October 10th is last day to sign up for this very special opportunity to learn first-hand about the Maya culture…past, present, and future. Click here to sign up for the trip! You will be spending the last four days in Copan Ruinas, Honduras celebrating and learning about the significance of the ending of the 5,140 year Maya Calendar on December 21st from renowned Maya Luminaries and leaders. For the first six days, you will be traveling on the ancient trails in Guatemala visiting our five Maya projects and their community and spiritual leaders. They are: Kuchub’al in the Quezaltenango region; the Peasant Committee of the High Plains in the mountainous volcano region surrounding Lake Atitlan; the Sakapulas Black Salt community in the Quiche region ; SAAQ’ ACH’OODI NIMLA K’ALEB’AL Maya Red Cacao in the Alta Verapaz region; and the Oxwitik Ch’orti in Chiquimula, Guatemala and Copan, Honduras.

Lake Atitlán with Volcano Atitlan, Volcano San Pedro, and Volcano Toliman

The Peasant Committee of the High Plains

The Maya people of Atitlán are predominantly Tz’utujil and Kaqchikel…but today with our project, The Peasant Committee of the High Plains, you will find indigenous people from all of the Maya regions. It was during the Spanish conquest of the Kaqchikel that they initially allied themselves with the invaders to defeat their historic enemies the Tz’utujil and Quiche Maya. The Kaqchikel were then conquered and subdued when they refused to pay tribute to the Spanish.

The Peasant Committee of the High Plains is an organization of more than 1,200 members representing people from all 21 Maya indigenous populations and regions. As with all of our projects, they understand value-added and want to make products to sell to our marketplace, to raise them out of dire poverty and to provide a future for their children. They grow all their crops, including rich high elevation-high valued coffee beans, macadamia nuts, and sugar cane in the Maya traditional method. However, today their plight is they must walk hours just to deliver a 50 lb. sack of green coffee beans for a minimum price from buyers called coyotes.

Reducing Poverty and Improving Environments

Imagine a store filled with healthy, natural products. All the products are produced by companies owned by indigenous Mayan people using raw materials grown in the region using agricultural methods that enrich the land rather than depleting it. The workers and growers are working themselves out of poverty by selling the products directly to consumers and avoiding wholesalers. The workers share company ownership with community foundations that use the profits to fund projects such as health clinics, water purification plants and school programs. Every product in the store is tied to a particular company and you can easily see how they produce it and what they are doing with your money.

Become a part of our movement

Tell the World…join us as a ‘Founding Member’ by adding your name to the Maya Global ‘Tree of Life’ on our website and like us on Facebook. Better yet, join us as one of twelve travelers on December 13-22, on a Once-In-A-Millennium trip to the Maya world. You will learn first-hand about the Maya Global 2012 agri-business projects and meet with Maya leaders and elders while traveling the ancient Maya trails in Honduras and Guatemala. You will spend the last four days exploring Copan Ruinas, Honduras – ‘the Paris of the ancient Maya civilization’. You will celebrate the ‘dawning of a new era’ on December 21, with renowned Maya Luminaries, to observe a cosmic alignment of our solar system with the plane of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, representing the end of a 25,920 year cycle that is based on the Precession of the Equinoxes.

Maya Ch’orti “Nuevo Dia” organization and the ‘New Useful Forest’

5,140 Years of Mayan Culture

OXWITIK CH’ORTI – New Useful Forest was identified five years ago as our first project, and has more than ten years in development and research. It’s Founders’, David and Julia Sedat, have revitalized ravaged hillsides by planting useful trees (such as the fruit bearing Noni tree) whose roots hold the soil and retain water from running off. The enriched soil can then be used to grow a wide variety of other trees and crops. It has been shown that even the worse degraded hillsides of Western Honduras and elsewhere in the region can be rescued from slash and burn and soil degradation, and transformed into useful and productive agro-forestry lands. Today, there are over 80 species of plants and trees being grown and being used to perfect recipes for hot sauces, flavored drinks, infused teas, health products, and much more.

Reducing Poverty and Improving Environments

The New Useful Forest (NUF) is achievable, sustainable, and will eliminate poverty because it incorporates intrinsically “Mayan” cultural strategies of land use and subsistence. The acceptance of the NUF ideals by the Maya Chorti “New Day” movement indicates that new ideas and plant species are accepted if they are presented in a culturally coherent fashion. The NUF is suited for the steepest and least desirable land for maize farming. It does not seek to displace the spiritually entrenched maize cultivation, but rather enhance its multiple-use by making the land more fertile and productive for subsistence and cash crops. This is where so many “outside” projects have failed—they do not take into consideration the “soul” of the Maya people.

A once-in-a-millennia opportunity

Witness the end of the 5,140 year old Mayan Calendar at the end of our 10 day trip in Copan Ruinas, Honduras. But first you will learn first-hand about the Maya Global 2012 indigenous projects of promise in Honduras and Guatemala while traveling the ancient Maya trails. All of these projects are ongoing and Maya Global 2012 founder Jeff Remmel has inspected their operations. Talks are underway whereby Maya Global could fund the expansion of land under cultivation and upgraded processing facilities. The latter is the key to success. You don’t want a burlap bag of green beans delivered to your door; you want a pound of hut roasted, ready to brew coffee. Likewise, the Maya want to sell $8 a pound roasted beans instead of $1.50 a pound of green beans. That means the difference between subsistence living and sustainable economic progress. And it means many more jobs for Mayans.

Become a part of the future of Mayan civilization

5,140 Years of Mayan Culture

No definitive answer has been found for what happened to the Mayans; it appears that it is a combination of factors: environmental problems, rapidly increasing population, climatic challenges, logistical problems, dietary problems, authoritarian structures, ritualistic superstitions out of control, and corruption of the system etc…all combined to end this great civilization. Sounds all too familiar, eh?

Why become a Founding Member…and put your name on the Maya Global ‘Tree of Life’? To be a part of the beginning of the ‘dawning of a new era’ on December 21, 2012, that will create a Maya Global community of socially conscious members, of all generations, building a new sustainable socio-economic model to end rural poverty and environmental degradation around the world. Our objective is to show our strength of one million founding members by end of 2012…so please join us and tell the rest of the world a new movement is being unleashed.

Reducing Poverty and Improving Environments

The Maya are largely excluded from national society; they produce and reproduce cultures that are uniquely their own. Their subsistence economy and corresponding family life, morality, rhythm of life, supernatural beliefs, humor, sexuality, music, and dances distinguish them from town-dwelling Ladino populations. Standards of poverty are relative, especially between indigenous and modern societies, but rural Mayan campesinos are poor even according to their own low standards. For generations, it’s been reported falsely that their diet was diverse and the land was productive. Today, too many people are trying to grow food on plots that are too small, steep, and eroded. Most suffer from malnutrition and are ridden with intestinal and respiratory infections. Though most Mayans recognize that these maladies are due partly to their subordination to local, national, and international powers, they tend to interpret them as an internal problem as well. Subsequently, Maya Global 2012 sustainable objective is to literally implement…Lao Tzu philosophy, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”