Ignacio Ochoa

	Nahual Foundation, Founder & Director
	Bio & CV
	Writings & Publications

Bio & CV

Born 19 March 1961 in the village of Quirigua, Los Amates, Izabal, Guatemala.  Cultural Anthropologist and Community Organizer who has spent over 25 years living, working and doing research among Latin American Indigenous and campesino communities, including Mixtec communities in both Oaxaca, Mexico, and San Diego, California; Mayan communities in Chiapas and Guatemala; Kuna, Emberä-Waunana, Chocö, and Ngöbe (Guaymí) populations in Panamá and Colombia; and rural communities in Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The compass of Ignacio's life found bearing when he went to Antigua Guatemala, for middle school and high school in the 1970s. While in Antigua, he joined Jesuit-run youth organizations and retreats. In a decade of revolutionary ideas and movements for social justice, these groups and activities were not simply Christian youth groups, but sources of spiritual inspiration and social empowerment for changing the unjust societies of Latin America. Ignacio was impressed by the Jesuits' pastoral work - which offered a conception of Jesus as a guardian of the poor and a social activist who spoke out against oppression - and by their community organizing projects that were creating consciousness and action among the poor of Central America. Within a few years, Ignacio decided he wanted to be like the friends he so respected.

During the 1980s, at the age of nineteen, Ignacio joined the Jesuits and began the required university study, spiritual trainings, and pastoral work. Ignacio went first to Panama for two years of training, then to Nicaragua for philosophy studies at the Jesuit-run Central American University (UCA) and, lastly, to the Central American University (UCA ) in El Salvador to complete his Philosophy Studies where he became a Student of Zubirian School of Thought.
Community organizing, liberation theology, and popular education methods complimented his academic work and brought Ignacio into contact with several Indigenous missions and cultures. For example, Ignacio worked with indigenous communities of Panama in the early and mid-80s. Ignacio lived with the Ngöbe people and did anthropological field work which involved collecting and compiling Ngöbe stories, songs, and religious and social practices for publication in a monthly anthropological journal. He also assisted the Ngöbe people in organizing to legally defend their lands from the Rio Tinto Copper Mine that had bulldozed over ancient cemeteries and disrupted numerous communities.

When he finished his university education, Ignacio began a new assignment in 1988, working in the K'iche' town of Santa Maria Chiquimula, in Totonicapan, Guatemala. This was a particularly important assignment as it had been illegal since 1980 for Jesuits to work with the indigenous communities of Guatemala. In fact, some of Ignacio's own professors had been tortured and expelled from Guatemala by its government and army who believed the Jesuits were supporters of the guerrilla insurgency.

In 1990, Ignacio left the Jesuit Order, but continued working with the Jesuit Refugee Service of Guatemala. At that time, Guatemala's civil war was in its 30th year and had caused thousands of people to flee their homes and country. Aiding Guatemalan refugee communities - mainly in Guatemala as well as in Chiapas, Mexico - Ignacio had to work at times in difficult and dangerous conditions. In this position, Ignacio assisted Guatemalan refugees in completing documents for political asylum and recording cases of human rights abuses. He formed part of a small team that founded the Archbishop's Human Rights Office in Guatemala (ODHA); organized and taught human rights workshops for labor groups, students, widows, farmers and others; and, lastly, presented human rights workshops to Central American conferences and international delegations. Despite scarce resources and often great personal risk, Ignacio remained with the assignment until 1996 when Guatemala's Peace Accords were signed.

In 1992, Ignacio began working as the Executive Director of La Casa del Nahual, a Guatemalan Cultural Center and Indigenous and Spanish Language School in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. He directed all aspects of the school and cultural center that focused on the Mayan languages and cultures of the K'iche', Kaq'chiq'el, Poq'om chi', and Q'eqchi' in addition to the Spanish language and culture. At La Casa del Nahual, Ignacio coordinated student volunteer internships in the areas of health, education, and reforestation; coordinated weekly cultural activities and exchanges for students and local residents, and presented workshops on Central American culture and socio-political realities to international delegations.

Between 1997-1998, Ignacio went to Boston University to study a Fellowship Program in Public Health and Medical Anthropology. In 1999, he moved to La Jolla, California and started his Graduate Program at San Diego State University and received his Masters Degree in Latin American Studies.

Ignacio was taking a more academic direction, yet his thinking always returned to Central America and his passion for community organizing. While in San Diego, Ignacio volunteered with the San Diego Chapter for the Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIR) and focused his Master's Thesis on the tragic murders of six Jesuit friends and Professors in El Salvador in 1989, explaining how their deaths pushed along a flailing peace process.

During Ignacio's stay in San Diego, California, the seeds of what is now the Asociacion Nahual (Nahual Foundation, Inc.) were sown. While working in Central America, Ignacio - like many others - saw that that the social justice movements of Indigenous peoples were often highly ideological and that policies and programs were created independent of the people they were meant to help. Throughout the Americas, indigenous communities called for their own perspectives and ideas to be included in policymaking, and Ignacio decided to respond.

