“I am Norma Sancir, a Kaqchiqel Maya journalist and defender of the rights of Indigenous Peoples and of freedom of expression. Community communication is my work and my way of fighting; I am the daughter of a mother displaced by war, and I honor that lineage.”
This case study seeks to identify the factors that led to Norma Sancir’s arrest and imprisonment and to understand the personal, and collective impacts, as well as those on her family, resulting from the criminalization of her work as an Indigenous journalist and her struggle to obtain justice and reparations.
Norma defines herself as a strong, brave, and wise woman who embraces life with her energy, affirming that her life has been shaped by the power of words as a tool for transformation and by her conviction to tell good stories with truth and dignity. She is from the municipality of Técpan and fourteen years ago she moved to Chiquimula to work as a community journalist and expose the state’s neglect and the violation of the rights of the Maya Ch’orti’ people.
