| In my dissertation, Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala, I focus on political transformation through ethnographically detailed case studies of the exhumation of clandestine cemeteries, the excavation of collective memory and community mobilization. I trace political changes from the micro of political mobilization in relatively unknown rural villages to the macro level of national political events. From the monolingual Maya widow who survived a massacre to the widows organization she founded, from the exhumation of a clandestine cemetery to the survivor's interactions with the new legal system, from the signing of the Peace Accords in Guatemala City to the closing of the army base and reintegration of guerrilla combatants into rural villages. I demonstrate that these transformations are not only relational, but mutually constituted at the local and national levels through the discourse and practice of truth, memory and human rights.; My central hypothesis, which is supported by 24 months of field research, is that increased participation and nonviolent mobilization of civil society, particularly the rural Maya sector, are key factors shifting the balance of power away from the Guatemalan military toward the civilian branch of government. Based on the multi-site collection of more than 350 testimonies in five Maya ethno-linguistic areas, I demonstrate that integration of the lived experiences of rural indigenous survivors of La Violencia into the collective national consciousness is key to understanding the violence of the past and ensuring that this violence is not repeated in the future.; In my analysis, I problematize the phenomenology of violence and genocide, collective trauma and healing, and the reconstruction of truth and memory in communities which have suffered extreme violence at the hands of the state. My research points to the importance of political events in remote regions of Latin America and their significance to political processes that have hitherto been conceptualized as urban and elite. The outcomes of my project will contribute to interdisciplinary debates about democratization, human rights and reconstruction of a viable judiciary, putting popular voice at the center rather than the periphery. |
