Since it is time to return to Guatemala, we have excited you, dancing emotions and nerves.

The situation is not convenient for the defenders of peoples and the land. Right now, it's time for defenders to hunt. Criminal groups act with total impunity against each other. Also against journalists. It would not be wrong for you to join them, for you to show solidarity with them. For starters, they have two journalists killed at once, not many. They used to account for the territories, that is, where we are the people of origin. It's hard to live there.

We have left Guatemala since last June.

I came after the last attack. Since I was a member of the Council for the Defense of Life, Mother Nature, the Earth and the Territory, the representative of the people of Maia Kiche, have attacked me several times. From the Council, we are trying to combat transnational corporations, corporations that have mines and hydropower at their disposal. Right now we are receiving timber from the transnational [Spanish businessman] ACS by Florentino Pérez. When I was named a spokesperson, in 2007, the attacks on me began. They came against me, directly, people who are very closely related to transnational corporations.

Attacks and death threats, as I read.

In 2012, for example, the car where I was going was paralyzed. They were hired, hired assassins. They wanted to kill me, but we were a group of women and I got rid of one way or another. However, one of those who travelled with us was beaten and his teeth plucked out. Another hit him until he bleed to death. They were burning until the community came to rescue us. The truth is that communities have saved us from the attacks, the people of the territories.

What are the employees to whom?

From entrepreneurs, landowners and oligarchy, it is the traditional Creole oligarchy that acquires the surface. The one that comes to the surface, above all, is united with the military, including the paramilitary groups, the narco and the Sicarios. On the other hand, there are always the maras willing to do the dirty workforce of others, regardless of who the target is. But above all, you have transnational companies, they are the ones at your disposal. Oligarchy, in itself, is nothing more than a server of the transnational. And the transnational knows that oligarchy runs organized crime.

On more than one occasion he has denounced that the economy and politics go hand in hand.

That is true. Oligarchies are not many, they are eight, or ten. The family of Bosch Gutierrez, or that of Alvaro Arzu Irigoien, who has Basque surnames, control the land. According to the law, they own, regardless of the fact that during the war the peasants were expropriated, with the complicity of the US Government. First, the oligarchies gave a coup d'état against the revolutionary government and, during the next war, amid all kinds of crimes and destruction, forced the peasants to abandon their lands. During this time, the lands were registered on their behalf. That is why the lands of the villages of origin are in the hands of the large families.

It is our fault, that of the European targets.

Completely. The mafia power of neoliberal patriarchal corporations is deeply linked to Europe. Europe, as you would say here, has a number of “experts”, genuine experts in the theft, disappropriation, death and destruction of the peoples of origin. It's as if it's innate, deep. Europe does not hurt, that is what it has always done. You bring it into the blood. You have an intergenerational model that favors invasion. That is what happens, that you take it inside, that you cannot see it, because it is part of you, because you have not decolonized your being here, because here too there was colonization. If you start looking inside you, and see how your ancestors were tortured here, the wise grandmothers here, the women who burned in Zugarramurdi… you would be able to make a critical analysis.

What would this analysis provide?

You have grown here under a specific macroeconomic model, which has drowned your personality. They've been introduced to the idea of fake development, the idea of fake rights, and well-being. The neoliberal states have imposed a “being” on you, and there you go, head, without completing the “being”. You are as devoured by the spirit of robbery, you see us less than you. This supremacy has put you in the bubble of what “must be”, and there you are.

Since the Spanish invasion, your story has been a massacre, genocide, idocution, looting, violence in the bodies… It is a lot of words...

They are not alone, the word, we are living it all the time, from knees to knees: my mom lived; my mother fought her; I fought her and now my daughter is drinking from that fight, so that they do not massacre her, because there are plans to kill us, it is not a chance, but a well-executed plan to destroy us. What has happened in Guatemala are execution plans: massacre, constipation, looting, systematic sexual rape against our bodies, genocide… It is proven that the thing is planned.

