Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 30 

 

Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared 

Priorities in Development Justice 
A collaborative case study written by staff members from 

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Guatemala and Asociación 

Nuevo Amanecer de Santiago Atitlán (ANADESA) Guatemala 

 

Carmen Lourdes Petzey Chiviliu, Jacob Lesniewski, Josefa Damian Sosof, 

Mayra Magdalena Reanda Tacaxoy, and Sara Wyngaarden (see box on next page) 
 

 

Decolonizing development is necessary to address the colonial legacies that contribute to injustices 

faced by Guatemala’s Indigenous populations. Through collaborative reflection, staff members from 

two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) share a case study of their ongoing processes of 

decolonization through 17+ years of shared relief and development work among Indigenous Tz’utujil 

communities in Guatemala. The authors argue that implementation of a localization model has 

fostered an environment of mutuality and learning in which decolonization processes could take place, 

effectively addressing and continuing to address colonial legacies within each organization and between 

these two institutions. Grounded in the practical experiences of an international NGO from the Global 

North and a locally rooted NGO from the Global South, this article contributes to the ongoing 

discussions on decolonizing development. 

 

 

Introduction 
In the field of international development, the role 

of structural racism in perpetuating colonial legacies has 

been highlighted as a barrier to decolonization (Peace 

Direct 2021). The reality of structural racism is evident 

in the context of Guatemala, where the impacts of 

external colonial influences from Europe, North 

America, and Asia have been compounded by internal 

colonial dynamics in which a non-Indigenous, 

“Ladino,” and globalized elite hold economic, political, 

social, and cultural power over Guatemala’s Indigenous 

communities (Grandin 1992; Nolin 2018; Perera 

1995). Decolonizing development is urgently necessary 

to address ongoing development injustices faced by 

Guatemala’s Indigenous populations. This process is 

particularly critical for members of Indigenous 

communities whose marginalization is exacerbated by 

other demographic markers, such as being female, 

coming from a rural area, and/or having low 

educational attainment.  

This article is the product of collaborative 

reflection on the part of two development 

organizations: one an international non-governmental 

organization (INGO), the other an Indigenous-led 

Guatemalan NGO supported by the INGO. Together, 

representatives of these organizations present a case 

study of their integrated and ongoing processes of 

decolonization in the context of 17+ years of shared 

relief and development work among Indigenous 

Tz’utujil communities in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. 

In alignment with decolonization theorists (Garreau 

1998; Alatas 2016; Said 1993), this article draws on a 

definition of “colonization” that goes beyond the 

specific practices of the Colonial Era (although these 

are highly relevant) and includes various ways that the 

lives and futures of the colonized have been and 

continue to be constrained by unwelcome external 

imposition. The story and perspectives shared in this 

article align with framings of decolonization as a 

forward-moving process through which the colonized 

become protagonists of post-colonial identities, politics, 

and social organization (Fanon 1961). Most 

importantly, in the same way that colonialism took 

years, decades, even centuries to become entrenched 

and bear its destructive legacies, we acknowledge 

decolonization as a long-term process, requiring 

consistent effort to build relationships, organizational 

forms, and practices that are liberating for Indigenous 

Peoples and restorative of Indigenous sovereignty. 

 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 31 

In this article, we argue that dedication to a 

localization model of international development has 

fostered an environment of mutuality and learning in 

which decolonization processes could take place, 

effectively addressing and continuing to address 

colonial legacies within each organization and in the 

relationship between these two institutions. The article 

begins with theoretical framing, followed by context for 

Indigeneity in Guatemala, an introduction to both 

development organizations, and an overview of the 

methods used for preparing the article. Next, we 

provide a description of the processes of decolonization 

carried out by each of the organizations and go on to 

explain how these processes were integrated and 

iterative. We close with some comments on both the 

challenges and importance of sustaining these long-

term processes. This article makes an important 

contribution to ongoing discussions on decolonizing 

development by grounding these discussions in the 

practical experiences of an INGO from the Global 

North and an NGO from the Global South who, 

together, are navigating a localization model within the 

social, political, cultural, and historical legacies of 

colonization among--and structural racism toward--

Indigenous Peoples in Guatemala.

  

 

 

 

  

AUTHORSHIP 

 Authors are introduced alphabetically by last name. Their contributions are described in the Methods section. 

 

Carmen Lourdes Petzey Chiviliu is a Tz’utujil woman and Guatemalan citizen. Since 2018, she has worked as a 

teacher in the Triumphant Children and Youth Project run by ANADESA and funded by MCC. Lourdes is one 

of the main presenters during ANADESA’s cultural nights and has participated in partner encounters on themes 

of decolonization, run through a collaboration between MCC and the American Friends Service Committee. She 

is currently completing a degree in social work at Universidad Mariano Gálvez in Guatemala.  

Jacob Lesniewski is a White, male, US citizen, serving as the Co-country Director for MCC in Guatemala and El 

Salvador since 2017. Jack holds a PhD in Social Service Administration (University of Chicago, US 2013), a 

Master of Social Work (University of Chicago, US 2007), and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science (Wheaton 

College, US 1999). Jacob and his partner, Sarah Lesniewski, previously served with MCC in the Q’eqchi region of 

Guatemala (2001-2005). Since 2017, they have worked closely with Indigenous and non-Indigenous Guatemalan 

organizations on agroecology, food sovereignty, solidarity economies, migration, youth organizing, and women’s 

empowerment. 

Josefa Damian Sosof is a Tz’utujil woman and Guatemalan citizen. Josefa coordinates the Proactive Women’s 

Project run by ANADESA and funded by MCC. She has been part of ANADESA since the organization was 

founded in 2005, has previously served as the organization’s legal representative, and continues to serve as a 

board member and partner of the Association. Josefa had the opportunity to study up until the third grade. She 

has one young child and is very involved in her community. 

Mayra Magdalena Reanda Tacaxoy is a Tz’utujil woman and Guatemalan citizen who was personally impacted by 

Tropical Storm Stan in 2005. Mayra started working with Asociación Nuevo Amanecer de Santiago Atitlán 

(ANADESA) in 2015 as an office assistant, then as a teacher in the education project, after which she became the 

coordinator of the women’s project. Since 2019, she has held the role of General Coordinator. She is the only 

university graduate and professional in her family of eight siblings, holds a degree in Business Administration 

(Universidad Mariano Gálvez 2018), and can work in Tz’utujil, Spanish, and English. Mayra has two young 

children.  

Sara Wyngaarden is a White, female, Canadian citizen serving as the Planning, Monitoring, Evaluating, and 

Reporting Coordinator for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in Guatemala and El Salvador. Sara is trained 

in Agriculture/International Development (BAS, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada 2016), and Public 

Health/rural development research and evaluation (MSc, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada 2020). She 

previously served with MCC in India (SALT program 2017-2018) and has been serving with MCC Guatemala-El 

Salvador since July 2021. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 32 

Methodological Lens: Colonialism, 

Colonialidad, and Decolonization 

This article draws on a broad definition of 

colonialism as a set of external political, social, cultural, 

and economic interests, values, and practices that are 

imposed, unwelcome, upon local communities. This 

definition, of course, relates to the historical and 

ongoing processes by which nations in the Global North 

and their corporate proxies have imposed non-native 

order on territories in the Global South to transfer 

resources from the racialized periphery to the racialized 

core (Gunder-Frank 1986). Latin American scholars 

use the term colonialidad to refer to how the legacies of 

these political and economic processes continue to be 

felt and lived in the bodies, stories, relationships, and 

daily lives of colonized peoples (Quijano 2000). 

