National Nurses United

the toucan, and the quetzal, a bird the Mayans view as the god of air and a symbol of freedom and wealth. But in recent history, freedom and wealth have been more elusive than the quetzal for the indigenous Mayan people who have made their home in Coban for millennia. "It was really heavy learning what they have to go through," said Valdez, whose family left Guatemala when she was 6 years old. "There is a lot of poverty and violence. It is a very difficult life." When the Spanish set foot in Guatemala in the 16th century, they stole the Mayans' land and forced them to work on cocoa and tobacco plantations. A series of military dictators backed by the United States ruled the country until the Guatemalan Revolution in 1944. Over the next 10 years, Guatemala enjoyed a period of progres- sive and social reforms. An ambitious land reform program insti- tuted in 1952 by President Jacobo Arbenz aimed to return land to the indigenous people and other poverty-stricken Guatemalans. But this policy ran counter to the interests of powerful multinational corporations, including the United Fruit Company, which held vast amounts of land in Guatemala. In 1954, the United States Central Intelligence Agency helped carry out a coup, installing the first in a long line of military dic- tators who pushed the region into chaos, brutality, and a 36-year civil war. According to a United Nations-commissioned report, at least 200,000 people, the vast majority of them Mayan, were killed during the war. The 1999 report found that entire Mayan villages were attacked, burned, and the villagers killed because the government assumed they would sympathize with those seeking to overthrow the govern- ment. Many of those who died were forcibly disappeared, kid- napped, and tortured. As part of the RNRN medical mission, the nurses learned much of this history. Monica Ramos, a labor and delivery nurse from Hollister, Calif., said she appreciated that RNRN took the time to educate the nurses on the history of the Guatemala. "The organization did a good job of helping you understand who you were serving and why the conditions were the were they were, so we didn't just go there totally blind and try to serve somebody we had no connection with," said Ramos. "It really felt like we really understood where they were coming from." In Guatemala, the RNRN volunteers worked with Fundación Amancio Samuel Villatoro (FASV), a foundation founded by the Vil- latoro family to honor the union leader, who was forcibly disap- peared in 1984. Villatoro's son, Samuel, is the executive director of the foundation. J A N U A R Y | F E B R U A R Y | M A R C H 2 0 2 0 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 11

• Cover