Letter from Guatemala: Indigenous Women on Civil War

Abstract

Nothing had been published on women indigenous combatants until Ligia Peláez edited memorias rebeldes contra el olvido: Paasantzila txumb'al ti' sortzeb'al k'u‘l, a collection of essays portraying the voices of Ixil and K'iche’ women. During the Guatemalan Civil War they fought with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor. When the war ended in 1996, they returned to their hometowns. About six hundred of them founded the Kumool Association in 1999. Peláez, an academic working for the Association for the Advancement of the Social Sciences, met them in Uspantán in May 2006. She returned in June with her team, and by the second meeting, in July, the Kumool women chose to collaborate in the writing of a book about their experience.