Bay Window: Where are you from and how did you become active in your country?

Juan Carlos Merida: I grew up in Guatemala in a very beautiful area. There's been a lot of fun, a lot of sadness, a lot of tragedy, a lot of terror, but also a lot of happiness in my life. Five months after I was born my mother passed, and I've been an orphan ever since. All my neighbors took care of me. They taught me how to walk, talk, everything that I learned as a child was by neighbors since I was an orphan. I grew up with my father somehow. He remarried. And my role as a child was to raise the goats. I learned to read with a gentleman who taught me. I was very fortunate. By the time I was ten years old I was able to read and write and teach other children. There was a priest who was a local priest and so I would travel with him, and learn from him and help teach the others in my community where I grew up as well as other neighboring areas. From the time I was ten till the time I was seventeen, that was the work that I did. I started teaching and organizing groups of young people so that they could learn what I was learning and we developed a youth training program.

We learned with just paper and pencil, that the church provided, and we used to teach the other children along the line. We travelled to many communities. I was very happy working with the church and learning and teaching at the same time.

We didn't have any blackboards so we used boards, slats of wood, and we would paint them and then we would write over them. We used catechism books from the church that talked about baptism and communion and confirmation and religious things that had to do with the church. Those were the tools we used to teach and learn. We learned using those books and we then used the books themselves and we went from community to community to do that.

Bay Window: What were the conditions of the people that you were working with?

Juan Carlos Merida: These were all country people. They were farmers. They had their own parcels of land where they raised corn and beans and just local things that grow in Guatemala for them to eat. I was able to do my own elementary schools within three years. During that period, I put my energy and my life and my emotion into learning and I was very happy and doing good work in the community, not only my own learning but helping others. So I got my first grades when the education ministry came to examine us, give us examinations, and I was able to succeed at the exams and got my first credential for school. That was my greatest dream, to be able to write music and listen to music and sing music. That was the beauty of my life and that's why I was very happy. I had the energy and the vision to do that.

I was very happy learning. I also felt like I wanted to defend my community in need and so I started to try to learn law and to be an advocate for the people in my community. The next two years, from fifteen until I was seventeen, I started working in the community. Helping develop leadership, again related to the church and the work of the church. I felt like the marginal communities needed someone and that I could be that person. I could learn to be a priest and do the work of the priest since it was the priest in the church that gave leadership in our communities. My father wanted me to continue in that way but his new wife, who was my stepmother, felt that I should go to Spain and study something other than that and not necessarily be an advocate in my community. That's why I couldn't continue my studies. The politics then started taking a major part in our lives, in our communities because the guerrillas were generating energy and work and recruiting people through the various communities. That's where my interest began in the guerrilla movement. Then the oppression began and it began at the church itself. The government would not permit us to go to different communities through the church and to do services in those communities. We had to remain in the church and do our work only in that local place where our church was.

Bay Window: Why was that?

Juan Carlos Merida: The government didn't feel that we should have the right to develop the things that we were developing. We were developing cooperatives, we were developing local agriculture. We were raising chickens and livestock. We were doing things that were developing our local communities, as poor people, and they felt that too much development gave us too much power, too much freedom. The government didn't want us to be self-determinative.

The various communities where I worked in all those communities, we had developed small industries that were local to us and they were industries that belonged to the people and the community. In Germany there was a market for honey and we were developing the honey that we could produce and market in Germany. Also in Canada. I was the person who was responsible for coordinating the business of the three communities. It was at that time that the repression began. They wouldn't permit us, us meaning myself, the community and the church that led us and helped us, were the victims of that repression. And in particular in the community. I was invited to a festival and a party by some cousins and this was in December of 1979. I thought it was a festival. I thought it was going to be a party but it turned out to be a meeting of people that were discussing what was happening in our community. I learned then at that meeting that there were communities of poor people who were rising up and taking into their own hands the business of opposing the repressive government that was assassinating us. I liked the idea of opposing these people who were assassinating our people in our community and repressing us.

