ABSTRACT

In the early 1980s, a counter-insurgency campaign in Guatemala led to the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of persons. In 18 months of terror, the army murdered or “disappeared” up to 150,000 Mayan peasants; 440 highland villages were razed to ashes (Jonas 2000, 24). In the campaign, rape was a systematic tool for “rooting” out guerrillas (Nolin Hanlon and Shankar 2000, 278). Guatemalan anthropologist and Jesuit priest Ricardo Falla meticulously recorded the names and sites of the attacks and massacres in a text both banned and revered, Masacres de la Selva. In his chapter on the leveling of the village of Cuatro Pueblo, Falla begins with a refrain from Bougainvillea, a poem by Alaide Foppa. ‘Heavy wines spill, and mix, in ruby splendor.’ Falla explains:

The massacres in the Guatemalan jungle drove peasant colonizers either deeper into El Peten, or across the border into neighbouring Mexico. For those forced to live in flight in the deep jungle, the Communities of People in Resistance (CPR), and for those who fled across the border into Mexico, hope for the future grew as they began to imagine themselves as part of a new Guatemalan nation. The slogan of the exiles in Mexico, ‘Return is a struggle, not a resignation’, captures the spirit of those who should have been victims, but instead became visionaries. In December 1996, prospects for return were strengthened, but not absolute, with the signing of the Peace Agreements between the United National Revolutionary Army (URNG) and the Guatemalan government. The experiences of exiles contrasted sharply with those who had remained and who had been forcibly relocated into “model villages” under the surveillance and discipline of neighbours, coerced to pledge allegiance to the Guatemalan army.