The Ixil Maya live in the highlands of Guatemala, isolated from the 21st century's instant communication and fast pace. In an area known as K'ichee, they grow coffee beans for export and guisquiles ("vegetable pears") for their own tables.
Chris Martin, a fourth-grade teacher from York, started going on missions trips to the Ixil homeland in 2000.
"It's all changing," Martin said. "The road used to end 10 miles from the village, but now it ends less than two miles away. I saw a guy in the fields wearing a Paine Webber T-shirt. It seemed important to document the Ixil way of life before it disappears."
Martin and Keith Trepanier, a York engineer, have mounted a photo exhibit titled "End of an Era," which they'll display Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Community Room on Prince, 19 N. Prince St., where they'll also be running a continuous slide show highlighting their adventures in Guatemala.
With eight children between them, Martin and Trepanier attend Living Word Community Church, a 2,000-member independent "super church" in Red Lion. Living Word regularly sends groups, including doctors, nurses and dentists, on missions trips to Guatemala. Martin and Trepanier oversaw the 80-item medical formulary last year, packing everything from vitamins to cold cures in big plastic bins strapped to mules.
Martin, 32, and Trepanier, 37, have camping and hiking experience. As a kid, Martin was a member of the Christian Service Brigade. Trepanier trained as a wilderness guide in Hawaii. Together they plan to climb Maine's mile-high Mount Katahdin in July.
The avid amateur photographers used their digital cameras to record images of the vanishing Ixil way of life. Martin described one family's one-room hut as "corrugated metal roof, logs for benches, cooking over a fire pit. We could see the sectioned-off bedroom where they had two wooden palettes covered in blankets as beds for the whole family. It was a reminder of the world's diversity — and its discrepancy."
First seen at a church missions conference in December, their 20-photo exhibit has been hanging at York's Sparky & Clark's coffeehouse for the past two months. The photos are framed in boards from weathered wooden palettes that had been stored in a barn at Martin's parents' dairy farm. All of the framed prints have been sold, but unframed prints are still available.
"When I first visited Ixil villages, it was like stepping back in time," Martin said. "They had dirt floors. They ground their corn by hand and walked around barefoot. Now they wear 'jellies' (cushy sandals) on their feet. In the city of Nebaj, the hotel had community showers and no TVs. Now there's a shower and a TV for every room. As the road widens, Western culture pours in."
"I fell in love with the Ixil people and the region," Trepanier said. "Life was simple there, and the people seemed content with very little."
"Thinking about the Ixil gives me a constant check on my own happiness," Martin said. "Why can't I be as joyful as they are when I have so much more? It's just a matter of figuring out what's important in life."
Contact Marty Crisp at mcrisp@lnpnews.com.
