Mayan Civil War Essay

Rigoberta Menchu, the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner, once said, “The Indigenous peoples never had, and still do not have, the place that they should have occupied in the progress and benefits of science and technology, although they represented an important basis for this development.” Indigenous people, they’re known for being the natives of a country and have been on that country the longest. In Guatemala, it is home to the Mayan civilization and there are numerous mayan people, there are the K’iche, Ixil, Chuj, etc. Around the 19th and 20th century, the Mayans were being enslaved, and discriminated in their own land and this led to a civil war. During the civil war, the Mayan community were a victim of genocide and after the war, Guatemala …show more content…
The mayan civilization and it’s harsh economy that is based on forced labor, the indigenous people were treated badly. The Ixil mayans were being treated wrongly for their hard work on the fields and they were treated badly during the civil war. What led to the civil war in Guatemala was how mayans were being treated, because they were used as slaves for coffee bean fields. In Professor Madden’s blog, “The Guatemalan civil war,” he states: “ The Mayans were also enslaved by the white plantation owners. They received horrible pay and were treated even worse” (Madden). The Ixil mayan people were treated badly in their own native land. They were forced to work hard with no benefits and were paid badly. Madden also states: “ One example of how the landowners took advantage of the Mayans was through their illiteracy. The landowners would trick the Mayans into signing documents that were in spanish and unknowingly gave up their land”(Madden). Being an indigenous slave means that you're getting taken advantage of. The plantation owners took advantage of the fact that the mayans couldn’t speak spanish and they would make them sign and eventually got their land taken away, because they couldn’t understand what they just