I dream of something that has always been my dream, since I was a girl. I dream of freedom of choice for women. I dream of a country and a world with less discrimination against Indigenous peoples. Where there are equal opportunities. I want to see girls and boys with greater rights. I dream of the pueblo en libertad, of people being free.
Dina Juc
As a human rights defender, community organizer, nature rights advocate, and Maya woman of Q’eqchi’ and Poqomchi’ heritage raising her children in K’iche’ territory, Dina Juc carries various identities and vivid dreams of a safer world. Having fought for freedom for many years – from her role as a youth leader of the Community Forestry Association Utz Che’, advocating for the respect of Indigenous rights to self-determination, to her current work as alcaldesa indígena (Indigenous Mayor) of the Indigenous Municipality of Santa Lucía Utatlán in Sololá, Guatemala – Dina knows exactly what kind of future she wants to bring into existence. Having a clear dream has kept Dina resisting and persisting over time, though her path has been anything but simple.
Family values and resistance to the Chixoy hydroelectric plant
According to Dina, ‘the defence of rights is not optional’ in Guatemala – known as Ixim Ulew [land of maize] in the original languages of the region–, ‘it’s an obligation all of us carry. If we want true freedom, we need to defend rights in an integral way.’ Taking a constitutive approach to defending rights means viewing the defence of territory as the defence of all elements within it, including the environment, the rivers, the land, human beings, food sovereignty, security, the rights of natural resources, the rights of the Earth, and of all living beings sharing space within the territory.
This holistic perspective was inculcated in Dina’s worldview by her parents. Her Maya-Q’eqchi’ mother and Maya-Poqomchi’ father raised her in Pamuc, San Cristobal Verapaz, in the mountainous northern highland regions of Ixim Ulew. The nearby Chixoy hydroelectric plant caused immense environmental destruction and displaced families close to her community. Dina’s parents formed part of the first group of people who declared a piece of forested land close to the hydroelectric plant as a protected area of the “Bosque Nuboso” community of Pamuc, in resistance to the construction of the World Bank and IMF-backed dam. ‘My father cultivated the land and would say that the greatest harvest we had was not just for us. We had to give it away. That is where the conscience of protecting everything comes from, it is a culture of not cutting down more trees, not destroying water sources, not hunting more animals,’ Dina told LAB, ‘It is a culture of reciprocity, of protecting life and living in community.’
Defending K’iche’ territory through local community organization
As a young girl, Dina observed how structures of violence and inequality were imposed on Indigenous peoples and natural environments of Ixim Ulew. She became more conscious of her cultural identity in contexts of discrimination and marginalization characteristic of Guatemalan institutions and societal structures. What brought her away from her Q’eqchi’ and Poqomchi’ roots was a combination of work and romance. Dina moved to Maya-K’iche’ territory when she married a young K’iche’ man from Santa Lucía Utatlán and began collaborating with the Community Forestry Association Utz Che’, a civil association of community organizations dedicated to the sustainable management of forests and water sources. For years, Dina defended rights and forests in a territory that was not her own. ‘I identify as Q’eqchi’ and Poqomchi’, but a part of my heart identifies as K’iche’,’ Dina explained. Carrying diverse Mayan cultural and geographical identities with her ultimately strengthened her commitment to the defence of collective human rights.
Her work with Utz Che’ led her to participate more closely in local structures of K’iche’ community organization and social support networks. Dina knows that when institutions fail to provide social safety, community is the heart of support and solidarity. In 2021, Dina began to participate in asambleas comunitarias, a form of Indigenous community organization and collective consensus-building that state-led government authorities do not approve of and even actively suppress. ‘We need to decentralize and dilute power so that everything can be more transparent […] and there is less corruption on a community level.’ Her participation in these asambleas in the Ciénaga Grande community resulted in her election as part of their Community Council. This shift in Dina’s role as a leader in K’iche territory occurred just before the entire country was enveloped in 106 days of pacific resistance starting on the first days of October in 2023.
