Chona Ajcot
San Lucas Toliman, Guatemala
Chona’s life began as one of 11 children in a poor, happy Mayan family near Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. At 13 she lived with the sisters of Notre Dame at the St. Lucas Toliman Mission for four years until she began to cook and work for Father Greg Schaffer, the American pastor of the Mission where she would remain for 35 years.
During these years, this area of Guatemala experienced the prolonged wrath of “La Violencia,” a concentrated genocidal effort by the government to “eliminate, exterminate and annihilate” the entire Mayan culture in Guatemala. During these years, many boys were abducted to become soldiers, many women were raped, and many men, including Chona’s husband, were killed or “disappeared.” Chona’s peacemaking work tended to the needs of the orphaned children and the widowed women of San Lucas.