Executive Director of the Mecanismo de los Pueblos Indígenas Oxlajuj Tzikin (Support Mechanism for Indigenous Peoples) (2005-2013).
Dr. Velásquez Nimatuj is the first Maya-K’iche’ woman to earn a doctorate in Social Anthropology and she initiated the court case that made racial discrimination illegal in Guatemala. She has won numerous academic fellowships and awards for her journalism, She was a member of the Latin American Consulting Group of Indigenous Leaders for UNICEF and participates in the UN through the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.
Irma also served as an advisor on indigenous issues for the Latin American and Caribbean office of UN Women (2014-2015)She writes a weekly newspaper column in el Periódico de Guatemala and through both her political and academic efforts seeks to create viable and realistic ways to create equality for indigenous people and a truly democratic and participatory democracy in Guatemala.
Norma Sancir is a journalist, social communicator, and human rights defender of the Ch’ortí people in Chiquimula, Guatemala.
She works as a communicator in the Central Campesina Chortí Nuevo Día (Nuevo Día Ch’orti’ Indigenous Association, CCCND), and is also a correspondent of Prensa Comunitaria. The Central Campesina Chortí Nuevo Día works alongside indigenous Ch’orti’ communities in the region of Chiquimula, Guatemala. They provide legal support and visibility to the communities of Jocotán, Olopa, and Camotán, who face threats and violations to land, environmental, and cultural rights, following the implementation of hydroelectric and mining projects in their territories.
Prensa Comunitariais an independent news agency focused on community and indigenous journalism, art, and feminisms. In 2014 Norma Sancir was arbitrarily detained while covering the police actions during a demonstration. Listen to Norma Sancir's testimony on violence, harassment, and the criminalization of journalists.
Norma Sancir
"I am a community journalist. Alternative communication is my job, and it is my way of fighting."
Dr. Erica Cusi Wortham is a lecturer, writer, and ally. Inspired by decades of work alongside Indigenous artists and activists, Dr. Wortham brings a concern for equity, justice, and diverse, complex cultural and social contexts to her work at George Washington University. Erica has a long relationship with and commitment to the visual arts as a lecturer and programmer. She has built an interdisciplinary practice, teaching across departments and schools including the Native American Political Leadership Program at the College of Professional Studies and the Latin American and Hemispheric Studies Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs.
Dr. Wortham is also an active member of an interdisciplinary team at New York University's Libraries developing a participatory digital Indigenous media collection. Her monograph, Indigenous Media in Mexico: Culture, Community and the State (Duke University Press, 2013), focuses on issues of representation within struggles for autonomy. As co-director of GW School of Engineering's Innovation Center, Dr. Wortham combines human-centered and systems approaches to design challenges that revitalize classrooms and curricula with experiential learning experiences and creative problem-solving.
Erica Cusi Wortham
"Indigenous communities, tribes, and nations have websites, documentaries, television shows – in short, their own media, authored by members of their communities. There are no excuses for not hearing what they have to say and how they have to say it."
Anastasia Mejía Tiriquiz, is a K'iche' Mayan indigenous woman human rights defender, journalist, and director at the Xol Abaj Radio and TV station. She raises public awareness on cases of corruption and documents social mobilizations in relation to indigenous issues within the municipality of Joyabaj, department of Quiché.
Anastasia Mejía has a long history defending freedom of expression despite the hostile climate to exercise this legitimate right and in spite of discrimination, persecution, and criminalization for expressing her indigenous identity.
Anastasia Mejía Tiriquiz
Anastasia was arrested on September 22, 2020, and placed in the Quetzaltenango detention center, and is currently on trial. The judge decided to link Anastasia Mejía to a criminal proceeding for her alleged participation in an August 24th protest against Mayor Francisco Carrascosa’s COVID-19 pandemic management in the municipality of Joyabaj, department of Quiché. Anastasia Mejía's judicial case has been full of irregularities, including the violation of due process. Despite the fact that Guatemalan law in article 9 of the constitution establishes that the initial hearing must be held within 24 hours after the arrest, the defender was only able to render her statement 36 days later. She has been under house arrest since October 29, 2020.
