Solving the Language Troubles of Mayan Immigrants

October 4, 1998

Solving the Language Troubles of Mayan Immigrants

By CHRISTIAN BERTHELSEN

OS ANGELES -- Two by two, a procession of boys in heavy pullovers, or lopils, and girls in embroidered huipil blouses dance a jaunty dance, their hands clasped behind their backs, to the tunes of a marimba band. They make their way up the stairs of a stage at the front of the room, where, finally, a nervous-looking young girl at the end of the procession ascends in the puffy white dress that is the traditional clothing of a Mayan bride and is crowned the year's Queen of San Miguel.
The occasion on this recent Saturday night at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in the historic center of downtown Los Angeles is the Fiesta de San Miguel, honoring the patron saint of the Mayan village of San Miguel Acatan. The 100 families taking part in the festival immigrated to the United States from San Miguel Acatan but are afraid to return in the aftermath of Guatemala's civil war, or simply do not want to go back.
But under a 1997 law, the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act, signed into law by President Clinton in November of 1997, many of the Mayans here and elsewhere in Southern California will eventually face interviews that will determine whether they can stay in the country and apply for permanent residency or be told to return to their homeland. A little-known language gap -- most Mayans have a limited command of Spanish -- stands to make that process difficult at best, so the festival opens with a reminder from a speaker that the interviews are coming and that a new group of indigenous interpreters is available to help give those seeking residency a fighting chance.
About 50,000 Mayans were among 250,000 Central Americans who fled torture, rape and murder in the 1980s during a civil war in their native Guatemala, and some 20,000 have settled in the Pico-Union and South Central neighborhoods of Los Angeles and in other Southern California communities, working in sewing factories, picking produce in the fields or lingering on the streets in the early morning in the hopes of being picked up for a day of manual labor.
Guatemala's war formally ended in 1996, but many Mayans are afraid to return to a country still in turmoil or have come to feel at home in the United States. Although some people have already gone through the asylum process, immigrant rights advocates have been feeling a sense of urgency regarding the others because the interviews under the 1997 law were to begin this month (they have been delayed).
To help the Mayans stay here, the advocates must first help them overcome a language barrier: Mayans speak indigenous Indian languages and know only basic Spanish, not enough to represent themselves adequately in immigration hearings. (The INS does not routinely provide interpretation services outside the world's major languages.)
The misconception that Mayans speak fluent Spanish is frequently furthered by Mayans themselves. They often go into the proceedings without a lawyer or an indigenous interpreter, in part because they do not know they can request one and in part because they do not want to attract attention to their indigenous heritage, which can be a target for condescension from Latino peers who ridicule them for being "Indios" or "ignorant." As a result, advocates say, Mayans lose the vast majority of their immigration cases.
"Most people don't know what the judge says, what the interpreter says, because the interpretation is English to Spanish, and people don't know what many of the words mean," said Victor Lopez, the director of Maya Various Interpretations Services and Indigenous Organization Network, or Mayavision, that was recently formed to provide interpreters for the Mayans.
Lopez came to this country in 1981 from Guatemala and started out as a flower picker in San Diego County, but began providing interpretation services for his countrymen 14 years ago. The network, which is financed by private grants, officially began operation in August and has about 35 interpreters.
Typical of the immigrants that the network seeks to help is Rosario Lucas, the wife of a landscaper in San Diego County, who crossed the border illegally in 1994 to flee the constant fear of Guatemalan guerrillas and join her husband, who had fled earlier. She began working on her asylum application in 1997. Ms. Lucas struggled through the process in Spanish for a year before finding an interpreter for her native Q'anjob'al, understanding the general sense of things but unable to follow the legal complexities of her case.
"I'm feeling real happy, because somebody's coming to help me in my language," Ms. Lucas said. "I can understand him and I can explain my case to him. If he understands me, and he can tell everything I'm saying to the judge, I can answer all the questions the judge is going to ask me."

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