In the heart of the Mayan world, the communities still remember a green childhood, dotted with colored birds and crystalline streams where they learned to swim as if they were inside a great placenta. That scenario has been broken for years. History repeats itself: a megaproject tears through the forests and the indigenous people hide, as if it were a trailer for the saga Avatar. Mayan lawyer Ana Rutilia Ical Choc has seen it time and time again, but she has managed to overcome her fear.
Ical Choc, a professor at the Rafael Landívar University, has grown up among the ghosts of the genocide in Guatemala, more than 200,000 deaths and disappearances during the eighties, most of them indigenous, according to the UN Truth Commission. Despite the peace agreements and the fact that figures such as former President Ríos Montt were prosecuted, the abuses against the Mayans do not end. The lawyer has not only learned to live with death, but she has put the State against the wall.
“They wanted us to disappear. They still see the Indians under the boot and that is no longer possible. I have faced a corrupt system, unpunished, bought by the oligarchies. I’m not afraid of them. They are afraid of me”, underlines the leader. In addition to bringing litigation involving exiled communities, in 2019 he managed to get the Supreme Court to agree with him in his fight against Renace, the largest hydroelectric complex in Central America made up of five plants, four of them built by the then Spanish company Cobra, chaired by Florentine Perez.
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The lawyer had appealed due to the lack of a “prior, free and informed consultation” of the native communities of San Pedro Carchá, as indicated in the agreement 169 of the International Labor Organization. Despite this, the project did not stop. The Cahabón River, sacred to the Maya, began to dry up as tractors ground up the forest and fences were erected. The water that fed their world disappeared and to cross their territory they had to identify themselves.
The lawyer, as she is called in her community, began to feel the plunder from a very young age, when her brother disappeared. While she was looking for him in military detachments, she was a teacher in the villages of Alta and Baja Verapaz, home of the Q’eqchi Maya. She later helped found the Academy of Mayan Languages and the Ombudsman for Indigenous Women. From the Academy they highlight the fight “of sister Ical” so that the Constitution includes as the official language of Guatemala, along with Spanish, the more than 20 living languages of Maya. Ical criticizes a society proud of the ancient Mayans of the pyramids and the codices that inspire NASA, but she forgets the living conditions of the current ones.
His degree in Legal Sciences progressed along with his conviction to learn to defend himself. “I defend our dignity. Mother earth, the forest, the river are sacred. The human being cannot live without them, ”he says, and his voice breaks on the phone.
The lawyer knows how to defend herself, but she also knows leaders and former prosecutors who are still incarcerated, she says. Threatened, Ical Choc has been branded as a troublemaker, accused of stealing from her parents, of defrauding the State. She has been winning her cases at the point of litigation and leaving her health. She usually changes her mobile to avoid eavesdropping and disconnects from the networks to avoid harassment.
“She is a woman with a lot of character and an enormous level of commitment. It is already difficult to be a human rights defender in Central America and more complicated if you are indigenous. Ana Rutilia has dared to stand up to one of the large economic groups in the country and the community division that this has caused”, explains Almudena Moreno, from the Spanish NGO Alianza por la Solidaridad.
From the Renace hydroelectric company, they point out that they have created a nature reserve, promote education and nutrition programs and employ members of the population. The community criticizes that they are temporary jobs, that they have destroyed the ecosystem and that they will not benefit from electricity, which is for export.
The marginalization is historic. Since the conquest, independence or the massive arrival of Germans in the 19th century, who implanted coffee and cardamom, the natives have been condemned in many cases to servitude and invisibility.
Moreno’s NGO, which makes the situation in the region visible, accompanied Ical to a hearing of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Madrid where Florentino Pérez was also summoned. Ana Rutilia does not forget that moment. The OECD reminded the businessman that his contractor status did not exempt him from complying with international standards and recommended that he collaborate with the authorities to remedy the damages. Cobra was sold to the French group Vinci at the end of 2021.
The lawyer appealed the decision of the Supreme Court of her country not to suspend the hydroelectric complex before the Constitutional Court. The Court has not yet handed down a ruling. Hydroelectric plants continue to be built. The Q’eqchi people await the day of the consultation on the complex. The months pass deaf without the noise of the water. It is already rare to see a quetzal, that magical bird with a red chest and green feathers that has always protected the Mayans.
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