Yolanda Colom: The Memory of Guatemala’s Revolution

By Alejandra Garcia on October 30, 2025

The voice that greets me is gentle, though every word seems shaped by years of struggle and memory. Yolanda Colom*, once a guerrilla leader in the Ejercito Guerrillero de los Pobres of Guatemala — the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) — begins her story with a quiet laugh, after I asked her for brief recount on the Guatemala of her childhood: “I’m quite old now,” she says, “almost seventy. But I remember it perfectly.”

She was born in Guatemala City, back when it was still a small town — a place that could be crossed on foot. “Everything was done by walking,” she recalls. “We went to school walking, to the park, to the market. The buses were safe, cheap, clean. There were no supermarkets, no malls. Everything was in the markets, and the center of the city was where life happened.”

She remembers the simplicity of those years: afternoons in the few city parks, trips to the outskirts where families spread out blankets and shared food under open skies. “Nothing was fenced in. We played with balls, jumped rope. They were simple, beautiful times.”

But even as a child, Yolanda’s gaze turned beyond her own world. “I realized very young that I lived in a privileged sector,” she says. “I saw poverty everywhere — children like me, but with nothing. I asked myself why. I never identified myself with the wealthy; I always put myself in the place of those who suffered.”

By the age of ten, she had already decided she would not accept the injustices she saw. “I told myself I would rebel against that reality.” She joined charity and solidarity activities as a teenager, but soon discovered that goodwill alone could not change structural injustice. “I saw how people spoke about the poor, about Indigenous people — with so much prejudice. I didn’t believe it. I wanted to prove with my actions that it wasn’t true.”

That inner rebellion would eventually lead her to the revolutionary movement that marked her life.

The Path toward the Guerrilla

Yolanda’s decision to join the armed struggle came years before the fall of Salvador Allende in Chile, though the Chilean experience deeply moved her generation. “Allende’s victory filled us with hope,” she explains. “It made us believe there could be a peaceful path. But when he was overthrown — violently, with the intervention of the United States — that hope died again. It confirmed what I already believed: that in Guatemala, a peaceful change was no longer possible.”

Her choice was not born out of romanticism or adventure, but out of a sense of historical inevitability — the conviction that injustice would not yield to petitions or votes. She joined the EGP, one of several groups that would later form the URNG, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity.

Fear, Sexism, and the Mountains

Did she feel fear? “Fear as a woman? No,” she says without hesitation. “Fear as a human being, yes. Fear of capture, of torture, of death. But not because I was a woman.”

What was difficult, she adds, was confronting the sexism that persisted even among comrades. “We came from the same society we wanted to change. So discrimination against women came with us. Inside the movement we had to fight another battle — against being underestimated, against being silenced.”

Her years in a clandestine existence were long and complex. “I prefer to call it a revolutionary process,” she says. “The guerrilla war was just one part of it — the military form of a much broader struggle that included politics, education, and humanism.”

She spent over twenty years in clandestine work, both in the countryside and in cities, always under threat. The stories from that time, she admits, could fill volumes. “I wrote a book about a small fragment — the years I spent in the mountains. For me, those were the years I learned the most about my country, my people, and myself.”

Writing after Defeat

Yolanda began writing after the fragmentation of the revolutionary movements. “After more than twenty years of giving your life to a cause, to see it collapse — it’s terrible. You feel as if the ground disappears beneath you.”

Worse still was hearing some former comrades say that it had all been for nothing. “I couldn’t accept that. The fact that we were defeated doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it. So I began to write — to honor the people who gave their lives, to make sense of my survival.” Her writing, she says, was both an act of remembrance and resistance — a way to preserve the human, moral, and political complexity of a movement that history often reduces to failure.

Today, at 76, Yolanda no longer lives in hiding, but she hasn’t stopped fighting. “If you look at the history of Guatemala — or of humanity — it’s a history of struggle. Some dominate, others resist. Many conform, but there are always those who don’t.”

She considers herself part of that small minority who refuse to give up. “I’m a survivor — maybe less than five percent of those who lived through that time. But new generations continue in other ways — through human rights work, civic movements, memory projects. Their struggle is criminalized and distorted, but it continues.”

A Life without Technology

In her modest home in the proximities of Antigua Guatemala, Yolanda lives surrounded by books and plants. “There’s very little technology here,” she admits, laughing. “I’ve lived most of my life without electricity, without running water, without television. I got used to solving problems without technology, and I never missed it.”

Her stove is still made of clay and wood. “I never needed a TV — I prefer to read, to take care of my plants.” When she reentered public life after the war, she was confronted by a world ruled by screens and devices. “Now everything is mediated — work, relationships, communication. I reject that. I want human contact, direct and free.” Economic hardship also plays a role. “Technology is expensive — maintenance, internet, new programs. I can’t afford that. But more than that, I simply don’t want it to dominate my life.”

Cuba: A Lighthouse

Before we hang up, I ask her what message she would send to the women of Cuba — a country that has shared much of Latin America’s revolutionary legacy. Her voice softens.

“With Cuba, I have only gratitude and admiration,” she says. “For its people, for its women — who have carried the hardest burdens of daily life with strength and grace. Cuba has been an example of dignity, of perseverance, of resistance before the empire. Many of us saw in Cuba’s firmness our own trampled dignity.”

She remembers the joy she witnessed there — in music, in children, in the streets. “To the women of Cuba, thank you. Don’t give up. Cuba is a lighthouse for many of us.”

The line goes silent for a moment. Then, her voice, faint but smiling: “Thank you, Alejandra. It was a beautiful surprise to receive your call.” A pause. Then — a soft goodbye from a woman who once carried the dream of a revolution on her shoulders, and still believes in it.

*Yolanda Colom was born in Guatemala in 1952. She is an educator, author, and former guerrilla member of the EGP. She spent more than 20 years in hiding and in exile. She currently works with Ediciones del Pensativo in Guatemala, compiling the works of her late partner, Mario Payeras, who was also a leader in the EGP.

Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English