Colonialidad is the social, cultural, and ideological 

residue left behind by the identity-defining project of 

colonialism, a common logic that manifests itself in 

different aspects of social life, patterns of thinking, 

education systems, and race, where racialized categories 

of ‘fully human, somewhat human, not human’ (De 

Lima Silva 2011) take away the ability of individuals to 

define their own humanity.  

In the context of this article, the above definition 

of colonialidad is also understood to relate to other 

processes that displace populations from land or affect 

their access to resources while devaluing existing 

cultural identities and imposing others. More 

specifically, we observe that within this case study, 

gender-based power differences contributed to patterns 

of oppression between Indigenous men and women 

that rearticulated colonial patterns of domination and 

submission. As intersectionality theory brings to light 

(Crenshaw 1989), the residues of colonization have 

differential consequences for different sectors of 

communities. Thus, their processes of liberation can be 

expected to take different forms. 

While we define colonialism broadly, neither 

“colonization” nor “decolonization” are defined loosely 

within this article. We strongly agree with Tuck and 

Yang’s (2012) warning that decolonization should not 

be treated as a metaphor or a kind of “keyword” 

denuded of its political and social power and import 

(Williams 1983). Given the fundamental injustice of 

colonization, and the evident and ongoing destructive 

legacy of colonialidad, it would be incomplete merely 

to engage in anti-racist practices, increase inclusion of 

women, or develop a subset of neoliberal diversity, 

equity, and inclusion initiatives and call them 

 
1 Neoliberalism describes the resurrection of free market economic policies that have been promoted, even pushed by 

the Global North, in response to the debt crisis of the 1980s. It centers economic arrangements, public policy, and 

cultural identity around the notion of an economically rational individual subject, downloading responsibility for social 

welfare onto the individual and shifting questions of identity to consumable signifiers of diversity and inclusion. 

“decolonization.”
1

 We, therefore, define decoloni-

zation most basically as the opposite of colonization, 

proposing that it must be a reparative, restorative, and 

redistributive process that directly responds to the 

historical processes of colonialism and colonialidad. 

Decolonization, then, must seek to unmake the 

political power dynamics and extractive economic 

relations imposed by colonialism, redistribute 

resources and power back from the core to the 

periphery, and repair the economic, political, social, 

and cultural damages of colonialism. In this way, 

processes of decolonization can restore conditions that 

allow colonized communities to pursue collective self-

determination, interdependent relationships with other 

communities, and a (re)definition of their post-colonial 

collective identities freed (to the extent possible) from 

the vestigial beliefs and ideologies embedded in 

colonialidad.  

While decolonization seeks to “undo” and 

“restore,” Fanon (1961) provides an important 

reminder that this is a forward-moving process. 

Decolonization cannot return the colonized to an 

imagined pre-colonial state, or restore the colonized to 

an imagined pre-colonial identity, because colonization 

has fundamentally and irreversibly changed the context, 

the colonized subjects themselves, as well as their 

colonizers. Therefore, just as the destructive legacies of 

colonization are multi-layered and ongoing, the 

restorative processes of decolonization must be multi-

layered, ongoing, and responsive to a changing world. 

At their core, however, Fanon argues that these 

processes must create spaces in which colonized 

subjects can integrate their experiences in order to 

develop, articulate, and become protagonists of a post-

colonial identity they claim as their own.  

Decolonizing international development requires 

the redistribution, return, and restoration of resources 

from the Global North to the Global South so that local 

communities can control the use of, and the benefits 

generated from, those resources. It also requires a 

commitment to not engaging in new and complex forms 

of the resource extraction and cultural imperialism that 

characterized the colonial project. Localization 

strategies have been forwarded as one way of working 

toward these needs. Broadly, localization seeks to 

provide emergency and development aid through local 

organizations, avoiding intermediaries. The intention is 

that international non-governmental organizations, 

bilateral aid agencies, and other donor agencies provide 

funds to local organizations that then implement 

projects that these local organizations themselves have 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 33 

developed. In other words, this method strives to shift 

resources and decision-making power from Global 

North-based development institutions to local 

institutions in the Global South to design, implement, 

and monitor development projects.  

The use of localization as a strategy for 

decolonization has been formally articulated in various 

international development forums (Fine 2022; 

Mutimbanyoka 2022; Russu 2021), perhaps most 

famously in the 2016 Grand Bargain documents 

(Grand Bargain 2016).
2

 Unfortunately, progress toward 

localization as described above has been miniscule 

compared to the ambitions set out and agreed to in the 

Grand Bargain documents. Instead, critics argue that 

many INGOs have applied a “localization spin” to their 

work, using the rhetoric of localization to obscure 

ongoing reinforcement of and commitment to systems 

and structures that perpetuate a colonial status quo 

(Peace Direct 2021). In this context, our article 

provides a critical case study to development agencies 

that sincerely strive to use localization as a strategy to 

move along the road of decolonization, by illustrating 

an experience of localization that has been mutually 

transformative for both institutions. 

 

Case Study Background  
 

Indigeneity in the Context of Relief and Development 

in Guatemala 

Through the imposition of a racialized social and 

political order by colonial authorities in Guatemala, the 

racial category “Indigenous” became synonymous with 

rural, poor, uneducated, exploitable labor (Casuás Arzú 

2018). Patterns of exclusion and exploitation set down 

during the colonial period (1524-1821) were codified 

during the post-independence period, especially 

through the liberal reforms of the 1870s (Grandin 

2002). The Guatemalan state defined racial categories 

in the 1871 Constitution, with “liberal reforms” that 

eliminated collective land rights of Indigenous Peoples, 

led to the creation of vagrancy laws that made 

Indigenous Peoples economic captives of large 

landowners, and created a monolingual educational 

system. In other words, exclusion and exploitation of 

Indigenous Peoples were translated quite literally into 

structural forms of racism, the legacies of which have 

continued to constrain the lives and futures of 

Indigenous Peoples in Guatemala. 

Five hundred years of racialized exclusion and 

colonialist exploitation of the Indigenous populations in 

Guatemala have had significant consequences for the 

 
2

 The Grand Bargain is an agreement that has endeavored to improve the efficacy of humanitarian work through 

various commitments on the part of donors and aid agencies involved in humanitarian work. One key focus of the 

agreement is movement toward localization. 

health and well-being of Indigenous Peoples. In 2019, 

approximately 56% of Guatemala's population lived 

below the poverty line and 27% of the population lived 

below the extreme poverty line. Meanwhile, among 

Indigenous Peoples, these rates were 79% and 40%, 

respectively (SDGF 2017, World Bank 2018). The 

World Food Programme (2018) estimates that 70% 

percent of the country's arable land is owned by less 

than 3% of the population while 90% of rural farmers 

(primarily Indigenous) do not have enough land to 

achieve subsistence. Furthermore, Guatemala’s high 

incidence of chronic malnutrition (4th in the world 

according to the World Food Program 2018) is 

concentrated within Indigenous communities. Because 

of these particular vulnerabilities, many relief and 

development interventions in Guatemala focus on 

Indigenous communities (IWGIA 2023; USAID 

2023). 

