Abandoned in the Jungle of Guatemala

In February 1977 at age 21, Lesley Miles arrived in Guatemala. She came to teach biodynamic organic gardening in a tiny village of Maya people. Without roads or electricity and over 175 inches of rain a year, the jungle was a formidable foe. But it wasn’t the only one.

In the 100 square miles where the Proyecto Ixcán cooperative inhabitants lived, they were cut off from outside contact due to a Guatemalan military build-up. Over the next two years as Lesley helped create an agricultural center, the build- up accelerated, supported by Israeli and clandestine American involvement. What had been virgin forest was now in the crosshairs of multinational oil and mineral prospecting with an eye toward the agricultural potential of the biodiverse lowland forests. At the same time the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres, the Guerrilla Army of the Poor was moving into the Ixcán from Mexico.

The garden project was threatened by destruction from all directions. Stranded when her organization folded, Lesley witnessed the inception of what two years later had become a scorched earth campaign by the Guatemalan army annihilating all of the villages in Ixcán and the massacre of over 200,000 people. Upon her return to the United States, she could find no information about her village nor the people she knew. She locked the memories away until years later, she was ready, and opened a box stored 40 years before with her journals, letters, reports and hundreds of photographs. She began to write hoping to understand what had happened.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Upon her return from Guatemala to the United States, Lesley Miles became a horticulturist and a business owner. At 40, she became a registered architect. All Things Hidden, her memoir of her early years, resurrects the people of Ixcán, Guatemala, and unfurls her own harrowing tale. She lives in Morgan Hill, California.