AMOR was founded in the UK in 2012 to promote the dream of Arnulfo G. Oxlaj, an indigenous Mayan human rights leader from Guatemala.
"I was born in 1985 in a village in the north of Guatemala called Cunen. Guatemala has long been in a heavy and difficult situation, and I have experienced this in my own life. Those who suffer the most are the children. After I was rescued from the well, I decided to work for love and generosity. I knew it would be foolish to wait for the government to take action. My people are poor - not mentally, nor do they lack talents or gifts, but there are great obstacles to their moving forward in life. It´s hard for them to see this deeply because successive governments have sown great confusion in them and, above all, fear.
Statistically, the government makes it look as though they are achieving ever greater equality, but it´s a lie. There´s no equality. Every day, injustice and the abuse of indigenous and women´s rights increases, especially in the judicial system which treats the poor like animals.
When the government creates more laws (which favour their own interests), not only are the people oppressed in ashes, a lake of sulphur, but it's as though large boulders were placed on top of them that crush them.
As a child, I saw we needed to awaken the people, and not wait for the government to act. I saw that if I did something, so too would someone else, and in this way we would create a chain of peace in which every human being is seen as human and not an animal. Reawaken the consciousness of my people, reawaken the consciousness of Guatemala and the whole world, beyond all hatred, beyond all ego. And this needed to begin like the eye of a hurricane that continually gains more strength.
I saw that we needed to start with education, a humane education that doesn´t just programme people but one that helps them know their rights and develop their gifts and talents. However, I saw that it wouldn´t be easy because of extreme poverty, where every day people struggle to find a piece of bread to eat. To counteract this, I saw it was necessary to balance education and empowerment with support for agriculture and livelihoods skills training. I realised, too, that the true school being the home, we needed to raise the awareness of parents that education can be a key to freeing a bird from its cage; that education is like putting glasses on the poor-sighted. What´s more, for parents to understand the importance of education, they needed to experience it.
It was then that I saw we needed to build a network of centres called Afretlain, or ´Abrazando la Fuerza a traves del Amor y la Generosidad´ (Embracing Strength through Love and Generosity in Action).
In these centres, souls and spirits would be formed of citizens of courage who make their rights count and help bring about justice, so that the silence of oppression would end. This would be developed into a replicable model for other areas of Guatemala so that one day we could have a Mayan government, a judicial system, a government that truly serves the people and not the other way round.
The result of this work would be that the Mayan people would finally breathe fresh air on this magnificent Earth that witnessed our births. Finally come out from under the feet of the oppressors. Finally share a cup of coffee and a piece of bread with their daughters and sons.
Finally, children and adolescents would have the privilege of spending more time with their mothers and fathers. Finally, the children of the indigenous Mayan people, slaves of oppression, would live in harmony with the children of their oppressors.
Finally, the day would come when the satisfaction of peace and tranquility would adorn the mountains and fill the valleys of Guatemala, and health flow from its homes like rivers, so that Guatemala would really be the nest of freedom and justice.
And on that day, the children of Guatemala, indigenous and non-indigenous, would no longer be condemned to suffer as beggars, and our governors would no longer be adorned by words while their actions stink. On that day, the indigenous people, independent of all religion and beliefs, would be lifted up to the same level as all citizens of the world.
This is the hope that was born in me, and this remains my hope today, my faith and my conviction for Guatemala, that together we can sculpt a Guatemala of justice and peace in which everyone enjoys our stage. Only in this way will we have a sovereign Guatemala where all its citizens work together, with great determination to fight and suffer together to achieve freedom.
I saw that Guatemala had become a hell for its citizens who suffer poverty, who die from curable diseases, who suffer from injustice and racism, and that this suffering would never end unless we work together to create a new tomorrow, alive with the vigour of the justice of freedom and equality.
Since 1996, an ocean of complete injustice and inequality has been signed and built in the middle of a star full of natural abundance and prosperity. Over twenty years after the Peace Accords were signed, the poor and native of Guatemala are languishing in the corners of that star as though it were a pigsty, on this star of prosperity that is Guatemala.