Wide disparities in official estimates of the 

Indigenous population of Guatemala speak to both the 

social construction and the stigmatization of racialized 

Indigenous identity, reflecting embedded colonialidad 
(Quijano 2000). While some estimates of Guatemala’s 

Indigenous population are as high as 60%, the 2018 

government census reported that 47.1% of the 

Guatemalan population self-identified as Indigenous 

(INE 2018). In present-day Guatemala, Indigeneity is 

constructed by physical signs, such as wearing specific 

kinds of clothing, speaking one of Guatemala’s twenty-

three Indigenous languages, having a particular last 

name, and exhibiting certain speech patterns and 

accents when speaking in Spanish. Because of 

persistent racism--both overt and structural--toward 

Indigenous Peoples in Guatemala, some individuals 

and families have chosen to shed Indigenous features. 

While features can be borne or shed to some degree, 

the ability to shed one’s Indigenous identity and 

participate more fully in Guatemalan society, politics, 

and economy is itself constrained by the educational, 

economic, and political inequalities associated with 

being Indigenous.  

Considering the socio-economic and socio-cultural 

realities for Indigenous Guatemalans, development 

efforts that focus on the challenges faced by Indigenous 

communities in Guatemala require an understanding of 

how settler colonization, post-independence liberal 

reforms, and structural racism have not only shaped the 

circumstances in which Indigenous Peoples live, but 

have also shaped their identity and self-image. For 

Indigenous communities in Guatemala, colonialism is 

not merely a legacy, but is an ongoing reality, embedded 

in the social, political, economic, and cultural structures 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 34 

that shape their daily lives and possible futures. 

Development work that ignores or minimizes the 

impacts of colonialism on Indigenous communities is 

more than merely incomplete; it perpetuates dominant 

structures and patterns of interaction that limit the 

flourishing of Indigenous communities and prolong 

their status as “colonized.”  

 

Introduction to the Case Study Organizations 

This case study is based on the relationship 

between two development organizations: Mennonite 

Central Committee (MCC) and Asociación Nuevo 

Amanecer de Santiago Atitlán (ANADESA). MCC is a 

global development organization with a binational 

administrative structure governed by two administrative 

boards made up of representatives from Anabaptist 

church conferences across the US and Canada. MCC 

began its relief work in 1920, responding to a call for 

food assistance from Mennonite communities in Russia 

and Ukraine. The organization expanded to 

accompany relief, development, and peacebuilding 

efforts in Mennonite and non-Mennonite communities 

around the world, while originally also providing spaces 

for Mennonites from the US and Canada to serve in 

and with those communities (service opportunities have 

since expanded further, as explained by the Epp 

Weaver and Smith Cain article in this same issue of 

CRDA. MCC became known for its grassroots 

accompaniment of marginalized communities, 

commitment to peacebuilding and nonviolence, and 

simple living on the part of its international “service 

workers.” MCC’s Guatemala program launched in 

1976 in the aftermath of a serious earthquake. 

Historically, most of MCC Guatemala’s leadership 

staff, field workers, and service program participants 

came from Canada and the US. In recent decades, the 

leadership staff team has included workers from 

Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Colombia, 

alongside an increasing number of service program 

participants from Central and South America. 

In October 2005, Tropical Storm Stan passed 

through Central America and Mexico. Parts of 

Guatemala were affected by heavy rainfall, causing 

destructive and deadly mudslides. The community of 

Panabaj in Santiago Atitlán in the department of Sololá 

was buried and over 300 people were killed. With 

support from MCC, Mennonite churches in Guatemala 

City organized an emergency response. After the initial 

disaster response, a group of Indigenous Maya Tz’utujil 

women from Santiago Atitlán came together to form a 

local development organization that would respond to 

broader community needs. This organization later 

became known as Asociación Nuevo Amanecer de 

Santiago Atitlán (ANADESA): The New Dawn 

Association of Santiago Atitlán). With support from 

MCC, ANADESA currently runs an economic 

empowerment project for Tz’utujil women (Proactive 

Women) and an educational reinforcement project for 

Tz’utujil students (Triumphant Children and Youth). 

ANADESA's unique position within MCC 

Guatemala’s network of partners makes it a critical case 

study for understanding how accompaniment-based 

localization can contribute to decolonizing 

development. While MCC Guatemala’s other partners 

exhibit one or more of the following characteristics, 

only ANADESA exhibits all of them: 1) Their 

connection to MCC started through an emergency 

response/relief project; 2) they have developed a long-

term institutional partnership with MCC and 3) have 

expanded into broader community development and 

peace-building; 4) their staff and leaders have varying 

levels of formal education, but 5) most are not formally 

educated as development workers. In addition, MCC is 

ANADESA’s main and, for most of its history, only 

funder. It is important to note that MCC Guatemala’s 

process of implementing a localization model began 

around the same time it began its relationship with what 

would become ANADESA. Taken together, these 

characteristics of the relationship between MCC and 

ANADESA offer a rich opportunity to understand 

more deeply the role of accompaniment-based 

localization in decolonization processes within the field 

of development.  

 

Methods 

In October 2022, MCC was invited to contribute 

to CRDA’s special issue on decolonization. MCC 

Guatemala staff identified ANADESA as an interesting 

case study. Having recently participated in a series of 

workshops on decolonization organized jointly by the 

American Friends Service Committee and MCC, 

ANADESA staff were eager to explore this theme more 

deeply in the context of their organizational history and 

relationship with MCC.  

This article presents the reflections and 

perspectives of MCC and ANADESA staff through a 

review of 115 organizational documents (including 

personnel placements, internal MCC assessments, and 

reports on ANADESA’s project and non-project 

activities) dated between 2010 and 2023 as well as 

recent discussions between staff from both 

organizations. Using an open-coding process 

(Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw 1995), co-authors from MCC 

examined how the relationship between MCC and 

ANADESA developed and changed over time and 

explored what insights these documents could provide 

on successes and challenges in decolonizing 

development. Through reflective discussions with 

ANADESA and MCC staff, co-authors from both 

organizations elaborated how these themes reflect 

shifting priorities and practices within each 

organization, where they have fallen within structural 



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Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 35 

and strategic changes across time, and current 

manifestations of these themes.  

The development of this article was a collaborative 

process that occurred in stages (See Table 1). Co-

authors Josefa Damian Sosof and Carmen Lourdes 

Petzey Chiviliu provided reflective analyses on the 

initial findings from the document review and broader 

critical analysis of ANADESA’s organizational history 

and relationship with MCC. Co-authors Sara 

Wyngaarden and Jacob Lesniewski conducted in-depth 

analyses of documents and reflective discussions, 

incorporated perspectives from MCC’s current and 

former staff, prepared the written article, and 

responded to feedback from the journal’s editors. Co-

author Mayra Magdalena Reanda Tacaxoy reviewed 

drafts of the written article and provided ongoing 

detailed feedback on the thoroughness and accuracy of 

content written by MCC staff, representing perspectives 

and experiences from ANADESA. The division of 

labour was based on co-authors’ availability to 

contribute to article preparation. While MCC staff took 

the lead on writing, all communication with co-authors 

from ANADESA emphasized a desire to accurately 

represent their perspectives, experiences, and voices, 

consistently inviting their explicit and critical feedback. 

The process of article preparation has fostered further 

discussion and growth on the part of both organizations 

in relation to these themes. 

