We are women, poor, indigenous; we are … triply discriminated against.

The [Civil Patrols] always threaten the women. [They ask,] “Why don't you have husbands, where do you get these bad ideas?” [Once] the chief of the patrols said: “Now we are going to put all the patrollers together and all the widows together … These women need husbands, because now they are not doing anything, that is why they are organizing … take two or three for each of you”… Several days ago [someone told me] that they raped four women.

My consciousness was born [after fleeing from the army and hiding in the jungle]. It is not correct when they tell us today that we are not worth anything, that we don't have any participation in the society, in the development of Guatemala … The same situation that I have experienced since I was a child up until today has made me have this consciousness to rise up as women to guard our heritage, to guard our sacrifices … Always the female elders said that … when the Spanish came here to Guatemala, when they came to invade, our grandparents … were tortured, burned alive. All the books where they had their scriptures were burned … In this sense I understood … the situation that they talked about when I had to live it. So, I came to appreciate the elders because it is they who know more of the culture, how we have been for 500 years … For me it is painful that we have not [only] been suffering for ten, fifteen years, but we have resisted for 500 years.