In the beginning of my stay in Guatemala, that is from 1978 to 1984 I didn't make a lot of drawings of what happened, mostly because I was frightened and in fact, I didn't want this feeling to be part of my art - still this kept on being part of it.  
 
     This drawing is called "Violence" - "Violence against the Mayas" - the inspiration to this drawing was the violence in the village where I lived, called "San Antonio Aguas Calientes" - that's where the Cachiquel indigenous live - it's a village close to Antigua. In these areas happened terrible things - for instance the army and some para-military groups set fire to people... in the little churches. 
 
      What fascinated and inspired me was that this is what the Nazis did, too, during the 2nd World War - and the Romans did it, as well. It seems that there is a vicious idea among warriors of all times to fill a church or some other sacred place with people and burn it.... I don't know why - but it is something that we've seen a lot times in the case of Guatemala. And when I had heard about this several times, I decided to make this woodcutting you're looking at here. Unfortunately, I couldn't capture the crying and the motion of the situation, because you're not able to describe these things.  
 
      I think that this kind of act is supposed to violate a sacred place - to violate the most dignified thing, we have - I'm not sure you can talk about dignity talking about war, but one of the characteristics of war is that people are killing people. But when a war also affects on the women, on the children and on every sacred place - that is, when somebody starts violating the human rights - all the basic things - then it creates a feeling that is absolutely indescribable.  
 
      The violation of the human rights and the violence you see in a civil war, which is a special kind of war, since nobody seems to know who is who - a war where some people violate the people's rights, because they're afraid, because everything is so confusing - that's also what happened in Vietnam - nobody knew who the enemy was. Guerrilla war is the worst kind of war because it always affects the civilians.  
 
      And when you gather civilians in a church, like they did in Guatemala and in El Salvador, it's because those in power are afraid, they are so afraid that they have to kill the women who could give birth to potential guerrilla soldiers or they kill the children who could, potentially, grow up to be guerrilla soldiers.  
 
      This means, that in the very beginning of life, you kill - that's horrible, it's unbearable.  
 
 
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