Women’s leadership in Guatemala drives peace and community participation in Huehuetenango
In the heart of Guatemala’s western highlands, in the department of Huehuetenango, peacebuilding has the face of women. In territories marked by historical exclusion, violence, and deep inequalities, community leaders are driving processes that transform the lives of other women and strengthen the social fabric at the local level.
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Women leaders from the department of Huehuetenango during the presentation of the “Women Leading Peace” project, which UN Women presented to the COCODE. Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Photo: UN Women Guatemala / Alejandra Chicas
Huehuetenango, Guatemala – In a territory where the legacy of the conflict still shapes collective memory and structural racism deepens inequalities, organized Indigenous women have become agents of change. María Guadalupe García and Francisca Domingo Pérez lead community initiatives that promote justice, dignity, and participation, demonstrating that peace is built day by day from within communities.
The Women Leading Peace project, implemented by UN Women, UNDP, and UNFPA with funding from the Peacebuilding Fund (PBF), supports these processes. Through this initiative, local women leaders strengthen their sociopolitical participation and help advance the Women, Peace and Security agenda, bringing the principles of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 to life in their territories.
In a context where violence against women and barriers to their civic and political participation persist, their leadership embodies a commitment to sustainable peace grounded in equality. Three decades after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, their work shows that gender-responsive peacebuilding is not a future aspiration but a reality advancing from the community level.
To understand how these processes take shape in everyday life, the story of María Guadalupe García offers a window into the transformations emerging from Huehuetenango today.
“We want to walk freely and without fear.”
María Guadalupe García from the Mamá Maquín organization during a community leadership workshop in the department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Photo: UN Women Guatemala / Alejandra Chicas
A survivor of the conflict that marked Guatemala’s history in the 1980s, María Guadalupe García Hernández found in exile a school of life. Like many Maya women displaced by the conflict, she sought refuge in Mexico to save her life. There, among women, the organization Mamá Maquín emerged, a space for training, resistance, and awareness.
“That is where we learned to listen to our voice, to our word as women and as Maya women in exile,” she recalls.
During that period of displacement, she also deepened her understanding of the language of rights and social justice. When she returned to Guatemala, she brought a clear political vision and a commitment to transforming the conditions that had shaped her life.
“We want to live without fear in our territories; we want our voice, our word, to be heard, from our way of thinking, feeling, and seeing,” she says.
From Huehuetenango, María Guadalupe has promoted organizing processes that bring together more than ten organizations of peasant, Indigenous, and rural women. Together, they have fostered violence-free spaces and placed the defense of the body, territory, and Mother Earth at the center of their struggle.
For García, violence cannot be understood in isolation.
“It is the result of structural problems: oppression, racism, exclusion, and discrimination,” she explains. Her analysis points to a patriarchal, colonial, and racist system that has historically denied women’s value and voice.
“The same system has educated us by telling us that women do not know, that we do not think… yet we are the ones who guarantee food and sustain life,” she emphasizes.
The organization she represents promotes awareness-raising processes, political training, and sociopolitical leadership from a rights-based agenda, without partisan affiliation. Thanks to these efforts, several municipalities have strengthened their Municipal Women’s Offices. However, she warns that challenges remain to ensure effective participation in decision-making spaces such as the Municipal Development Councils (COMUDES) and Community Development Councils (COCODES).
“There is still a lack of political will to achieve real structural change,” she says, stressing that women’s participation is essential because they are the ones who care for life, water, nature, and the community as a whole.
“When you have the floor, do not let it go.”
Francisca Domingo Pérez shares her views with a group of women during the presentation of the “Women Leading Peace” project to the CODEDE in Huehuetenango. Photo: UN Women Guatemala / Alejandra Chicas
Like María Guadalupe, other women in Huehuetenango have transformed experiences marked by violence into community leadership. One of them is Francisca Domingo Pérez, a Maya-Mam woman, departmental delegate of the National Women for Peace Forum, and the first Indigenous woman to coordinate a COCODE in her municipality.
Her leadership grew out of profound personal loss. She lost her parents during the conflict and survived violence within the home. Today, she works so that other women do not face those realities alone.
In Huehuetenango, she explains, violence against women persists both in the family sphere and in politics, where machismo and discrimination continue to limit women’s participation.
When she assumed the presidency of the COCODE in the municipal capital, she faced direct resistance.
“Ladino men said they could not understand how they had allowed an Indigenous woman to come and teach them how to work,” she recalls.
Rather than discouraging her, that experience opened doors for other women.
Thanks to her leadership, 47 women have taken on community coordination roles and now participate actively in spaces such as COMUDES and Departmental Development Councils (CODEDES). Her message is constant: “When you have the opportunity, and you have the floor, do not let it go. The voice is yours, make yourselves heard because we are worthy.”
From the National Women for Peace Forum and in partnership with UN Women, Francisca coordinates political training processes with a long-term vision.
Looking ahead, she hopes that by 2027, more women will be ready to step into decision-making spaces.
Her final message is directed at younger generations: getting involved, participating, and building knowledge not only transforms individual paths but also shapes the kind of State and society people aspire to build.