Martyrs
In the United States, our memory of fallen heroes is incredibly short-lived. As the memories of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and John and Bobby Kennedy fade with each generation, most Americans cannot remember the days or even the months when these icons were killed.
In Guatemala, there is a stronger sense of history, and I witnessed it and participated in it on Saturday. Steve and I went to the city of San Marcos to march on the 11th anniversary of the killing of Monsignor Juan José Gerardi Conedera, a Catholic bishop who was an outspoken supporter of indigenous people in their struggle against the Guatemalan government and was beaten to death with a concrete slab by three soldiers in 1998.
The march was in San Marcos, as it has been every year, largely because of the political biases of the current bishop of the area, who has been receiving death threats since he was appointed about 20 years ago. Saturday's march began near the cathedral in San Marcos, and made its way down several kilometers of major city streets on its way to the center of the neighboring town of San Pedro.
I was impressed by the turnout; before the march even started at 9:30 (people had been told to be there at 8 a.m. sharp, guaranteeing a 9:30 start), there were thousands of people stretching for more than a block. Estimated crowds from previous years average about 10,000 people, and by the end of the march, it certainly seemed like there were that many people, as I looked back at one point and saw the procession stretch more than two blocks. A large portion of the crowd was students who joined from a Catholic high school, and they all wore matching school t-shirts to make their presence of hundreds of students known.
Interspersed in the crowd were pick-up trucks with PA systems, from which organizers led the crowd in chants and also sold t-shirts at cost. Organizers handed out fliers with all of the chants that would be used that day, and the booming voices from the truck used all of the ones on the sheet.
I protested a fair amount in the lead-up to the Iraq war, so I have a decently trained ear for protest chants. Some of them were excellent, such as ¡Gerardi, amigo, la gente está con tigo! (Gerardi, friend, the people are with you!) Another favorite was ¡La tierra no se vende; el pueblo la defiende! (The land is not for sale; the people defend it!) Others were not as catchy, such as the one that decried "indifferent transnational" corporations, which made me certain that chants should never have five-syllable words in them. Another that was slightly eerie was ¡Los mártires no se lloran; se imitan! (Martyrs are not mourned; they're imitated!) and I hoped that 10,000 Guatemalan protesters would draw the line of imitation at being brutally killed. Other chants didn't work at all, such as ¡Antes del individualismo, Jesús convoca a la unidad! (Before individualism, Jesus preaches unity!), which sounds just as unwieldy in Spanish as it does in English. The most resounding chant of all was its most simple: Guatemala, ¡nunca más! Guatemala, never again!
The march ended with a service at the San Pedro cathedral, which Steve and I passed up because there were no more available seats. We walked back to San Marcos and took a bus back home. On the bus ride back, I compared in my mind the importance of this 10,000-person march and thought about the most publicized political movement going on back home; the ideologically vacant and ridiculous Tea Party movement. At least one country knows what to protest about.
In Guatemala, there is a stronger sense of history, and I witnessed it and participated in it on Saturday. Steve and I went to the city of San Marcos to march on the 11th anniversary of the killing of Monsignor Juan José Gerardi Conedera, a Catholic bishop who was an outspoken supporter of indigenous people in their struggle against the Guatemalan government and was beaten to death with a concrete slab by three soldiers in 1998.
The march was in San Marcos, as it has been every year, largely because of the political biases of the current bishop of the area, who has been receiving death threats since he was appointed about 20 years ago. Saturday's march began near the cathedral in San Marcos, and made its way down several kilometers of major city streets on its way to the center of the neighboring town of San Pedro.
I was impressed by the turnout; before the march even started at 9:30 (people had been told to be there at 8 a.m. sharp, guaranteeing a 9:30 start), there were thousands of people stretching for more than a block. Estimated crowds from previous years average about 10,000 people, and by the end of the march, it certainly seemed like there were that many people, as I looked back at one point and saw the procession stretch more than two blocks. A large portion of the crowd was students who joined from a Catholic high school, and they all wore matching school t-shirts to make their presence of hundreds of students known.
Interspersed in the crowd were pick-up trucks with PA systems, from which organizers led the crowd in chants and also sold t-shirts at cost. Organizers handed out fliers with all of the chants that would be used that day, and the booming voices from the truck used all of the ones on the sheet.
I protested a fair amount in the lead-up to the Iraq war, so I have a decently trained ear for protest chants. Some of them were excellent, such as ¡Gerardi, amigo, la gente está con tigo! (Gerardi, friend, the people are with you!) Another favorite was ¡La tierra no se vende; el pueblo la defiende! (The land is not for sale; the people defend it!) Others were not as catchy, such as the one that decried "indifferent transnational" corporations, which made me certain that chants should never have five-syllable words in them. Another that was slightly eerie was ¡Los mártires no se lloran; se imitan! (Martyrs are not mourned; they're imitated!) and I hoped that 10,000 Guatemalan protesters would draw the line of imitation at being brutally killed. Other chants didn't work at all, such as ¡Antes del individualismo, Jesús convoca a la unidad! (Before individualism, Jesus preaches unity!), which sounds just as unwieldy in Spanish as it does in English. The most resounding chant of all was its most simple: Guatemala, ¡nunca más! Guatemala, never again!
The march ended with a service at the San Pedro cathedral, which Steve and I passed up because there were no more available seats. We walked back to San Marcos and took a bus back home. On the bus ride back, I compared in my mind the importance of this 10,000-person march and thought about the most publicized political movement going on back home; the ideologically vacant and ridiculous Tea Party movement. At least one country knows what to protest about.
posted by Peter Myers at
10:16 AM
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