It is the case of Guatemala, alone, or it is Guatemala, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras…

Da Abya Yala [America] That is why we are talking about a new internationalism, because the plans to reduce us have surpassed all the internationalisms so far. The world powers, the oligarchies, the transnational ones, the military structures… have overcome all the internationalisms, but, at the same time, the people of origin also overcome the borders, because we are still in resistance and in struggle. The oligarchy on the one hand, us on the other, and in the center what? Citizens of supposedly democratic European countries who do not resemble themselves. If they were inclined towards those who want to kill us, “we have no friends”, we would say, but since they do not go to that side, we believe that there is a possibility of reaching agreements. However, despite the covenants, the covenants are not properly rooted, because the people here, like in the church… What is the word?

Charity?

That is it! Charity! That is the plan, charity, helping the “poor”, the “underdeveloped”, the “third world”. It is not thought that “the third world” also have alternative models that are useful. Many people live here in that ambiguity. We have friends, fellow countrymen partners, but among them there are many people involved in the bubble of ambiguity, which, in the name of charity, easily penetrates into the wind. It's not easy.

Do you mean it serves us to cleanse our consciousness?

To wash consciousness, to wash hands... Supremacy is always action. “What happens to you doesn’t happen to me,” they think, but they are wrong, of course, what happens to them. The exploitation of young people in the work here is unusual, the generational rupture is incessant, the lack of relationships: you bring children to school, from a young age, without the possibility of living in a community; you put the elderly in the residences, do not take care of the children or the elderly, because the work prevents them from doing it. The system is the fault, this miserable system, which is rotting communities and terrors. And they don't talk about that. Citizens feel frustrated, but not knowing how to get out of that frustration, not knowing where the source of the problem lies.

As you have once said, in Guatemala, after 36 years of war, a war has come that continues to destroy the country of origin. Megaturism, for example.

Because megaturism has its weapons. Among other things, the tourist comes, with the camera in his hand, taking pictures of me, you and everyone. He who does so has no other purpose but to inflate his ego. Neoliberalism has put it in the helmet, traveling to those “exotic” peoples that you call us so, “exotic.” But you don't come one, not two, but big groups. And among them, high-level, luxury tourism. States want the money of those people -- they're Germans or Americans -- and you have to organize the country: places, food, roads -- and, in the end, our lives and our bodies. They just need to put us in a window, smiling, greeting the visitor, making us objects. This megaturism impedes autonomous, free relationship within the community.

What do you mean?

Nor can we put in peace an atol [corn drink] in the park, where the crowd will come and give you a click! Click! They say we're part of the landscape. I am therefore part of the landscape. And believe me! The planes follow each other, filled with these kinds of people. And the planes were not too few, and the boats were too. They are people who have a lot of money, which humanity does not care about, that they like it, that they have fun – both sexually and with money – at the expense of our lives. No! We denounce, we want a dignified, more humane, freer life in relations between equals. And we will fight for it.

When you've said dignified life, the dignity of women is your first fight. The attack comes from outside the villages of origin, but also from within.

It's true. It is not right for our lives or for humanity that such attacks should not be invisible, that attacks should be carried out with impunity. We don't talk about it in community assemblies. Yes, mines are always there, attacking, but we are not only attacked by mines, but also by our fellow men. First, in bed, when I lie down. So what is the enemy's accomplice? Spokesman for the oligarchy? What are we going to think if he's sticking you in bed? What?

I thought it was the same fight...

It's fighting the struggle it's waging, it's playing the pure hypocrite, it's violent sex. That's what happens when the woman says not to a man: “Not today.” The man does not respect the rejection of the woman, he only thinks of giving satisfaction to his body, of reducing his own suffering. So we start talking about clitoris, because man doesn’t care how we are… The people of Maia have a saying, “You are my other side”, that is, “I am you, you are me”, “we are”. But many of our friends have forgotten it. That's why we women start talking about power from bed: work in the morning, in the afternoon, in the community, and at dusk, when you want to rest, a man waits for sex. And yes or no, it's a decision of oneself, of no one. In addition, the work roles, the distribution of domestic tasks… “We want tortillas, toast and hot!”. OK! And who is going to do it? What happens at home also happens in the community. That's the reality, and that's what we're talking about in community councils, that's what we're talking about in community feminist movements.