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Juanita Batzibal and Medarda Castro are Mayan Indigenous women working on Indigenous rights and identity with Community Aid Abroad-Oxfam's Guatemalan program. They visited Australia in July 2000 to make connections with our Indigenous Australia program in south-west Western Australia, and with Indigenous communities generally. The exchange aimed to bring Indigenous women from Guatemala and Australia together to share their experiences, learn from one another and build connections that will strengthen their respective struggles for justice and self determination. Juanita and Medarda spoke with Indigenous Australian Women at public forums in Melbourne, Sydney, and Perth. In 1992, during the Guatemalan Civil War, "agents of the state" entered Medarda Castro Ajcot's home and murdered her brother. Like Medarda, he was an outspoken activist against the genocide of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples. Juanita Batzibal avoided a similar fate by fleeing to become a political refugee. While in exile, Juanita made several visits to the UN in Geneva, lobbying for the recognition of Indigenous People's rights, and to bring an end to the war. The Indigenous peoples of Guatemala, the Mayas, make up over 60 percent of
Mayan women have endured the imposition of a foreign culture that constantly undermines their status in their own culture, and have suffered from violence and sexual harassment as part of the State's campaign to destroy Indigenous culture. In 1999, three years after the signing of the Guatemalan Peace Accords, the UN released 'Memory of Silence', the report of its supervised truth commission in Guatemala. "The State must now honour its responsibility to introduce social, political and economic reform that seeks to overcome existing inequalities and injustices. It is based on the belief that we have one thing in common with all peoples, all plants, the animals, the stars, the oceans and the winds: that we all come from and will return to the One Great Spirit. " 'Memory of Silence' charged government forces with responsibility for 93 percent of the war's violence including more than 200,000 deaths, the destruction of 440 Indigenous villages and the uprooting of over a million Indigenous people from their homes. Juanita Batzibal and Merdada Castro are both very involved with these issues, particularly in strengthening Indigenous women's identity, in education and in recognising the injustices of the past in order to build a society that respects difference. " This sense of collective identity forms the basis of the Mayan value system. As Juanita explains, the Mayan concept of collective identity embraces all of nature. These connections will be explored during a number of visits by Juanita and Medarda to Koori and Noongar communities and organisations in Victoria, Western Australia and New South Wales. There is a strong emphasis in the projects on, as Juanita says, "ridding our hearts and minds of the marginalisation and undervaluation of women" so they can play a more active role in the creation of the new Guatemala. She teaches us about our relationship with mother earth, about harmony and about the relationship that must exist between humans and nature. She gives life to the family and community. " She has spent the past two years involved in national reform in education and economics, representing the interests of Indigenous women, who live with the triple discrimination of being poor, indigenous and female.
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