{"id":51815,"date":"2023-05-11T08:40:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T22:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intrepidtravel.com\/adventures\/?p=51815"},"modified":"2024-01-31T20:14:02","modified_gmt":"2024-01-31T09:14:02","slug":"indigenous-tour-leader-guatemala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intrepidtravel.com\/adventures\/indigenous-tour-leader-guatemala\/","title":{"rendered":"“I can speak in the voice of the Maya.” Embracing my Indigenous heritage in Guatemala"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Luis Felipe Guerra is Intrepid Deputy Operations Manager in Guatemala<\/a>, but he\u2019s also Maya, and a tour guide. As a child, he struggled to come to terms with his Indigenous heritage, facing racism on a regular basis. By discovering more about his history, and sharing it with travellers, he\u2019s learned to take pride in his heritage. Now he wants young Guatemalans to do the same.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When my father was a child in Guatemala, he was not allowed to speak Mayan in the classroom. If he ever said a word in Mayan, my grandfather would have to pay a fine, and my father would be punished. He used to tell me about being made to kneel on corn kernels while holding a chair on his back, often for hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I come from a Mestizo background, which means I have mixed native and European ancestry. My father is Maya, of the Poqomam people, but my mother is European. I was born in the northern-most Pet\u00e9n region of Guatemala, and spent a lot of my childhood in one of our greatest Maya cities, Tikal, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Luis leading a tour group in Tikal, Guatemala. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My father used to work for an airline that flew to Tikal, and eventually became a park ranger there. I remember my brothers and I bringing him lunch and playing amongst the ruins, watching the archaeologists do their work. This is where I first saw tour guides showing visitors around the site. As I watched these travellers, overwhelmed by the beauty of the pyramids, I believe that was the moment, without knowing, when my heart fell in love with tourism. I was hooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was growing up, Guatemala was a very racist country, and being Indigenous was not something to be proud of. Like my father, I was discriminated against in school. It took 36 years of civil war and hundreds of thousands of lives to turn things around. Guatemala had one of the longest running civil conflicts in South America, stretching from 1960 to 1996, and when it was over, one of the peace terms from the rebels was respect for all Indigenous people in the country. It was a horrible conflict, but because of that war, my children now learn Mayan at school! Kids can wear their traditional Maya dress, instead of the school uniform. It\u2019s not perfect, and we still have a long way to go, but if you compare the culture now to my father\u2019s generation, it\u2019s been a total, 180-degree change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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