Sandra Cuffe is a freelance journalist based in Central America who has filed stories from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Belize, Mexico, and Canada. Much of her work focuses on environmental, indigenous, and human rights issues.
In 2016, Sandra received an honorable mention in the Outstanding Beat Reporting, Small Market category of the Society of Environmental Journalists' 15th Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment for her "Environment and Human Rights in Guatemala" entry comprised of five articles published by Mongabay in 2015. According to the judges:
"Sandra Cuffe's reporting in Guatemala is a service to her readers and the disenfranchised, digging into complex situations and human rights issues related to conflicts over natural resources. Her stories paint an eye-opening picture of indigenous people who have been fighting for their ancestral lands - and lives - in the face of state and international mining interests whose security and police forces too often turn to violence."
Sandra Cuffe
Daniel Villatoro is the Executive Director of Visibles, a Guatemalan organization dedicated to fighting for an inclusive Guatemala for all of its diverse people.
Visibles aims to serve as a space for meetings, political dialogue, learning, and the definition of strategy and broadly work for LGBTQIA people to live a life free from discrimination.
Daniel coordinates Exprésate, the Latin American Journalism Initiative on LGBTIQ+ communities of the International Women's Media Foundation. His areas of expertise are investigative journalism and social technology projects, as well as addressing representation and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity through various initiatives.
Daniel Villatoro
Glendy Paola Agustin Jíguan is a writer, actress, reporter, interpreter, international activist, and documentary maker. Glendy is a 23-year-old Maya Mam woman and political science student from Comitancillo, San Marcos, Guatemala. Currently, she works on projects on migration issues, with the families of the victims of the massacre in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and serves as a Community Communicator on the communication team of the Mayan People's Council -CPO- of Guatemala. She also is a volunteer in the promotion of Human Rights in language Mam with Youth for Human Rights in Guatemala.
She broadly works in defense of the rights of indigenous peoples through communication and movements that make it possible to fight to eradicate discrimination, racism, injustice, and social inequality.
Glendy Paola Agustin Jíguan
“In Guatemala, the struggle and resistance for the defense of human rights and Mother Earth have historical roots; Since the Spanish invasion, the colony, the internal armed conflict up to now, native peoples have been surviving before a patriarchal, racist and exclusive system that has kept them submerged in poverty and misery. Therefore, being a woman and belonging to this group is reason enough to direct actions to achieve the exercise of good living, to dismantle this system that oppresses, enslaves, and murders.
Safeguarding natural common goods, denouncing the dispossession of territories, protecting elements of identity, history, culture, and fighting to end injustices and inequalities have been the crimes of many activists imprisoned and murdered by this State that gives privileges to those who have maintained concentrated the political, economic and social power of the country. As a result of this reality, women and men have used communication in native languages as a tool to: create awareness, make visible the different collective struggles, denounce all injustices, and inform the peoples. The alternative means of communication are a political act before the corporate media of the private sector; They are spokespersons for marginalized communities.
Personally, my own history and that of my community inspired me to fight and defend human rights through communication, using the tools that are within my reach such as radio, television, the internet, and newspapers. That is why I have created written and audiovisual materials in Mam and Spanish languages such as: poems, analyses, documentaries that have been presented at festivals in countries such as Canada and Belgium, short films, reports, and programs. "
-Glendy Paola Agustin Jíguan
(translated - see original Spanish quote linked below)
Jorge Zaqueo Coronado Velásquez is a communicator and audiovisual producer. Jorge was born in 1992 in the municipality of Comitancillo, San Marcos in Guatemala and is part of the Mayan Mam people.
He has collaborated in community media such as radio, television, written press, and digital media. He is the director of the La’jb’il Film Short Film Production Company and works on the subject of audiovisual production at the Academy of Mayan Languages of Guatemala. From 2014 to 2016, Jorge served as Public Relations Officer for the Municipality of Comitancillo. He graduated as a Teacher of Intercultural Bilingual Education (Mam Language - Spanish Language). Jorge currently studies Communication and Audiovisual Production at Universidad Panamericana.
