ABSTRACT
Re-membering and forgetting are two sides of the same phenomenon: the past in the present. Both are employed, whether consciously or not, for a variety of social and political purposes. The Guatemalan government uses public, official memories for rhetorical and political purposes; widows, through reworking unofficial, secret memories, turn personal tragedies into narratives, thereby repositioning themselves in the past, constructing a sense of continuity and restoring a semblance of dignity. La Violencia resulted from a collision between conflicting elements in Guatemala's socio-economic structure. Guatemala's export-led, labour-intensive plantation economy depends on subsistence farmers for its cheap, seasonal labour. Nominally, La Violencia was a battle against guerrilla forces who had begun to regroup by the mid-1970s. Exacerbating existing tensions within and between villages, setting one hamlet against another, was a standard army tactic. The resultant fragmentation of indigenous communities allowed the military to impose control with greater ease and also to obscure their involvement.
