ABSTRACT
Maya children continue to die at the US-Mexico border. Experts have decried the Border Patrol stations known as “hieleras,” freezing cold centers with inedible food, undrinkable water, and open toilets, unsuitable for children. Since the end of the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), in which the state engaged in a massive genocide against Mayas that wiped out over 600 villages, Mayas have continued to face extraordinary challenges. The postwar was a period of stagnant economic growth and massive unemployment (officially recorded at 50%). It saw the gradual emergence of two non-regulated parallel powers: at the top, government functionaries and military officers became junior partners of drug cartels. At the grassroots level, unemployed youngsters formed criminal gangs. Both began to squeeze vulnerable people (Mayas, women, youth) from the top and from below. Starting in 2004, mining corporations in cahoots with functionaries and high military officers profiteering from laundering narcotics’ capital, corruption, and impunity began strip mining in Maya territory. Mining stripped Mayas of their lands, polluted their rivers, and generated a wide variety of diseases, especially among children. At the same time, the lack of economic opportunity led to a rapid rise in banditry and street crime. Grassroots gangs gained muscle, wealth, and prestige, exposing Guatemalans to the greatest crime wave in their history. Lacking protection of any kind, the only alternative for ordinary citizens became to flee. The population thus initiated a nightmarish voyage that has led to the current terror at the southern border. It was in this logic that Mbembe argued in “Necropolitics” (2003) the colony as a trope represented the site where sovereignty consisted fundamentally of the exercise of power outside the law; where “peace” is more likely to take the face of a “war without end.” This is where we presently find ourselves.
