Love of Land = Life

This weeks reading finally gave me an idea of what it is like to love land. After reading over and over that Guatemalans cherish the earth and soil that they farm and inhabit a broader and fuller picture has been cast in my mind about why and how this can possibly be so. Furthermore, I think the chapter from Tecpán Guatemala was so interesting because it presented a historical outlook on the love and land and how today – just like other aspects of indigenous life and culture – land may not be seen by youth as important as it once was.

A few phrases that I think captured the essence of this relationship with the land really caught my attention. Among some of my favorite are the following: “cultural wealth, is seen ultimately to derive from the land” (125) and maize is thought as through its “symbolic value as sacred and life-giving product” (129) and finally “land is more than an investment, more than an asset…Instead it represents a particular relationship between people and place, an intimate knowledge that even an increasingly hyper-mobile Guatemalan society has not erased” (132). I think these quotes represent the reason why land is more than property to Guatemalans. And ultimately, I think it sheds a new light on the severity Mayans and Ladinos have faced over loosing their land in the past.

While I always knew that the Arbenz overthrow, being forced to work on plantations, and having to share rotten land throughout the last 60 years must have been awful and horrifying, it was not before reading this chapter that I fully appreciated why. I think the care that the Guatemalans take in making sure to collect every last piece of maize and putting in the effort to pay someone to farm rather than just sell their land goes to show that land is their life. It is what feeds them but it is also what gives them pride and fuels their hearts. Especially in relation to ancestors, having land passed down from generation to generation was not only a privilege, but also a way to stay connected to lost loved ones. I can’t really imagine something this special and sacred in American culture but in all honesty I wish I could experience it.

Because I was so enthralled by the deep relationships Guatemalans have with their land, the end of this chapter was very saddening. The image of broccoli growing in a field in rural Guatemala seems so strange to me that I almost laughed when reading about it. However, U.S. consumer demand now dominants Guatemalan agriculture and it seems that in order to survive, the people must adapt. I hope that this shift in agricultural production is not a representation of the developmental path Guatemala is on. Although there are clearly positive aspects to the faster growing, more money yielding crops, I fear that by producing for another country Guatemala may become dependant on the market in the United States. I do not know much about economics so I may be over analyzing this issue, but I do think that Guatemalan’s had a special relationship with maize that will soon be forgotten along with their indigenous languages and other things if careful preservation methods are not implemented soon.