Nationalism, Memory, Violence
and Political Struggle
• It takes at least two somethings to create a
difference. (…) Clearly each alone is—for
the mind and perception—a non-entity, a
non-being. Not different from being, and
not different from non-being. An
unknowwable… (Bateson 1978: 78).
Why the violence?
The emergence and relevance of
ethnicity
• Social encounters and interactions
• Coping with demands and challenges of life
• Sociologist David Riesman, 1953
Working definition
• Ethnicity is an aspect of social relationship
between agents who consider themselves as
being culturally disctinctive from members
of other groups with whom they have a
minimun of regular interaction: identified
also as a social identity.
What is collective identity?
• National identity is to be
understood as a particular kind of
collective identity constructed
within a defined ‘social space.
Nationalism
• Nation: any community of people who
see themselves as an ethnic and
culturally (linguistically) unit, in
contrast to other groups of people
surrounding them but nationalism can
also be intimately linked to the
organisation of industrial capitalism
and the formation of economic elites
How can we explain the violence
in Guatemala?
• 200, 000 dead, one million displaced, 440
Mayan villages burned
• Roots in policies of inclusion and exclusion
• Internal hierarchies, divisions
Does internal divisions among the
Mayan explain state terror?
Guerrilla Army of the Poor
(EGP)
Why
• Little political price to pay
• Historical neglect
• Viewed as a natural enemy
Did Guatemala’s ethnic divisions
facilitate political violence? .
• One part of the population against another
• Upward mobility for young Indians
Army strategy:
• Ineffectiveness of selective killing
• Mass violence: product of effectiveness and
ignorance
• easiest way to fight guerrillas
Rationale
• "These people [the guerrillas] are
difficult to distinguish from most of the
rest of the population... Because of that,
well, the population suffers" (Simons
1982).
"The guerrillas have won over many
Indian collaborators. Therefore, the
Indians are subversives. And how do you
fight subversion? Clearly you have to kill
the Indians because they are collaborating
with subversion. And then it would be said
that you were killing innocent people. But
they weren’t innocent; they had sold out to
subversion" (Guatemalan Presidential
adviser Francisco Bianchi, Amnesty
International 1982: 6-7).
Discussion Questions
• According to Greg Grandin Mayan Patriarchs developed an alternative
understanding of ethnicity and Nationalism in nineteenth century
Guatemala. Explain why.
• What happens to communities victimized by state terror? How are
people’s responses to terror shaped by their cultural history as well as
their economic and political situations?
• How do perpetrators justify their violence?
• What role does gender play in the perpetration of, and reaction to, state
violence?
•
• What theories and methods do anthropologists use in studying the
personal and communal effects of state violence?