We Come to Form Ourselves Bit by Bit

Student Focus Groups With Civic Images

Perhaps the most unusual data collection method in this project was the use of “civic images,” pasted onto 3 × 5 inch cards, to elicit discussion among students on the abstract topics of civic belonging, national identity, and historical understanding. Using images can help participants “connect core definitions of the self to society, culture and history” (Harper, 2010, p. 13). This technique has been used with success in history and civic learning research (e.g., Barton & Levstik, 1998; Epstein, 1998). Not intended as an objective measure, these tools were designed to ground abstract topics in familiar images so as to provoke rich discussion among students.

Drawing on research, observations while in the country, and discussions with Guatemalan colleagues, I developed a set of 34 recognizable images taken from historical, political, cultural, and economic themes in Guatemala, with an accompanying protocol. ⁸ The tools were field tested by a Guatemalan academic, revised, piloted with students at El Internacional, and revised again. During data collection, we concluded each focus group by asking students if there were images they felt were missing, irrelevant, or redundant and used this information to adjust the set. Students were enthusiastic about the images, sorting through and discussing them even before beginning the official protocol. Focus group sessions lasted between 60 and 90 minutes and were audio recorded, with participants’ consent.

Interviews With Students, Teachers, and School Directors

Students were interviewed after focus group sessions to follow up on emerging themes and solicit individual perspectives. Student interviews lasted between 45 and 60 minutes. Teachers were interviewed to gain their perspectives on civic teaching, learning, and identity in Guatemala, as were school directors. The adults provided insight about their schools and communities, with questions about how different aspects of Guatemala’s history were taught and what civic issues they felt faced the country. Interviews with teachers and administrators typically lasted for 60 minutes and were audio recorded, with participants’ consent.

National History

History was both part of the official curriculum and inseparable from expressions of identity and belonging in El Básico and Nuestro Futuro. Highlighting the impact of Spanish conquest on the original inhabitants of the area, social studies and citizenship development teacher Profe ¹¹ Pedro of El Básico, a resident of the community and Kaqchikel himself, told a version of history distinct in tone and perspective from the matter-of-fact version offered by state-approved textbooks and outlined very generally in the CNB. He described Spanish colonialism to his students, tying them directly to the region’s precolonial Maya population.

“Sadly,” he began, “they [the Spanish] came to assassinate all our culture. They came and they killed, they assassinated, they raped the Maya population. And as part of this, they took our territory.” In this telling, he and his students belonged to the same people as those original inhabitants, suffering and continuing to pay the price of events taking place over half a millennium earlier.

In interviews conducted amid the din of dusty outdoor hallways, students expressed identification with the vanquished Maya. Josue explained that one of the worst moments in Guatemalan history was “when the Spaniards came. What they did, they stole everything . . . they were bad, the Spaniards, they came here to rob. They took everything.” For Emilio, the “people of Guatemala” were the Indigenous groups living in the area when the greedy and treacherous Spaniards arrived. He attributed Guatemala’s current poverty to the trickery of the Spanish, explaining,

When Spain came here to Guatemala, Guatemala wasn’t poor. Because they say that before, there were gold and silver, everything, but the Spaniards when they came, they say that they subordinated the people of Guatemala, they made them think that a little mirror was better than gold and silver.

Students at both schools expressed a sense of trans-historical Indigenous belonging, equating precolonial Indigenous people with their own contemporary Indigenous communities. Selecting from the civic images set those they felt “made them proud” to be Guatemalan, El Básico students chose Tecún Umán, Guatemala’s official national hero, thought to be the last ruler of the K’iche’ Maya. They chose him, they said, “because he defended us against the Spaniards.” Students said they were proud because “he was Indigenous [and] we also are Indigenous,” a direct identification that referenced both oppression and resistance.