At this time, the so-called ‘Pact of the Corrupt’, a network of entrenched political and business elites, tried everything they could to stop the democratically elected Presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo from assuming office. Indigenous community organizations, including the Indigenous Municipality of Santa Lucía Utatlán, rose up to block key paths of transport across the country and thereby demonstrate their dissent to political elite meddling with the 2023 election results. Interlinked with Dina’s local commitment to decentralizing power and fighting for transparency in K’iche’ territory is the continuous resistance to widespread corruption in federal and municipal institutions of Guatemala.
Joining the men’s club
In a tumultuous time of Indigenous-led protest to defend the democratic 2023 election of Bernardo Arévalo, Dina’s community chose her as a mayoral candidate for the Indigenous Municipality of Santa Lucía, an ancient community institution that Dina explains has existed since ‘way before the 1996 Peace Agreement, way before the colonial invasion. It’s a people’s organization’. Dina represented her community as a candidate at the municipal level but didn’t believe she would be elected to form part of the Municipality as alcaldesa. ‘I thought, they know me in my community, but I don’t believe they know me in Santa Lucía. I didn’t think they knew me. But it seems they did, I became alcaldesa.’
Dina likens her ascent to holding the position of one of several Indigenous mayors of Santa Lucía Utatlán to that of a treacherous journey through stormy seas. ‘As a woman, navigating waters where the majority of leaders are men is a great challenge. Questioning them or proposing other ideas becomes complicated because you don’t have women as allies around you,’ she tells LAB. Direct and indirect attacks on her credibility as a leader and constant barriers to accessing decision-making power have made her story difficult, but never hopeless.
As Indigenous mayor, Dina forms part of a team of eight mayors (she is one of three women) who work to ensure integral development initiatives and Mayan values of justice are prioritized in the 54 communities of Santa Lucía. Integral development initiatives are based on a holistic Mayan cosmovision, which prioritizes balance, ecological harmony, as well as human and non-human quality of life, integrating all elements of territory into the development equation. The Indigenous Municipality ensures ancestral knowledge is represented and respected, especially through community-led assemblies and consensus-building. Often, Indigenous Municipalities throughout the territories of Ixim Ulew stand up against state-led initiatives. However, Dina’s team has collaborated with the Presidential administration to agree on new plans to better meet the communities’ needs.
Throughout almost two years as a resolute alcaldesa fighting for balance and integral development, Dina has had to resist a heavy share of machismo. ‘Women are undervalued simply for being women. At the municipal level there are various challenges. The general population does not value or appreciate women’s work. Women’s roles are made invisible,’ Dina explains. She also recognizes women’s own internalized machismo. ‘It is very intense and even more painful. We need to deconstruct all those patriarchal thoughts we have, even if it is difficult.
‘[Women think], “I am alcaldesa, but I serve the male alcaldes drinks, I clean the table.” We need to deconstruct thoughts like this, that women only serve to wash dishes. Even with the role of alcaldesa, we think “I serve to clean”. I want women to understand that they have great value and that this value has been repressed for many years. […] [Young women’s contributions] have an essence of life experience and a basis in the practices we have learned from our grandmothers and grandfathers. That has a lot of weight because our words are based on ancestral values.’
Currently, the leaders of all 54 communities in Santa Lucía Utatlán are men. Although five women joined Community Councils in 2025, they do not occupy roles that lend them decision-making power. Dina knows there is still a long path to be paved until there can be talk of true equality. ‘As a woman, they have told me, “that lady is very complicated, problematic”, simply because I don’t give in or negotiate my position in defending certain principles. If you defend a perspective with arguments and facts, when I make my points in benefit of the common good, the majority of the men cannot contradict me, so the easiest thing is to attack me instead. They attack you where they think you are weakest.’
Despite this, Dina believes she is setting a precedent so that other women can occupy roles which are often ‘full of stereotypes and prejudice’. The context in which Dina has risen up the ranks and assumed leadership roles is a highly complex societal structure, informed by hundreds of years of patriarchy, colonial conquest, extractivisms, and resistance.
Dina has also had to confront prejudice against her as alcaldesa for her heritage. She has heard people tell her, ‘you are a woman and you are not native to here, so you have no reason to have an opinion’. The diversity of Mayan cultural heritage can be a challenge, especially since Dina does not speak much K’iche’. She explains, ‘It is difficult for me to speak with my colleagues and project my thoughts, goals, and visions because I cannot transmit them in their language. If I say it in Spanish, the essence is lost. In K’iche’, you connect with the people, you touch their spirit and you can project what you want to say to them with more pertinence.’
