Andy Carter - HARDBALL & LITTLE HEROES PRESS

AUTHOR PROFILE: ANDY CARTER, HELPING PRESERVE INDIGENOUS MAYA LANGUAGES

For thousands of years, the Maya people in Guatemala have spoken many indigenous languages, among them K’iche’ or Mam. When the Spanish conquered the region in the 16th century, they promoted Spanish as the national language and worked to suppress indigenous languages. That cultural oppression was but one arm of the campaign to oppress and weaken the Maya communities.
For thousands of years, the Maya people in Guatemala have spoken many indigenous languages, among them K’iche’ or Mam. When the Spanish conquered the region in the 16th century, they promoted Spanish as the national language and worked to suppress indigenous languages. That cultural oppression was but one arm of the campaign to oppress and weaken the Maya communities.

The oppression of indigenous Peoples in Guatemala continued into the 20th century in a civil war often referred to as the Dirty War. In a series of assaults between 1981 and 1982, the village of Saq Ja’ was completely destroyed by the Guatemalan military. Many villagers died in the attacks, while others joined the political resistance, fled into the mountains, or went to refugee camps in Central America. Among those who went into hiding was María Guadalupe and among those who fled Guatemala was Don Virgilio Vicente. In response to this humanitarian crisis, the Sanctuary Movement was formed in the 1980s to welcome Central American refugees into the United States. In 1986 Don Virgilio was taken into sanctuary at University Church in Chicago, Illinois.

In 1998 Andy Carter and his colleagues from the Sanctuary Movement at University Church in Chicago began sending yearly delegations to work in partnership with the people of Saq Ja’ to rebuild their village. On a delegation to Saq Ja’ in the spring 2007 Andy met Doña María Guadalupe, who told him of her father, Don Margarito Esteban Álvarez Velázquez, and his lifelong work of planting and nurturing a forest near his home in Saq Ja’.

Andy and his colleagues understood that one of the goals of the school in Saq Ja was to teach and preserve K’iche’, their native language. Working with Doña María Guadalupe, Andy crafted a children’s story about Margarito in K’iche’ for the village school.

He then contracted with the gifted artist Allison Havens to create illustrations for the book. To do this Allison asked children from the school in Saq Ja to draw images of local animals, plants and scenes after hearing the story of Margarito and his forest. Allison then used the children’s artwork along with her original drawings, paintings, and traditional and Mayan textiles to create the stunning illustrations for the book. With that done, El Bosque de Don Margarito, written in Spanish and K’iche’, was published in Guatemala in 2016.

Back in Chicago, Andy heard about Hard Ball & Little Heroes Press from a colleague in the Working Class Studies Association. He called the publisher and soon had a contract to publish El Bosque de Don Margarito in an English and Spanish version,. The text included side-bars of key phrases in K’iche, color coded for language exploration and appreciation.

After the publication of El Bosque de Don Margarito in 2016, with generous donations from friends and colleagues, the Maya Book Project (MBP) of University Church was founded in 2017. Since its beginning, the MBP has donated thousands of copies of El Bosque de Don Margarito to K’iche’ speaking communities in Guatemala. Andy then added a second version in Spanish and Mam, which along with the original Spanish K’iche' version, has been adopted for national distribution by the Guatemalan Ministry of Education.

https://www.margaritosforest.com/the-maya-book-project

Margarito’s Forest has done more than support the preservation of indigenous Mayan languages. The beautifully illustrated book also uses Maya numbering alongside the traditional Arabic numerals, providing an intriguing opportunity to explore different forms of numeration. The book includes an explanation of the Maya numeration, noting that the Maya discovered the concept of “zero” around the same time as the Muslim scholars in the Middle East.

More recently, the Maya Book Project partnered with Hard Ball Press in publishing two new editions of Margarito’s Forest. One is English-K’iche’ and the other is English-Mam. These new editions came about in response to requests from several K’iche’ and Mam speaking communities living in the US. The new editions are now in print and will be offered to schools and social justice organizations in North America at steep discounts.

Audio versions of the books, read in K’iche’, Mam, and Spanish are also available for free to any school. These audio books help Maya children learn to pronounce as well as read their native languages.

With great pride and humble gratitude, Hard Ball & Little Heroes Press and Andy Carter are publishing these two new editions of Margarito’s Forest in our continuing effort to help preserve the K’iche’ and Mam languages for children (and adults) in North America, Guatemala, and the world.

https://www.margaritosforest.com