 

 

Table 1: Overview of the Writing Process 

 

From Implementation to Localization: 

Decolonization within MCC 

As noted in Vision/Mission section of the MCC 

website, MCC “envisions communities worldwide in 

right relationship with God, one another, and creation.” 

The organization’s partnerships and programs are all 

oriented by this vision and are rooted in a historic peace 

theology. Part of MCC’s theory of change (the way it 

understands how sought-after change comes about) is 

that humans establish right relationships and build 

 
3

 MCC’s Connecting Peoples program offers various opportunities to live, serve, share, and learn with MCC teams and 

partners across the world. 

communities of peace by “Connecting Peoples”
3

 across 

differences such as geography, language, culture, 

ethnicity, race, gender, faith, socio-economic status, 

political orientation, etc.  

MCC’s move from implementation to localization 

reflects a recognition that “Connecting Peoples” is not 

synonymous with “establishing right relationships” if 

those relationships continue to be steeped in power 

imbalances that reflect historical development injustices 

(including but not limited to colonial legacies). These 

Stage Activity MCC’s role ANADESA’s role 

1 Document review 

(October 2022) 

Reviewed 115 documents dated 

between 2010 and 2022 that were 

present in MCC’s database (project 

proposals, progress reports, 

evaluation reports, etc.). 

Faithfully prepared and submitted 

organizational documents to MCC 

throughout their partnership 

history. 

2 Initial discussion 

(November 2022) 

Prepared questions for a semi-

structured discussion with 

ANADESA leaders about their 

understanding of 

colonization/decolonization and 

how that has played out in their 

organizational history. 

Articulated the definitions of 

colonization and decolonization 

used in this article based on recent 

involvement in exchanges with 

other Indigenous-led organizations. 

Shared reflections on how these 

definitions relate to their 

organizational history and ongoing 

work. 

3 Initial article drafts  

(December 2022, 

April 2023) 

Based on document review and 

initial discussion, prepared a draft of 

the article for initial review. 

Reviewed the draft article and 

provided feedback on 

thoroughness of content and 

accuracy of interpretation. 

4 Editing and 

preparation for 

publication 

(June-August 2023) 

Worked together with ANADESA 

and journal editors to finalize the 

article for publication. 

Provided ongoing feedback and 

final approval of the article for 

publication. 

https://mcc.org/about/vision
https://mcc.org/about/vision


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Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 36 

relationships, then, are not “right” and must be critically 

reexamined. Throughout the years, MCC’s theory of 

change has expanded to reflect a belief that “right 

relationships” require recognizing and deconstructing 

the privileges and power imbalances that perpetuate 

development injustices and building alternative forms 

of relating that are based on mutual learning and 

respect, genuine care and solidarity, and recognize and 

embrace interdependence. 

MCC’s shift from implementation to localization 

has been a decades-long process (described in further 

detail by Epp Weaver and Smith Cain 2023). Initially, 

most of MCC’s project funding was attached to 

international service workers who moved from Canada 

or the United States to communities in the Global 

South, where they designed and were responsible for 

implementing projects that addressed development 

needs in those communities. By the 1970s, MCC was 

taking initial steps toward localization by shifting 

towards a partnership model, in which projects were 

implemented through local partner organizations rather 

than MCC staff. Within this model, service workers 

continued to play a key role on the ground as 

“community development workers” seconded to 

partner organizations. While their primary role was to 

provide “accompaniment” to the partner organization, 

project, and participating communities--a strategy 

rooted in decolonial concepts of local autonomy and 

control--service workers still tended to take on (or be 

given) clear leadership roles in project design and 

implementation. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, 

seconded service workers expressed increasing 

discomfort with the “heavy hand” of Canadian and US 

citizens in MCC’s projects in the Global South. 

Additionally, concerns with the temptation to fall into 

clientelist dependency thinking in relationships with 

partner institutions emerged (Fraser and Gordon 1984; 

Williamson 2000). Discussions of colonial legacies and 

problematic power relations became prevalent, fueling 

MCC’s deeper engagement with localization. 

As MCC moved away from seconding service 

workers, its focus moved toward becoming more of a 

granting agency. In this localization model, resources 

are transferred from MCC to local partners who design 

and run the day-to-day operations of relief, 

development, and peacebuilding projects while 

providing biannual reports to MCC’s in-country offices. 

This arrangement changes MCC’s relationship with its 

partners to a more interdependent one, in which local 

partner NGOs rely on MCC for financial resources 

(and sometimes technical support) while MCC relies on 

local partners for progress reports that communicate 

both challenges and positive outcomes of their 

activities. MCC also relies on partners for the actual 

work of projects, including their outcomes, successes, 

and failures. Through reports and forms of 

accompaniment such as field visits, MCC staff learn 

how to support partners more effectively while also 

gathering data and stories that help MCC raise funds 

from donors in Canada and the US, thus continuing 

MCC’s existence and shared relief, development, and 

peacebuilding work.  

Today, MCC’s partnership-granting localization 

model remains rooted in “accompaniment,” but rather 

than seconding workers to engage in project 

implementation alongside partner organizations, the 

focus for MCC staff is on understanding, effectively 

supporting, and accurately representing the local work 

of partner institutions. For MCC, the decolonial 

approach of “accompaniment” focuses on minimizing 

external imposition on the part of MCC and 

maximizing opportunities for partner organizations and 

communities to define what development means in 

their context and design interventions that actualize that 

vision. It takes the long view, recognizing that 

deconstructing the legacies of colonization and the 

impacts of colonialidad takes time and concerted effort 

on the part of all involved parties, requiring long-term 

relationships that function well beyond project funding 

cycles. Importantly, MCC’s long-term accompaniment 

model assumes change over time on the part of both 

MCC and its partners: not just changes in project 

activities, monitoring practices, or resource 

management, but also changes in institutional priorities 

through processes of formation, growth, and 

development of institutional identity. In the 

Guatemalan context, most of MCC Guatemala’s 

partners are Indigenous-led organizations and/or 

NGOs supporting Indigenous communities 

(ANADESA falls into both these categories). Thus, 

MCC Guatemala has taken special care in creating 

spaces for these institutions and communities to 

practice self-determination and become protagonists of 

post-colonial identities, politics, and social organization 

(Fanon 1961). 

Acting as a granting agency does not automatically 

resolve all tensions or power imbalances: MCC 

continues to have financial power in its relationships 

with partners and experiences other privileges 

associated with being an institution based in Canada 

and the US Still, through this model, MCC is able to 

use its privilege to redistribute resources from the 

Global North to the Global South--from the racialized 

core to the racialized periphery--thus contributing to a 

reversal of colonial patterns of resource extraction. This 

model returns power to local communities and 

institutions to define what meaningful change looks like 

in their communities and then design and implement 

local development initiatives that actualize that change. 

Additionally, this model complicates power dynamics 

that are typical to North-South development 

connections by establishing a more interdependent 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 37 

relationship between this INGO and local NGO 

partners as well as the communities they serve. While 

one could argue that the use of data from development 

projects as a fundraising tool is simply another means 

of resource extraction, the intended ends of this 

“extraction” process are quite the opposite of the 

colonial agenda: the goal is to facilitate an ongoing 

redistributive and restorative process that returns power 

to marginalized populations to define, direct, and 

defend their own humanity and choices about their own 

development. In these ways, MCC strives to engage in 

partnership-granting localization as a form of 

“reparations” responding to a colonial past (Peace 

Direct 2021). 

