EL SALVADOR

EL SALVADOR
and survival instinct.
I will never forget those days when
we had to flee the shootings in our villages.
Our grandmother was brave and
decisive. Some nights when the shootings
took place very near our makeshift hut by
the Pan-American Highway, she simply
embraced us and reassured us that the
world was going to be okay.
In 1993 my grandmother heard that
the United Nations had declared an International
Decade of the World’s Indigenous
People. Let’s remember that in 1993
a UN-mediated peace agreement had
only just ended the 12-year-long civil war.
Most of us were afraid, traumatized and
unsure if the killings would restart if the
UN observers were to leave.
Despite all this uncertainty and fear,
my grandmother asked me to organize
a plan. I was to gather members of the
community to form a cultural committee
in our village. She also requested my help
in writing down as much as she could tell
me of her oral tradition. Her vision during
this time was extraordinary—she could
see that this was the moment of transition,
the chance to rescue our people’s
cultural heritage and preserve it for the
modern world.
In November 1994, in a small community
gathering, we proclaimed her the living
Comishaual. This title translates into
English as Flying Jaguar, and was used by
all her female predecessors who reigned
over the Lenca people.
My grandmother asked me to craft a
basic bill of cultural rights—an almost
unbelievable idea for those of us who had
lived for generations under prohibition.
When I gathered our neighbors in the village
and read the proposed bill to them,
many were amused, others excited and
some were challenged by the audacity of
the indigenous family to act as a noble
clan and enact cultural rights.
The people most offended by our public
display of indigenous pride and intention
to declare our own rights were the
ex-military men—killing machines sitting
idle during the transitioning years from
war to peace. With our small cultural
charter, we had become a target of their
unresolved anger.
Multiple death threats and subsequent
attacks against our family escalated during
the very fragile peace process implementation.
I survived several shootings
because my grandmother advised me to
sleep in different homes that she negotiated
as safe havens among her contacts. I
remember once after one of those shootings,
I was crying and telling her how
afraid I was of her being killed by these
armed groups. She simply told me that
this time we were not going to back down.
I wrote a letter to the provincial governor
reporting the attacks and my concerns.
In it I highlighted our desire to celebrate
our identity as part of the nation and
not as separate groups. I wanted them to
understand that we were not, as accused,
a guerrilla group promoting communism.
I never received acknowledgment of my
letter—at least not formally.
Instead, in September 1995, an armed
group arrived in a car to our neighborhood
and without warning gunmen opened fire
on me and my nephew Ernesto. At the
sound of the bullets, my nephew put himself
in front of me, receiving eighteen bullets
and dying instantly.
My grandmother then summoned a
family gathering, ordering me to seek
safety. I objected, arguing that my duty
was to be there for her and to die for her
if I had to. She quickly reminded me that
the decisions of the Comishaual were not
open to debate.
In July 1996 I arrived as a humanitarian
refugee in Australia, leaving behind all
that I knew, loved and lived for.
Living in exile as a refugee was a painful
process despite all the help and support
given by Australia. I lived with extraordinary
pain and longing every day as I saw
the sun set and felt no hopes of ever seeing
my grandmother and extended relatives
again.
In 1997, when I finally relocated the
whereabouts of my grandmother, she
directed me to never give up the cultural
program. She reminded me of my duty to
my people: “we are born noble, and nobles
we die.” And so that year I established the
Office for Lenca Affairs. Since then, my
role at the UN sessions increased.
Without the efforts of my grandmother,
these achievements would never have
been possible. I can truly say that I am her
product, and that I am in debt to her for
all that she gave me during her life. Her
brave example and rigorous teaching
shaped me as a person in the new generation
with skills and values to face the challenges
at hand.
From exile, I have been able to influence
the successful reform of the constitution
of El Salvador, which in 2015
acknowledged the indigenous people. I
know that these landmark events can only
happen when great leaders are behind the
scene, adding their wisdom and strength
to the local processes on the village level
to affirm our rights and to add our voice
to a global process of great significance to
us. Today, there are well organized indigenous
entities such as CCNIS, ASIES,
ACOLCHI and many more.
My grandmother lived to see these
great events before her death in August
2015. Never fleeing into exile in the face of
danger, but choosing to stay in the land of
her people, the last Comishaual now rests
in the place that is once again acknowledged
as the traditional land of the Maya
Lenca people.
Our lineage is one of the last matriarchal
clans of the Americas that has somehow
survived to become the meeting point
of the old ways and the modern world.
Today, my sisters and I live scattered across
several continents. Despite these vast distances
of separation, we stay close and
united by the values and traditions given
to us by the last Queen in the Americas.
Leonel Antonio Chevez is the Ti
Manauelike Lenca Taulepa (Hereditary
Chief of the Jaguar House and the Lenca
Indigenous People). He has served as
strategic adviser to indigenous groups
participating in the “Second International
Decade of the World’s Indigenous
Peoples” at the United Nations, and as a
panel member in special sessions at the
Permanent Forum on Indigenous People
2000-2014. He lives in Australia and can
be contacted on info@lencas.net
30 ReVista SPRING 2016 OPPOSITE PAGE: MELISSA GUEVARA, I AM STILL ALIVE 2, 2015C-PRINT COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND THE MARIO CADER-FRECH COLLECTION