The Mayan people are downtrodden and forgotten in their own land, viewed as animals. And that should be embarrassing for the nation.
The indigenous and non-indigenous poor are not free. Over twenty years later, the lives of the poor remain submerged in marginalisation and poverty, wounded by the metal chains of discrimination and racism.
It´s not a feeling.
Over twenty years after the signing of the Peace Accords, today more than ever the people suffer from complete inequality. Over twenty years later, racism, discrimination and selfishness are killing thousands of innocent children in Guatemala and across Iximulew.
The government has sown a semblance of normality today, to the extent that we view hunger, inequality, illiteracy and suffering as normal. It´s creating a nation of passive psychopaths. Guatemala needs to wake up. I have never accepted the excuse that there are insufficient funds for equality in Guatemala and Central America.
We will never reach a state of equality gradually. Now is the moment to make real the promises on which democracy is founded. Now is the moment to come out of the well of darkness, the well of blindness, towards the candle of justice, the rays of justice.
This is the year to lift up our people and our nation from the ashes of inequality and racial injustice and walk together towards the happiness of equality, of brother and sisterhood. We´re all children of this earth.
It´s dangerous when governors allow such inequality and injustice to go unnoticed because this will inevitably lead to rebellion.
The native people and poor mestizos need peace, and I will fight until the day that that marvellous and splendid equality and justice exist in my beloved nation.
Every child who is born, indigenous and non-indigenous, has the right to a piece of land.
In Guatemala, over 70 per cent of the population are native poor, and 20 per cent non-native poor. However, the small group that governs the judicial system are getting richer from the space that in reality belongs to the 90 per cent.
We might ask ourselves, “Do the rich owe the poor? Should we feed them?” The thing is, nobody is naturally poor. The problem is the system which has imposed poverty.
Nobody in this world chooses to be poor, never, not even addicts. It´s imposed on the people in order to weaken and silence them, easy when they have no space. When people are weak, they´re easily silenced, subdued and blinded, made to fight amongst themselves like dogs in a cage.
I have a dream, a dream based on the reality that I see every day, but also on my experience as a child. Children should be able to enjoy each stage of their life, the purity of their childhood.
We humans aren´t born a blank page. Psychologically speaking, when someone says that, it´s as though people were rubbish bins in which anything can be thrown. No. We humans have gifts and talents.
In natural law, the concepts of rights and equality don´t exist. They can be summed up in a single word: happiness. The basis of happiness is humility. And when there´s happiness, there´s peace.
So I conclude that this system of government is depriving the indigenous and the poor of their freedom. Democracy appeared, and one of the main principles of democracy is freedom. Democracy is like a religion that tells people, “Pray and you´ll be healed,” when in fact God asks us to do our 50 per cent. God would say, "I´m tired of listening to you. I can listen to you every day for the rest of your life if you like, but it won't change anything unless you take action!”
However, in order to make peace, justice and equality a reality, we need to take each other by the hands. If we don´t have hands, we can at least link minds or hearts and walk together. The longer we leave it, the longer we´ll remain at the tail end, and will never participate in the scientific debate except as guinea pigs.
When I was a child, I saw that I was economically poor because I lived in those ashes. It´s not easy to move around when you´re struggling to buy a tortilla. Yet I said to myself, “Despite all the obstacles, I can do something with my life.”
If we´re afraid of justice and equality, nothing will ever change. Someone has to start to do something.
Guatemala isn´t even what Plato referred to in The Republic. When his character Adimaentus claimed that justice meant people having at the very least food, home and clothes, Glaucon replied that such a society would only be fit for pigs. For me, Guatemala doesn´t even have that society fit for pigs. I´m citing something from two millennia ago.
The Afretlain Mayan Education Centres are designed to meet the needs not just of the body and mind but all Five Elements: soul, spirit, heart, mind and body, developing young citizens who are fully integrated into society and able to participate in the development of global technology, science and art. Guatemala is a very young country, and its young people are traumatised. They believe that this is just how Guatemala is, how life is, and that it can´t be changed. However, that´s not true. That young energy needs to be harnessed to establish a new generation filled with happiness and peace."
