Paper short abstract:

Education is seen as central to civic reconstruction efforts in postconflict settings. This presentation engages the ways that, in postconflict Guatemala, historical memory and the "coloniality of power" shape teachers' and students' joint consideration of Guatemala's past and present.

Paper long abstract:

In 1996, the extended armed conflict in Guatemala between army and guerilla forces, an unequal struggle more than three decades long, ended with the signing of the Firm and Lasting Peace Accords. These UN-brokered accords included a promise by the government to "design and implement a national civic education programme for democracy and peace, promoting the protection of human rights, the renewal of political culture and the peaceful resolution of conflicts" (United Nations General Assembly, 1997, p. 11). As in many postconflict settings, both internal and external actors viewed the educational system as central to this effort, creating a new national curriculum to achieve this end.

But the past "is not preserved but it is reconstructed on the basis of the present" (Halbwachs, 1950/1992, 40). Students' and their teachers' notions of history and belonging, situated amid starkly differing relationships with the country's history of conquest, colonization, exploitation, and repression, compete with national education policy that trusts in the healing powers of tolerance and democracy. Postconflict Guatemala is a fertile site from which to consider the ways that historical memory, belonging, and structural inequalities shape present day constructions of civic identity. This presentation engages the ways that historical memory and the "coloniality of power" (Quijano, 2000) shape teachers' and students' joint consideration of Guatemala's past and present, with implications for civic learning and identity.