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"This volume brings rich historical and contemporary ethnographic material to bear on the urgent task of writing against violence and terror. The volume benefits greatly from the long-term professional commitments of anthropologists working in settings embroiled in violence and engaging with peoples suffering the ongoing sequelae and cycles of genocidal terror."--Philippe Bourgois, author of "In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio" and co-editor of "Violence in War and Peace"

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GENOCIDE

Duke University Press

Contents

Acknowledgments..................................................................................................................................1PART 1 TRUTH/MEMORY/REPRESENTATION.............................................................................................................291. What Is an Anthropology of Genocide? Reflections on Field Research with Maya Survivors in Guatemala Victoria Sanford.........................542. Perilous Outcomes: International Monitoring and the Perpetuation of Violence in Sudan Sharon E. Hutchinson...................................80PART 2 TRUTH/MEMORY/REPRESENTATION.............................................................................................................1134. A Politics of Silences: Violence, Memory, and Treacherous Speech in Post-1965 Bali Leslie Dwyer..............................................1475. The Limits of Empathy: Emotional Anesthesia and the Museum of Corpses in Post-Holocaust Germany Uli Linke....................................192PART 3 TRUTH/MEMORY/REPRESENTATION.............................................................................................................2197. Addressing the Legacies of Mass Violence and Genocide in Indonesia and East Timor Elizabeth F. Drexler.......................................2478. Mediated Hostility: Media, Affective Citizenship, and Genocide in Northern Nigeria Conerly Casey.............................................2739. Cleansed of Experience? Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Challenges of Anthropological Representation Pamela Ballinger.....................317Epilogue: The Imagination of Genocide Antonius C. G. M. Robben..................................................................................333Contributors.....................................................................................................................................339

Chapter One

Reflections on Field Research with Maya Survivors in Guatemala

Genocide is a problem not only of war but also of peace. -Raphal Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress

This essay draws on the work of Dominick LaCapra (2001) and Primo Levi (1989) to consider the limits of memory and the challenges of anthropological research on genocide. In particular, I borrow Levi's concept of the "grey zone" to consider the lived experiences of Maya youth who were both victims and victimizers in the Guatemalan genocide. Based on more than a decade of field research on the exhumations of clandestine cemeteries of Maya massacre victims,1 I consider the excavation of individual and collective memory as a cultural and political act of community reconstruction. I suggest that both the accretion of truth and political space in the exhumation of clandestine cemeteries are central to the processes of reclaiming cultural memory and of contesting dominant metanarratives that negate subaltern subjectivity and buttress official histories of denial. I trace political agency and the development of new subjectivities in Maya communities over time. I ask, "What is an anthropology of genocide?" to provide a framework for my reflections on field research with Maya survivors of genocide. It is my hope that this framework is useful for reflecting on field research on genocide and violence in other contexts (see also Strathern, Stewart, and Whitehead 2006; Riches 1991). This essay is my modest attempt to share both the survivor memories and the challenge they present to the researcher in the field who, while overwhelmed by the sensation of their immediacy and sorrow, seeks to understand the lived experiences of survivors in such a way that they might make sense to survivors, researchers, and readers.

THE LIMITS OF MEMORY AND RESEARCH

The Auschwitz survivor Levi wrote: "It is natural and obvious that the most substantial material for the reconstruction of truth about the camps is the memories of the survivors" (1989:16). Holding this same belief in the value of testimony a half century later and on a different continent, the Guatemalan anthropologist Ricardo Falla lived with survivors of Guatemalan army massacres who were still in flight from army attacks in the northern Ixcn region of the country. While he accompanied Maya survivors in their hardship, he took their testimonies of survival. In 1992 Falla published Masacres de la selva based on some 700 testimonies. That same year I completed a yearlong project of taping the life history of Mateo, a Mam Maya child survivor of the Ixcn massacres, who had been recruited by the guerrillas, the civil patrols, and the army before reaching the age of 15. At the time of our project, Mateo was a 19-year-old refugee attending high school in San Francisco. Falla documented two survival stories that are of interest for our consideration of the limits of memory and of the challenge of research on genocide. Mateo had never met Falla, nor had he read his work, yet he gave similar testimony regarding these two survivor stories.

Falla's witness remembers:

An 8-year-old girl survived because they tied a rope around her neck and tightened it, "they saw the tongue coming out of the girl and thought she was dead." An old man of 75 was cut in the neck by the soldiers, and he also lived because "the knife got stuck on a button in his shirt, and the soldiers thought they had hit the bone and there was blood, so they kicked him and left him for dead." A couple and their baby girl also survived. They threw themselves into the river from a bridge. She was carrying the baby of 1 1/2 years and the woman was hit by a bullet from the bridge, but she did not die, neither did her baby. "God is great," says the witness, because these five survived. (1992:57)

Mateo remembers what was recounted to his family by the survivors:

The army arrived to another center very close to our village. The people were at church praying. The soldiers surrounded the church, doused it with gas, and burned it with the people inside. Other families were burned too because the church was built with carton and palms and close to some other little, palm houses. So they caught fire and burned as well. There were about 10 families and the army captured them and put them into a line. My father's compadre and comadre were in this line. One-by-one, the army would grab each person in line, beat them and ask them questions. The soldiers beat the campesinos and they killed them. But my father's compadre was old. They tied him up and they stabbed him three times in the neck and they cut him in other places, too. But because he was so old, his skin didn't break enough. First the soldiers were mad because he didn't die. Then when he looked bad off, they said, "Now, he is dead." Then, they threw him in a hole. He stayed there. Next, the soldiers took his daughter and they tortured her with a rope. They put a rope around her neck and pulled the ends of the rope until they thought she was dead, too. Then, they threw her in the same hole. They told us later that the army left them there for dead. Behind them, were some other friends waiting their turn. He was very religious and was with his wife and baby girl, maybe she was one year old. The baby was crying. The father said, "Why don't we...