Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the potential to affirm or negate life in the context of genocide and forced participation in violence in 1980s Guatemala. It considers the granular spaces where perpetrators improvised and rationalized violence, and where victims resisted, negotiated, and affirmed life.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the potential to affirm or negate life in the context of genocide and forced participation in violence in 1980s Guatemala. While embroiled in an armed conflict against Leftist guerrilla insurgencies, the Guatemalan state military launched a campaign of genocide against the mostly indigenous and peasant communities whom it considered the “subversive” support base for the rebels. The generals also forcibly militarized virtually all rural men into the militias —civil defense patrols— in order to defend and police their communities and eliminate perceived “subversives.” This militarization and forced participation in violence, was a planned component, and a second layer, to a genocidal campaign that aimed to destroy Maya communities both physically and spiritually. Despite the hegemonic weight of top down orders, at the granular level, perpetrators often demonstrated a tendency to improvise (and at times downplay) persecution, create pretexts for killing, and attempt to rationalize utterly absurd circumstances that were essentially anti-life. Victims in turn did not succumb to state violence without expressing agency and negotiating their circumstances. In numerous examples, victims and survivors expressed subtle forms of resistance in their interactions with perpetrators. At times, their affirmations of life acted as testaments of hope, even after they lost their lives. This paper proposes that even in the face of genocidal projects, and forced participation in violence, a critical piece of hope is the reality of human vulnerability, the need to create meaning, and the capacity for individuals to either affirm or negate life in a given moment.