Voices and images:Mayan Ixil women of Chajul

Voces e imagenes: Mujeres Maya Ixiles de Chajul

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Voices and Images: Mayan Ixil Women of Chajul, a book in both Spanish and English with accompanying photos, is the outcome of a joint collaboration between a group of women living and working in a rural community in the Altiplano of Guatemala that has received support from the Ignacio Martín-baróFund for Mental Health and Human Rights, and M.Brinton Lykes, co-founder of the Fund and one of its long-time supporters.

In 1992, the Martín-baróFund provided a grant to ADMI in Chajul, Guatemala, when they identified the need for a corn mill.  Their community had few mills and the women saw the opportunity to develop, manage, and run their own mill as a way to generate support for their developing organization, with which Brinton had collaborated, and which was formed to respond to women and child survivors of the nearly 36-year civil war in Guatemala. The project contributed to the women's self-esteem and helped launch them on a trajectory they discuss in text and illustrate with photos in the fourth chapter of Voices and Images.

The 120-page volume, published in Guatemala in 2000 by MagnaTerra, contains photographs and text by 20 ADMI women who participated in a project they called PhotoVoice, a name borrowed from University of Michigan scholar Carol Wang's work with rural women in China who used photography to document their health needs (see www.photovoice.com). The ADMI women used the methodology to document the effects of the war and political repression on themselves, their families, their community and its surrounding towns.  The participatory action research methodology used in the project is described in the introductory chapter and in another co-authored chapter by Lykes and the Women of ADMI. 

An interactive process of taking and analyzing photographs as well as interviewing the women, men, and children whose pictures they were taking continued for two years. During the second year, the women concentrated on winnowing through their analyses and photographs and organizing them into the four book chapters. These focus on the civil war's violence and its effects in their lives, their Maya Ixil culture, women's daily lives, and the work of ADMI as a response to the war and its effects. Textual discussion of each picture appears in both Spanish and English.  Each page carries titles in Spanish, English and in Ixil, the mother tongue for most of the project participants.  An introductory chapter by Brinton Lykes describes this cross-cultural, cross-national collaboration. A final chapter includes excerpts from the life stories of women of Chajul. U.S. psychologist and activist Joan W. Williams, Ph.D., and Spanish psychologist M. Luisa Cabrera participated in the field project. Cathy Mooney, Ph.D., another long time Martín-baróFund supporter, revised the Spanish text and translated it into English. 

PhotoVoice was generously supported by the SOROS Foundation-Guatemala. All proceeds from sale of the book go to women's work in Chajul. The book is available from EPICA in Washington, D.C., USA, at epicabooks@igc.org for $35 US or from Brinton Lykes for $25.  Selections from the book are available here but not be copied unless permission is secured from Brinton Lykes or the Women of ADMI.

Review by Marcie Mersky La Cuerda, 2001 

Article by Sean Smith. BC Chronicle Editor