Jorge Zaqueo
Coronado Velásquez
Verónica Yat Tiu is the Managing Director of Limitless Horizons Ixil, an organization dedicated to supporting academic and personal development and literacy skills for the Ixil community of Chajul. Verónica was raised in Chajul and lived there during and after the civil war. Through hard work, a scholarship, and her mother’s sacrifice, Verónica is one of the first and few women from Chajul to become a university-educated professional and recently became the first woman from Chajul to earn her master’s degree (in human resources). She went to primary school in Chajul and then studied at Mariano Gálvez University in Quiché where she earned her bachelor’s degree in business management. Prior to joining Limitless Horizons Ixil as Program Director in 2008, Verónica gained extensive nonprofit and NGO experience as a secretary, community organizer, and case manager with previous positions at Chajul’s health center, Con Tierra, Proyecto Ixil, and Save the Children. Verónica is proud of her work to provide opportunities for people in her own community, believing that “with the support of the people, we can work together on community development and make a real difference.”
Verónica Yat Tiu
Guadalupe Ramírez is the founder and director of AMA (Asociación de Mujeres del Altiplano), an organization dedicated to the social development of indigenous women. AMA's roots are as a cooperative movement for women in the communities of Chontala El Quiché, with mostly by female victims of the Guatemalan Civil War. She also works for the Highland Support Project.
Guadalupe was born in the town of Tejutla, San Marcos, in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. Descendants of slaves, Guadalupe and her family struggled to maintain their health and well-being in a poverty-stricken community until their lives were transformed when nuns from Belgium arrived to foster liberation through education and empowerment. Guadalupe’s father was became a leader in the cooperative movement. The change fostered by the organization of cooperatives was substantial and long lasting, one generation later, her family now contains one sister who is an accountant, another sister a schoolteacher, the third sister has her MBA, and the youngest is working on a postgraduate degree in chemical engineering.
Guadalupe Celeste Ramírez
Spending much of her childhood in cooperatives meetings, Guadalupe learned that people could change their lives for the better by working together. While there are serious challenges confronting indigenous communities, the practices of consensus and community action have allowed her people to survive centuries of injustice and marginalization.
Alexander Pérez Ventura
Alexander Pérez Ventura is an audiovisual producer and a member of the Mayan Mam ethnic group. He is currently 22 years old, and a student studying Communication Sciences. Alex is originally from the municipality of Comitancillo, San Marcos, Guatemala. Alex is an independent audiovisual producer and journalistic collaborator in different local and regional communication media. He is dedicated to making documentaries for non-governmental organizations on the diverse cultures that exist in Guatemala promoting their language, culture, tradition, and tourism.
Alex is also a producer and announcer of a podcast on Spotify where they think about the various social problems that exist in the country. In the last year, Alex has made short films about the realities of marginalized communities and showed them at both national and regional festivals.
"In Guatemala, there has always been violence and racism from political elites towards our indigenous peoples, but it is time to be lights and spokespersons for those who cant be. We are the young people of this struggle and we are the resistance that will break paradigms and even the political system."
Ana Beliana Mateo Juárez
Ana Beliana Mateo Juárez was born within the Q’anjob’al Maya Town, of Santa Eulalia, Huehuetenango. When she was 7 years old, she emigrated with her parents to the Maya K'iche ' village and since then, they have been part of the Municipality of San Francisco El Alto, Totonicapán, Guatemala.
Ana is 29 years old and a graduate of a Primary Education Teacher program and has a Bachelor of Clinical Psychology. Ana works as a volunteer in the psychologist area at the San Francisco El Alto Parish Clinic. In addition, she is a primary education teacher at the "El Patriota Training Center"; and a communicator, journalist, moderator, and documentarian for the community radio La Consentida.