Dina reaches a national and international stage
Dina’s story serves as a potent example of the structural barriers that exist to prevent women and Indigenous peoples from assuming more power in a country as diverse and culturally complex as Guatemala. Dina shares, ‘I dream of a country and of a world with less discrimination against women and Indigenous peoples. Although we may not believe it, when you start moving in national and international spaces, you understand that there is still an enormous gap to overcome with respect to the rights of Indigenous peoples.’
Dina’s work is achieving national impact. She campaigned to advance the Territorial Agenda of the Pueblo K’iche’ of Santa Lucía Utatlán, a commitment which was ratified by the President of the Republic of Guatemala in November 2024, committing the government to attend directly to the needs of the population. Dina points out that for the first time in history, a small municipality, where 98 per cent of people are K’iche’ or Indigenous, has effectively fought for the creation and signing of an agenda like this. The commitment includes objectives for the management of environmental, territorial, cultural, health, infrastructural, and other issues. ‘It is a counterproposal to the extractive economy that is being implemented at a national level.’
Internationally, Dina has contributed to fora such as COP29, where in November 2024, she advocated at the Caucus of Indigenous Peoples for the recognition of Indigenous women as guardians of knowledge and nature. In her role as Coordinator of Rights and Culture for the Mesoamerican Alliance of Peoples and Forests, Dina has created opportunities to positively position Indigenous communities on an international scale and accompany them in their journeys to recuperate practices of self-governance.
‘I consider international spaces to be key and we cannot underestimate them because they allow us to provoke discomfort in those who oppose us. There is an opportunity to continue raising our voices even when the State does not want to listen to us. We speak out against the criminalization enacted against us,’ Dina told LAB.
Ancestral wisdom to create equality
Despite her resoluteness, Dina is conscious that the systems she works within are still co-opted and gatekept. Dina feels that on both a local and global level, ‘instead of reducing poverty and discrimination, we are regressing.’ According to Dina, the way out of inequality and marginalization can be found by reintegrating ancestral wisdom into our individual and collective imaginaries. To come back to peaceful and sustainable forms of life, we must contextualize our roles as humans within a more complete mental map of the territory.
‘A lot of the time, we think that as humans we are the principal element of the territory, but it is not that way, we are just one element. We have made bad use of the privilege of speaking, having opinions. Mother Nature cannot speak as we can, but she has a right and she is a living being. When she speaks, she doesn’t speak like us, but she speaks.’ Remembering the human dependence on and interconnection with Mother Nature is like the North Star on Dina’s compass in her journey to leadership. She knows that ancestral wisdom and connection to nature are central elements of the solutions we urgently need to implement around the world today.
‘I dream of our people being free. It hurts a lot to see women and children repressed. All because of economic interests. I believe the fight is worth it.’
Dina prioritizes children and future generations in her career. In an interview with digital feminist publication Ruda, Dina highlighted how children from the school in Xesampual, a small town in her municipality, say that ‘those who lose their memory, lose their history’. Many K’iche’ children understand, as Dina does, that if memory is lost, ‘we turn into slaves of the present.’ Recuperating Indigenous cultural identities and histories is not just an act of bravery, it is an act of healing and peace-making. In her interactions with community leaders in Ixim Ulew and her speeches on the international stage, Dina fights for rights to self-determination, ecological stability, and anti-extractivist initiatives so that her children and her children’s children can enjoy their basic rights to safety, enjoyment, and high quality of life. The driving force behind her active hope is the protection of future generations.
In a world where dreaming of a safer future seems almost impossible, Dina believes, ‘the more that pueblos are strengthened and empowered in the exercise of their rights at the national and international level, the stronger the power of Indigenous peoples at the global level.’ Dina knows that everyone, no matter their identity or age, has a role to play in maintaining hope at all levels. For her, to resist and persist, we must continue dreaming. We must continue actively constructing hope, recuperating historical memory, and implementing better agendas for progress. ‘Someday, the work we have done with my colleagues will bear fruit and future generations will feel gratitude for it. Who will fight for our pueblo, if not us? Everything we do has a repercussion.’