Students in focus groups at Nuestro Futuro also selected Tecún Umán. “He was the king of the Maya,” a student explained, echoing the common national narrative, “and he fought until the end with the Spanish, but he couldn’t overcome them. They killed him, and for this we will always remember him.” Selecting conquistador Pedro Alvarado as one of “the worst parts of Guatemalan history,” Nuestro Futuro students explained that he was terrible “because he invaded Guatemalan lands,” equating Guatemala, a postcolonial construct, with precolonial Maya territory in a way that students in the other cases did not.

Beyond this identification with the precolonial Maya, Nuestro Futuro’s curriculum and educational practices included a focus on remembering injustices suffered by the Indigenous community throughout time. “They [the teachers] teach them [the students] about the political situation,” said Sonia, director of the nonprofit organization that ran the school, describing the school’s history curriculum. ¹² They teach the students

how people [the ruling elite], to keep power, used mechanisms to pacify the population from very early. They took grandparents to work on farms, indebted them. [They teach about] the role that other states have played in financing this situation. This year, they used two texts, one in [the Indigenous language], about the Maya community, the history of [the community].

Living amid inequalities rooted in historical structures of oppression, the school’s Indigenous educators created materials to supplant a national curriculum that did not, in their estimation, meet their students’ needs to understand their history.

Indigenous Language and Culture

To fulfill the mandate in the Accord on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples for the “recognition, respect and promotion of indigenous cultural values,” the CNB called for schools to include instruction in Indigenous language and culture and to promote multiculturalism (del Valle Escalante, 2009; Tetzaguic & Grigsby, 2004; United Nations General Assembly, 1995). While these edicts were fundamental to the demands of the Indigenous parties to the Peace Accords, their instantiation in these Indigenous schools demonstrated the complexity of identity in modern Guatemala.

Looking out at a large group of boys playing soccer on the dirt plaza that served as a field, Profe Pedro described El Básico’s surrounding village:

This is a highly Indigenous community where the population is descended from the Maya-Kaqchikel culture. I’m sure you’ve noticed the typical dress—a very colorful huipil, with various drawings, designs that represent what the ancestors said—the flora, the fauna, the green that represents the hope of the Maya people. And also the skirt that goes down to the ankles.

Relationships to Indigenous customs and language were complex. In Profe Pedro’s view, traditional dress “was being lost” to the conventions of Western attire in light of the labor required for huipil production and the value of huipiles in the tourist market. He pointed to evidence of this shift in the community, where women often wore traditional skirts paired with Western-style t-shirts or blouses.

The relationship to Indigenous language was also complex. In an interview, student Maria condemned the Spanish for taking away Indigenous language, seeing a direct line between colonialism and her personal language loss. Speaking of the Spaniards, she said, “because they came, today we speak Spanish, but before the people spoke Kaqchikel.” Her grandparents spoke Kaqchikel with each other, she explained, but did not teach it to her parents or to her. She enjoyed learning it in school. Language maintenance was variable: In focus groups, some students reported speaking Kaqchikel at home, others Spanish, some described a mix of languages in use.

Profe Pedro offered an example of how distinct orientations to language might arise:

My father spoke it, but my mother was from another place, she didn’t speak Kaqchikel, and when we came here my father was part of the army, my mother took care of us more. Then my father was working, my mother with us, and we didn’t learn to speak Kaqchikel.

Teaching students Kaqchikel was, as intended by the Accords and CNB, a form of cultural “rescue” (rescate), but one that was not always appreciated. “It’s very difficult,” explained Profe Pedro, “because the parents of the family analyze it and say ‘okay, my child, what good will Kaqchikel be to you? Better to learn English because it will open many doors for you.’”

In an interview at Nuestro Futuro, Edelmira expressed a similar ambivalence. Would she teach her Indigenous language to her children when she had them? She explained:

For me, I wouldn’t want to teach them [the Indigenous language] because here in the institute they always use Spanish, . . . so what happened to me when I was a little girl, they didn’t teach me Spanish and now I can’t really pronounce the words.