Ana is also part of the Community Communicators of the Mayan People's Council (CPO). Her personal focus and where her develops her capacities are in the topics of the defense of Human and Natural Rights and respect for indigenous peoples. She supports and participates in projects whose purpose it is to continue promoting the worldview of the Maya people and respect for life.
"I am part of two peoples that have fought, defended, and resisted for many centuries, the different spoils and plunder. These dispossessions carried out by elites whose purpose is enrichment without measure and that the only thing it has caused in our territories is poverty, slavery, malnutrition, emigration to other countries, and other social problems that are increasingly serious. Added to this is the presence of corrupt governments without clear ideologies to govern. For us, there is a new awakening in our peoples, of which we are part and we believe we are a generation that must be the actor of projects, plans, and proposals to be included in national plans and the possibility of building a Plurinational State. Being aware of the history of our peoples and their struggle commits us to follow the path that our ancestors have traced and that is why my struggle as a Q'anjob'al and K'iche ' Maya woman is only my contribution to this construction of an inclusive town that protects all its citizens with equity."
Jayro Bustamante is a Guatemalan director, filmmaker, and screenwriter. Bustamante studied communication at San Carlos University in Guatemala City. In 2009, Bustamante founded La Casa de Producción in Panajachel with Marina Peralta to tell stories that had not yet been told in Guatemala. It aimed to fill a gap in a country where stories had been stacking up in silence and new talents longed for a space to bring them to life.
In 2019, Jayro founded the IXCANUL foundation, a non-profit foundation that aims to use film as a tool for learning, change, and social impact in Guatemala, both in the Mayan and mestizo communities.
Some of Bustamante's most notable films are
IXCANUL (2015)
La Llorona (2019)
Tremors (2019)
Jayro Bustamante
María Mercedes Coroy is a Guatemalan Mayan Kaqchikel actress. She is best known for her leading roles in IXCANUL (2015) and La Llorona (2019).
As a little girl, she grew up in Santa María de Jesús, Guatemala where she participated in plays and local folk dances, but she had to interrupt her studies to help her mother sell fruits and vegetables. At the age of 17, she continued her studies and was cast in the lead role in the film “Ixcanul.” Since then, she has participated in various projects, such as “Bel Canto” with Julianne Moore, and the Mexican series “Malinche.” In 2016, she graduated from University of San Carlos de Guatemala with a degree in acting.
María Mercedes Coroy
Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a Mayan k’iche’ human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Rigoberta was born in 1959 in Chimel, a small Mayan community in the highlands of Guatemala. As a young girl, Rigoberta traveled alongside her father, Vincente Menchú, from community to community teaching rural campesinos their rights and encouraging them to organize.
In 1979, Rigoberta joined the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). That year her brother was arrested, tortured, and killed by the army. The following year, her father was killed when security forces in the capital stormed the Spanish Embassy where he and some other peasants were staying. Shortly afterward, her mother also died after having been arrested, tortured, and raped. Rigoberta became increasingly active in the CUC, and taught herself Spanish as well as other Mayan languages than her native Quiche. In 1980, she figured prominently in a strike the CUC organized for better conditions for farmworkers on the Pacific coast, and on May 1, 1981, she was active in large demonstrations in the capital.
Rigoberta Menchú Tum
In 1981, Rigoberta Menchú had to go into hiding in Guatemala, and then flee to Mexico. That marked the beginning of a new phase in her life: as the organizer abroad of resistance to oppression in Guatemala and the struggle for Indian peasant peoples’ rights. In 1982, she took part in the founding of the joint opposition body, The United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG).
Over the years, Rigoberta Menchú has become widely known as a leading advocate of Indian rights and ethnocultural reconciliation, not only in Guatemala but in the Western Hemisphere generally, and her work has earned her several international awards including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and the Prince of Asturias Award in 1998.
Rigoberta ran for President of Guatemala in 2007 and 2011 under the banner of WINAQ, the first indigenous-led political party founded by herself. In 2013 the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) appointed her as a Special Investigator within its Multicultural Nation Program. She continues to seek justice for all Mayan people impacted by the genocide.
