[Peace] FW: revised email...to send to the peace list!!!

[Jan & Durl Kruse]

"la voz popular"


 

today i started school again (in preparation for my work

as a human rights accomapnier at the end of october) in this

magical place called proyecto linguistco de espanol, it is officaly a

spanish school but really it is much much more that that,

 

here at the school i saw lots of friends and former teachers,

 

and i began to study with one of the most amazing women i have

ever met, her name is maria tulia,

 

maria was 23 when she joined the resistance movement in guatemala, she 
was

part of the guerilla movement for many many years of her life

giving up contact with family, having a relationship, a normal

life...to struggle for a better life for the poor in guatemala,

 

during her time in the war maria worked with "la voz popular", this 
was

the radio program of the resistance movement, they had programs 
broadcast

every friday, and later, on both fridays and tuesdays,

 

everything was very clandestine because of course the army was

trying to find where the transmission was coming from and destroy it,

 

maria told me there were three parts to producing "la voz popular", 
the

site of production (where she worked), those involved in carrying the

program into the mountains, and then the group responsible for setting 
up

the transmiter, sending out the program, and taking down and hiding 
the

transmitter after each broadcast,

 

the site of transmitting the program changed each time to keep the 
army

from finding the site...people would go into the mountains, climb 
atop

treets with cables and broadcast the signal...and then hide all the

equipment in the ground,

 

maria told me of one army general who was determined to find and

destroy the radio transmission site, she said on once occassion he

sent 5,000 troops into the mountains to look for the site, and that

they used high tech equipment to try to locate the signal as it

was being transmitted...but, the high tech equipment did not work

because of the diverse peaks and valley in the mountains that 
confused

the locating signals,and even though the guerillas had many less

forces, they were able to repel the army with mines and other traps

that they had set up...so the army finally withdrew, the the general

was tan frustrado!

 

at this time there was an opening in the frequencies...and so "la voz

popular" would use this space, maria told me their first broadcast 
went

great...some said people told them they could hear it all the way to

argentina! she said they called this first broadcast the 
"bomb"...because

it was so successful and had such impact,

 

but after that the army tried to disrupt and prevent the signal

from getting out by playing loud rock music over the frequency...so 
they

had to tell people to adjust their dial to find the right frequency,

 

for 8 years maria was the voice of "la voz popular"...she often gave 
very

impassioned addresses but eventually had to stop because she had done 
such

damage to her voice. So after that she began working in the technical

aspects of the radio production...

 

she also told me people had to listen to the radio in a secret and

clandestine way because if the army found you listening they would 
accuse

you of being a guerilla, she said people would listen by wearing

headphones, and that even some members of the army listened because 
they

new the army commanders were lying to them about combats

that had happened and that "la voz popular" would tell the truth,

 

she said programs included an address at the beginning of each

program to a different sector of the population, a specific greeting 
to

campesinos, or women, or students...they also did special programs on

special days, like program about womens rights on international 
womens

day...

 

of course, there was also a separate system for radio communications 
among

the different guerilla fronts and she was involved in helping with 
these

communications about logistics,

 

one of the most amazing stories she told me was about how after the 
peace

accords were signed in 1996 all the people who had been working for 
the

radio were able to finally meet each other face to face in a 
xela...they

had all been part of the same project but had never

seen each other face to face...many recognized her by her voice...

 

a couple of years ago maria was approached by members of the

zapatista army in chiapas to help set up a radio program there,

but the people came to talk to her in a very clandestine way and

did not leave contact information, and so they lost touch, but she told 
me

even today she believes in their struggle and would go to

chiapas to help pass on her information about popular radio,

 

just think, for one tiny minute, what this would mean for say, imc 
radio

news in urbana...can you imagine!?

 

somwhere in urbana a group secretly produces the radio piece, another

group transports it across town to a clandestine location where 
others

take it to the highest spot in town (?) for a transmission...after 
each

transmission all equipment is taken down and hidden, to be 
rebroadcast

from a different place next week...and those listening? well you do 
this

subversively, carefull so others around do not hear what you are tuned 
in

too... and remember all of this is not a game, if you are found out at 
any

point, you are killed on the spot, or worst tortured to death...

 

and what are you broadcasting?  the voice of the people, people 
who have

been oppressed for so many years that they have nothing more

to lose and are willing to risk everything to improve their 
lives...even

within the context of an insane genocidal military machine...

 

but this of course is not all, maria was also a nurse for the last part 
of

the war...she had very little training before going in, only how to 
clean

wound and gangrene, she told me she learned to give

injections in the field working with oranges, she said she learned 
almost

all her skills during the war...treating people with crazy

infections. Maria tells me there are two kinds of gangrene, black

gangrene, which is preferred becuase it moves slowly, and then

gasly gangrene, in which pussy bubbles appear above the skin, and

this is the worst, because it spreads so fast, both are potentially

mortal, but one kills faster, so she spoke of many people who lost 
their

limbs, she said loss of legs was most common.

 

originally they had a health network set up throughout gautemala, 
where

there were safe houses to take wounded people...then in the early 80s 
she

said the guatemala government got help from counter insurgency troops 
from

the united states, chile, and israel and the crackdown was severe, 
the

safe houses were discovered, people were disappeared, and so they 
began

shifting everything to mexico across the border. But taking wounded 
people

to mexico was longer and so many infections got worse and worse...

 

not only did maria treat physical wounds, she also told me of the

physchological work she did...with people suffering seizures, not

caused by physical wounds but from shock...susto....she also worked with 
a

young woman 18 years old, who suffered shock and trauma...

 

and the ironic ending to this whole story is that maria is now

a student in the unviersity here in guatemala studying psychology, 
and

with all this life experience and pratical knowledge guess what 
curriculm

is she

studying?  case studies from the US! about men who cheat on 
their

wives, and kids who have adjustment problems in school, and women

worried about their physical appearance...

 

she looked at me today and asked me why...why is the curriculm in

gautemala modeled after the US?  why do we have to study 
these

foreign problems?  she asked her professor why there are not 
more

examples from gautemala, the war, the horror that people endured

here and the almost complete LACK of mental health care they 
recieved...

 

he told her it is because there are not many written case studies

of these situations...

 

so, maria left proyecto tonight with a plastic bag full of case 
studies

from the united states, and tonight she will read about the mental

health problems of the rich and famous in the united states...

 

i guess being able to pay for mental health guarentees your

problem will be studied by students around the world...

 

i am not saying these problems should be not be studied, or these

people helped, but for gods sake...what trauma the people of

guatemala have endured...and how they today continue to suffer...

 

the world is upside down, makes no sense...

 

here is maria, someone with unmeasurable real world experience, with 
a

desire to study and help those suffering in guatemala, who is forced 
into

a curriculm locked into a  first world mentality.  If 
only those in the US

had to learn half of what all those around the world learn out of 
pure

survival about the united states...

 

so, i send you love from xela, each day here teaches me so much, and

always keeps questions constant in my mind...where to go? what to

do?....sigue, sigue, sigue sigendo...with love, meridith

  
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