The transition from implementation to localization 

has occurred unevenly across MCC. By the mid-1980s, 

some country programs were almost entirely engaged in 

a partnership-granting model. Meanwhile, in other 

country programs direct implementation and/or 

partnership-secondment remained prominent into the 

2000s. While some direct implementation and 

secondment-based programming continues within 

MCC, it is now the exception rather than the rule and 

is based on partner- and community-led discussions on 

local priorities and needs.  

In the Guatemala country program, the transition 

from secondments to grants was underway by 2005, the 

same year that MCC first connected with what would 

become ANADESA. ANADESA has played a key role 

in helping MCC Guatemala learn how to engage a 

partnership-granting localization model well, taking 

their own steps along the road of decolonization 

throughout their partnership with MCC. In particular, 

we assert that MCC’s commitment to localization-based 

accompaniment has offered ANADESA the space and 

freedom to define its own leadership structure and 

strengthen its institutional processes; to develop its own 

theory of change, including its specific methods of 

program implementation; and to tell its own story with 

confidence. These processes are described in the 

following section. 

 

Organizational Structure, Ideology, and 

Identity: Decolonization in ANADESA 

 
From Aid Recipients to Local Development Leaders 

After the mudslide response in 2005, MCC 

Guatemala continued working alongside the 

Mennonite church in Guatemala City to provide relief 

to Santiago Atitlán and assist ANADESA in getting 

established as an organization. As part of this early 

partnership, MCC brought groups from Canada and 

the US as “Work Teams” to help build ANADESA’s 

infrastructure (especially their main offices in Panabaj). 

These groups often raised funds for these projects 

before arriving. Meanwhile, as noted above, MCC 

Guatemala had started implementing the institutional 

shift from partnership-secondment localization to 

partnership-granting localization. Through feedback 

from ANADESA staff, project participants, and “Work 

Team” participants, MCC Guatemala staff realized that 

this shift could be paralleled in the “Work Team” 

programming. As MCC and ANADESA continued 

discussing ANADESA’s institutional principles and 

priorities, and as MCC Guatemala deepened its 

engagement with localization as a decolonization 

strategy, these groups gradually shifted from “Work 

Teams” to “Work and Learn Teams” to “Learning 

Tours” by 2016. This shift changed the focus of visits 

from providing material and financial assistance to 

ANADESA to mutual learning and developing 

solidarity-based relationships with ANADESA, its 

project participants, and their communities. In turn, 

ANADESA and the communities they serve shifted 

from being recipients of assistance from Canadian and 

US visitors to being experts who teach these same 

visitors about their culture, history, and current living 

situations, as well as the development interventions they 

actively implement within that context. 

Changes in ANADESA’s relationship with 

Canadian and US groups and institutions occurred 

alongside ANADESA’s growth into an implementing 

organization for development projects. This change 

occurred through direct discussions between MCC 

Guatemala leadership and the (then-male) leadership 

of ANADESA. Since those first discussions, 

ANADESA has experienced three distinct periods of 

organizational development which, we argue, taken 

together, illustrate steps in ANADESA’s own process 

of decolonization and liberation. The first period 

occurred between 2012 to 2016, when ANADESA 

focused on formalizing themselves as an organization 

and building relationships with churches, schools, and 

universities in Canada and the US. We observed that 

rhetoric used by ANADESA’s then-current leadership 

to portray their own Indigenous Tz’utujil communities 

reflected the colonialidad embedded in ANADESA’s 

organizational narratives at the time. For example, in 

organizational documents, ANADESA articulated that 

the purpose of their relationships with Canadian and 

US institutions was to generate resources and create 

service opportunities to “help” or “assist” “the poor, 

under-educated, and suffering” populations in Santiago 

Atitlán.  

For the second period, from 2015-2018, 

documents show an increasing focus on education 

alongside ongoing embedded colonialidad. At the time 

the same documents show concerns among MCC staff 

over the disconnect between ANADESA’s stated 

organizational identity as a colectivo (grassroots 

organization) of Tz’utujil women and the emphasis on 

the need for computer and English classes for students 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 38 

in their education programs to bring children into the 

“modern era.” Additionally, there was an articulated 

need for youth to develop an “entrepreneurial spirit” to 

overcome poverty and “backwardness.”  In this period, 

ANADESA’s implicit and explicit understanding was 

that the Tz’utujil of Santiago Atitlán suffered from 

cultural deficits and that ANADESA should work to 

overcome these deficits through encouraging 

participants to become more like the dominant culture 

in their decision-making, values, language, and 

understanding of their place in the world. 

ANADESA’s third period of organizational 

development, which started in 2018 and continues to 

the present day, began when the women staff and 

women board members took over the leadership of the 

organization from its formerly male executive 

leadership. For its entire history, ANADESA’s staff and 

board were made up almost entirely of Tz’utujil 

women, while executive leadership was entirely male. 

Much like Fanon’s description of the colonial 

administrators (Fanon 1964, 30ff), these Indigenous 

Tz’utujil men acted as intermediaries between the rural 

Tz’utujil women that made up ANADESA’s staff, 

board members, and project participants, and the 

external powers (in this case Canadian and US 

institutions and INGOs) that had connected with these 

communities. These male leaders absorbed and passed 

along the explicit racialized and gendered cultural 

critiques of the dominant Ladino elite in Santiago 

Atitlán and the implicit critiques of Canadian and US 

outsiders in ways that further marginalized the women 

associated with ANADESA and added to their tangible 

burdens of poverty and exclusion and psychosocial 

burdens of colonialidad. In other words, being female, 

Indigenous, and rural dwelling was more 

disadvantageous than being male in the same context. 

One consequence of the leadership arrangement 

within ANADESA was that communication between 

women staff and women board members was largely 

managed and/or overseen by the male executive 

leadership. Both groups of women were discontented 

with how the organization was being led, but each group 

was under the impression that the other had approved 

these circumstances. It was only when staff members 

managed to communicate directly with board 

members, in the absence of male leaders, that they 

realized both groups experienced the then-current 

leadership style as exclusionary and exploitative of 

women. Both groups saw this leadership style as an 

unwelcome external imposition. In other words, based 

on the broad definition presented in this article, women 

staff and women board members experienced this 

arrangement as a form of colonialism that was impeding 

the development goals they had for their families and 

communities. In 2018, these women approached MCC 

Guatemala with their plan of action to remove the male 

intermediaries and set the stage for ANADESA to be 

an organization led by women.  

Taking over the leadership of the organization was 

an act of bravery and strength on the part of 

ANADESA’s female staff members. In a cultural 

context of machismo (a belief ascribed to Latin 

American cultures that women should be under the 

power and authority of men), this act was particularly 

symbolic, countercultural, and revolutionary. MCC 

staff stood in solidarity with the women as they 

identified and articulated how their intersectional 

identities had exacerbated their experience of 

marginalization, and then asserted themselves to 

counter the machismo they had identified within their 

own institution. Today, ANADESA staff state that the 

leadership takeover would not have been possible if 

these women had not become empowered and 

experienced solidarity and concientización (a 

heightened sense of critical awareness) through their 

own involvement in ANADESA. Furthermore, staff 

state that the leadership takeover would not have been 

possible without organization and communication 

between staff members and the board of directors. We 

suggest that it also would not have been sustainable if 

the women did not have a vision for their organizational 

identity and for how they wanted to contribute to 

community development. The movement of women 

into ANADESA’s leadership has fundamentally shifted 

how ANADESA presents itself to outside organizations 

and groups. Instead of “welcome to our community, 

these are our needs, thank you for helping us meet 

them,” ANADESA now communicates “welcome to 

our community, this is who we are and what we do, 

thank you for accompanying our work.” In other words, 

they have pushed off various layers of colonialidad, 

integrated their experiences to create a new post-

colonial identity (as explored below), and become 

protagonists of an ever-developing post-colonial 

identity. 