Rather than focusing on teaching Indigenous language to students who were often fluent in it and wanted to learn Spanish and English, Nuestro Futuro educators infused the curriculum and pedagogy with locally fashioned Indigenous connections. Directora Sonia explained the school’s approach to teaching rural development as “learning about their ancestors’ ways of caring for the earth.” A student explained that the school “taught them the work of the ancestors, customs that we shouldn’t lose.” Agriculture and culture were deeply connected to each other and to Indigenous ancestry. “We should keep working in the fields,” one student explained. “Some [educational] establishments don’t [value] labor, but only study, so students don’t remember how the ancestors worked, what they planted.”

This connection to Indigenous ancestors suffused the school’s teaching methodology. In Nuestro Futuro’s hot and dusty classrooms, young people sat in groups of four—two girls and two boys—around worn plastic picnic tables, discussing photocopied texts. Lead teacher Profe Rolando told me that the seating arrangement came from Maya cosmology, four students representing four directions, four different elements, balancing each other out. “We each have our own way of thinking,” student Jesus explained to me as I watched the class. “We all have our own perspectives and can learn from each other,” another affirmed, interpreting this practice. When Profe Rolando asked the students to explain the school’s values to me, multiple students proclaimed, “respect for the ancianos” (elders). Students’ sense of Indigenous belonging was strong in both of these schools, complex and situated, belying the simplicity of the policy edict to preserve language and culture.

The Armed Conflict

In both schools, teachers went beyond the national curriculum to educate students about the country’s internal armed conflict. El Básico’s Profe Pedro spoke with his class about the recent Rios Montt genocide conviction.

He explained that killing children, mothers, and elders were fundamental genocidal acts, and all had happened to Indigenous communities during the conflict. “With these requisites we can say that there was genocide in Guatemala,” he concluded, “but we all don’t know this, because they [the authorities] don’t explain it, they don’t tell it. We are here. We come to form ourselves bit by bit, and this is what this course is about.”

In a focus group discussion, El Básico students agreed that the ongoing trial of Efrain Rios Montt was “good” because as Lilia explained, “he is going to pay for the harm he did to the Indigenous people.” Her classmate Maria appeared to equate national identity with Indigenous identity, explaining, “He’s going to pay for what he did to the Guatemalans, for the massacres he carried out.”

At Nuestro Futuro, study of the armed conflict was an even more explicit part of the curriculum. The school itself was founded by a survivor of a local massacre that took place during the worst years of the war and designed to provide secondary education to the Indigenous descendants of small agricultural villages particularly impacted by the conflict. The school’s unique carrera (career focus) in community and rural development was coupled with an equal emphasis on memoria historica (historical memory) of the armed conflict. On the second morning of my visit, the school held a ceremony to commemorate the Spanish embassy’s burning in Guatemala City in 1991, an event that killed Rigoberta Menchu’s father. Students convened on the playing field, standing in a circle around a candle- and flower-covered altar. Each grade came forward, sharing reflections and offerings. A procession followed, then a prayer. Directora Sonia confirmed the centrality of such events in the school’s curriculum. The educators did not want students to forget “the history,” she said. “It is painful but important.” Historical memory, she explained, echoing Profe Pedro, is “knowing the historical truth. State sponsored education never gives it.”

In a focus group, Nuestro Futuro students chose a photo of the signing of the Peace Accords as an image of one of most important moments in Guatemalan history. “We chose the signing of the Firm and Lasting Peace Accords,” they explained, “because this was a new concept for Guatemala . . . because before then, there were a lot of wars, there were genocides.” Although they noted that violence was still a problem in the country, students credited the Accords for bringing an end to massive, state-sponsored violence that had directly impacted their community, saying, “before they signed the peace [accords] there was a lot of violence in Guatemala and they [the government] didn’t respect the laws, but since they signed it everything has changed.”

At these schools, locally fashioned approaches directly addressing issues of history and injustice supplanted the CNB’s emphasis on the promotion of a globalized version of multicultural, democratic citizenship. By writing their own textbook and engaging in blunt conversation about the treatment of Indigenous Guatemalans during the armed conflict, these educational communities crafted approaches to civic learning that were rooted in their sense of belonging to a community situated amid historically imbalanced structures of power.

