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[español]
A generous gift by MNO Registrar, Karole
Dumont-Beckett has spurred the idea of a fundraising campaign
to assist in building and staffing schools in isolated Mayan
communities in Guatemala. Karole and her husband
Glen have been contributing to international funds for children
for years. Hearing that MNO President Tony Belcourt is going
to Guatemala at the end of February, and knowing of the plight
and need of schools for children she and her husband decided
to pledge an annual donation of $300 per year for the next
5 years. When MNO Senator Reta Gordon learned about this,
she immediately offered to match the gift. Thus began the
idea for this fundraising campaign.
Tony Belcourt and his partner, Danielle, have
been making private visits annually to Guatemala for years.
They’ve struck up a friendship with many people there
and have been helping to fund the education and better family
life for a young girl and her mother. They have also learned
a great deal about the struggles of the people in the Alta
Verapaz Region who are living in conditions identical to the
feudal system of centuries ago. Many people in the Métis
Nation have heard about these struggles over the years from
them and also from Roderico Teni, Culture Bearer of the Q’eqchi
Maya who has visited MNO AGA’s on a couple of occasions.
Métis people have responded in the past to calls for
assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch and the mudslides
following Hurricane Stan.
At the beginning of 2000, the year of the millennium,
leaders from the community of Secanal, at great risk to themselves,
walked for hours from their village in the dead of night to
spend a day with Roderico, others from his organization, ADEEC
(Association for Educational, Economic and Cultural Development)
and Tony to tell their story. Theirs is a tragic account of
conditions akin to slavery, poor health, extreme poverty and
a desolate future.
In 2003, although they had been swindled of
hundreds of hours and years of labor they thought were being
credited to purchase of their land, they were fortunate enough
to obtain a loan from a US benefactor and are now in the process
of repaying that loan. Now that the community has found a
way to buy their land and they no longer need to live in fear,
their story can finally be told publicly. The meeting in 2000
was video and audio taped. The text of the interview is now
available on this website. So too is a progress report some
time ago by Roderico Teni.
Even though the people of Secanal II are in
the process of buying their land and now can build permanent
dwellings and have begun to build a school, their financial
resources are marginal to say the least. Their needs are great,
but so too, and perhaps even greater, are those of the other
isolated communities that have not yet been able to take the
huge step taken by Secanal II. Thousands of Q’eqchi
remain as “squatters” on mountainsides at the
tolerance of landowners who allow them to remain if they work
for free. Tony Belcourt and Roderico Teni will be meeting
with representatives of Secanal and other communities soon
and a full update on the current circumstances will be made
early in March.
Be
sure to check out the photo and video gallery
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