Bay Window: What kinds of repressions were people going through?

Juan Carlos Merida: At that time, I became a sympathizer with the organization of guerrillas called the AFA. I didn't join formally the AFA until May of 1980. For a year I was basically a sympathizer. I was learning first of all what they were doing. I knew what was happening in our communities. In January of 1980 was the beginning of the real serious repression by the President Lucas Garcia and his army and they were the main focus of the repression. The army did the things under his direction to the people. I saw people decapitated. We saw the army go then into full repression. They would sequester people. They would kidnap people. They would assassinate people, including beheading people. They burned Catholic churches in all of the communities and burned the homes of the people. It didn't matter which way you went. If you stayed in your community and didn't get involved in the guerrilla they would kill you. If you went off into the woods with the guerrilla they would still kill you. It was an easy choice to make.

Bay Window: Around 1987 to 1988, what was happening?

Juan Carlos Merida: The people raised their own crops in the mountains. Bananas, different vegetables, tropical fruits and vegetables, and they, and they are, they raised those fruits and vegetables, corn, and, and that provided them the food and the sustenance that they needed in those hills as they were hiding from the, from the military. In those years we were training, again the young people, they were learning to read and write while they were also learning military strategies and military techniques. The classes, the children took the classes early in the morning. Children from seven years to twelve years of age. Then after the morning session we would take a break for lunch or just to rest and then the women came in the afternoon and then in the evening the men got their training.

It was literary training as well as military training. But we wanted all the people to know how to read and write and be literate. We wanted all the population to be literate and to be able to advance personally as well as militarily. That's how many people learn to read and write. Again we used wood and charcoal because we had very little reading and writing materials. But that's how our population was able to become literate and able to carry out their tasks. This happened in many towns in the area. The local population always helped us. They would transport food and supplies from one place to another for us. Very often the population from one location would have to escape from the attacking, marauding armies to other locations and so that often they went several days without food. My brother was killed. His name was Pedro. This was in September of 1985. He was leading a group of local peasants and he was one of the guarding guerrillas, we had a cadre of guerrillas that were guarding the escaping peasants and he was killed during that raid.

In later years when things became difficult and we could raise our own food, we would hijack trucks along the road and we would take the things that we need. Sometimes it was sugar, corn, bread, rice, beans, whatever we could find. But we always paid for it in one way or another. We always returned to the people that we took anything from. We paid them back. We were also fortunate in finding many plants and things that grew in the woods, in the mountains, in the jungles, that we knew and the indigenous people knew and would lead us to it. We don't even know most of their names. But they were things that were edible and that sustained us because there came a time when there was no transport on the highways that we could hijack and no places that we could secure the food we needed to stay alive. Often we had no clothes, no shoes, we would mend our shoes with pieces of plastic or whatever we could find. We suffered a a great deal of indignity, of fear and hunger. We had no clothes, no food, but we were sustained by our moral strength that we knew that our cause was just and we had to liberate our people from the terrorism.

That was a goal of our revolutionary movement. My father left Guatemala and went to Mexico because he was being chased, he had to escape and he had left behind myself, his daughter who had been killed, his other son, my brother who had been killed and so he felt alone in Mexico and he wrote me a letter. It took me two years to receive that letter. This was in 1988. My father was alone, he had no support, no relations. This was in 1989 and I was commanding a guerrilla force of 150 people when I received this notice from him. He was very ill and totally demoralized in Mexico. When I learned of my father's plight, I turned command over to my next in command and I headed for Mexico. On foot. I walked for three months until I reached the border. Many days I had no food, no water, but I continued and in March of 1990 I crossed the border into Mexico and eventually found my father. He was very sick and he was very happy to see me.

