Gladys Elizabeth Tzul Tzul (born 1982) is a Maya K'iche' activist, public intellectual, sociologist, and visual artist who was one of the first to study Indigenous communal politics and gender relationships in Guatemala.
Gladys Elizabeth Tzul Tzul (born 1982) is a Maya K'iche' activist, public intellectual, sociologist, and visual artist who was one of the first to study Indigenous communal politics and gender relationships in Guatemala.
Tzul Tzul was born in a small K'iche' community in Totonicapán. [1] She is a descendant of Atanasio Tzul , a K'iche' leader who led an Indigenous revolution in 1820. [2]
She earned a master's degree from the Alberto Hurtado University in Chile and a PhD in sociology from Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico. [3] [4] Her scholarly work focuses on the relationships of Indigenous women within their communities and with larger political structures, such as federal governments. [5] [6] In many of her articles, Tzul Tzul describes how Indigenous women resist domination and exploitation through communal democracy in the Andes and Mesoamerica. [7] [6] [8] [9] [10] Indigenous land ownership is also one of her key beliefs. [11] [2]
One of Tzul Tzul's case studies is the Ixcán highland village of Santa María Tzejá, an Indigenous community that was destroyed in 1982 as part of the ethnic cleansing of the Maya during the Guatemalan Civil War. [12] [13] [14] As rebuilding efforts began in the 1990s, women in the village linked alcohol to increased violence and began to organize efforts to prohibit the sale of alcohol. [8] Tzul Tzul describes the successful regulation of alcohol starting in 1994 and the accompanying decrease in domestic violence as a success of the "communal process of historical [and Indigenous] self-regulation," which could represent the intersectional concerns of Indigenous women in a way that federal governance could not. [8]
A key part of her activism is the idea that individual Indigenous communities best understand their own needs. [15] [1] She is influenced by the work of Michel Foucault and Silvia Federici, [8] [2] and has argued that Indigenous communities can resist political domination through language and through their continued existence. [16] [17]
In 2012, Tzul Tzul faced persecution for her efforts to bring light to the massacre of Indigenous leaders; she was an expert witness in the 2016 trials that saw the exoneration of community leaders. [18] [19]
She has written that Indigenous communities have responded flexibly to the COVID-19 pandemic despite government neglect because of Indigenous authorities' use of native languages and support for communal markets. [20]
She is also the founder of Amaq', an organization that provides legal guidance to Indigenous peoples. [3] [21]
In 2017, she received the Berta Cáceres scholarship, named in honor of the Honduran Indigenous activist. [4]
Tzul Tzul received the 2018 "Voltaire Prize for Tolerance, International Understanding and Respect for Difference" from the University of Potsdam in Germany. [21]
Tzul Tzul is a member of the Indigenous photographers' collective “Con Voz Propia" (English: "In Their Own Voices" or "In Her Own Voice"). [3] The organization was established in response to federal programs to "liberate" Indigenous women; instead, Con Voz Propia empowers Indigenous women to represent themselves through photography. [1]
This is a demography of the population of Guatemala including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
Kʼicheʼ are Indigenous peoples of the Americas and are one of the Maya peoples. The eponymous Kʼicheʼ language is a Mesoamerican language in the Mayan language family. The highland Kʼicheʼ states in the pre-Columbian era are associated with the ancient Maya civilization, and reached the peak of their power and influence during the Mayan Postclassic period.
Quiché is a department of Guatemala. It is in the heartland of the Kʼicheʼ (Quiché) people, one of the Maya peoples, to the north-west of Guatemala City. The capital is Santa Cruz del Quiché. The word Kʼicheʼ comes from the language of the same name, which means "many trees".
The Kaqchikel are one of the Indigenous Maya peoples of the midwestern highlands of Guatemala and of southern Mexico. They constitute Guatemala's third largest Maya group. The name was formerly spelled in various other ways, including Cakchiquel, Kakchiquel, Caqchikel, and Cachiquel.
Indigenous peoples of Mexico, Native Mexicans or Mexican Native Americans, are those who are part of communities that trace their roots back to populations and communities that existed in what is now Mexico before the arrival of Europeans.