National History

Standing in his sun-filled classroom, Profe Diaz, El Colegio’s social science and citizenship development teacher, lectured to his group of ten 16- and 17-year-olds, presenting a description of Spanish colonialism quite different in tone from the El Básico version. Elaborating on the thin textbook account, Profe Diaz said,

The issue was this, it was the thinking of the time. First of all, the Spanish came with the understanding that they were “chosen by god” to Catholicize the Indigenous, so the Spaniard truly believed in his divine right to do what he did. For them it wasn’t bad. They had the firm idea that god had designated them conquistadors and converters of the Indigenous. So, with this thinking you are obviously not going to go down a different path, you are really stuck in the Catholic faith. This was the problem.

It was a rational explanation, told with some degree of sympathy for those who suffered at the hands of the stubbornly religious Spanish, but concluding with the relativistic notion that the conquerors were merely products of their time. Distinct from the tales of Spanish trickery and Indigenous destruction (“assassinating our culture,” “they stole everything”) shared by Indigenous students and educators, this version of the conquest was devoid of direct identification with any of the players.

Victoria, sitting in the front row, iPad in hand, dragged the discussion into the present, identifying the coloniality of power at play. “If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be where we are now. Do you understand me? It definitely would have been very different.” Profe Diaz built on her remark, connecting the colonial past to the divided present and placing himself and his students firmly on one side of this divide. “The Indigenous in our country are still resentful of the Whites. . . . They bow their heads when someone like us comes by, and they talk softly. There are some that still say ‘patroncito’ [little boss].” El Colegio students belonged to “the Whites,” clearly divided from the beleaguered and embittered Indigenous. Like that of the educators at El Básico and Nuestro Futuro, Profe Diaz’s instruction placed his students amid the coloniality of power, but on a different part of the spectrum.

Indigenous Language and Culture

In a primary grade Kaqchikel class, all of the school’s younger students, from kindergarten through third grade, gathered under the canopy of the outdoor eating area. Sitting on neatly arranged metal folding chairs, a television placed on a stand at the front, the teacher addressed the group, asking, “Who are the Maya?” A student raised his hand, saying, “They are the people who lived before.” “Yes!” she confirmed enthusiastically, as she started playing an animated version of the Maya origin myth “Men of Corn.”

While the school’s youngest students fulfilled their Indigenous language requirement by learning about the Maya as an ancient, essentialized, and even mythical people, a modern Kaqchikel woman confronted the older students with the origin of the country’s current inequalities. Seño Hortencia, leading one of the infrequent Kaqchikel workshops and dressed in her village’s vibrant purple, pink, and green huipil, started class with a Maya spiritual invocation. ¹³ She then directly confronted her room full of 14-year-old Ladinos. “Why do you think there are majestic temples in Antigua? Whose work was that?” Speaking of the destruction of Maya documents during the conquest, she told the students, “If we had all of these documents, we’d have a different story, not of the Niña, Pínta, Santa Maria, but that the Spaniards came and un montón [a heap] of people died.” Students appeared both shocked and interested in this different version of history.

At El Colegio, students took the CNB-mandated Indigenous language class in the form of a “workshop” on culture given “every other month or so,” according to the director. Asked why they did not teach the local Indigenous language, he replied,

Why don’t we teach Kaqchikel? It is a good question. But our students come from various places; the majority of them don’t have an ethnic origin, so we think it isn’t necessary to learn the language. They are Ladinos, so it is better to give them a general vision of Maya culture than to make them learn a language that perhaps isn’t their own and isn’t going to be very useful.

For the director, his Ladino students were not “ethnic” and thus had no use for the local Indigenous tongue. A “general vision of Maya culture” would suffice, leaving time for students to focus on learning English.

El Internacional students—although most were Guatemalan citizens and subject to the same national mandate—did not even have this limited exposure to Indigenous language and culture. Ms. Clara reflected,

I think we are better in teaching kids to be citizens of the world than we are at teaching kids to be citizens of Guatemala. Our curriculum has no place for learning the [Guatemalan] customs, languages, and traditions. I think we are much better at world history.

