“For my people,” Andres Chajil explained, “even the dream of having our own land had never existed. It was simply accepted that our people would live forever as servants on the plantation.”

Disparity of land ownership in Guatemala, in which approximately 80% of the land is owned by only 2% of the population, fueled Guatemala’s civil war for four decades. The San Lucas Mission’s Land Distribution Program, in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, attempts to address the hopelessness caused by this disparity. Promoting the principle of the dignity of the human person the Mission has distributed land to nearly 4,000 families over the past 35 years.

Political indifference toward the landless Maya – one of the largest indigenous groups in the hemisphere – is not a new occurrence in Guatemala, but rather a continuation of a discrimination directly aligned with national policy since the 19th century, when communal land expropriation and forced labor laws created a landowning economic elite provided with a supply of cheap indigenous labor for the coffee harvest.

Despite boasting the largest economy and one of the highest per capita incomes in Central America, Guatemala’s rural, mostly Maya population (estimated as 60% of the population) are excluded from the benefits socially, economically and politically. In 1988, through the Guatemalan Catholic Bishops’ Conference pastoral letter titled “The Cry for Land”, the Catholic Church accentuated its position regarding this inequality.

Stating that the majority of Guatemalans, specifically the Maya, find themselves having been expelled from their traditional lands by an unjust and punitive system, living like “strangers in the land which belonged to them for thousands of years,” the Church posited its stance on the agrarian problem in Guatemala.

Responding to this expressed felt need for land has been a long-standing endeavor of the San Lucas Mission Land Development Program, and part of a three-point plan to provide families with land and housing – ideally three acre plots – of which two could be used for the farming of staple crops (corn and beans) and the third for a traditional cash crop (coffee). Having acquired land, the Parish then works with families in a small scale farming and animal husbandry program, utilizing the Juan Ana Experimental Farm for sharing farming techniques.

As there are more families in need of land and housing than actual availability, the selection process is handled by a local land and housing committee affiliated with the parish.  If the selected family owns no land, which is typically the case, then the parish assists in the purchase of an available plot, covering the entire cost if need be, with the family making small payments at no interest. 

Through this process the San Lucas Parish attempts to facilitate the repatriation of land to the traditional and rightful owners – the Maya – as they carry on their cultural identity in peace in amid overwhelmingly adverse conditions.