I found myself in a quandary because my father wanted me to stay, to look after him in Mexico, yet I was part of the revolution. It was part of me and I was part of it. I knew the plight of my people, I knew their soul, I knew their conscience, I knew the morality, I knew the needs, and I knew the strategy and the planning that the army needed, the guerrilla army needed. So I was caught in a real quandary whether to return to the revolution and my place in it or whether to stay with my father. I knew the suffering of my people. I knew them, because I lived it. I lived with them and I knew all that suffering. I knew the guerrilla movement, at times barefoot, women with no clothes covering their private parts with little pieces of cloth, people going hungry, without sleep, without rest, trying to escape the military. Living in the woods, living in the forests. I knew that and I felt that. It was a part of me and I didn't know what to do. There were times, like for four years we had not tasted salt. We went sometimes as many as two years without a single tortilla, and we had to share what little we had and we all knew the suffering and I was not the only one. There were many like me who had suffered, both the military and the civilian population of Guatemala.

Early the next morning at dawn I returned, I made my way back to Mexico, but I knew that in Mexico I was not going to be well-received, either by the military or by the local authorities and they did not want us there. We were always treated poorly. And for myself which they did not recognize me as a refugee but as a escaped military, I was not comfortable in Mexico. Even though they had formed a commission which was supposed to deal with the refugees, we were not well-received either by the commission or by local authorities or by the population of Mexico. So I did not know what to do. One thing that happened in Mexico was that when we got there, we were limited as to our travel. We could not go from one place to another. We didn't have the freedom to travel from one location to another. We had to remain in a single location. That was not acceptable to me. There was another United Nations commission but they judged the people, they were prone to consider everyone a guerrilla rather than a refugee and in fact they would interrogate me and ask me to judge the individuals that were there, so that I could acknowledge that they were guerrillas rather than refugees. This one fellow was always questioning and investigating and I would tell him these are not guerrillas. Guerrillas would not carry chickens and children. These are women and children, they're refugees, they're the population of Guatemala that is suffering. I made myself appear innocent so that I could help the others appear innocent I was fortunate that I had trained and got training in the forestry service and I could help. I had helped in my country develop agricultural coops and I started to do the same in Mexico with the refugees from Guatemala.

While I was there I created a special garden, an orchid garden, in the forestry service and that drew a great deal of attention to me and a special commission from the federal district, from Mexico City came to the area and started visiting the work that I had been doing in the forestry service and around that time was the uprising in and most people don't know this but within it was not only Mexican military but Guatemalan military that came to seek many of the refugees and the guerrilla across the border. So I was in deadly fear. In addition to that the government, the forestry people were concerned that I was developing too much rapport with the people. I was becoming very popular, I was developing leadership in that area and they were basically concerned about my ascendance. So at that time I became very fearful because I thought they might either turn me in or identify me to the Guatemalan military in that area.

I had studied and I had gained a diploma in forestry while I was there. So what I was forced to do because I was concerned that they would separate me from the forestry service, they did not want me identified as a guerrilla in the forestry service, and at the same time there was a good possibility that the military would arrest me. I decided that I would leave Mexico and come to the United States and try to find a life for myself here and bring my family with me. As it was, I left my father behind and my wife and my children, and I came ahead. It was a long journey and when I started out, I started alone but my wife insisted that she come with me.

She was afraid. She feared that I would be arrested and killed and so she decided that she would stay with me and if we were going to die we would die together. So we left. We left the children with my father and we made our way through Mexico to the United States and ended up in Las Vegas. It was a long, arduous journey where we had many frustrations, many fears, many sufferings, much hunger and cold and deprivation. We arrived eventually in Las Vegas. Sometimes we found work for a day or two, but we were suffering. We did not have anything. We had no home, we had no clothes, we had no resources. But we identified some people and we were able to make some contact with other people that we would meet along the way that were following the same route that we were. Eventually an uncle of mine who was here and had been granted political asylum reached us by telephone in Las Vegas through some friends. He suggested that we come here, to the Bay Area, to Oakland, to Casa Epseranza, to Sister Maureen and to this program. That's how we found our way here.

