Communities sharing their past and present struggles
The second part of the exchange took us to the regions of Pisco and Ica, located 300 km south of Lima on the Pacific coast. We visited the community of San Clemente de Pisco, close to a year after it was hit by a major earthquake. The regions of Pisco and Ica did not experience political violence during the conflict in Peru, but over the twenty years of conflict, between 50,000 and 150,000 people relocated there, fleeing devastating violence in other parts of the country. Many formed an association of internally displaced families in response to the discrimination and high levels of poverty they experienced in their new homes. After the earthquake, the association supported their members to obtain title to the land they were living on in order to access government funding to reconstruct their houses.
When we arrived in San Clemente, we were greeted at the association’s Welcome Centre (Casa de Acogida) by music and dancing. As soon as we stepped off the bus, each one of us was pulled into a collective dance party that blocked the entire street! This was quite a show. After a few speeches and presentations on the association’s work, we were treated to a typical Andean meal – meat slow-cooked underground, potatoes, and corn. The dancing and singing continued after the meal, and we were introduced to a Quechua tradition where talcum powder is thrown into the air when people are dancing to express joy. As one of the Peruvian participants told me, celebration, dancing, and singing are part of resistance strategies for indigenous people in Peru.
Celebrations and singing were also on the menu when we stopped at the Pacific Ocean on our way to Ica from Pisco. This was the first time the Guatemalans were seeing the ocean, so we combined the Mayan traditional candle ceremony with Peruvian music and singing to celebrate.
On the last day of the exchange – July 18, 2008 – the Guatemalans performed a final candle ceremony to commemorate the anniversary of the Plan de Sánchez massacre. On July 18, 1982, Guatemalan security forces surrounded the community of Plan de Sánchez, in the region of Rabinal, and murdered 268 people. Only twenty people survived this brutal massacre. One of them was Benjamin Gerónimo, one of the founding members of the AJR and now its president. Benjamin told us the story of that terrible day, and asked us to join him in remembering. Many tears were shed. Most Peruvians and Colombians were hearing this story for the first time, directly from one of its survivors, and shared the pain of their Guatemalan friends.
| Reviewed July 31, 2009 |  |
Publishing Policies |
