The images, viewed tens of thousands of times in Guatemala, are unsustainable. A short, haggard human torch, surrounded by a crowd sometimes applauding, sometimes uttering cries of dread. The poor man’s end is not filmed, we guess it is atrocious.
Domingo Choc Che, 55, spiritual guide and Mayan herbalist, died charred Saturday, June 6. A few hours earlier, he had been tortured by a family accusing him of having killed their father by practices of "Witchcraft". His denials and pleas did nothing. One of the deceased father's sons doused him with gas and threw a match. "Of course I did, because he killed my father. I had to do it, thank God ”, calmly explained to the press the young man at the door of the police station, a slightly embarrassed smile on his lips. Three other people were arrested.
The assassination sparked reactions to the emotion aroused by the appalling murder. The President of the Republic, Alejandro Giammattei, immediately "Condemned" the "Terrible" and "Coward" assassination and promised that everything would be done to bring those responsible to justice.
On social networks, the keyword #JusticiaParaTataDomingo ("justice for Grandfather Domingo", the Mayan sages being called grandfather) has gone viral, and the debate has opened on the factors that led to his death : racism and religious intolerance. Two evils that have plagued the country for centuries, but that Guatemala had never, until then, really faced.
"Folklore or Satanism"
Domingo Choc Che was an Alijonel (literally, "who cares with plants", or master herbalist) and an Ajq’ij (Mayan spiritual guide). He was a member of the Council of Mayan Spiritual Guides Releb'aal Saq'e and was, as such, part of a transdisciplinary team of Guatemalan and European scientists working on research projects with the University of Zurich, University College of London (UCL) and the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG).
The aim of the team is in particular to document ancestral medical practice and medicinal plants and to identify the habitats of the forests of Petén, in the north of the country, which are receding more and more in the face of deforestation (35% of the forest disappeared there between 1990 and 2016) for monoculture for palm oil and livestock. Domingo Choc, a great connoisseur of Mayan medical herbalism, was obsessed with preserving these habitats in the face of large corporations and farmers who expropriate indigenous peasants.
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