Photo of a group of people standing and sitting during the launch of the book “Poetic Justice” from Parque Intercultural on the National Day of Dignity for the Victims of the Internal Armed Conflict. There’s a bright red wall in the background.
I have been all-in here my first month as student coordinator, refining my historical and political understandings of Guatemala. I have started out by reading, researching in-depth, going on viajes, having conversations, and asking a lot of questions in order to perfect the orientation that students receive when they come to PLQ for their first week of language classes. For me, one of the most powerful parts of orientation is sharing about the inspiration for PLQ. I had heard the story articulated by coordinators in orientations before, but ultimately decided this week to directly ask Carlos, the director and a co-founder of PLQ. He shared with me the story many of us know if you have spent time at PLQ (or if you have read a previous Boletín).
The school was founded in 1988, just one year after the disappearance, torture, and murder of two university activists, René Leiva Cayax and Danilo Alvarado Mejia, who were also friends and co-organizers with the co-founders. The goal was to teach Spanish in a context where foreigners would come to the country and witness the human rights violations that were happening during the height of the Internal Armed Conflict. Those students supported organizations working to improve the human rights situation in Guatemala at the time, and other times, they served as a protective presence. In whichever manner students showed up, the idea was that they would ultimately go back to their countries and share what they had witnessed.
After speaking with Don Carlos, I returned home from work that day to continue putting my own touches on the orientation. I didn’t want to press into a wound by asking him too much information, but I was curious to learn more about the two students organizers who I had now connected myself to. I myself had been a student organizer, and I am now working at this school inspired by them. It occurred to me to enter their names into a search engine to see if I could find more information. I found some answers in a report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, specifically details of their kidnapping and torture that moved me to tears.
Portraits of Danilo (left) and René (right) pictured in black and white on “el muro de ojos abiertos” (wall of open eyes). The header says, “Neither forgotten, nor forgiven.”
Just two days later on Feb. 25, the Dia Nacional de la Dignidad de Las Victimas del Conflicto Armado Interno (National Day of Dignity for the Victims of the Internal Armed Conflict) was upon us. A group of us made our way to Parque Intercultural for an event from el Museo de la Memoria launching their book Justicia Poetica. Before the actual program began, we walked to a small structure that sits behind the old train station that was later a military base, and we approached a wall that holds the portrait of hundreds of the disappeared and murdered from the Internal Armed Conflict, among them René and Danilo. There was a short poetic work, which named many of those held by this beautiful “wall of open eyes,” and then we lit and placed candles to accompany those who the people of Guatemala refuse to forget.
I have often noted the ways in which grief seems to be on public display in some of the spaces I inhabit here. Private or public grief should be sacred rights for those who desire it, but in some contexts, private grief is an apolitical privilege that many refuse to surrender to. For people not born to the land of Ixim Ulew or Guatemala, our witnessing is often an extraction of that grief.
I asked Don Carlos directly about the foundation of the school because I wanted to convey René and Danilo’s story with care and intention to the students who join us. I know that their spirits are alive and wrapped in the walls of the school, brushed off in the light yellow paint when someone leans against these walls — perhaps René and Danilo’s own refusal of being forgotten.
What I didn’t know is that PLQ actually used to be called el Proyecto Linguistico of René Leiva Cayax and Danilo Alvarado. Don Carlos told me that they had changed the name as the school grew in order to avoid attracting attention from the government. I wondered what it must have been like for René and Danilo’s friends to remove the name of their beloved friends from that of the school. I imagine they did it precisely for the benefit of the movement that René and Danilo were fighting for through their organizing and activism.
I don’t want to romanticize PLQ, as surely you also have or will find its shortcomings. I also find myself grappling with what occurs here. I believe PLQ is a special and important place, and I also think that the people who are not connected to the land of Ixim Ulew (Guatemala) must also continue to grapple with and complicate what our broader motive and relationship to this place actually is. What was once a site of more direct organizing against the state regime now serves as one of historical memory-keeping, resource redistribution, and a support hub for community projects.
If there is any place for a pensive PLQ student coordinator to begin and end a reflection, it’s with the care of the memories of those who suffered during the Internal Armed Conflict. And so, I come back to René and Danilo. Although our method of action at PLQ has significantly evolved, René and Danillo’s spirit for the transformation of Guatemala remains.
Every student orientation, I invite our new students into that legacy. That invitation is important as we see the same logics and forces that have contributed to genocide here continuing to operate and replicate themself globally. And so, dear reader, former student, prospective student — whoever you are — may you also be invited into that legacy and a method of action that is truly transformative.
I find myself stepping into some big shoes of incredible writers that were student coordinators before me (notably Chris and Manni). They have illuminated a lot for me through the Boletín, as well as their personal writing, from their intimate personal experiences to their political analyses. I’m not sure I will bring to this forum exactly what they have brought into their writing, but I hope you will find something in whatever is shared here that connects with you.
I imagine there will be more to say soon, but for now, I’m really grateful to be at PLQ and to be connected to this network of people, both in Guatemala and internationally.
-Bran