Violence in a time of peace: Social fear and women's organizations in post Civil War Guatemala

In this dissertation I seek to explore experiences and understandings of violence in post-civil war Guatemala. I argue that social fear, an original concept, is helpful in understanding the collective experiences with violence in places where there has been a systematic use of military and police forces to control the population. This fear is much more than the individual level fears that someone may experience when they are threatened, for it entails the use of cultural knowledge (Margold 1999) to ensure that everyone in a certain population has a sense of fear. The use of violence is one of the most common methods of creating an overwhelming sense of fear. Social fear refers to the collective experience of the dangers and fears of violence, and the links of these understandings to class, ethnicity, gender, and geographical location. In places like Guatemala, where violence targeted only a particular group of the population, we see radical differences in the ways in which people understand and as a result challenge violence around them. The violence in the post-war period is clearly linked to the structures set up during the armed conflict, and therefore should be analyzed as a result of the war. The primary data for this dissertation comes from interviews conducted in Guatemala during 2002--2003. The interviewees were women involved in one of three women's organizations: GAM, the Mutual Support Group, CONAVIGUA, National Widow's Coordinating Committee, and Madres Angustiadas, Anguished Mothers. I interviewed a total of 41 women involved in these organizations. I concentrated on GAM, CONAVIGUA, and Madres Angustiadas because these groups have organized and engaged in political activity based on their understandings of violence in Guatemala. Through a comparative analysis I conclude that even though there is a convergence in understanding violence as problematic there are still major differences in the ways people explain the sources of violence. This is because women experienced the violence during the war in different ways and as a result it has had a major effect on the ways in which they will challenge violence and make demands on the state. This has been one of the major obstacles for creating a broad-based coalition to combat violence.