Richard Flamer Biographical Note

Richard Flamer (1947-) of Long Beach, California, served in the U.S. Army from 1965 until his discharge in 1971, with deployments in Vietnam and Ankara, Turkey. Following his discharge, Flamer travelled around the US briefly before finding work at a rare book shop in Kansas City, where he began to build an inventory of books. Flamer attended Goddard College in Vermont, where he published his first rare book catalogue. After graduating with a B.A. in Philosophy from Goddard and attaining an M.A. in Psychology from Dartmouth College in 1974, Flamer began operating a rare book dealership in Omaha, Nebrasksa in 1975, which he continued to operate until the late 1980s, when he left the rare book trade.

Beginning in the tumultuous years of the late 1980s through the 1990s, Flamer began working in Central America and Southern Mexico as a professional news service photographer. With a perspective derived from his Vietnam War experiences, he visually documented the profound affects of war and poverty on local Maya and other Indigenous groups. In the late 1980s, Flamer primarily worked as a photographer in La Gloria refugee camp, Chiapas, Mexico, aiding and photographing Guatemalan refugees who had fled the Guatemalan Civil War.  During this period, Flamer also organized gallery shows and exhibitions in the United States and Central America showcasing Indigenous art from Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Central America, as well as his own Central American photography. The proceeds from photo and art sales went towards supplies and aid for the Indigenous Mexicans and Guatemalans he worked with.

For three years in the early 1990s, Flamer worked as a forensic photographer, first for the United Nations and then for the Catholic Church, assisting in the investigation of mass graves at massacre sites in Guatemala, including photographing exhumations of mass graves in Plan de Sánchez and Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, in 1994.

From the late 1990s through the early 2000s, Richard Flamer helped renovate and establish a community center and daycare in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, called SYJAC - an acronym in Tzotzil that means "Service to our people" - where he began teaching woodworking classes for local Indigenous people. While helping with the construction and renovation of SYJAC, Flamer also served as the co-director of the local branch of Habitat for Humanity for a few years. Through his photography, Flamer extensively documented the construction and renovation of SYJAC.

Around the same time Richard Flamer began working at SYJAC, he established The Chiapas Project in connection with the Des Moines Catholic Worker Community in Iowa to raise funds and supplies for humanitarian work at SYJAC and elsewhere in Chiapas. Flamer made several trips between Chiapas and the US in this period to fundraise and bring tools and other equipment for the construction of SYJAC. Through the Chiapas Project, Flamer invited Catholic workers from Des Moines to visit Chiapas, see the work the Chiapas Project was doing in person, and assist in the construction of SYJAC.

While working at SYJAC, Richard Flamer met Araceli Benitez Moya, a Zapotec volunteer from Oaxaca working with Indigenous women and children at SYJAC, whom he began a romantic relationship with. The two first attempted to get married by Frank Cordaro, co-founder of the Des Moines Catholic Worker Community, during a visit to Chiapas, but due to trouble with the Mexican legal system, the couple would not be legally married for several more years. Richard and Araceli were eventually married by Chiapas's first Indigenous federal judge in a civil wedding ceremony, and then married in a Christian ceremony in June 2015 in Des Moines, Iowa, after a 6 year fight with the US immigration office.

Due to changes in leadership at Habitat for Humanity and changes in management philosophy by the director of SYJAC, Richard and Araceli left SYJAC in 2003. Araceli began organizing a cooperative for Indigenous women craft vendors in San Cristóbal de las Casas called Siempre Vida, while Richard worked to aid and improve his local community in Ranchería Guadalupe, Ocosingo, Chiapas.

Richard Flamer still lives in Ranchería Guadalupe and works to improve the conditions of Indigenous people in Chiapas. Araceli Flamer now spends most of her time working and studying English in the United States. Richard and Araceli reunite at least once a year in Chiapas or the US.