I wanted to share this post from Rights Action to celebrate their work and to give voice to the community of Santa María Tzejá.
Rights Action supporters may recall that from 1995-2010 we helped fund an empowering education project in the Maya community of Santa Maria Tzeja, Ixcan, Quiche, Guatemala. Over the years, the education program grew to strengthen primary school, and add middle and high school, and scholarships for university.
In the early years, we also helped fund “There Is Nothing Hidden That Will Not Be Made Known”, an extraordinary play that SMT community members helped write, and that SMT students acted in. “There Is Nothing Hidden That Will Not Be Made Known” told the story of the massacre and other military repression suffered by their parents, grand-parents and family members in SMT in the early 1980s.
So empowering was the play, that the students toured to other Mayan villages across Guatemala (including Rabinal where we have long worked) that had suffered and barely survived the same.
Our support for the SMT education was coordinated through a long-time friend and colleague Randal Shea who has lived in and worked with the SMT community for decades now, and was the founder of the education program. Randal shared this letter of gratitude written by one of early beneficiaries of the SMT education program … who also acted in the play.
A heartening read.
You can read the full post, including photographs, here, A Seed That Blossoms Over Time: Letter of Gratitude to Supporters of Santa María Tzejá Education Program.
Categories: Accompaniment, Corruption, Criminalisation, Criminalization, Environment, Evictions, Gender, Genocide, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Land, Military, Mining, Poverty, Racism, Solidarity in Action, Solidarity in Action/Guatemala, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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