Guatemala’s indigenous population stands today at approximately 40 per cent of the overall population, and incorporates the majority Maya and the smaller Xinca and Garifuna ethnic groups.1 Since the colonial encounter, indigenous Guatemalans have been marginalised systematically from the country’s political, economic and cultural spheres and have fallen victim to aggressive institutional, structural and interpersonal racism propagated and instrumentalised by religious and military leaders, politicians and the wealthy landowning oligarchy. Such beliefs and the behaviour they undergird are embedded within Guatemalan society and employed broadly by the non-indigenous at all social and economic levels, largely determining the norms and attitudes that mould intergroup relations. (See Map 23.1.)