Scholarly Review:

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 1. Introduction

In Guatemala, mass violence did not fall from a clear sky. Mayans have experienced racism, authoritarianism and repression ever since the earliest days of the conquest [1]. In the early 1980s, political violence was at its peak, with a wave of state terror sweeping through the western highlands.

In the bourgeoning field of Guatemalan studies, La Violencia has emerged as a key topic. There is a wealth of literature, ranging from testimonial accounts and human rights reports to legal and ethnographic studies. Yet, surprisingly, genocide scholars have paid scant attention to the Guatemalan case. It was not until the Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) presented its findings in February 1999 that the “hitherto little-known or long-denied” (Gellately/Kiernan, 2003: 8) Guatemalan case entered public discourse.

The CEH estimated that over 200,000 persons had been killed or disappeared during the ‘internal conflict’ and attributed 93 per cent of these cases to the state and 3 per cent to the guerrilla (the remaining 4 per cent of the killings could not be attributed to either side). In the cases presented to the CEH, 83 per cent of the victims were Mayan. Ninety-one per cent of the crimes documented by the CEH were committed between 1978 and 1984.

As the counterinsurgency reached unprecedented levels in the early 1980s, the CEH analyzed in detail the ‘armed confrontation’ in four geographical regions. Based on the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which had been ratified by Guatemala in 1949, the CEH came to the conclusion,

“that agents of the State of Guatemala, within the framework of counterinsurgency operations carried out, between 1981 and 1983, acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people who lived in the four regions analyzed.” (CEH, 1999: §122, see also Perlin, 2000; Tomuscha, 2001).

The studies reviewed below gravitate around two central questions: (1) Who did what to whom? Was the construction of boundaries between perpetrators and victims based on ethnic differentiations, rather than on power and socio-economic status? (2) Did the massacres occur by order of the highest authorities of the State? How voluntary could the obedience to authority be?

It is crucial to recognize that the “acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people” registered by the CEH were committed by both, non-Mayan and Mayan perpetrators, with non-Mayans dominating the power bloc and, particularly, the higher ranks of the military. Guatemalan mass violence was structured by binary oppositions, being modernity/primitivity and communism/national security the fundamental narratives. In 18 per cent of all cases documented by the CEH, members of the Civil Defense Patrols (PACs) had been involved. Starting in 1981, the military forced the rural male population to form PACs that had to observe and control their communities and participate in ‘scorched earth operations’. In 1984, about 900,000 men were incorporated in the civil patrol system. “In a way, military control over the countryside was being decentralized into the hands of the civil patrols, which were allotted a certain amount of freedom to act as they saw fit” (Remijnse, 2003: 125). A second network of local military control was composed of military commissioners. Since dictator Ubico established them in the 1930s, military commissioners – often ladino military veterans – acted as civilian intermediaries between local urban and rural populations and the Armed Forces, usually in charge of enforcing obligatory draft requirements. Appointed by the military for indefinite periods of time, their responsibilities were expanded in 1976 to include intelligence, surveillance, as well as military recruitment. On a weekly basis, thousands of military commissioners would report to the military on the activities they observed. In rural indigenous communities, the Commissioners at first rivaled and then often replaced more traditional forms of authority (EAFG, 1997: 148-150, 309-310; CEH, 1999, Vol 2: 158-180). In the 1980s, they were often appointed head of civil defense patrols. Moreover, this local structure of violence was reinforced by military recruitment. In rural Guatemala, the military implemented systematic patterns of forced recruitment, with young indigenous peasants being the principal victims of forced recruitment practices. Vol. 2 of “Guatemala – nunca más!” (ODHAG 1998), entitled “The mechanisms of horror”, includes a detailed analysis of military socialization into violence, based on group control, obedience training and complicity in torture, rape and killings. In recent years, ethnographic studies have addressed the methods employed to convert the male indigenous population in rural parts of Guatemala into ‘willing executors’ (for instance, AVANCSO, 2002; Manz, 2004; Remijnse, 2003; Zur, 1998: 92-123). Moreover, forced recruitment was understood as a means to achieve both, the mental metamorphosis of young indigenous soldiers, and the ladinoisation of indigenous communities. According to General Julio Balconi, 80 per cent of Guatemalan soldiers are of Mayan descent (Krujit/van Meurs, 2000: 148). It is crucial to note that thousands of indigenous men evolved into perpetrators through violent ‘us’ – ‘them’ differentiation and devaluation.

This review is divided into six parts. The following part offers a short overview of subsequent stages of scholarship, following subsequent waves of violence. It describes the interconnectedness of scholarship and political transition, and indicates central epistemological and methodological issues. Sources on the origins of Guatemalan mass violence are extensive. Part three deals with studies covering “ethnicity” and “the armed struggle and counterinsurgency”. Part four focuses on quantitative and qualitative macro-attempts to investigate human rights violations and acts of violence. Part five describes two central scholarly controversies that concern the value of subaltern testimonios and the relationship between indigenous communities and guerrilla groups. Part six focuses on studies dealing with the military discourse on insurgency, annihilation and otherness.

The studies reviewed below were selected because they illustrate the most important debates among “Guatemalanists”. Many important Mayan, Spanish, French and German studies are not discussed.

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