Apoyo de Indigenous Peoples Issues

Public Statement On Killing Of Mayan Kaqchikel Artist Leonardo Lisandro Guarcax Gonzalez

The national and international artistic community, indigenous, farmers´ and social organizations

We all manifest

our total indignation and repulse faced with the abduction and cruel killing of Mayan Kaqchikel artist Leonardo Lisandro Guarcax González, coordinator of the Sotz´il Jay Cultural Centre and group, with which he performed all over Guatemala as well as at Latin-American and European festivals. He was responsible for a serious, conscious work of high quality within different disciplines like music, dance, poetry and theatre; investigating the Mayan pre-Hispanic art, generating dreams and creating action for the transformation of our country and society, through the reclaim of the Mayan peoples and their culture. He was a noble educator, greatly committed to his work with children, youngsters as well as his work for the collective rights of indigenous peoples through art. Lisandro was a spiritual guide, a wise companion, brother and friend.

We all denounce

that Leonardo Lisandro Guarcax González, from El Tablón, Sololá, was abducted on the 25th of August, while on his way to the Official School of the Chuacruz community, in the municipality of Sololá, where he worked as a headmaster and teacher. His body was found hours later with severe signs of torture. This inacceptable criminal act against a defender of Human Rights strongly affects the cultural and artistic life of our country, and shows once again the climate of violence and restlessness in which we live, the degree of repression and criminalization of our people and the voices generating conscience, the intolerance of a different world.

We fervently demand

that the Guatemalan State, the national and international judicial system, do not leave this case in impunity, we demand that it be followed up on and that the appropriate investigations are put into action and that the ones responsible for this terrible crime must be punished.
At the same time, we show our solidarity with the Guarcax family and the Sotz´il Jay Cultural Centre, who already lost two other family members and collaborators, due to the killings of Ernesto and Carlos Emilio Guarcax González in 2009, crimes which until now have been left in impunity.
Lisandro Guarcax returns to mother Earth as a giver of life. His wisdom is alive amongst us and in his community. It is preserved as a seed of constant growth at the Sotz´il Jay Cultural Centre, as a treasured heritage for the present generation and the ones to come.

Your heart blooms