In a focus group, when asked if they learned about Indigenous culture at school, a student answered the question in relation to the ancient Maya rather than their contemporary descendants,

Not really. We learn more about Semana Santa, the marimba [Catholic and secular national traditions], but they don’t talk about the Maya culture, and sometimes what they say isn’t true . . . they haven’t changed [the curriculum] in years and sometimes there are things that don’t make sense at all.

Exposure to the Maya was limited to a brief and not particularly accurate study of pre-Columbian people. Yet many El Colegio and El Internacional students were intrigued by and proud of the ancient Maya. Many selected an image of Tikal, an archeological site of an ancient Mayan city, as one of the most important things in Guatemalan history. Many of these Ladino students wore Maya zodiac signs. One 15-year-old girl studied what she described as “Maya shamanism.”

Despite this respect for the ancient Maya, students at these schools saw themselves as belonging to a group distinct from their contemporary Indigenous co-citizens. An El Internacional student, speaking about Indigenous weaving in a focus group, explained “you always see it in the streets.” “They are selling their stuff,” added another. “They don’t have anything else to do with their lives,” a third contributed, pronouns indicating lack of common identity with these fellow citizens. Indigenous people were, in their view, educational and appropriate for tourism. “In Antigua [a popular site for tourism] you see a lot of them, because of tourism,” explained one student. “Every time you go to Pana [Panajachel, a tourist spot popular with foreigners and affluent Guatemalans] there are people who dress like that, and they teach us the culture.” In a focus group, El Colegio students selected an image of the garbage dump in Guatemala city and of an Indigenous woman cooking on a wood burning stove to illustrate what they felt were some of the biggest problems facing the country: poverty and the Indigenous birth rate. “They have up to 12 or 13 children,” said Melisa, “they don’t think about how they are going to support all the creatures they have . . . this [is] what has brought Guatemala to have an extreme population.” This apartness was not neutral but had negative connotations. “I don’t think anybody would be proud to say they have Indigenous blood,” said Ms. Clara. “There is still a stigma here; the kids insult each other by using the term Indio. It’s still an insult. No one would say, ‘oh you know I have Kaqchikel blood in me,’ it’s not a point of pride.”

The Armed Conflict

These students’ and educators’ historical memory of the armed conflict was completely different from that of students and teachers in El Básico and Nuestro Futuro. According to Profe Diaz, “The armed conflict doesn’t interest them because . . . it is very distant for them. It didn’t affect us directly, including me as a teacher, it didn’t affect me either.” Educators and students in these settings strove for equivalency when discussing the armed conflict. In a focus group, students selected an image of the signing of the 1996 Accords in response to a question about the most important events in Guatemalan history. Cesár explained the selection, saying, “Because it brought peace between two cultural groups, the guerillas and the government.” This notion of two equal sides was the official stance of the school. “It is good that the student has the two versions, really,” said El Colegio’s director. “For example, now we have the genocide case of Rios Montt. We have to be aware that the army carried out crimes, but also that the guerillas did the same; we have to have the two points of view.” These views were consistent with textbook accounts minimizing detail and apportioning equal blame for the conflict.

Students at El Internacional, responding to an image of Efrain Rios Montt, spoke in focus groups about the genocide charges against him. “Really there wasn’t genocide in Guatemala,” said David. “There wasn’t genocide; I feel that they are only judging one side. They aren’t doing anything to the guerillas,” echoed Diana. In contrast with Profe Pedro of El Básico’s invocation of the Holocaust, an El Colegio student explained, “Everyone compares Hitler and Rios Montt, but he never discriminated against the Indigenous like that.” Ana agreed, saying, “Maybe they are saying that he committed genocide, but they didn’t exactly exterminate the Indigenous race because there are still a lot of them.”