"I was born in 1985 in a village in the north of Guatemala called Cunen. Guatemala has long been in a heavy and difficult situation, and I have experienced this in my own life. Those who suffer the most are the children. After I was rescued from the well, I decided to work for love and generosity. I knew it would be foolish to wait for the government to take action. My people are poor - not mentally, nor do they lack talents or gifts, but there are great obstacles to their moving forward in life. It´s hard for them to see this deeply because successive governments have sown great confusion in them and, above all, fear.
Statistically, the government makes it look as though they are achieving ever greater equality, but it´s a lie. There´s no equality. Every day, injustice and the abuse of indigenous and women´s rights increases, especially in the judicial system which treats the poor like animals.
When the government creates more laws (which favour their own interests), not only are the people oppressed in ashes, a lake of sulphur, but it's as though large boulders were placed on top of them that crush them.
As a child, I saw we needed to awaken the people, and not wait for the government to act. I saw that if I did something, so too would someone else, and in this way we would create a chain of peace in which every human being is seen as human and not an animal. Reawaken the consciousness of my people, reawaken the consciousness of Guatemala and the whole world, beyond all hatred, beyond all ego. And this needed to begin like the eye of a hurricane that continually gains more strength.
I saw that we needed to start with education, a humane education that doesn´t just programme people but one that helps them know their rights and develop their gifts and talents. However, I saw that it wouldn´t be easy because of extreme poverty, where every day people struggle to find a piece of bread to eat. To counteract this, I saw it was necessary to balance education and empowerment with support for agriculture and livelihoods skills training. I realised, too, that the true school being the home, we needed to raise the awareness of parents that education can be a key to freeing a bird from its cage; that education is like putting glasses on the poor-sighted. What´s more, for parents to understand the importance of education, they needed to experience it.
It was then that I saw we needed to build a network of centres called Afretlain, or ´Abrazando la Fuerza a traves del Amor y la Generosidad´ (Embracing Strength through Love and Generosity in Action).
In these centres, souls and spirits would be formed of citizens of courage who make their rights count and help bring about justice, so that the silence of oppression would end. This would be developed into a replicable model for other areas of Guatemala so that one day we could have a Mayan government, a judicial system, a government that truly serves the people and not the other way round.
The result of this work would be that the Mayan people would finally breathe fresh air on this magnificent Earth that witnessed our births. Finally come out from under the feet of the oppressors. Finally share a cup of coffee and a piece of bread with their daughters and sons.
Finally, children and adolescents would have the privilege of spending more time with their mothers and fathers. Finally, the children of the indigenous Mayan people, slaves of oppression, would live in harmony with the children of their oppressors.
Finally, the day would come when the satisfaction of peace and tranquility would adorn the mountains and fill the valleys of Guatemala, and health flow from its homes like rivers, so that Guatemala would really be the nest of freedom and justice.
And on that day, the children of Guatemala, indigenous and non-indigenous, would no longer be condemned to suffer as beggars, and our governors would no longer be adorned by words while their actions stink. On that day, the indigenous people, independent of all religion and beliefs, would be lifted up to the same level as all citizens of the world.
This is the hope that was born in me, and this remains my hope today, my faith and my conviction for Guatemala, that together we can sculpt a Guatemala of justice and peace in which everyone enjoys our stage. Only in this way will we have a sovereign Guatemala where all its citizens work together, with great determination to fight and suffer together to achieve freedom.
I saw that Guatemala had become a hell for its citizens who suffer poverty, who die from curable diseases, who suffer from injustice and racism, and that this suffering would never end unless we work together to create a new tomorrow, alive with the vigour of the justice of freedom and equality.
Since 1996, an ocean of complete injustice and inequality has been signed and built in the middle of a star full of natural abundance and prosperity. Over twenty years after the Peace Accords were signed, the poor and native of Guatemala are languishing in the corners of that star as though it were a pigsty, on this star of prosperity that is Guatemala.
The Mayan people are downtrodden and forgotten in their own land, viewed as animals. And that should be embarrassing for the nation.
