Publisher House: Editorial Piedra Santa
Year: 2011
Antes de la Luz is a historical novel based on real events but with fictional characters. The novel takes place in Santo Domingo Cotzal, a small Maya Quiché town in the Guatemalan highlands. The story shows how the Mayan Indians were affected by the 36 year long civil war. The novel takes place during the worst period of the war (end of the 1970’s to the beginning of the 1980’s) when the military committed massacres, killings and disappearances of civilians applying the counterinsurgency strategy called “taking the water away from the fish”. The novel also illustrates the reasons for the conflict, as well as how the Indians lost their land piece by piece. A process which started with the invasion of the Spanish conquistador Pedro Alvarado and was aggravated through the development of coffee plantations in Guatemala.
Through the lives of the main characters and other parallel stories told by ancestors and spirits, the book illustrates the Indians’ struggle to survive physically and to keep their culture alive in midst of the ungraspable violence. The novel will fascinate many readers. The story has some similarities to the bestsellers from the Afghan war "the Kite Runner and a Thousand Splendid Suns", but with a Latin American twist following the tradition of García Márquez and Isabel Allende. Simultaneously, the novel is unique in its character. It has a Mayan Indian perspective and is full of ancestors and Nawals who constitute a basis for the Mayan religion and their Calendar. The books offers a different perspective on the Mayan Calendar and the changes of the universe predicted for 2012. Moreover, it gives a background to understand the violence currently plaguing Mexico and Guatemala, as well as the Mayan revolt led by Comandante Marcos in Chiapas, Mexico. The story starts in 1979 when Ana, one of the main characters, is 15 years old. Her world is made up of dreams of a better future for herself and her people. She wishes to learn more about the Mayan spirituality through the reluctant help of don Miguelito, an old Mayan priest living in a village outside town. Ana dreams of becoming a teacher and later on in the story also of a future with young Mateo, a distant cousin who she falls in love with. Ana’s father, Ciriaco, is deeply involved in the cooperative movement promoted and supported by the Catholic church. To escape the escalating violence he has brought his family from the province capital, Santa Cruz de Quiché, to the quite town of Santo Domingo Cotzal. But the persecution of Mayan religious and political leaders, the forced disappearances, the assassinations and the increased radicalization of the youth and some Mayan leaders happening all over Guatemala also reach Santo Domingo Cotzal. With the support from the Catholic church he starts a cooperative store in Santo Domingo. The store and the Indian catholic movement growing with the arrival of Ciriaco, starts to draw attention from powerful landowners with competing shops in town. The situation worsens when Ciriaco founds himself protesting against the military’s forced recruitment of young boys. From that moment, Ciriaco is included in the Military’s list of suspected and dangerous leaders. Mateo is Ana's distant cousin. He is 16 years old and lives with his mother, three brothers and sisters in Santo Domingo Cotzal. Due to their poverty, Mateo leaves school and is forced to work at the coffee and sugar plantations. As many others like him, he dreams about freedom and a life without poverty. But unlike Ciriaco and Ana, he believes that solution is the armed struggle. He is torn between his interest for Ana and the guerilla. Mateo and others like Vincente Pu and Manuel Oxlaj who work for Ciriaco, slowly become radicalized. The situation peaks when Mateo’s brother Laurenzo and Vicente Pu's young son are taken away by the military and forced to become soldiers. One day Mateo is gone, and no one knows where he is. He becomes el Coyote and one of the few Mayan group leaders in the EGP guerilla “The Army of the Poor”. To prove his love for Ana he sends her a heart made of jade asking her to wait for him. Don Miguelito, is a grumpy but good hearted Mayan priest who cures illnesses and helps people to solve their problems. He works in the traditional Mayan way and diagnoses his “patients” trough consulting the Mayan Nawals. (The Nawals are the spririts / energies constituting the base of the Mayan Calender, which ends in 2012). He cures with herbs and through ceremonies of fire in order to ask God, the Nawals and ancestors for help. One of the main Mayan spirits, Hermano Maximon, orders him to write a book about what is happening. Reluctantly, he starts writing and the spirits sends him messages and make him travel in time. Don Miguelito witnesses important episodes in history like the invasion of the Mayan Kachikel kingdom and how they were tricked by Pedro Alvarado to help him invade the Mayan Quiche kingdom. He meets Rosaria Pu, a women who is already dead but who talks to don Miguelito and tells him the story of the burning of the Spanish Embassy in 1979 in Guatemala City. Several Spaniards and Guatemalans were burned to death when the police and the army attacked the embassy in spite of the recommendations and direct orders of the Spanish ambassador. (Both are real stories). The situation worsens and violence is all around them. The army installs a camp in town and on Christmas eve they initiate a wave of attacks, killings and massacres in the surrounding villages. Don Miguelito is warned by the Nawals some days before the attack on his village, and when the army and the civil patrols from other villages (forced to join in the killings of their neighbors and fellow Mayans) the village is empty. Ciriaco is captured and taken to the military headquarters in Santa Cruz de Quiché, where he is tortured and killed. Ana together with her sister and brother are forced to make a living and keep the family united waiting for their father to come back. They have no news of Ciriaco and try desperately to find information through the cooperative which is falling apart. The military has ordered the closing of the cooperative store. A few weeks later, Ana is captured and brought to the so called "women house" created by the military in one of the church buildings. Together with the other women in the house she is forced to cook for the soldiers in town. Furthermore, like the others in the house, she is raped various times by soldiers, civil guards and villagers cooperating with the military. But Ana finds help in Cecilia, an old woman with silver grey hair, who knew Ciriaco and recognizes his daughter. Cecilia can perform miracles. Through old prayers in Quiché language and by adding a certain herb to the food, she makes everyone fall asleep. Cecilia and Ana miraculously escape to a village far away where neither the guerilla nor the army is present. In doña Cecilia's house, awaits the book which don Miguelito had started to write. Ana finishes the book and starts to train as a Mayan priest, two things which help to heal her wounds.
* For more information of the Novel and to receive a copy in Spanish, please contact the Swedish author Kristina Boman at kalb@bomanpeck.se
