Menchú is one of the most famous faces in Guatemalan politics and this is her second attempt to run for the office. But Reyes is a newcomer, running on ticket with Eduardo Suger, a mathematician of Swiss-Guatemalan origin and founder of the private Galileo University.
Reyes, a Mayan Kaqchikel woman from the municipality of Tecpán, in the department of Chimaltenango, two hours from Guatemala City, describes herself as a resiliant woman who had to fight against the odds to have a career.
“I had nine brothers and sisters, two of whom died at an
early age,” she said. “My family was very poor even though my parents were so
hard working. My mother sold corn tortillas and atol [a think drink made from
rice flour] and my father was a builder. But they always told me: ´If you study
your life will be different from ours.´ I started to work as a teacher but one
day I told my father: “´I’m going to Guatemala City because I want to get a
university degree no matter what it takes.´”
Reyes enrolled in the state-funded University of San
Carlos to study law but was forced to quit her studies during her fifth
semester due to financial hardship when she lost her part-time job. On three
occasions Reyes had been offered a place on a computer studies program for
students with special needs (she was born missing the lower part of her right
arm) at the private Francisco Marroquín University.
When she found herself unemployed she decided to rethink
the offer. Eduardo Suger, founder of the university, agreed to give her a
placement on the condition that she would stay on after the course and work
with him.
Reyes completed the course, worked as a secretary for the
university´s information technology department and gradually worked her way up
the ladder until she was promoted to the position of director of the same
computer studies program where she had been a student a few years earlier.
Meanwhile, Reyes completed her law degree as well as many
postgraduate courses on indigenous customary law, labor issues and
constitutional law.
She continued to work with Suger when he left the
university to found the Galileo University. “Why did Dr Suger choose me as vice
presidential candidate? Because
I’ve been loyal to him,” said Reyes.
When Suger announced that he would run in tandem with Reyes
– a Mayan Kaqchikel woman with special needs – he said that more needed to be
done in order to include indigenous Guatemalans – who account for 38.4 percent
of the country’s population of 14 million, according to World Bank figures – in
the political sphere. He also criticized the Álvaro Colom administration, which
came to power in 2007, promising to build “a government with a Mayan face” but
who only appointed one Mayan cabinet member: Minister of Culture Jerónimo
Lancerio.
Suger’s CREO party – a new moderate right wing
organization in fourth place in the latest polls – has promised it will do
things differently. However, whereas most parties’ propaganda – both TV adverts
and posters – usually include the presidential and vicepresidential candidates
together, Suger appears alone or with Roberto González, who is running for
mayor of Guatemala City.
“There is a contradiction between discourse and reality.
An indigenous woman is allowed to participate but then she is made invisible”,
says Ana Silvia Monzón, coordinator of the gender studies programme of the
Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, or FLACSO.
No cohesion in indigenous movement Under Guatemala’s
institutionally weak political system, parties rarely survive two
administrations and are regarded by ladinos – non-indigenous Guatemalans – and
Mayans alike as mere vehicles to get to office.
Unlike other countries with large indigenous populations
– such as Bolivia and Ecuador – Guatemala has no parties founded by Mayan
leaders and based on indigenous identity, with the exception of Menchú’s tiny
Winaq party, one of the three political organizations running under the Frente
Amplio coalition.
For this reason, indigenous candidates at a local and
national level, are spread accross the political spectrum. Speakers at a public
debate on indigenous participation in politics, hosted by the Central American
Institute of Political Studies on July 11, brought together Mayan candidates
from four of the nine political parties running for office. Speakers came from
parties with different ideological leanings, including the far-right Patriot
Party, currently leading the polls with 40.1 per cent of the votes.
Many members of the audience asked Carlos Batzín, a
Congressional candidate for the Patriot Party, why he joined a party whose
presidential candidate, retired army general Otto Pérez Molina, took part in
the genocidal “scorched earth” policies, under which 10,000 Ixil Mayans were
massacred during the early 1980s in the department of Quiché. Pérez Molina also
advocates neoliberal economic policies with an emphasis on the relentless
exploitation of the country’s energetic resources, despite the fact that
indigenous communities have repeatedly rejected such projects due to their
detrimental impact on the environment. Batzín defended his choice, arguing that
he “sought to belong a space where decisions are taken, a winning party”, as
only by betting on the winning horse in the race could Mayans exert any
influence.
He added that Pérez Molina, was one of the army generals
who signed the 1996 Peace Accords that brought an end to Guatemala’s
36-year-long civil war.
However, Otilia Lux, who is seeking re-election in
congress with the Frente Amplio, replied that Batzín’s hopes were naive: “I
swear that Batzín will never be unable to change anything. In all the
commissions in Congress members of the [Patriot Party] and other parties did
nothing but protect the interests of those who financed their campaigns and my
indigenous brothers had no other choice except shut up and tow the party line.”
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