CIE TAA' PI'T ONG
Comunidad intercultural Educativa
our INTERCONNECTED story
Taa' Pi't's programs are centered in San Pedro La Laguna, on the shore of Mother Lake Atitlán. Our story is inseparable from the story of this magical place — its people, its history, and its water.
Guatemala's history runs from the ancient Maya civilization through Spanish conquest, which absorbed Maya lands into the Viceroyalty of New Spain, to a civil war that lasted thirty-six years, from 1960 to 1996. More than 200,000 people were killed, the majority of them indigenous. Alongside the violence came forced assimilation, racial exclusion, and the loss of native seed — wounds that were cultural as much as physical.
The peace accords ended the fighting. They did not end the consequences. For Tz'utujil communities here, that inheritance is still visible: languages spoken by fewer people each generation, traditions interrupted mid-transmission, and a weakened tie between families and their ancestral land.
Our students are the generation that inherits all of it. What they learn now determines how much of it survives.
Every one of our programs is a response to a deep story that began much further back than 2006.
our CULTURAL LOSS IS MEASURABLE
AND VISIBLE IN THE WATERS OF
MOTHER LAKE ATITLÁN
Lake Atitlán, framed by three volcanoes, is in ecological crisis. Improper waste management and the irresponsible use of agricultural chemicals have degraded the water. Sterilized soil and the disappearance of native seed varieties now threaten the food security of every community whose life depends on this shore. Naturally, the causes are systemic and structural at both the national and international levels.
In the Mayan worldview, water is sacred. That understanding shapes our response — not conservation as a technical problem to be solved, but restoration of the relationship between people and place that made this lake healthy for centuries.
Our ecological education teaches sustainable agricultural practice rooted in Mayan knowledge: working with the land's natural cycles, recovering native seed, and defending biological diversity as a matter of both heritage and survival.
The lake will endure only if the communities around it are part of deciding how. By prioritizing Mayan practices of sustainable management and a harmonious relationship with the environment, we work toward a Lake Atitlán that remains a source of health and well-being for generations to come.
WE invite you to partner with us
in this sacred work.