The indigenous and non-indigenous poor are not free. Over twenty years later, the lives of the poor remain submerged in marginalisation and poverty, wounded by the metal chains of discrimination and racism.
It´s not a feeling.
Over twenty years after the signing of the Peace Accords, today more than ever the people suffer from complete inequality. Over twenty years later, racism, discrimination and selfishness are killing thousands of innocent children in Guatemala and across Iximulew.
The government has sown a semblance of normality today, to the extent that we view hunger, inequality, illiteracy and suffering as normal. It´s creating a nation of passive psychopaths. Guatemala needs to wake up. I have never accepted the excuse that there are insufficient funds for equality in Guatemala and Central America.
We will never reach a state of equality gradually. Now is the moment to make real the promises on which democracy is founded. Now is the moment to come out of the well of darkness, the well of blindness, towards the candle of justice, the rays of justice.
This is the year to lift up our people and our nation from the ashes of inequality and racial injustice and walk together towards the happiness of equality, of brother and sisterhood. We´re all children of this earth.
It´s dangerous when governors allow such inequality and injustice to go unnoticed because this will inevitably lead to rebellion.
The native people and poor mestizos need peace, and I will fight until the day that that marvellous and splendid equality and justice exist in my beloved nation.
Every child who is born, indigenous and non-indigenous, has the right to a piece of land.
In Guatemala, over 70 per cent of the population are native poor, and 20 per cent non-native poor. However, the small group that governs the judicial system are getting richer from the space that in reality belongs to the 90 per cent.
We might ask ourselves, “Do the rich owe the poor? Should we feed them?” The thing is, nobody is naturally poor. The problem is the system which has imposed poverty.
Nobody in this world chooses to be poor, never, not even addicts. It´s imposed on the people in order to weaken and silence them, easy when they have no space. When people are weak, they´re easily silenced, subdued and blinded, made to fight amongst themselves like dogs in a cage.
I have a dream, a dream based on the reality that I see every day, but also on my experience as a child. Children should be able to enjoy each stage of their life, the purity of their childhood.
We humans aren´t born a blank page. Psychologically speaking, when someone says that, it´s as though people were rubbish bins in which anything can be thrown. No. We humans have gifts and talents.
In natural law, the concepts of rights and equality don´t exist. They can be summed up in a single word: happiness. The basis of happiness is humility. And when there´s happiness, there´s peace.
So I conclude that this system of government is depriving the indigenous and the poor of their freedom. Democracy appeared, and one of the main principles of democracy is freedom. Democracy is like a religion that tells people, “Pray and you´ll be healed,” when in fact God asks us to do our 50 per cent. God would say, "I´m tired of listening to you. I can listen to you every day for the rest of your life if you like, but it won't change anything unless you take action!”
However, in order to make peace, justice and equality a reality, we need to take each other by the hands. If we don´t have hands, we can at least link minds or hearts and walk together. The longer we leave it, the longer we´ll remain at the tail end, and will never participate in the scientific debate except as guinea pigs.
When I was a child, I saw that I was economically poor because I lived in those ashes. It´s not easy to move around when you´re struggling to buy a tortilla. Yet I said to myself, “Despite all the obstacles, I can do something with my life.”
If we´re afraid of justice and equality, nothing will ever change. Someone has to start to do something.
Guatemala isn´t even what Plato referred to in The Republic. When his character Adimaentus claimed that justice meant people having at the very least food, home and clothes, Glaucon replied that such a society would only be fit for pigs. For me, Guatemala doesn´t even have that society fit for pigs. I´m citing something from two millennia ago.
The Afretlain Mayan Education Centres are designed to meet the needs not just of the body and mind but all Five Elements: soul, spirit, heart, mind and body, developing young citizens who are fully integrated into society and able to participate in the development of global technology, science and art. Guatemala is a very young country, and its young people are traumatised. They believe that this is just how Guatemala is, how life is, and that it can´t be changed. However, that´s not true. That young energy needs to be harnessed to establish a new generation filled with happiness and peace."