Bay Window: Tell me about Sister Maureen.

Juan Carlos Merida: The biggest problem that we faced when we were in Las Vegas was money. We had no money, we had very little work, occasionally we would get work for a day or so. But fortunately Sister Maureen called and told us she had a space for us. A place where we could stay with a roof over our heads. But we would have to find our way here. I worked and raised some money. Slowly we raised some money, some of which we borrowed and we're paying back, but I finally arrived in Oakland to Casa Esperanza on the 23rd of February in the year 2000. Despite that, the thing that I consider is that I have never felt free. I have always been in a position of suffering since I was five months old and my mother died.

My entire life has been filled with suffering, with the feeling of not having freedom, with the feeling of being oppressed, even after the revolutionary guerrilla movement in Guatemala. When we sought refuge in Mexico I was arrested in Mexico, by the military, threatened by the commissions, hounded, even there, always in fear that they would turn me over to the authorities and I would be returned and so I found my way to the United States. And here I am hoping that maybe if I plead with this government, with President Clinton, with the immigration service to grant me political asylum so that for once in my life I can feel free. Free from oppression, free from the misery of poverty and the misery of being, living in fear all my life. I thank Sister Maureen for helping us find our way here. I want to be free, I want to be listened to, I want to have a voice. With all my heart I look for that freedom, for that ability to work, to be respected, to be able to bring my children and my family and reunite them in this country and that is the future that I look forward to. My greatest triumph would be to have my father and my children and my family here reunited in this country, granted political asylum and free from the fear and the oppression and the repression that I have lived my life with in Guatemala and also in Mexico for that matter.

Bay Window: Much of the military oppression and repression that came from your government was funded and supported by the United States. How do you feel about that?

Juan Carlos Merida: There is no question that the U.S. was involved in the war in Guatemala. We knew it by the equipment, we knew it by the markings on the planes, we knew they were American helicopters and American bombers and America fighters and American supplies and weapons. We recognize that and we know that all of the countries in the third world are manipulated by the United States and by their economic and military power. Nevertheless, we recognize as well that in this country there is an opportunity for political asylum. There is political asylum and there are organizations within the nation that support people like myself and the hundreds and thousands of others like me that have come to this country. I would like to come to this country and be here and unite myself and bring my skills to that battle and that fight that's here. Recognizing that within the framework of the U.S. government the people of this nation have a voice in opposition to the policies of the government. I would join that voice and that work.

Bay Window: At what point are you in preparing your case for applying for asylum?

Juan Carlos Merida: I expect that by the end of this weekend we'll have my declaration ready. I have been working with my attorney Michael in putting together my entire history and all of the reasons and the rationale for my request for political asylum. We may extend one more weekend just to finalize it. Once I have completed it, it will be translated into English. It will be set up in the form of a declaration and be submitted to the Immigration and Naturalization Service with my application for political asylum. So I anticipate either next week or the following week at the latest to have the formal application in before INS. Once my application is in, they'll give me a receipt, and then they'll give me a date to come in for an interview. And that normally happens pretty quickly.

Bay Window: What do you think would happen if you were returned to Guatemala?

Juan Carlos Merida: I have lived so much. So much pain, so much misery. I have seen so much death. People burned, mutilated, stabbed, killed, shot, massacred in general. Whole towns burned, whole populations shot to death. And the same people are still in power, and my family, so I would not feel safe returning to Guatemala. And that history of that revolution that lives in me and has always lived in me would surface. I know that I would not survive. My preference would be, if I was going to be denied political asylum, that I die here in a public place before a public audience where I could state my case and let the world know of all the horror that these people have caused, all the deaths, all the disappearances, all the tragedies, and I would rather lose my life here, before a public firing squad than to be returned to be killed clandestinely in Guatemala.

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