Stories from the Land

"We come from the Earth, and we will return to the Earth."

-Hector Pop

Elsa Maria Barrientos grew up in the area of Semuc Champey, biodiverse land where heritage farms, and ancient practices are still kept as a way of living. Her people honoured cacao as an animate force of nature, a currency, a treasure, an ancestor that carries the wisdom and the medicine of love. Growing up in this tradition, Elsa María learned that caring for cacao is also a way of caring for the land, culture, and community.

Ancestral Cacao made by Elsa Barrientos and her community

Passed down from generation to generation

Elsa grew up on the ancestral lands of her family, where cacao, copal, and ceiba trees have lived alongside her community for generations. At the age of seven, her grandmother began teaching her the sacred art of cacao making. Sitting beside the fire, she learned to roast cacao on the comal and grind it slowly on the metate, a stone carved from volcanic rock.

Today, she still uses the same metate passed down through four generations of women in her family — a living inheritance that will one day be passed on to her daughter. Every movement of her hands carries the memory of those who came before her, the mothers and grandmothers who nourished their families and ceremonies through this tradition.

In her community, cacao is known as a sacred tree and a medicine for the people. It is offered in celebrations, accompanies births and rites of passage, and is placed on sacred altars as a symbol of abundance, gratitude, and connection.

Today, Elsa continues to keep this ancestral tradition alive and share it with her community. As a guardian of her lineage’s wisdom, she carries forward the living legacy of her ancestors — honoring a sacred medicine that her people have cultivated in a deep and treasured relationship for thousands of years.

Where the land remembers

Where the Cahabón River moves through valleys and forested hills, and where Semuc Champey reveals the hidden river, the land carries a long memory. The waters move through caves and beneath natural stone bridges, carrying the quiet continuity of generations.

This is the territory of the Q’eqchi’ Maya, where knowledge of the land is not written but lived — in the timing of the rains, the phases of the moon, and the reading of soil and forest. Planting, harvesting, ceremony, and daily life follow rhythms that have been sustained across centuries.

Even after the wounds left by the 36-year conflict Guatemalan Civil War, the knowledge carried in these lands did not disappear. Much of it survived through the resilience of the Maya peoples, and their enduring relationship with the living world around them. Many Indigenous regions rich in land and natural resources became battlegrounds. Maya communities were often accused of supporting guerrilla movements simply for living in rural territories, organizing locally, or defending their lands.

The result was devastating. Entire villages were displaced, and thousands of Indigenous people were killed or disappeared. For many communities, the war meant not only the loss of loved ones, but also a rupture in cultural transmission, land stewardship, and community life. Rooted in a deep respect for the Earth as a Mother, their traditions are guided by the understanding that rivers, forests, mountains, and seeds all carry spirit and rights. Agriculture, ceremony, and daily life are practiced with this awareness — honoring the land not as a resource to extract from, but as a relative to live with.

Through this bond with the Earth, ancestral knowledge continues to move across generations, held in practice, memory, and care for all forms of life.

Hector's Vision

Hector, a Q’eqchi’ farmer and permaculturist, speaks from a simple but profound place. His dream is to leave his children a meaningful legacy — wisdom, dignity, and the possibility to live in peace with the Earth.

For him, the future depends on humanity becoming more conscious of the way we live: learning to respect the Earth, to respect one another, and to cultivate the land with care and responsibility. Good agricultural practices and harmony with nature are not only traditions of the past, but pathways toward a viable future.

His hope is that those who lead the world will begin to listen — that they will understand that the future of humanity depends on caring for the Earth that sustains us all.

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