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		Happenings By Sue Ellen Kingsley  May 13, 2004 Text and photos © 2003 Sue Ellen Kingsley.  Reprinted with permission. Photo: Sue Ellen Kingsley and young Fronterizo friend.

CCGAP to hold dance, raffle May 15

HANCOCK -- The Copper Country Guatemala Accompaniment Project (CCGAP) will be holding its annual fundraising dance and raffle from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday, May 15, at the Motherlode Coffee House in downtown Houghton. The band Finn Street will be opening the evening with a set of Spanish songs, and then the local band "Algoma" will be featured. The public is invited to dance, socialize and join the festivities.

Raffle tickets will be available for a variety of handmade Guatemalan crafts including purses, hats and the grand prize, a hand-woven wool blanket. For more information contact CCGAP at 482-6827.

This beautiful, hand-woven wool blanket will be the grand prize in CCGAP's raffle from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday, May 15, at the Motherlode Coffee House in Houghton. (Photo © 2004 Sue Ellen Kingsley. Reprinted with permission.)

CCGAP recently sponsored a talk by Denese "Dominga" Becker, who showed the award-winning PBS film Discovering Dominga, at First United Methodist Church in Hancock.***  The film documents her life story, including the massacre by the Guatemalan army that killed more than 176 people in her village, Rio Negro. Denese answered questions from the audience after the film.

On May 2, 2004, after showing the film Discovering Dominga, Denese "Dominga" Becker answers questions from the audience at First United Methodist Church in Hancock. (Photo © 2004 Sue Ellen Kingsley. Reprinted with permission.)

On Feb. 13, 1982, Denese's father and more than 70 other men in her village were brutally massacred by the Guatemalan army and paramilitary soldiers. One month later, the same men attacked the village in the wee hours of the morning, gathering everyone they could find (mostly women, children and the elderly). In the midst of confusion, Dominga's mother helped her escape. The film shows how the nine-year-old Dominga, with her baby sister strapped to her back, spent weeks hiding in the mountains, trying to keep her baby sister alive by squeezing berry juice into her mouth. When Dominga finally found other relatives, also hiding in the mountains, the baby was too weak to live. Dominga was taken to a convent in Rabinal, and later to an orphanage in Guatemala City, where she was adopted by a couple from Algona, Iowa, when she was 11.

The film also shows Dominga as a teenager trying to adjust to American life. Eventually, though, after marrying and having two sons, she is haunted by recurring nightmares. With the help of her adoptive family, including a cousin who speaks Spanish, and her local church in Iowa, Denese Dominga returns to Guatemala to find other survivors and to join in the work of gathering evidence which could eventually prove what happened to the victims of the massacre.

Discovering Dominga, produced by Patricia Flynn with Mary Jo McConahay, has won many awards, including "Best Documentary" in the Bermuda International Film Festival and at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. 

The film has had many screenings, from California to Washington, D.C. Many organizations, including Amnesty International, Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian (New York), Humanities Iowa and Guatemalan Human Rights Commission (GHRC), have sponsored these events.

To read more about Denese and the film, visit the PBS Web site, which also provides information on purchasing the film.

To receive regular updates on Denese's ongoing work, email domingasic@hotmail.com. To contribute to her work, write to The Dominga Foundation, P.O. Box 482, Algona, IA 50511.

Editor's Note: CCGAP has been supporting accompaniers to live in Guatemala as human rights observers in accordance with the agreements signed by the Guatemalan government in 1992. Hancock resident Sue Ellen Kingsley established the Copper Country Guatemala Accompaniment Project (CCGAP) after serving as an accompanier herself (in 1997) in the Guatemalan village of Fronterizo 10 de Mayo, a community established May 10, 1995, by a group of refugees who returned to Guatemala after 12-15 years in refugee camps in Mexico. CCGAP attempts to strengthen ties between Fronterizo and the Copper Country by developing individual relationships and giving financial support to small projects planned by the Guatemalan community. *** CCGAP offers educational talks on Guatemala to groups in the Copper Country and offers the opportunity for involvement in this community-to-community relationship with the Mayan indigenous people of Guatemala. **Read about one of CCGAP's accompaniers, Hale Sargent, in his article, "Celebrating Connections." **Read Sue Ellen Kingsley's May 15, 2003, article, "Water Pots come to Fronterizo." In November 2001, a family from Fronterizo visited the Copper Country. See "Guatemalan visitors offer Copper Country cultural exchange."

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