ABSTRACT
On December 8, 1985, Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, a Christian Democrat, won a run-off election to become the first civilian president of Guatemala since Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro in the last years of the 1960s. Like Mendez, Cerezo has faced tremendous problems. Keeping the peace in the wake of protracted social conflict and a new habit of civil violence is one of them. Identification of mechanisms of reconciliation and forgiveness, of ritual redress, and of rededication of erstwhile adversaries to new common goals are useful anthropological perspectives to bring to Guatemala’s effort to reconstruct civilian rule and reconstitute democracy. Indeed, I shall argue that peace-making is the essence of the task of establishing a viable, long-term democracy.