Ignacio shared the state of indigenous affairs with Bernard Groefsema, a Dutchman long interested in indigenous issues, and they spoke regularly about indigenous problems while Ignacio lived in San Diego. Ultimately, they decided to create a non-profit that might support Indigenous-based development projects and develop those projects through the sharing of ideas with community organizers and indigenous communities throughout the Americas. Their first action was to establish the Nahual Institute for Global Studies, an educational Study Abroad Program offering three week seminars on the Mixtec Culture in Oaxaca, Mexico, as well as courses offering an inside view of the socio-political situation in El Salvador and Guatemala. A year later, using the Nahual Institute as a base, Ignacio and Bernard along with new-comer Warren Blesofsky founded the Nahual Foundation, a think tank by and for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Since 2004, the Asociación Nahual is actively participating in development activities in the department of Sacatepequez, Guatemala. Currently, Ignacio trains community leaders and organizers in the laws related to Community Council Development. One of the most significant governmental changes to come out of the 1996 Peace Accords - the Law of Community Council Development passed in 2002 - established a new level of government, whereby Community Development Councils (Consejos Comunitarios de Desarollo; COCODEs) - something similar to city councils - would exist at the local level, below the overarching municipal level of government. These COCODEs gave communities, for the first time, the ability to direct the use of funds allocated to their community by the national government.

Yet while the law establishing COCODEs was landmark in its aim to decentralize the state and empower communities, it exists largely as a hollow, unread document. On paper there is a COCODE in every community with that community's mayor as its chairman. But, in reality, few communities or village mayors know what COCODEs are or how to use them. Seeing these community development councils as "a great tool" for people to develop their own communities, Ignacio began teaching the law to community leaders and organizers as well as accompanying them in the institutional infancy of the councils. First he began with the municipality of Antigua, then moved on to nearby municipalities, and today his trainings have injected life into the COCODE system throughout the 16 municipalities of the department of Sacatepequez.

When asked what he enjoys about his work, Ignacio explains that he finds most fulfilling "helping people to find answers in post-war Guatemala." He admits, however, that this is "very complicated, because people are still affected by the war and today it is not completely safe to push decentralization." Another aspect Ignacio enjoys is the teaching of different educational methodologies to community leaders and organizers so that they might educate their own communities. "Teaching lets me learn how to teach better," he says. "I see how learning empowers, how people frame their own struggles."

Reflecting on the  years since founding the Asociacion Nahual, Ignacio says that he is happy with the organization's success. Today, the Asociacion Nahual is a member of the Indigenous Policy Network where he serves as Co-Editor and  published some articles on Indigenous experiences and struggles. The Antigua office has become a community center, hosting local projects such as quilting clubs, youth marimba bands, and kite building workshops for the Day of the Dead. A project to research and preserve Antigua's archives has been initiated. And, in response to October's Hurricane Stan, the foundation established a number of aid projects and a small reconstruction effort in the town of San Lorenzo, Pastores.

Through his COCODE trainings, Ignacio has begun to see changes in the actions of community leaders, the flourishing of community councils, and a much greater interest on the part of communities in seeing how existing laws might help them. The Asociacion Nahual's COCODE program has now trained over 400 community leaders from around Sacatepequez and through efforts alongside IGER (Instituto Guatemalteco de Educación Radiofónica), a long distance radio educational program, the Guatemalan Secretariat of Planning, and the World Bank Institute's Urban and Local Government program, a radio play and a educational booklet have been created to teach COCODEs to the general population.

Looking towards the future, Ignacio says he will continue working on the COCODE project and hopes to expand it to the rest of Guatemala. As for the Nahual Foundation, Ignacio Ochoa, its co-founders Bernard Groefsema and Warren Blesofsky, and the Nahual Foundation's community of international volunteers will continue working on existing projects and search for ways to increase the Foundation's funding.

When asked what he believes Guatemala needs to develop most, Ignacio explains that first "it must strengthen the state by creating accountability and ethical practices." Ignacio notes that this is partly what he is doing: "If we continue teaching people about how important it is to be involved in this process of rebuilding post-war Guatemala and creating sustainable peace, I think that something good will come out of it."

Writings & Publications

May 2003
"El Salvador1989: The Two Jesuit Standards and the Final Offensive," Master's Thesis, San Diego State University, May 2003.

Fall 2004
Ochoa, Ignacio. "A Brief History of the Mixtec Language Academy." Indigenous Policy
Journal of the Indigenous Policy Network (IPN), FormerlyAmerican Indian Policy. Fall 2004.

January 2006
Ochoa, Ignacio. Ñuu Snuviko Viko Tata Sa Jua (The Patron Saint Feast of St. John of Mixtepec). San Diego: Nahual Institute for Global Studies, 2006.

October 2007
Ochoa, Ignacio. "In Loving Spirit, Day of the Dead celebration in Santiago Sacatepéquez is a rich texture of tradition."  Revue Magazine, Antigua Guatemala October 2007:18-19, 102.