For the four community schools you have to train teachers. They have to learn Kaktxikel, because transmission fails.

Unfortunately, peanut is not transmitted. There are many factors for this to happen. One of these four centres, for example, is close to the city and, as a result of this closeness, Spanish is the one representing the puppy. We also live in tough internal conflicts, here we have very violent processes, there are murders. On the other hand, parents think that if we do not learn in Spanish, we will not find work. The question “What is the language for?” is common. Those who think about it have received messages of this kind in the ordinary education system, in violent processes. We are told that the Mayans are the worst thing that can happen to Guatemala.

We have been discriminated against as Maya, the factors for not transmitting the language are very strong.

You have a lot of work preparing the teachers.

It's not about saying, "Let's teach teachers beetle!" We start from being. Who am I like a river? How do I live? We want to recover the knowledge of our grandparents and grandmothers, and so the teachers won't be mere cacchillo teachers. That you fall in love with your culture, that you know from your heart what our language is. We trained academically and politically faculty. In this way, we will be able to take away from the history that they have taught us. We are decolonizing education so that we can work the language. It's not enough to say, "Let's talk to the puppy!" There are people talking to the puppy, but they think like the system. We with the teachers are working on historical and political training.

The complete immersion model has been implemented in one of these four centres.

They have students aged 3 to 16. They started about five years ago. It's yielding very good results. Before being a community college, it was My Melody College. The children learned Spanish and English. The owners left the land and the building to start the school they were going to teach at the Kakutxel.

English and Spanish? Didn't parents leave when they changed the model?

English has gained a lot of strength in Guatemala. If you learn, you'll have a job.

Some left, but some did not. They didn't go away, because we explained to them that we would be in favor of the community, that we wanted to reclaim our identity and our culture. It's very advanced methodologically, from the moment you go in to the moment you go out, you do it in Spanish, in the classroom and out of the classroom.

The other center studied 60% in the original language.

It is a school of different nature. It is oriented to meet social needs. A student may come suddenly and not know anything about the puppy. Instead, children are politically empowered. Today, it's said empowered, right? [laughs]. They have an art school and they learn the knowledge and music of the elderly. They have very active parents and when there are protests the children ask their parents to take them with them. Children are accompanied by marimbas, drums and turtles. The girls have started asking for our clothes. We had lost our clothing and it's important because it shows our nature, the universe, the way of life. However, we have stopped dressing for discrimination and racism, because otherwise on the street they tell us: “Look, there goes the Indian!” They're really tough situations, it's easier to live like one of them and wear pants. The girls explain to the mothers why they want to get the suit back. Weavers have also begun to reclaim our tissues.

What are the other two centers like?

51% of parents speak to the puppy, compared to 5% who know how to speak. Very little transmitted. The advantage is that, although they don't speak, they are able to understand. They try to put on a model of immersion. In one of them they have a major obstacle, they don't have enough money to become teachers. The truth is that, as a Community centre, we all have economic problems. A center has been offered by the City Hall by the professor. He knows the language, but he has the thinking of the system. We have to start working from scratch with them, and some of them are apathetic to our way of life.

Are parents satisfied with the four centers?

What matters most is the mood in which children go home. Children are happy and motivated. Good things get infected. In state schools they lean towards their own, learn and learn by heart. Our children don't even know who they are. They're left in community colleges, they start from the heart. Whoever chooses the path of the heart is not mistaken. I think when we choose what we want to be, we don't get it wrong and we live happy.

I remember the concern of a mother who enrolled her daughter in one of these centers. She told me I didn't have to go into school, because she started to slap her and asked why she wasn't using the original clothing. The girl wanted to change school, but her daughter didn't and didn't. Gradually, the mother became sensitized and eventually began to dress in original clothes. He came to love his clothes, to love his culture.