No Fear of Internal Conflicts

Sunday, 06 December 2009 03:25

Aila Abernathy, the creator of the Guatemala Project is the type of strong willed woman who can be thrown into the most dire of circumstances and succeed without a hint of apprehension.

Every year Abernathy organizes volunteers to travel into the most remote locations to aid Guatemalans in need.

To this day she packs mules and hikes into the humid, overgrown jungles of areas still inflicted by internal warfare.

To put it simply, she gets things done with a certain determination that she says, can only be gained from a strong faith in God.

"It is not easy witnessing some of the things I have seen and trying to juggle other people's miseries with my own," she said.

When asked about how she became involved with the Mayan Communities and how she started the Guatemala Project, she laughed.

"Everything is somewhat accidental, or else it was programmed from all time, I'm just not sure, " Abernathy said. "I suppose it all started because I attended St. Michaels."

Abernathy has attended the Episcopal Parish of St. Michael and All Angels for many years, but not until she received one particular fax, did she get involved with international humanitarian aid work.

The fax was an invitation from the church to attend a "walk in" visit to Guatemala.

Abernathy recalled that on a whim she said "sure," and with two-and-a-half weeks notice, she got time off work and then suddenly found herself walking through a village in Guatemala.

She said that this was the first time she knew of, where internationals entered into remote towns that were still under military control to peacefully assemble.

"It was like a strike, but we traveled thousands of miles to do it," she said.

She said most of the international peoples were going to see the different Communities of Population in Resistance groups or CPR's.

Abernathy recalled gaining a strong desire to help the people in the particular CPR-sierra group that she stayed with.

These peoples are primarily Ixil and Quiché Maya farmers from northern Quiché, Guatemala, one of the hardest hit areas during the long and violent internal conflict.

"It was an incredibly compelling experience," she said.

Abernathy said that very few people from the United States and North America attended the event.

"Most of the people were from Europe and solidarity groups within Guatemala," she said.

She explained that the solidarity groups would not have been able to enter the villages, without the support and presence of the international people who attended the event.

They may have faced resistance or even violence from the Guatemalan army.

"In fact, one guy was pulled off of a public bus and shot several times in the stomach," she said. "All of his video footage of the event was confiscated after he left."

Abernathy said she continued to take a lot of photographs even though there was great danger in doing so.

To this day, she shares some of her photographs with new volunteers to the project.

After leaving and being impacted by those days in Guatemala, Abernathy thought she wouldn't return that way a second time.

"But I did go back and the next time I returned I decided to actually do something for these people," she said.

Abernathy applied for a small grant to start her project, was approved and thus named it the St. Michael's Guatemala Project in 1993.

Since then, Abernathy, along with her volunteers, has successfully raised money and brought medical supplies and basic needs including food and shelter requirements to the isolated people.

Written by Emily Jones