Students felt the Peace Accords should have put an end to the issue of the armed conflict, questioning recent attempts to prosecute war criminals. “If they are going to try Rios Montt,” said César at El Colegio, “they should also try Rigoberta Menchu, because when they signed the Peace Accords they said that it [the armed conflict] was erased.” “It supposedly ended the guerillas, there was an erasure and a new beginning, supposedly.” It should be, “a new beginning for Guatemala.” “The war is over already,” said Mateo, frustrated with the trial. Indigenous people were “not respecting what this peace signing was.” Francisco from El Internacional complained, “I think people should move on already.” Not seeing a direct connection between themselves and this history, students were eager to relegate it to the past.

Students’ historical memories of the time of the armed conflict, derived from family talk and story, were at odds with those of their Indigenous peers. It was unclear to them that this was a better time for the country. El Colegio students spoke about this animatedly in focus groups, responding to an image of a group of gang members that they selected as one of the problems they felt their country faced. “My mother told me that maybe it was better before because there wasn’t delinquency.” “Before there weren’t gangs.” “My mother told me that when there was the general [Rios Montt], the violence was totally reduced because there were punishments. If someone robbed, they’d cut off a finger.” “My grandparents said that before everything was safer, that you could be in the street and there wasn’t danger that they would assault you or rob you.” El Internacional’s Francisco echoed this in an interview, explaining

My mom says it was safer [before] than today. Now violence is everywhere. Pérez Molina [current president] said he would reduce violence; that’s why everybody voted for him, he was a [member of the] military and Guatemala used to function well when the military ruled. It was when we changed to another approach that everything got bad. He’s from the army so people thought it would be like in the old times when we were safe.

The military government “was kind of extreme, but it worked.” Expressing nostalgia for those years, these students identified not with those who were the victims of military violence but with those who benefited from the oppressive regime.

Operating within an affluent, Ladino context, El Colegio students’ understandings of civic issues were marked by privilege. Seño Isabel, who taught a course focused on civic research and action, reflected, “they live in a bubble and they don’t know what Guatemala is like.” Profe Diaz hoped to “open their eyes” so that

at least they can have a little more consciousness of what the situation is in our country, the economy, the society . . . that at least they have a little bit of a notion and aren’t enclosed in a fantasy bubble.

Despite educational policies oriented toward ending civic discord, with little in the curriculum to challenge their worldview, these students’ historical memories put the armed conflict in the remote past. Belonging to a different Guatemala from that of their Indigenous peers, El Internacional and El Colegio students had different readings of the pervasive inequalities shaping their country.

National History

Profe Carlos, one of the school’s directors, described the history curriculum at El Instituto, which included “the discovery of the Americas, the conquest, the pre-Columbian era, colonial times.” In a focus group, students shared a similar conquest narrative to that of the students in El Básico and Nuestro Futuro. “There was gold here, and in exchange for the gold they gave the Maya mirrors,” one student explained, responding to an image of the conquistador Pedro Alvarado, selected by the group to represent an important event in Guatemala’s history. “Maybe because they didn’t have the knowledge, they didn’t know what a mirror was so they were surprised, and they gave the gold to the Spaniards.” This was the origin of the country’s poverty: “Because of this Guatemala was left without gold; they came and took it all away.”

The students also studied the armed conflict and Indigenous oppression. They had read La Hija del Pluma, a book about the armed conflict told from the point of view of an Indigenous girl who fled her village to take refuge in Mexico, and they had learned about Rigoberta Menchu (Zak, 1986). “She was an exemplary woman,” one student reflected, selecting Menchu’s image as one of the things that made them most proud to be Guatemalan, “because despite being Indigenous—and the majority thought that the Indigenous couldn’t do anything and were lesser than everyone else—she demonstrated the opposite.” Girls in another focus group discussed the woman they fondly called “La Menchu,” selecting an image of Rigoberta Menchu accepting the Nobel Peace Prize to indicate one of the most important moments in Guatemalan history. “She won the Nobel Prize,” she was an inspiration because “she suffered during the war.” “She stood out, despite being a woman,” “and despite being Indigenous,” “and despite being poor.”

