Transcript

Hello my name is Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa. Welcome to the House of Kawinal.

This project started with my desire to visit a pyramid I had heard had become underwater. And the pyramid ended up being near my great grandmother’s area, where she was from. And she was an Achi woman. And I was curious about the Achi because they were really affected by European immigration in the 19th century because their lands were taken away for a lot of them and given to farmers, European immigrant farmers.

Anyway so I went to this location, I tried to look for the pyramid. And we had a really hard time. And so for three days we went for different points on the dam, which is very long and also the area is very mountainous so you have to cross or go around lots of mountains to get to supposed one entrance to another. And we’d just given up until we were offered a ride by a man we happened to see on a boat from on top of the mountain. And then I became aware that social political reality of these people and their dam.

Because of course to me the whole thing was mostly about the image of the pyramid underwater and also maybe the family history, but not really the reality of what it means to have your territory flooded. And the people they afford me how all their farm lands are now underwater and the mountains are very arid and steep so they can’t actually grow anything on them. So this valley where they use to grow things, they have no access to it and also the company that made the dam was supposed to compensate them and give them new land somewhere else and housing. But it still has not and so they have to buy everything and yet they have no means of making an income and being financially independent so this was a very.... suddenly reality came into the project.