Awakatek is a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala, primarily in Huehuetenango and around Aguacatán. The language only has fewer than 10,000 speakers, and is considered vulnerable by UNESCO. In addition, the language in Mexico is at high risk of endangerment, with fewer than 2,000 speakers in the state of Campeche in 2010.
Guatemalan Sign Language or Lensegua is the proposed national deaf sign language of Guatemala, formerly equated by most users and most literature equates with the sign language known by the acronymic abbreviations LENSEGUA, Lensegua, and LenSeGua. Recent legal initiatives have sought to define the term more inclusively, so that it encompasses all the distinctive sign languages and sign systems native to the country.
Ixcán is a municipality in the Guatemalan department of El Quiché. Its administrative centre is the town of Playa Grande. The municipality consists of 176 communities, called aldeas. It has an area of 1,693 km2. It is the northernmost municipality of El Quiché, and borders with Mexico, the municipalities of Chisec and Cobán of the Department of Alta Verapaz, the municipality of Santa Cruz Barillas of the Department of Huehuetenango, and the municipalities of Chajul and Uspantán of El Quiché.
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Ricardo Falla-Sánchez is a Guatemalan Jesuit and anthropologist. He studied in the United States and has dedicated his life to documenting the lives and cultures of the Quiché [K'iche'] Maya Indians in Guatemala and other indigenous peoples in Central America. His writings document the massacres of indigenous communities, their struggles for justice and human rights, and their revitalization with assistance by Catholic Action, an outside organization.
Ana María Cofiño Kepfer is a Guatemalan researcher, anthropologist, editor, and historian. She is the founder and co-editor of the feminist magazine La Cuerda and the bookstore El Pensativo. She is a prominent activist in favor of women's rights, gender equality, and the defense of indigenous communities from expropriation by the state and foreign companies.
Julieta Paredes Carvajal is an Aymara Bolivian poet, singer-songwriter, writer, graffiti artist, anarchist and decolonial feminist activist. In 2003 she began Mujeres creando comunidad out of the activism of community feminism.
Rita Laura Segato is an Argentine-Brazilian academic, who has been called "one of Latin America's most celebrated feminist anthropologists" and "one of the most lucid feminist thinkers of this era". She is specially known for her research oriented towards gender in indigenous villages and Latin American communities, violence against women and the relationships between gender, racism and colonialism. One of her specialist areas is the study of gender violence.
Aura Lolita Chávez Ixcaquic, known as Lolita, is a women's rights activist, Guatemalan indigenous leader, and international leader in the struggle to preserve natural resources. She was a finalist of the Sakharov Human Rights Prize in 2017 when she was living in the Basque Country in Spain because of death threats in her own country.
Thelma CabreraPérez de Sánchez is an Indigenous human rights activist and politician. Cabrera ran for president of Guatemala in 2019 as part of the political party, Movement for the Liberation of Peoples. She finished fourth in the 2019 election garnering 10.3% of the popular vote, the highest vote total for an indigenous candidate in Guatemalan history.
Moira Ivana Millán, is a Mapuche activist from Argentina. She is one of the leaders of the indigenous ancestral lands recovery movement. The recovery rights are recognized by the 1994 amendment of the Constitution of Argentina. She participates in the feminist movement Ni una menos, denouncing the feminicide of indigenous women, and promotes in the "Women's Encounters" the greater visibility of the problem of indigenous women.
María Jacinta X. Riquiac is a Maya Kʼicheʼ anthropologist and indigenous rights activist from Guatemala.
The Totonicapán Uprising of 1820 was an uprising of indigenous Maya peoples (K'iche') against the Spanish Empire that occurred in Totonicapán, located in the western highlands of Guatemala. The revolt was in response to the excessive tribute demanded by the colonial authorities, and managed to establish a short lived breakaway state in Totonicapán with a free indigenous government. The rebellion was concurrent with the independence of Central America and other Latin American wars of independence.
Lorena Cabnal is co-founder of the community-territorial feminist movement in Guatemala and of the Red de Sanadoras Ancestrales del Feminismo Comunitario.
Anastasia Mejía Tiriquiz is a Guatemalan Kʼicheʼ journalist who reports on indigenous affairs in the town of Joyabaj. She received international attention in 2020 when she was arrested and charged with sedition after reporting on a protest against the municipal government; the charges were dropped in 2021.