Reporters/Producers: Maria Martin, Sam Eaton, Walter Morgan, Angelica Luevano
Central American Collaborator: Youth Associate Estela Hernandez
We return again in this edition of our special series: "Despues de las Guerras: Central America After the Wars," to the story of one village, Santa María Tzejá, a small community in Guatemala's northern rainforest. Santa María Tzejá was destroyed during that country's bloody civil war and resettled in the years afterward. In this story we focus on the youth of the village. They are trying to move forward into the future while dealing with the ghosts and the wounds of the past. Maria Martin of Graciasvida Productions has our special report, co-produced by Youth Radio's international desk, in association with National Geographic.
After the remote Guatemalan village of Santa María Tzejá was viciously
sacked by the military in 1982, survivors fled into the surrounding rain forest
and eventually to Mexico; some went even further, to the United States. Others
stayed behind, falling into the military's hands. Today the community is rebuilding
with the help of villagers past and present. The story of the village of
Santa María Tzejá embodies the forces and conflicts that define the
country today. The story of the village's history was told in
Segment 1: Santa María: The Tale of One Village. This
segment tells the story of the present and future of the village through the
perspective of Santa María Tzejá's young people, especiially a young
Mayan woman who recorded a radiodiary and interviewed other young people for this piece.
For more information about the issues raised in the segment Santa Marta Tzeja: Youth Voices (The Tale of One Village, Part 2), see the following books and articles.
(Note: this is not intended as a complete list. Check back for more recommendations and an opportunity to make your own recommendations soon.)
Carmack, Robert M., Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis.
Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
Falla, Ricardo. Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcan, Guatemala, 1975-1982. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994.
Heptig, Vince. A Mayan Struggle: Portrait of a Guatemalan People in Danger. Ft. Worth, Texas: Maya Media, 1997.
Russel, Grahame. Unearthing the Truth: Exhuming a Decade of Terror in Guatemala. EPICA and CHRLA, May 1996.
Manz, Beatriz. Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror and Hope. Berkeley: 2004.
Perera, Victor and Daniel Chauche. Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Sanford, Victoria. Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003.
Wilkinson, Daniel. Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal and Forgetting in Guatemala. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.
Casa Alianza Regional Office Report: Child Rights Under Scrutiny Press Release 6 June, 1997.
Central American states due to report to UN on street children by November. Contrasting official and NGO reports.
Tiempos del Mundo (Argentina):
More Honduran girls prostituted.
Reuters, 28 February 1998 (English and Spanish).
Young girls being taken to Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico.
Kovaleski, Serge F.:
Child Sex Trade Rises in Central America.
The Washington Post, 2 January 2000.
The sexual exploitation of girls and boys, largely by U.S. males, has reached alarming proportions in Central America,
according to children's rights advocates who say the region is now a priority in their struggle against child prostitution
and pornography.
Muñoz, Néfer:
7.5 Million Children at Work. IPS, 3 August 2000.
More than 7.5 million Central American children and adolescents have lost their
right to recreation and studies because they must go to work in order to help support
their families. Children performing dangerous industrial jobs, young people hired
to commit crimes and babies sold into adoption in industrialised countries are
all part of the panorama.
Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala: www.nisgua.org
UN verification mission in Guatemala
The Guatemalan Human Rights Commission: www.ghrc-usa.org
The Commission for Historical Clarification
The Guatemalan Truth Commission report
Discovering Dominga: Guatemala and the Maya
Center for Human Rights Legal Action site about General Fernando Romeo Lucas García
Conciliation Resources (CR): Violent Truths: The Politics of Memory in Guatemala
Produced by GraciasVida Media Center, the independent journalism resource for Latin America.
For more information, contact:
Producer Maria Martin
email: graciasvida.media@gmail.com
or telephone: 415.670.9717
Funded by
and the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
© Maria Martin
Photo at top left © Donna DeCesare www.donnadecesare.com