Jürg Widmer Probst on five Guatemalan women who have changed history by fighting for the rights of indigenous people. check out this article for more detail.

1. 5 Guatemalan women you should know about
Guatemala is home to more than 16.6 million people. Of these, almost two-thirds are
indigenous people, whose achievements are often left out of historical canon.
For Guatemalan women, this is even more the case. Think about how many women
from Guatemala you’ve read about or heard about. The chances are, it’s not many.
There are, of course, exceptions. For example, Nobel prize winner Rigoberta
Menchu is well-known, but there are many more who have been overlooked. Here
are five women from Guatemala who deserve to be more well-known. Each of them
changed history and made an impact in some way.
Guatemalan women who have changed the course of history
1. Kalomt’e k’abel, 7th
century AD
Kalomt’e k’abel was warlord and queen during the Classic Maya era (in the
7th
century). Historical scholars believe that she was most likely more
powerful than Wak k’inich Bahlam II, her warlord husband. In 2012, after 10
years of excavation at Peru Waka near the border with Belize, her remains
were discovered.
Archaeologists discovered her tomb. Here they found various artefacts
inscribed with her other name Ix Kam Ajaw. This translates as ‘Lady Snake
Lord’. Jade jewellery, weapons and other treasures were also dug up form
her tomb. Historians now think that she was the most powerful and
important person in the kingdom of Calakmul.
2. Alaide Foppa, 20th
century

2. Alaide Foppa was a poet, feminist and human rights advocate. Historians think that
she was most likely killed during the Guatemalan civil war. She was born in Spain in
1914 with a Guatemalan mother and an Italian father.
After growing up for part of her life in Europe, Foppa obtained full citizenship in
Guatemala and moved there. When the United States ousted Guatemalan President
Jacobo Arbenz, she was forced to flee to Mexico. Here she joined Amnesty
International and taught courses on the sociology of Latin American women. In 1980,
she was denounced as subversive and went missing in Guatemala City. It’s thought
that she was murdered under General Romeo Lucas Garcia’s military Government.
3. Myrna Mack Chang, 20th
century
Chang fought for the indigenous people during the Guatemalan civil war. She was of
Mayan/Chinese descent and was an anthropologist before the war. On 11
September 1990 she was murdered by the military Government’s death squads. Two
days earlier she published important research showing the tyranny that the
indigenous people were being subjected to under the Guatemalan military
dictatorship.
Chang’s sister went on to lead the total transformation of Guatemala’s justice
system. In 2003, she succeeded in getting the International Court of Human Rights
to order Guatemala’s responsibility for her sister’s murder. This case was
instrumental in changing the way that human rights cases were tried and judged in
Guatemala.
3. Thelma Cabrera, 20th
century
Politician and human rights campaigner Thelma Cabrera ran for the Guatemalan
presidentship in 2019. An indigenous Maya Mam Guatemalan, Cabrera was born on
the west coast of the country in El Astinal. After growing up in poverty and married
off at 15, she soon became a member of a grassroots organisation fighting for the
indigenous Guatemalans forced to live in poverty.
The organisation is called CODECA (Comite del Desarrollo Campesino). She
was elected by CODECA to run for President heading up their new political
party called the Movement for the Liberation of Peoples (MLP). She won a
historic 10.3% of the vote and is only the second indigenous Guatemalan in
history to run for President.
5. Lucia Xiloj Cui, 20th
century
Another fighter for justice, Cui is a Maya q’echi lawyer. She is particularly active in
fighting for victims of sexual abuse during the Guatemalan civil war. In 2010, she
began collecting together testimonies about the genocide of the Achi people during
the same civil war.
She discovered that more than 5,000 Achi people were murdered, equalling a
quarter of the population. Cui also uncovered 36 cases of rape and sexual abuse of

3. Achi women by military men in 1981. The case is still in court, as it keeps suffering
setbacks but Cui is determined to fight on and find justice for these ignored victims.