Both Profe Carlos and Seño Flor, the Kaqchikel teacher, noted that students also studied what the latter called “today’s social problems.” They displayed a more pointed social class analysis than did their peers at many of the other schools. One student explained, “We were talking about social classes, then she [the teacher] said that the elite class were nine families that joined together in a society, and they had the most power.” Another added, “We say that the children of the owners, when they intend to marry it is only with families of the same level.”

This economic critique extended to politics, as the girls considered an image of the president at that time, Otto Perez Molina, selected in response to a question about the biggest problems facing the country. ¹⁴ “Otto Perez Molina,” a student began, “he said that he was going to end the violence or diminish it and no.” “It’s worse,” agreed another. “Many people say that he is in favor of the upper class . . . because he always appears at events with people who have a lot of money.” They connected money to politics, saying,

There are some parties that go to the left and others that go to the right. He went with the parties of the right, the rich people. Since the beginning we knew that he would go with the rich people.

They linked these class divisions to the country’s identity-based divisions. In a mixed group of Indigenous and Ladina students, one explained, “Otto Perez Molina won in Guatemala [the capital], but in all of the [other] departments he didn’t win because of the Indigenous people; the Indigenous people didn’t want him. I believe that they knew his history.” Indigenous and Ladina students alike at this school displayed a critical and engaged citizenship that took history and identity into account in their analysis and discussions of the country’s civic issues.

Indigenous Language and Culture

Despite the curricular focus on language as a means of cultural preservation, for many girls at El Instituto, indigeneity was not identical to the mastery of a language they did not speak. In an interview, Jenifer explained,

When my uncles wanted to learn Kaqchikel he [her grandfather] didn’t let them because he said that they lived 20 kilometers from the capital [where Spanish dominates] and they didn’t need to use the language. They understand it, but they didn’t learn to speak. My mother speaks a little, but not 100 percent. My grandmother yes. . . . My grandfather spoke Kaqchikel, but he had the thought that we didn’t need to use the language anymore. Besides, I think he had seen a lot of discrimination if you used the language.

Vilma, when interviewed, described a similar process of language loss due to fear and discrimination:

I speak Spanish, my grandparents and my parents speak Kaqchikel. What happened is that when my grandfather was alive, he didn’t want our parents to teach us because our grandparents were afraid that they were going to do something to us, because of speaking our language, so we lost this opportunity. I would have liked to have really learned it. But they didn’t teach it to us and now we realize that it would have helped us a lot. Because of this, they ask us “are you Ladinos?” I can’t say yes; I don’t hide my family. I’m proud to be Kaqchikel although I don’t speak it, but I’m proud that my parents can speak it.

At El Instituto, all of the students studied the local Indigenous language for a full year as a regular class that met several times weekly. “It’s a rescue,” said Seño Flor, a Kaqchikel woman who each day wore a huipil from a different village. She explained that while many of the students were Indigenous, most did not speak Kaqchikel. She herself had learned the language as an adult.

There are a lot [of students] in traditional dress and they identify as Kaqchikel when they are asked to identify themselves on the form. . . . So some put that they are Kaqchikel, but there are others who are and they don’t want to put it down.

In her class, she taught greetings, vocabulary, songs, and tongue twisters; students did creative projects and studied the customs of different Indigenous villages.

During one of these presentations, a student, barefoot and dressed in traditional dress for the community that she was describing (although she may have identified as Ladina), stood on the wooden teacher’s podium at the front of the class, explaining the meaning of the colors in her huipil. “The black is for the land, the blue is the sky and water. Orange for corn.” A second girl held up posters of people wearing Western clothes, explaining that Indigenous people were losing their clothing traditions, wearing both casual and formal (Western attire), depending on the occasion, because handwoven traditional dress could be more expensive than Western clothes and many employers required their employees to wear uniforms. In another presentation, a student expressed a connection with the Maya that was frequently made at El Instituto as she explained her huipil, saying, “The figures in the huipil, they now say that they mean nothing, but each one, each one had meaning to our ancestors.”

