THE GUATEMALANS - HISTORY

"He told us about a place in the United States where the indigenous Indians were free, and not persecuted. He said that in this place, there was even a town named in the Indians' language, and that it meant 'my home.' The name of the place was Immokalee." Pedro Lopez and Andres Mateo

Most of the Guatemalans in Immokalee are Mayan Indians who have been persecuted for centuries. The Guatemalans lived in the same kind of poverty as the Mexicans and the Haitians, but some of them also went through the persecution of Guatemala's "Dirty War," an extended civil war between the government and the indigenous people that lasted thirty-six years, from 1960 to 1996. Two hundred thousand Mayan Indians were killed, tortured, or "disappeared" and over one million Guatemalans were driven from their homes by their own government. Many of them left Guatemala for "el Norte" (the north) and some of them now live in Immokalee.

It took until December 29, 1996 for Peace Accords to be signed between the government and the guerrilla forces, but issues are still not really settled. Today, General Efrain Rios Montt, the military leader who instituted a "scorched earth" policy - the most brutal part of the civil war in the early 1980s - is the leader of Guatemala's Congress.

And the poverty is worse. To survive, many Guatemalans Mayas tried moving to Guatemala City. They faced the same conditions there that the Mexicans and the Haitians faced in their big cities: "shantytowns," no work, no food, and no hope.

Because of price declines in the international coffee market, many people in Guatemala today are even poorer than Immokalee's Guatemalans were before they left home. Many of the people in the northern Highlands today eat wild bananas and their children beg for food on highways. Mexico will not take them; it has enough problems with its own poor people in the southern states of Oaxaca and Chiapas.

But word trickles down from northern to southern Mexico to Guatemala that there is work in the United States. Many who hear that word will come to a place that in the language of the indigenous people means "my home"- the place called Immokalee.

THE GUATEMALANS - STORY

I first met Pedro Lopez at a meeting of an inter-faith movement to support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, an advocacy group for farmworkers. I talked to Pedro afterwards and arranged to meet him the following Sunday for an interview at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, at 11:00. We were having our monthly breakfast of the people who come to the English Mass, and I would meet him when it was over.

Pedro brought his friend, Andres Mateo, with him. I was not confident enough at that time to do the entire interview in Spanish, so I asked a young volunteer named Brian Payne to help me translate. Brian is very fluent and was a great help. The last time I saw him, he was working with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

The first thing I did was to thank Pedro and Andres for taking the time to talk to me. They said they thought it was the reverse, and that they should thank me.

"We think it is important that you write this history," they told me. "It is important that our children and grandchildren will know what we went through to get here, and how we fought for our rights. This book will tell them our stories; the stories of immigrants. When it is written, we will look forward to having it to show to our children."

This statement, from two people I had just met, really moved me. It is one of the reasons I started writing this book. It is why I kept on writing it when I would rather have been playing tennis or riding my motorcycle or playing the piano or even working ( because Pedro and Andres wanted to have this book to show to their children.

I had saved some food for them from our after-Mass breakfast; a few donuts and some eggs, sausage, rice, and tacos. They didn't touch it, and I was embarrassed to have given them food that was almost cold. I should have invited them to come earlier when the food was still hot. But when the interview was over I realized I was mistaken. They carefully wrapped the cold food, thanked me for it, and said they would take it home to their children.

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