Vince Heptig
- 1991
![Picture of Vince Heptig](https://aliciapatterson.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Heptig.jpg)
Fellowship Title:
- A Documentary of Mayan Culture
Fellowship Year:
- 1991
![A villager holds three liquor bottles for use in the fiesta celebrations of the Guatemalan village of Todos Santos. He is a member of Cofradia, a religious brotherhood.](https://aliciapatterson.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Heptig_Happiness20-300x193.jpg)
Happiness and Despair in Guatemala
A young boy participates in the holy week procession in Santiago, Atitlan. A boy enjoys the festive day as crowds gather in front of the church in Todos Santos. The village of Todos Santos celebrates its name-sake holiday, All Saints Day, with an action-packed fiesta. As many as 50 riders run a quarter-mile course repeatedly throughout the day, stopping at intervals for rounds of drinks. Participants spend months of wages to rent horses and costumes for the race as a way of gaining Prestige in the village. The day following the horse race finds villagers at the town cemetery, paying respect to the dead. Women walk in a holy day Procession in file small Guatemalan mountain village of Santa Alaria de Jesus. Two thirds of the workers at this south coast finca lived under plastic roofed huts. Rain brings misery to all. A child lies near a pile of coffee beans on a large plantation (finca) on the south coast. Guatemala’s indigenous population is forced by economics to leave their villages and work on coffee,
![An evangelical priest gives a eulogy behind black trash bags containing the skeletal remains of eight people murdered in the early 1980’s during the Guatemalan army’s counter-insurgency campaign. They were among the 23 bodies unearthed by anthropologists in August in Chontala, a village in the western highlands of Guatemala.](https://aliciapatterson.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Heptig_Suffering01-250x300.jpg)
The Suffering of Guatemala’s Indigenious People
A noticeable hush fell over the small crowd of Guatemalan indigenious people. They watched in horror as forensic anthropologist Luis Miguel Alonso painstakingly unearthed the body of a young Indian boy killed in a massacre in 1983. An evangelical priest gives a eulogy behind black trash bags containing the skeletal remains of eight people murdered in the early 1980’s during the Guatemalan army’s counter-insurgency campaign. They were among the 23 bodies unearthed by anthropologists in August in Chontala, a village in the western highlands of Guatemala. Indigenious women dressed in brightly-colored huipils dotted the green cornfield as a team of Argentine forensic anthropologists slowly uncovered evidence last August of a Mayan tragedy in the small village of Chontala. The village, in the western highlands of Guatemala, was part of the bloodbath by the army and civil patrols that engulfed this small Central American country during 1979-1985. Two residents of Chontala, in the western highlands of Guatemala, pray over eight bodies of members of their community. They were killed during the army’s counter-insurgency campaign in the
![Villagers burn a soldier’s effigy on Easter Sunday to continue to protest against the military massacre of 14 citizens of Santiago Atitlan on Dec. 2, 1990.](https://aliciapatterson.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Heptig_Aftermath01-300x199.jpg)
Aftermath of a Massacre in Guatemala
The highland village of Santiago Atitlan continues to hold monthly masses to commemorate the 14 citizens killed and 24 injured when soldiers fired into a crowd that had gathered to protest an earlier shooting of a resident by drunken soldiers. A 30-year conflict between the army and leftist guerillas has left the indigenous population in Guatemala hopelessly pinned between both sides. Villagers burn a soldier’s effigy on Easter Sunday to continue to protest against the military massacre of 14 citizens of Santiago Atitlan on Dec. 2, 1990. Villagers burn a soldier’s effigy on Easter Sunday to continue to protest against the military massacre of 14 citizens of Santiago Atitlan on Dec. 2, 1990. Antonio Quieju Chiveliu and his family received a wall of corn from neighbors after Antonio was shot in the leg during the massacre. He will be unable to work for a year. Magdelena and Francisco Sisay cry over the body of their slain nine-year-old son, Geronimo. Magdelena and Francisco Sisay cry over the body of their slain nine-year-old son, Geronimo, his family
![A child is carried by her mother, waiting in line for donated food at a refugee camp, La Gloria, in Chiapas, Mexico.](https://aliciapatterson.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Heptig_Guatamala02-300x215.jpg)
Guatemala’s Refugees
APF Fellow Vince Heptig lives in Guatemala City and has been photographing Guatemala’s refugees in Mexico and other locations. In addition to living in poverty, the new generation of refugee children has lost most cultural ties to its Mayan heritage. A child is carried by her mother, waiting in line for donated food at a refugee camp, La Gloria, in Chiapas, Mexico. Mateo Gomez in a sparse cornfield in a refugee camp in San Lorenzo, in Chiapas, Mexico. His son, also named Mateo, was born in the camp in 1985. They have little hope of returning to Guatemala. A young refugee, Luis, sits atop a bag of donated corn in his family’s hut in the Cieneguita camp, Chiapas, Mexico. An infant and her mother wait for food at the government’s re-education center outside of Nebaj, Guatemala. Baltazar, age 11, leans on his hoe behind a group of civil patrollers outside of Nebaj, Guatemala. An almost toothless Gaslisia Cano, 89, waits for help at the re-education center outside of Nebaj. ©1991 Vince Heptig Vince Heptig, a