Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork of the exhumations and reburials in the Ixil region in Guatemala, this paper focuses on the dual process of forgetting and remembering for indigenous victims' relatives, through representations associated with the human remains and landscapes where they were buried.

Paper long abstract:

The internal conflict (1960-1996) in Guatemala has left few tangible traces, with the important exception of hundreds of dead bodies that were hastily buried, often close to towns. Most of the 200.000 victims were indigenous, killed by the Guatemalan army on suspicion of "subversion". In the 1990s, the peace process piloted by the UN both ended the conflict and also launched the long process of exhumation and reburial of the victims. The restitution of these remains to their families has been articulated by institutional actors as the key element to enable the grief process, through funeral rituals that are largely re-inventions. The process of individuals healing through their personal grief is presented as the way for the Guatemalan society to overcome the war trauma, as a form of "social grief".

Exhumations participate in a complex process of memory reactivation and transmission, of mourning and mourning closure. The reburial of the dead is supposed to bring closure to the relatives, but it can also be seen as a way to "lay to rest" the collective memory of these traumatic events. However, the landscape around them is full of reminiscences of the dead. In this paper, I analyse the strategies put in place by local actors to manage their relationship to memory and the stakes of its transmission. I focus on their interactions with two emblematic places: first, the cemetery where the bodies are newly reburied and second, the exhumation site, where the dead remained for many years before being exhumed.