This drawing is called "Man in pain" - I don't know the date or the place - but probably it's from Chichicastenango, which is the capital, so to say, of the QuichÈ Mayas.  
 
     This man was sitting on the stairs of the church and I wasn't interested in his surroundings, only in his expression, since that is the expression I've seen in the faces of thousands of the indigenous people of Guatemala: This expression of withdrawn pain.... They withdraw their pain and leave everything else outside.  
 
      This means that the crying and mourning - is not really very common, of course they do it, but just not as much as we do. They have another relation to death, especially because they believe in reincarnation - so they withdraw and turn to the dead. And this man possibly sat there for hours. I drew a man because it's a common expression, I might as well have drawn a woman or a child, it's the same expression - it's like they're in some state of meditation - they've withdrawn and shut out everything else.  
 
      They are alone with their pain - maybe they are together with the dead, maybe they're thinking of some of the things they did together, maybe they're preparing themselves to a life without the dead, I don't know. But I think that if they didn't have this ability of withdrawing, most of them would have gone mad, since they have all lost several of their dearest - it's almost impossible to find a family that hasn't lost somebody because of the violence.  
 
      We all die eventually, we know that, but what matters, is the way we die - and also the reason why we die. They often die because of what they are - they don't even understand what they are, the mere fact that they are Mayas, is so scaring to other people.  
 
      I've talked a lot about this - and some of the best answers to this question have come from the women who say: If we are able to threaten people with this life of ours, with our being Mayas, then what frightens them isn't our culture, but our solidarity. It's our way of living that scares others. And therefore they have to kill us - we don't have anything that other people want, we don't own anything, we're poor, we don't even know how to read and write - therefore it has to be something else that they're trying to kill. And most of the women think that what they are trying to kill is the solidarity, the tribe, the traditions, the conventions and the ceremonies.  
 
      Maybe they're trying to blur that they feel guilty about what happened 500 years ago, maybe they think that by killing everybody, there will be no evidence - but this is not how it works...  
 
 
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