Impossible Memory and Post-Colonial Silences: A Critical View of the Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) or Truth Commission in Guatemala (original) (raw)
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would like to acknowledge the invaluable trustful relationship I cherish with Maya-K'iché human rights activists Angelica Macario, 'don Antonio' , Candelaria Pixcar-a survivor of one of the early 1980s Chontolá community massacre, and non-Maya Amilcar Mendéz whom have been pivotal in gaining knowledge about Cold War local Indigenous archives. I thank Samuel Neylon for reading a dra of this chapter. 1 In a recent report, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social A airs (2017, chapter IV) acknowledged that-based on 2010 census data-the Indigenous Latin American population was approximately 45.3 million. is population represents 826 di erent Indigenous people or communities, and in addition, 200 other communities are estimated to be living in voluntary isolation. See United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, <https:// www.cepal.org/ en/ infographics/ indigenous-peoples-latin-america> accessed 6 July 2020.
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How is the postcolonial subject's identity formed, in a nation which in addition to being postcolonial also happens to be postwar. The importance in bridging both the fields of Post-colonialism and Memory studies, is crucial to further understand the identity creation processes in Latin America. The case of Guatemala, and its 36 years long raging Civil War,has provided informants that were interviewed in order to shade a light onto their truths, and further our understanding of the identity of the postcolonial subject.
In contemporary Guatemala, historical memory (memoria histórica) offers a valuable generative resource for (re)defining identity at multiple sites and scales—from individuals’ profound personal experiences with ritualized remembrance in Maya spiritual traditions, to national-level political and legal contests over the official version of history. However, personal and collective memories in Guatemala often reflect the past as experienced from perspectives that were substantially divergent—sometimes even violently at odds. The public negotiation of these contrasting memories can thus have highly charged political consequences, creating impasses that indicate a national-scale crisis of truth. In order to explain how, why, and to what effect different Guatemalans could remember the past so differently—e.g., how the current president can claim that “there was no genocide” while one of his predecessors stands trial for its perpetuation—I turn to an anthropological framework of memory as mediated action. In this paper, I examine and contrast three movements that seek social change through transforming practices of collective remembering: protest-oriented ‘memory offensives’ that challenge society to discuss rather than silence the difficult past, pedagogically-oriented campaigns for textbook reform that seek to re-imagine national history, and legally-oriented movements to prosecute former military leaders for war crimes. I focus on the ways in which each of these movements draws on Maya memories and mnemonic practices, arguing that some approaches are fundamentally transformed by this borrowing while others merely appropriate Maya discourses in ways that are deeply (though often unintentionally) problematic. Keywords: Memory, Activism, Guatemala
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International Journal of Transitional Justice, 2010
Truth seeking in postwar Guatemala is a political battleground in which perpetrators intent on guarding against accountability confront victims' associations equally intent on exposing abuses endured during the country's 36-year armed conflict. Having stage-managed the peace negotiations that established the restrictive parameters of Guatemala's Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), army officers and guerilla leaders ceded control of truth seeking to Commission staff and their civil society partners, even as the latter mobilized to push the CEH to its investigative limits. The CEH final report's finding that the army had committed genocide galvanized both sides. Victims' associations insist on more truth alongside justice and reparations, while army perpetrators reject incriminating Commission findings. The Guatemalan case reveals how truth initiatives are at once politicized and polarizing and how politics interfere with a truth commission's effort to produce a consensus history, end violence or afford reconciliation. While it confirms that confronting the past risks undermining the labor of transition architects, it also suggests that these may be necessary evils that could eventually contribute to transforming and strengthening democracy.