ANADESA has established itself as a local 

development leader. While MCC remains their 

primary project funder, examination of project 

documents shows ANADESA’s increasing confidence 

in its ability to generate resources and create networks 

of support with other external organizations. 

ANADESA also documents its successes in asserting 

itself in Guatemalan-Ladino contexts, a particularly 

challenging prospect for an organization of Indigenous 

women in the context of internal colonialism and 

structural racism in Guatemala (Grandin 2002; Tuck 

and Yang 2012). Today, ANADESA is recognized as a 

vital partner for local public schools, participates in 

various planning commissions of the municipality of 

Santiago Atitlán, and is a member of the local branch 

of a national non-profit network. 

 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 39 

Promoting and Defending Local Cultural Identity 

ANADESA’s organizational mission is to support 

“[holistic] training and sustainable communi-

ty development of children, adolescents, young 

people, and women of rural communities [in Santiago 

Atitlán] through education, training, and community 

development programs” (ANADESA). 

ANADESA’s organizational mission is to support 

“holistic training and sustainable community 

development,” particularly among children, 

adolescents, and women from rural communities 

around Santiago Atitlán. While the organization started 

as a way of channeling material resources to meet 

material needs, ANADESA’s current projects focus 

more on expanding and reinforcing the capabilities 

present among program participants so that they can be 

empowered through increased autonomy and use their 

voices to stand up for themselves and support their 

families and communities. In other words, 

ANADESA’s theory of change (again, the 

understanding of how sought-after change comes about) 

shifted from the ideology that external aid will create 

positive change in local communities to the ideology 

that local people are capable of creating positive change 

within their own lives, families, and communities, and 

supportive local institutions can help them visualize and 

actualize that change. The shift to this theory of change-

-with greater focus on inclusion, accompaniment, 

capabilities, and empowerment--has occurred over 

time, as ANADESA developed a distinct understanding 

of the challenges facing Tz’utujil communities and 

defined its role in addressing those challenges.  

In other words, ANADESA’s theory of change 

(again, the understanding of how sought-after change 

comes about) shifted from the ideology that external 

aid will create positive change in local communities to 

the ideology that local people are capable of creating 

positive change within their own lives, families, and 

communities, and supportive local institutions can help 

them visualize and actualize that change. 

One way that this shift is visible in project proposals 

and reports is that ANADESA uses less deficit language 

regarding the needs of their constituents and program 

participants. For example, rather than broadly painting 

Tz’utujil communities as culturally deficient, 

ANADESA discusses specific cultural challenges, such 

as how machismo results in the exclusion of women 

from decision-making spaces and creates challenges for 

girls in pursuing education. The interventions in their 

women’s empowerment project then focus on the 

capabilities that program participants can develop and 

are developing through the accompaniment of 

ANADESA’s staff team to confront these challenges in 

their daily lives. 

Another example of this shift in ideology is the way 

that ANADESA talks about their integration of 

Tz’utujil, Spanish, and English languages in their 

education programming. In ANADESA’s thinking, a 

focus on just Spanish and English would devalue 

Tz’utujil culture, identity, and heritage in a way that 

perpetuates the legacies of colonization. On the other 

hand, a focus only on Tz’utujil language would 

minimize opportunities to share cultural practices and 

beliefs with others and defend Tz’utujil communities in 

the public sphere, once again placing cultural survival at 

risk. Rather than continuing to see Spanish and English 

capacity as a way to leave behind Tz’utujil language and 

culture and bring children into the “modern era,” 

ANADESA has come to see Spanish and English as 

tools that can enable Tz’utujil people to promote and 

defend their culture, including their language, to 

Spanish and English speakers. ANADESA’s “middle 

ground” approach allows them not only to continue 

developing their cultural identity within a changing 

world, but also to be protagonists of that identity among 

external audiences. ANADESA developed this 

perspective based on experiences of Tz’utujil people 

who, during the internal armed conflict, did not have 

the language skills to defend themselves from the 

Guatemalan army and were therefore assumed to be 

insurgents. Thus, it represents one way that ANADESA 

has integrated its experiences of colonization into an 

emerging post-colonial identity.  

Another key factor in changing organizational 

priorities is that ANADESA staff have integrated 

learning from earlier projects with their identities and 

experiences as Tz’utujil women. The women leaders of 

ANADESA know firsthand the experience of social 

exclusion and not having their capacities or opinions 

valued. ANADESA increasingly prioritizes offering 

inclusive opportunities through their projects, providing 

space for participants to share their perspectives and to 

affirm that each participant’s opinion is valued. 

Additionally, ANADESA supports program 

participants in developing critical thinking skills and 

engaging in creative problem-solving to counteract a 

long history of lack of educational opportunities. 

ANADESA staff first modeled these organizational 

priorities by standing up to what they considered 

oppressive and exclusionary male leadership. Now they 

continue to model these priorities through 

collaboration and team decision-making, while looking 

to their board of directors--made up completely of 

Tz’utujil women--to guide the organization’s future. 

MCC’s accompaniment throughout these processes has 

consisted of remaining faithfully present, asking 

questions, listening carefully as ANADESA articulates 

their perspectives and approaches, and thoughtfully 

observing the ways they put these into action. 

 

 
 

http://anadesa.org/language/es/quienes-somos/historia


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Owning Their Story:  

Protagonists of a Post-Colonial Identity 

“Measuring” identity is a challenging task; however, 

one can use narratives that individuals, organizations, 

and communities develop about themselves to reveal 

understandings of their identity. A post-colonial identity 

emerges when colonized peoples experience the 

freedom to tell their own stories, articulating who they 

are and the futures to which they aspire. ANADESA’s 

story reveals a gradual process of integrating 

experiences to reach greater institutional clarity on 

identity, priorities, and direction, albeit with complexity 

and nuance. Below are three examples of how 

ANADESA’s articulation of their identity has changed 

over time. 

ANADESA staff and leadership have 

opportunities to express their understanding of their 

identity through presentations to “Learning Tours” and 

other visitors. Two of these presentations stand out in 

how they have changed over time. First, ANADESA’s 

headquarters in Panabaj is located next to the Parque 

de Paz, a memorial to Santiago Atitlán residents who 

were massacred by the Guatemalan army in 1990 while 

protesting the actions of drunken soldiers. This 

massacre set off a protest movement that succeeded in 

non-violently and permanently expelling the army from 

Santiago Atitlán, an unprecedented achievement in 

Guatemalan history for an Indigenous community. 

Initially, ANADESA’s presentations on what happened 

in 1990, what led up to the events of that night in 

December, and the aftermath closely matched the 

“between two fires” discourse of dominant political 

powers in Guatemala (Stoll 1993). This discourse 

situates Indigenous communities as passive victims of 

the “two fires” of Soviet-backed guerillas and the US-

backed army fighting a brutal proxy war in the highlands 

of Guatemala. The reality of the armed internal conflict 

in Guatemala both generally and in Santiago Atitlán in 

particular is more complicated, and iterations of 

ANADESA’s presentations between 2017 and 2022 

have increasingly acknowledged that complexity; they 

have discarded the two-fires discourse for a more 

nuanced and personal understanding of their 

community’s resistance and resilience in the context of 

the armed conflict, thus restoring agency to past and 

present residents of Santiago Atitlán.  

