The reconciliation trap: disputing genocide and the land issue in postwar Guatemala (original) (raw)

Guatemala's reconciliation debate is as much about the present and the future as it is about history. In order to highlight its political dimension, I propose to read this controversy through the lens of hegemony theory. It is precisely because of the entwinement of specific political economic interests, centuries-old ethnic conflict and structural racism in Guatemala that charging genocide constitutes a key moment in a fight over power-a fight in which controversies about the politics of history are also expressions of struggle over economic resources and political hegemony. In this light, reconciliation does not appear to be a solution but a trap, set by those who defend their interests against the changes that the Peace Accords and the recommendations of the Historical Clarification Commission demanded. In the first section, I show that one crucial motive for these elites to deny the Guatemalan genocide, besides obvious reasons of historical shame and responsibility, is economic issues, among them the century-old land question. In the following sections I present two seemingly contrary arguments from the political and academic left. One takes apart, from a poststructural perspective, simplifying binary logics of class and ethnic conflict and thus delegitimizes the indigenous and peasant struggle for economic reform in the process. The other proposes a form of universal guilt that also ends up depoliticizing the history of the civil war. Reconciliation as a model of rule and the recalcitrance of genocide memory Given their ubiquitous coupling in academic and political discourse, genocide and reconciliation would appear to be a tricky but inseparable conceptual pair in many transitional justice scenarios. And yet, as the controversial nature of the Ríos Montt trial and its aftermath illustrates, the political memory of genocide was unlikely to provide fertile ground for reconciliation in Guatemala. To inscribe, or not, the term of genocide permanently into Guatemala's twentieth-century history has been one of the highest stakes in the postwar negotiations about the representation of the past. And it is non-negotiable to many of the actors in this process. Therefore, if offers of reconciliation are based upon excluding this issue, then reconciliation is little more than a simplistic equation to solve antagonistic relations of power and eventually become a 'conflict in itself'. 1 This article explores how the controversies about genocide in Guatemala expose the hollowness of