Fleeing death in Guatemala, two Ixil Maya activists hope to continue their defense of indigenous rights from the US â if they can stay By Jazmine Ulloa Globe Staff,Updated May 1, 2021, 5:46 p.m. Email to a Friend Francisco Chavez Raymundo (left) and Gaspar Cobo Corio were in El Paso, Texas, on April 15. They waited in Mexico for 17 months to get asylum in El Paso.Christ Chavez For The Boston Globe EL PASO â They left their Ixil Maya town deep in the Cuchumatanes mountains of Guatemala just before dawn and without much time to say goodbye. Francisco Chávez Raymundo, 45, and Gaspar Cobo Corio, 32, had been part of a tight circle of indigenous activists who in the spring of 2013 helped bring a military dictator to trial over the 1982 genocide of the Ixil people, a Mayan ethnic group that became one of the main targets of systematic racism, rape, and forced displacement during the Guatemalan civil war.