Father Revolutionary

Last May, former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt became the first head of state ever to be convicted of genocide by his own country. Under the guise of a civil war, the court found, he and his forces had targeted the indigenous Mayans of the Guatemalan highlands for slaughter, including the now-infamous massacre of the village of Dos Erres. During this period, Montt, an Pentecostal pastor with ties to American superstars Pat Robertson and Luis Palau, was enthusiastically praised by Ronald Reagan as “a man of great personal integrity and commitment.” This background is vital to understanding what is now happening among the same indigenous Mayans: a land reform movement, begun after this catastrophic period, that evolved into mass conversions to the Eastern Orthodox Faith.

For years, former Roman Catholic priest Andres Girón de Leon has fought for land reform, thereby gaining the trust of the indigenous Mayan population. According to Laura Saldivar Tanaka and Hannah Wittman of the Land Action Research Center, “Guatemala’s rural populations suffer from one of the most unequal land distributions in Latin America.  Less than 1% of landowners hold 75% of the best agricultural land, 90% of rural inhabitants live in poverty, and over 500,000 campesino families live below subsistence level.” Fr. Girón would help raise donations and help acquire low interest loans to alleviate the plight of the Mayan people and to help purchase back their land. This earned him the title, often repeated in western news publications in the 1980s, of “Father Revolutionary”.