El Instituto students displayed the fluidity and complexity of ethnic identification in modern Guatemala. For some students, to say Guatemalan was equivalent to saying Indigenous. Teresita, who wore traditional Indigenous dress to school, explained in an interview:

“It is the same, Guatemalan and Indigenous.”

“What about Ladinos?” I ask.

“They are also Guatemalans but they don’t use traditional dress but rather they use pants or skirts, but they continue being Guatemalan by our form of speaking, by our form of being; above all we are chapines [the colloquial term for Guatemalans].”

“What is chapín for you?”

“It is to say Guatemalans in the heart . . . if you are from here, from Guatemala you can use it.”

Carolina described El Instituto, in an interview, as a diverse mix of students, in which she greatly valued her Indigenous friends, saying,

Here there are thousands of women, they come from different places. I am Ladina but I like to share more with the Indigenous people because they are more respectful, they stand up for what they want, they fight for what they want, they don’t leave one at the last minute, for friendship they are very agreeable.

Hedy reflected on ethnicity a bit differently in her interview, invoking dress and rights.

Here the majority of us are Ladinas who don’t wear Indigenous dress, but there are some that wear typical dress and it is very nice to share with them. There are people that say that they [the Indigenous] are less than us because of this [their dress] but it isn’t so. There isn’t a difference between the groups because they have the same rights as us. They dress differently, but they are equal.

These girls distinguished themselves from their Indigenous classmates but expressed respect, camaraderie, and adherence to a tolerant multiculturalism similar to that found in the CNB.

Some blurred these lines further, broadening notions of indigeneity or, more commonly, Mayanicity, to include both Ladino and Indigenous people. In an interview with Bianca, a Ladina-identified girl, she explained,

To be Guatemalan is to be born in Guatemala. To love the country. I think that yes, we are all Indigenous, because this is where the Maya were born. So we are all Indigenous, but we don’t all wear typical dress. And some don’t have Indigenous last names. . . . I think we all are [Maya]. As here was the Maya race, so in a certain way they were part of us, of our ancestors.

Profe Carlos, a Ladino himself, agreed with this idea, telling me in an interview that “Ladino or Indigenous, those are the terms [used to classify students] but we all come from the Maya.” In this setting, young people were engaging directly with complex ideas of ethnicity and belonging, and although their efforts were not always logically coherent—or were even, at times, essentialized and static—they attempted to articulate the relationship between different forms of identity and forge a new, if messy, understanding of Guatemalan belonging.

The Armed Conflict

Unlike their peers at El Colegio and El Internacional but much like those at El Básico and Nuestro Futuro, El Instituto students agreed that Rios Montt should be tried for genocide. In a focus group, students segued from their selection of an image of the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords as one of the most important moments in Guatemala’s history into a discussion of the ongoing trial. “Yes, and supposedly it wasn’t genocide, but who knows. In my personal opinion I believe that it was genocide,” said a student. “Yes, yes it was genocide,” agreed another. “We didn’t live it, but maybe our families,” a third concurred. One girl shared how the army abducted her uncle and forced him to fight, a common occurrence in poor, rural areas. Another described a nighttime raid on her family home.

In these students’ estimations, things had clearly changed since those times. A student explained, “Now it isn’t like before. If someone spoke about this [the armed conflict], they would go to the people and pull them away and kill them at once. Now, it is all more liberal.” Profe Carlos confirmed this, describing the disappearance of politically active students while he attended the country’s main public university during that time period. Some were more critical, however. “Supposedly Guatemala has peace,” one student said, in a focus group, “but in reality we can say that there isn’t peace, because they are still killing people, right? A lot of us say that the Peace Accords are only a piece of paper, because there isn’t peace now.” Acknowledging the irony of claiming peace amid the current violence, El Instituto students both condemned the past and critiqued the present. An awareness of economic inequality may have undergirded the shared, if complex, sense of national belonging expressed in this integrated setting, where students learned together about local Indigenous traditions and engaged, to a certain extent, with the country’s difficult history.