In August of 1999 ,after 17 years of exile, Elena and Felipe Ixcot returned to their native village of Concepcion Chiquirichapa with Judy Luce, a North American midwife. They met with the midwives of ACAM to hear the story of how they had organized at the end of the war to support each other, to improve their education, and to preserve their traditional  medicine and sacred Maya childbirth practices.  They described how they attended the majority of births in the area which still take place at home, but lacked the most basic equipment or opportunities to increase their knowledge and skills.  They described how they were disrespected in the hospital and blamed for problems they had no way to treat, problems that result from severe malnutrition, too many pregnancies, lack of transport, and limited access to medicines and preventive care. Learn More

The simple project that grew out of that meeting involved midwives in the US pairing with midwives in Guatemala which resulted in birth kits, equipment and supplies being sent to the midwives.  This meeting also marked the beginning of educational and cultural exchanges between ACAM midwives and  North American midwives.  A major fund raising effort was begun in the U.S. Five years later, in June of 2004, ACAM celebrated the opening of “Casa Maternal de Nacimiento y la Comienza de Esperanza,”with its birth center, educational and community space, clinic and guest quarters. It represented a new beginning, a new birth and hope for the Maya people of the Mam area. The Ixcots are  now full-time at the center guiding its expansion.  The role of the midwives goes beyond that of providing prenatal consultations and attending births.  The midwives are trusted in the community and many villagers bring their sick children and receive medicines and herbs for upper respiratory infections, skin infections, and diarrhea and other primary care issues.  Many present with symptoms of psychological trauma from the war, family breakdown, abuse, and disasters such as Hurricane Stan.  Since June of 2004 the Center, under the supervision of the medical director, Dr. Mildred Vasquez, has dispensed medicines  from the small pharmacy established in the Center as well as traditional plant medicines.  The midwives conduct ceremonies and rituals for the relief of trauma and also run workshops for the community led by a psychologist who is Maya and specializes in post-traumatic stress. They have also begun weekly radio programs in Mam on various health related topics.

In the words of  Berta Juarez, ACAM Midwife and Council Member:

“Maya medicine for many thousands of years has a sort of trinity formed by Mother Ixchel, and the great couple of Citbolontún and Itzamná. These last two worked to discover the medicinal strengths of plants. Mother Ixcel, for thousands of years in antiquity is known as the Rainbow Woman. She was the one who advocated for maternity and through it for all the people. The whole nation carried beautiful branches of flowers to her because she cultivated the science of facilitating all future births and also knew the secrets for curing sterility. Following the way of our Mother Rainbow, many women of the Mam area, by themselves, individually for many years, have set out on our path for the beautiful way of giving life, and in many opportunities, two by two, or three by three, we have been looking to share our experience, to reveal our secrets, or discuss certain problems that arise every day and together seek solutions to do a better job with our mission as givers of life.

"On various occasions we were grouped in some associations that had as a mission to work with midwives and we have participated gladly but in this type of gathering there doesn’t exist any thinking that is truly indigenous, that is in keeping with the principles of Mother Ixchel because there were organizations connected with the non-indigenous culture. Thus it was very difficult to be able to exercise our own leadership and make decisions in terms of our Maya-Mam culture."

 

Therefore we began with some indigenous midwives to discuss this problem and the necessity of finding ways to set up our own organization.  We used our own language which is vital for the practice of life because by means of it we transmit values and we understand the spirit of the culture of the women we attend. By being Mam we understand our sisters and they feel greater confidence when we put our culture into practice. Then when we discovered that we were capable of creating our own organization we understood that it was necessary to use the laws of Guatemala to have a legal base to carry out our sacred mission. We received the help from Maya brothers who are lawyers and they helped constitute a legal Association of Midwives of the Mam Area as of July 26, 2000. We have our own judicial status with the rights and obligations to the Guatemalan state including payment of taxes that the law demands of us. In addition we went to introduce ourselves to the departmental and regional health authorities. We were received by the Director of the General Hospital of the West with offices in Quetzaltenango before whom we were accredited as midwives and he offered to receive and collaborate with the patients that we refer to his attention.

And so we were a very small group of five who formed the Association and two collaborators making 7, perhaps because the colors of the Rainbow are seven, in memory of Mother Ixchel. And thus little by little as the days went on we were joined by midwives from our community until we reached more than 40 sisters. Then, thanks to the Ixcot family we created bonds of friendship and cooperation with Judy Luce, a North American midwife. We began a series of visits. with the Ixcot and Luce families and many U.S. friends to talk about immediate and long range plans for a Midwives Program for Concepción Chiquirichapa.  On February 2, 2001 Don Felipe and Doña Elena Ixcot traveled to our city giving financial help to buy a piece of land which would be used to construct a Maternity Center which we had so much dreamed of. In this way we brought our dreams to fruition and we began another dream: the construction of the Maternity Center to care for the life of sons and daughters of the Maya-Mam culture. Now there are more midwive dreamers who attend our meetings and we continue growing ,letting the world know that cooperation between peoples and cultures is possible no matter what the distance. The important thing is love, the desire to live and the big responsibility to dream. We are a group of women who say to themselves: we are dream-eaters and this is the truth because in our indigenous cultures we dream for the reality to construct it and we will construct it by dreaming about it.”