Diary of a Maya Indian of Guatemala

"At midnight on Tuesday, some desconocidos [unknown men] arrived in a [yellow] pickup. They went to the house of Mario Puzul, jefe of the group [of commissioners]. They broke into his house and took him by force of arms to the car. His wife says that he recognized the jefe of the group and said, 'Buenas noches, my lieutenant, ' but the lieutenant didn't answer. Mario said good-bye to his wife and his brother, Francisco. The car left and the uproar began, ringing the bells and the people gathering. But there was nothing they could do." "On 16 November 1985, a military commissioner was killed. They say that many people saw it. They took the military commissioner out of his house and then to the corridor [porch] of the municipality, where they hacked him into pieces with a machete and left him." This is the story of Ignacio Bizarro Ujpán, a Maya Indian who resides on the shores of the beautiful Lake Atitlán, Guatemala. The story narrates Ignacio's life town, and country during the 1980s, a period when many campesinos found themselves caught between two fires--the insurgency of the guerrillas and the counterinsurgency of the army. Meanwhile, Ignacio and his fellow townspeople attempted to maintain as much normalcy in their lives as possible. They cultivated their bean and corn fields, educated their children, and practiced either folk Catholicism (a blend of Catholic and Mayan beliefs and practices) or evangelical Protestantism.

Review :
"Ignacio, a Mayan campesino living in the mountainous region around Lake Atitlán, supports his large family by tending small fields of coffee and other crops, baking bread, and hiring himself out for small jobs. His observations are remarkable, not only for their astuteness, but also for their scope."--Library Journal "One outstanding feature of Ignacio's story is that it is intensely personal, but in its particularity or perhaps precisely because of its particularity, it strikes universal themes. Ignacio describes conflicts in Guatemala that have been going on even since the Spanish conquest of the country, from the bottom up so to speak, in the voice of a participant, not an outsider looking down and in from the outside. Ignacio records the repression, poverty, insecurity, and violence that drive the unrest in Guatemala, as well as the sources of pleasure, strength, and achievement in his life and the life of his community. In telling about his own life, Ignacio speaks for Tzutuhil and other Indians in Central America and more generally for the poor of the earth. So while the book has great scholarly value, it also has the deepest sort of human (or humanistic) value."--Norman Schwartz Ignacio provides a current look a life in Guatemala from the point of view of not only someone living there, but of someone who is also a careful observer. As years pass, Ignacio will continue to be important because it is one of the best autobiographies of a Mayan that is available."--Michael D. Olien