Humberto Ak’abal

GUATEMALA

(1952–2019) Humberto Ak’abal was born in Momostenango, Guatemala. He grew up in a Mayan K’iche peasant village, and moved to Guatemala City to work as a street vendor. In the 1980s he began to write in K’iche, but although he translated his own poems into Spanish, he could not find a publisher willing to print his work until 1992. Since then, he has won many prizes for his poetry, including the 2004 Guatemala National Prize in Literature, which he turned down because it is named for Miguel Asturias. Ak-abal explains that Asturias’ 1923 essay, The Social Problem of the Indian, contributed to the marginalization of the indigenous peoples of Guatemala. His works include Aquí Era El Paraíso,Poems I Brought Down from the Mountain, Drum of Stone, and Honeyword.

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