When Ana Elizabeth Pop Jor was growing up outside Chisec in rural, northern Guatemala, violence was never far away. The oldest daughter in a family of 11 children, Ana still remembers the day that the low ceilings of their small home saved her mother’s life.
“My father lunged at my mom with a machete and swung — but the hanging wire from a lightbulb snagged his blade and stopped him from killing her. He swung at me, but I escaped and ran to my grandparents,” she remembers today, decades later. “That fear was so deeply embedded in our minds. We never learned to speak out or disagree. This was our reality.”
At 20, Ana was raped, became pregnant and gave birth to a son. Instead of being a source of comfort and support, Ana’s father and brothers blamed her for the sexual violence and the shame they said she brought upon their family. Her home life mutated into a jail sentence.
“The men in my family controlled my whole life, everything. I became the black sheep of my family: scolded for taking a tortilla to eat, humiliated, and locked inside,” she remembers. “I reached a breaking point: the only decision I was able to make on my own was that it’d be better to kill myself.”
Thankfully, Ana’s mother stepped in and “brought me back from the brink,” she says, but she knew something had to change. Ana found AJWS grantee La Asociación Mujeres Q’eqchi Nuevo Horizonte (ANH) or Q’eqchi Women New Horizon Association, at exactly the right time. Based in the northern town of Chisec, Guatemala, ANH has been working with women survivors of sexual and gender-based violence since 2003 — offering empowerment training, mental health counseling and, maybe most importantly, a safe and non-judgmental community of women fighting to tear down Guatemala’s patriarchy. Today, ANH reaches nearly 5,000 women a year.
Ana still remembers the day she managed to leave her home and join an ANH workshop, a guided discussion about self-esteem.
“I sat and just listened. I couldn’t speak; I was suffocated by fear. Every time I wanted to open my mouth, my body tensed up. I’d endured years of hearing I was worthless, that I was nothing more than my mistakes. These words pulsed through my veins,” she says.
But she kept coming back. And eventually, other women and ANH staff coaxed her to speak, to express herself, and to begin to heal. Her transformation had begun. At first very slowly, and then all at once. Ana’s family had forced her to drop out of school, but with ANH’s support she caught up in her studies. She joined a cohort of women receiving therapy from ANH.
“Through therapy, I emptied out all my fears, anxieties and shame,” she says. “And I rebuilt myself. The Ana of before was so quiet, timid, afraid. But now I refuse to stay silent — not with my family and not in my community.”
Ana then enlisted in an ANH training for survivors to become mental health counselors and lead women’s groups themselves — an experience that pushed her to eventually enroll in a local university studying psychology. Today, at 38, she is working as a therapist for local domestic violence survivors, growing crops on her own small plot of land, and after years in ANH’s community she is serving as the organization’s president.
“When women come to ANH, they are often on the verge of collapse. On the edge of disaster. But we bring them back to themselves,” she says. “We fortify them, strengthening their minds so they can protect their bodies.”
Ana’s leadership within ANH has pushed her to become a leader in her wider community as well — in 2023, she was elected to a regional women’s council and rapidly got to work spearheading the construction of a center for women survivors of violence. That center is set to open its doors in 2025.
Helping women expand into civil and political leadership is a critical piece of ANH’s work and mission. The first change comes from individual women in their own home — but then grows into breaking down the patriarchal norms that limit what women can become.
Says ANH Founder Maria Gualim: “They say we are born to attract husbands. We are reproductive vessels — meant to raise kids at home. That’s our role, and that’s our prison. But we’re changing this point of view, starting in our own homes. If we aren’t given opportunities to change, we need to create them.”
For Ana and the small but mighty ANH team, the name ‘New Horizon’ isn’t just poetic — it’s instructive. Ana’s seen her own life expand, and she’s helped countless other women follow suit.
“New Horizon means seeing beyond what you think is possible — seeing somewhere you’ve never been before, where the future is open,” she says. “We don’t know how we’ll get there; we don’t know when. And we know we may never reach this place ourselves, but women will follow us on this path and walk even farther. And one day, we will all arrive.”