Second, ANADESA’s descriptions of the “before” 

and “after” of Tz’utujil cultural practice in Santiago 

Atitlán during their “cultural night” presentations have 

also changed. Whether presenting clay pots and their 

modern plastic equivalents, showing the male 

traditional clothing that is no longer commonly worn, 

or sharing other lost artifacts locally produced and 

consumed, ANADESA’s cultural night presenters 

lament the loss of circular solidarity economies, in 

which collective efforts provided for the collective 

benefits of the people of Santiago Atitlán. Part of 

ANADESA’s definition of their collective identity is 

connected to their critique of changes in the material 

and consumer culture of Santiago Atitlán. It is no longer 

consistently true that local resources are used to serve 

local needs, nor that the Tz’utujil people of Santiago 

Atitlán work together to provide for and meet the needs 

of all their neighbors. This is a marked change from 

earlier presentations, which focused on the 

impracticality and expense of “ancestral” artifacts and 

the convenience of their modern equivalents. 

These presentations have allowed ANADESA to 

develop and refine its voice and its own understanding 

of the history and culture of Santiago Atitlán. The 

changes ANADESA has made to the narratives along 

the way are evidence of the process of decolonization 

in which the organization is immersed. Furthermore, 

these changes have helped decolonize the experiences 

of Canadian and US visitors, as ANADESA guides 

them in situating their learning within broader 

economic, social, and political structures (Villareal-Sosa 

and Lesniewski 2020). MCC staff have observed and 

taken note of these changes as they accompany groups 

to visit ANADESA and take part in these activities. 

Third, ANADESA’s gradual adoption of human 

rights discourses, especially in relation to its work with 

women, is a change from earlier deficit-centered 

rhetoric around their communities. Instead of 

presenting in project proposals, reports, and 

presentations a picture of a “backwards,” needy people 

who need external uplifting to enter the modern era, 

ANADESA increasingly (but not exclusively) uses 

human rights discourses and gestures to form structural 

understandings of why their communities are the way 

they are. Their solutions and interventions focus more 

on individual and collective empowerment through 

rights education, mutual aid, and productive project 

activities, and less on deficit-based education and 

entrepreneurship models. This change can be seen as 

an assertion that Tz’utujil people, and women in 

particular, are worthy agents of change for themselves, 

their families, and their communities. It can also be 

understood as the development of a form of localized 

Tz’utujil “community feminism” (Latina Feminist 

Group 2001) that grounds the liberation of Tz’utujil 

women in their own experiences, history, and cultural 

practices.  

Understanding how ANADESA talks about itself 

and the communities in which it is embedded and how 

that has changed over time helps illustrate the processes 

of identity formation they have engaged in during that 

time. These “perspectives about action” (Snow & 

Anderson 1991, 157) are necessarily retrospective and 

the product of ANADESA’s own process of shaping 

rhetoric for external audiences; yet they can still be 

helpful in understanding how ANADESA’s staff 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 41 

members and board of directors make sense of 

themselves and their context. The three rhetorical shifts 

noted above indicate a process of ANADESA owning 

its own story of who they are and what it means to be an 

organization of Tz’utujil women serving Tz’utujil 

communities in Santiago Atitlan. This story is neither 

fully “pre-colonial” in that it acknowledges what has 

been lost permanently, nor is it “colonial” in that it 

asserts the importance of practices, beliefs, and 

orientations outside of dominant Guatemalan-Ladino 

culture. As noted throughout this paper, this emergent 

post-colonial identity has shaped ANADESA’s 

approaches to its work in communities and its 

relationship with external actors, including MCC. 

 

Mutual Transformation:  

Decolonization as an Iterative Process  
We argue that MCC’s partnership-granting 

localization and accompaniment model has created a 

safe, flexible, and relatively neutral space for 

ANADESA to experience freedom in establishing, 

exploring, and expanding their institutional identity in 

the ways described in the previous section. One of the 

fruits of this process has been ANADESA’s growing 

institutional self-confidence, which MCC has seen 

evidenced when ANADESA pushes back on MCC 

staff and asserts their organizational preferences, 

priorities, and petitions. For example, when MCC 

contracted an external auditor to review ANADESA’s 

financial systems, ANADESA staff asked for a more 

rigorous analysis that would essentially audit their entire 

organization because they wanted insight into 

improving their systems and programming more 

broadly. Furthermore, each year MCC invites partners 

to reflect on and adapt their projects in response to 

changing contexts and organizational circumstances. 

During these annual reflection processes, MCC staff 

have asked ANADESA about specific indicators; 

whether they are useful and informative, or whether 

they have become onerous and should be adapted, 

replaced, or even removed from the monitoring system. 

ANADESA has consistently affirmed that staff value 

the outputs from these indicators and would not like to 

make changes. On the other hand, ANADESA has 

requested adaptations to project budgets to better suit 

their needs and priorities for resource management.  

MCC staff value these moments of “pushback.” In 

addition to indicating a level of comfort and security 

that ANADESA experiences in their relationship with 

MCC, these moments are opportunities to learn from 

ANADESA and thus experience mutuality in 

institutional growth and transformation. As noted 

 
4

 The Washington Consensus is a term commonly used for the set of free market, neoliberal policies heavily pushed 

by Washington-based institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and USAID. 

previously, the assumption of change over time on the 

part of MCC and its partners is foundational to MCC’s 

accompaniment model. Beyond being a realistic 

assumption in any relationship, we argue that holding 

this viewpoint in grant-based partnerships is an 

important way of responding to the ongoing inevitable 

power imbalance between granter and grantee. An 

expectation of constancy and uniformity can set up a 

system where fund acquisition is based on compliance 

with granter-set standards, maintaining the status quo on 

the granter/grantee power imbalance. This system 

stifles growth and learning. On the other hand, an 

assumption of change over time can create a safe space 

where partner organizations have the freedom to reflect 

on their work, learn, adapt, and share this iterative 

process with MCC so that both organizations can grow. 

As has occurred with MCC and ANADESA, these 

built-in incentives toward interdependency create a 

more neutral space in which both institutions can 

negotiate their ongoing relationship, including the 

standards of accountability to which they will hold one 

other.  

