{"id":105,"date":"2011-01-10T00:02:23","date_gmt":"2011-01-10T00:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/?p=105"},"modified":"2011-01-10T00:02:23","modified_gmt":"2011-01-10T00:02:23","slug":"manuel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/manuel-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Manuel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nWhen I was a year old, my dad died \u2013 I never knew him \u2013 because of the war that happened there in my village, in Chajul, in Quich\u00e9. My mom was left a widow. There\u2019s four of us in my family. A sister and two brothers, I make four, my mom makes five. We lived in one house but my mom never, never got married when my dad died and this was a hard thing for me because I never knew my father.<\/p>\n

Thus it was horrible, it was terrible, I didn\u2019t know my dad, only in photos, there were photos of him. It was really terrible and it affected me psychologically. So sometimes the kids would look at their dads, my friends, the neighbors, when their dads came home and they\u2019d all run out, \u201cDad, Dad!\u201d and hug him\u2026 I asked my mother why I didn\u2019t have a dad and little by little my mother began to explain because I wanted to have a dad.
\nSometimes when I\u2019d ask her about it she\u2019d start to cry. I had my uncle, I called him dad, and he also, thanks to him he helped me get beyond it, what I was missing, what was empty inside me and that\u2019s why.<\/p>\n

Then, my dad was a patrolman because back then everyone had to go patrolling, they had to travel a lot. So it was because of how they terrorized my dad that he died. Little by little, according to my mom, he was really, really thin and he was frightened and afraid. It killed him. My dad died. Of fear.<\/p>\n

I have an uncle that the soldiers took him away and also my other uncle, the guerrillas took him away. Like that, he disappeared, we never saw him anymore. And I don\u2019t know if he\u2019s alive, still alive, or if he\u2019s already dead. Two uncles. One they took to the soldiers, the other they took to the guerrillas.<\/p>\n

I even have a friend that can\u2019t forget where his father died. We were around eight years old already (or he was eight, and he\u2019s older than me) and his father, the soldiers grabbed his father in an apple tree and burned him, still alive, in front of him. So then he also, psychologically… it\u2019s affected people there, they\u2019re very scared because of the war that happened. But little by little they\u2019re moving on, moving on.<\/p>\n

It was terrible because my mom\u2019s told me that sometimes people were just thrown in the streets, with no head. And the soldiers even also sometimes the guerillas arrived in the village and if you had\u2026 if someone had contact with the soldiers, they\u2019d kill him, just as the soldiers would kill if someone had contact with the guerrillas. The soldiers were killing people in the village, sometimes with machetes. There were people, already dead, but with no head, no arms, no legs. The soldiers damaged my family because it was very hard and still sometimes people today don\u2019t forget– at least I don\u2019t forget either, really– because the war marked me with that memory. There are still people in my village that when someone, when a person comes to the village they hide because they\u2019re still afraid because of the war.<\/p>\n

There is still a great deal of pain\u2026 when someone sees that something happened and hides. At least in my town that still exists. If you travel, you arrive in my town, in a village, the children sometimes now they don\u2019t do it but the old people: \u201cWho is he?\u201d They hide. They\u2019re afraid, because of the war. Maybe it was because Chajul isn\u2019t developed economically and intellectually because\u2026 they couldn\u2019t study, there weren\u2019t schools there, there weren\u2019t classes, they didn\u2019t have classes and the soldiers came but they burned the schools even in the church as well. There\u2019s a movie called Cuando las monta\u00f1as tiemblan (When the Mountains Tremble) I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve seen it, but this is very interesting.<\/p>\n

The memories are still there and there are even men who, whether they were guerrillas or soldiers, they\u2026 they hit hard. That is, they\u2019re hard, they don\u2019t think that there\u2019s a person there, and I\u2019ll leave it at that. There are still people like that, hardened. Because of the same thing, from the war that caused everything.<\/p>\n

When the war ended other problems came too, like the gangs, the people who assault, and here in Guatemala there\u2019s a lot of that. That is, there in my village the war is all calmed down. Well, thank God the children now are being educated, there\u2019s a difference from before. Before we couldn\u2019t study, at least for me when I grew up. I only spoke my language and the classes they gave us were in Spanish and I didn\u2019t understand anything. I didn\u2019t learn Spanish until I was 12 or 14. I only spoke Ixil. But later I learned Spanish, I spoke Spanish, but very little. I understood it but I couldn\u2019t express myself. I still \u2013 exactly \u2013 I still have a hard time now as well.<\/p>\n

When I grew up I knew how to understand (what had happened) and now thank God I have struggled to surpass it. I work, I work and study, I work to pay my school fees. I study on weekends and sometimes at night, though it\u2019s also thanks to many projects just like what you\u2019ve done. And well, thank God, really, that there was the peace signing. Now\u2026 we are\u2026 maybe we\u2019re not at peace because there are always wars, there are always thieves. In reality Guatemala sometimes needs help, just like other countries.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m studying business administration. My vision is to give my people jobs, people in my village, to start a business. They grow coffee, cardamom, green beans, so I want to make an association to be able to export coffees and have a business in the village to give people there jobs, because we are farmers. I am a farmer, I work the earth and I know how to work well. That\u2019s my vision. I\u2026 God willing, I graduate this year.<\/p>\n

When I have children I will tell them how I lived. That is\u2026 tell them something about my father and have them understand that you have to appreciate yourself. But I won\u2019t go into great depth because maybe, from my point of view, it would hurt them, maybe, their minds. But yes, I\u2019d tell them what I went through and what happened: just like my mother told me, I also have to tell my children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a year old, my dad died \u2013 I never knew him \u2013 because of the war that happened there in my village, in Chajul, in Quich\u00e9. My mom was left a widow. There\u2019s four of us in my family. A sister and two brothers, I make four, my mom makes five. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-testimonies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}