Of course, “creating space for change” has not 

been a completely neutral process for MCC Guatemala 

staff. Over the years, MCC staff have held their own 

aspirations for ANADESA’s development, many of 

which align with progressive ideologies that characterize 

MCC’s own organizational identity. As detailed above, 

ANADESA’s earlier articulation of neoliberal 

development discourses as well as sometimes 

uncomfortable rhetorical relationship with Tz’utujil 

identity and the story of the armed internal conflict were 

real challenges for MCC staff. MCC staff tended to have 

understandings of development rooted in progressive 

ideologies that critiqued the Washington Consensus,
4

 

which seemed inadvertently to inform so much of 

ANADESA’s understandings of development. MCC 

staff also tended to have an understanding of Tz’utujil 

identity and Mayan identity that aligned with Mayan 

cultural activists in Guatemala, and an understanding of 

the armed internal conflict as a genocidal campaign 

against Guatemala’s Mayan communities. Even so, 

MCC’s focus on local autonomy and control has 

remained central to the Guatemalan country program 

strategy, reminding staff that minimizing external 

imposition, especially as it relates to community 

organization, vision, and identity, is a critical decolonial 

act. Progressive, purportedly “liberating” ideologies can 

be just as much an unwelcome external imposition as 

ideologies that seek to confine and constrain if they 

misalign with a community’s current preferences and 

priorities. 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 42 

Following ANADESA’s lead and accompanying 

their work through careful listening, observation, 

questions, and discussions has taught MCC staff that 

not only does ANADESA talk about their work in 

unique ways; they also do Indigeneity, women’s 

empowerment, education, and economic development 

in ways that are their own and are radical, 

transformative, and impactful in their context. For 

example, ANADESA asserts a feminist agency by 

broadly valuing women’s work, regardless of what that 

work looks like. In a context where “women’s work” is 

assumed rather than valued, this model of feminism is 

empowering. It asserts that traditional “women’s work” 

is not mere “drudgery,” but is critical to the functioning 

of households and communities. When this work is 

valued, it can also be shared between household 

members in such a way that women are freed to 

dedicate time to other activities, such as participating in 

ANADESA’s trainings and social activities, getting 

involved with another community organization, or 

working on their own income-generating projects. 

In a development model that does not prioritize 

localization-focused accompaniment, the radical work 

being implemented by ANADESA might be 

overlooked and imposed upon. But within the space 

created through MCC’s partnership, localization, and 

accompaniment strategy, MCC staff have consistently 

learned from and been challenged by ANADESA’s 

team. In particular, MCC has deepened its 

understanding of the ways in which Indigenous 

communities in Guatemala navigate the challenges of 

adapting from their colonial past and working through 

ongoing colonialism and structural racism in the 

present, how Learning Tours and other visits fit within 

its theory of change and broader development work, 

and the importance of accompanying partners at the 

institutional level and not simply at the project level. 

Because of ANADESA’s organic development of 

program discourses and practices, MCC Guatemala has 

gained a much richer understanding of the specific 

context in which they work and the ways they 

conceptualize meaningful change within that context. In 

this way, the environment fostered by MCC’s 

partnership localization and accompaniment model has 

been mutually transformative, moving both 

organizations further along the road of decolonization. 

 

Vigilance for the Road Ahead 
While both MCC and ANADESA have taken 

many steps along the road of decolonization, each 

organization recognizes that its own process as well as 

their shared process could easily get derailed through 

changes in organizational leadership, shifts in strategic 

direction, new partnerships that work out poorly, or 

even burnout among organizational staff.  

ANADESA continues to encounter situations in 

which they need to assert their organizational identity 

and defend their autonomy. They have recently had to 

explain to prospective participants how their 

programming differs from paternalistic initiatives found 

in Santiago, and they have had to distance themselves 

from institutions that took credit for ANADESA’s 

work. Additionally, staff members occasionally 

experience tension with board members, who still 

struggle to trust that executive leaders have their best 

interests and those of their families and communities at 

heart. In short, ANADESA continues to grapple with 

the legacies of colonialism and colonialidad. 
MCC Guatemala, in turn, occasionally faces 

questions around its long-term status as ANADESA’s 

primary funding source, spurred by dominant 

development discourses around “dependency.” From 

the perspective of MCC Guatemala staff, this invocation 

of dependency disregards the importance of long-term 

commitments to decolonization processes as well as 

institutional growth and strengthening. A parallel 

challenge is that MCC faces regular, planned staff 

transitions at all levels of its in-country staff. These 

transitions have implications for long-term relationship 

building and maintenance. While the intention among 

in-country staff is to build and strengthen MCC’s 

institutional relationship with partners rather than have 

partnership strength be dependent on individual 

personalities, new staff still have the potential to harm 

previous relational work and place ongoing relational 

development at risk.  

The process of forging a collective identity and 

working through the impacts of colonialism and 

colonialidad has shaped ANADESA staff into a team 

that strongly asserts its organizational identity, 

conscientiously upholds their organizational priorities, 

and is vigilant against external imposition. We remain 

hopeful that this institutional self-confidence, rooted in 

an ever-developing post-colonial identity, will continue 

to serve ANADESA well. And we are hopeful that as 

ANADESA negotiates its relationship with future 

iterations of the MCC Guatemala team, they will hold 

MCC accountable to its commitment to engage deeply 

in reparative, restorative, and redistributive processes 

that decolonize development. 

 

Concluding Remarks 
The process of decolonizing development is long, 

difficult, and non-linear. No single intervention strategy, 

theoretical orientation, or methodology will serve as a 

simply applied formula to undo the impacts of centuries 

of political, economic, social, and cultural violence and 

structural racism by redistributing political power and 

economic resources from the core to the periphery. 

This article presents a case study in which localization-

based accompaniment is shown to be an effective 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 5(1), Summer 2023  

Petzey Chiviliu, et al., Along the Road of Decolonization: Shared Priorities in Development Justice 43 

decolonizing mechanism in the work of, and 

relationship between, an INGO and a local community-

based partner in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. We 

argue that a commitment to a localization approach that 

centers flexibility, focuses on organizational or 

institutional strengthening and development, and 

permits the local partner and INGO to learn from one 

another has opened space for a set of impactful 

decolonization processes for both MCC and 

ANADESA and has enabled the development of a 

“uniquely ANADESA” post-colonial identity.  

Whether this process continues and grows 

depends on an overwhelming set of macro-, meso-, and 

micro-level factors both within and beyond the control 

of MCC and ANADESA. Fanon’s (1961) and other 

decolonial theorists’ pessimism about the possibilities 

of a peaceful and smooth transition to a more just and 

equitable post-colonial world reminds those involved in 

the world of international development that patience, 

flexibility, a constant and consistent commitment to 

mutual learning, and a long-term view are vitally 

important for the long struggle to decolonize the 

practice of international development. To these ends, 

we assert that a commitment to long-term localization-

based accompaniment can foster greater 

interdependence, more mutual growth, further formed 

post-colonial identities, and more moments of 

flourishing among development institutions committed 

to decolonization. It is an apuesta metodológica (a 

methodological bet) and a worthwhile one. 

 

 

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Carmen Lourdes Petzey Chiviliu is a teacher in 

ANADESA’s Triumphant Children and Youth 

Project. 

Jacob Lesniewski is the Co-country Director for MCC 

in Guatemala and El Salvador.  

Josefa Damian Sosof coordinates ANADESA’s 

Proactive Women’s Project. She is also a board 

member and partner of the Association.  

Mayra Magdalena Tacaxoy is the General Coordinator 

at ANADESA.  

Sara Wyngaarden serves as the Planning, Monitoring, 

Evaluating, and Reporting Coordinator for MCC in 

Guatemala and El Salvador.  

 

Author emails:  
Carmen Lourdes Petzey Chiviliu: 

a.anadesa@gmail.com.  

Jacob Lesniewski: jacklesniewski@mcc.org.  

Josefa Damian Sosof: a.anadesa@gmail.com. 

Mayra Magdalena Tacaxoy: a.anadesa@gmail.com.  

Sara Wyngaarden: sarawyngaarden@mcc.org  
 

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mailto:a.anadesa@gmail.com
mailto:a.anadesa@gmail.com
mailto:sarawyngaarden@mcc.org