![]()
1Introduction
Two lynchings – a microcosm
Overview
Drawing upon two lynchings that happened in Todos Santos Cuchumatán in the north-western highlands of Guatemala, this book seeks to explain why these two attacks occurred and to reconcile the geneses of these two events with the wider national and regional wave of vigilante lynchings that began in the 1990s and have carried on into the present. The book explores the complex causation of violence and how local, national, and regional factors interplay in the spread of collective violence. The book is A Tale of Two Lynchings because, by the time I arrived in Todos Santos, the lynchings had already happened and my research became a matter of unpicking the stories that circulated about the attacks in an attempt to retrospectively understand what happened through the narratives I encountered. This approach is a layered one as I aim to make sense of lynchings as acts of violence in themselves but also against the backdrop of the national and regional wave of lynchings and in relation to the violence of the conflict, while also exploring how collective violence and violence more generally spread as social phenomena. My approach is distinctly scalar in that I am starting with the local and specific in early chapters before expanding outwards into more nationally and then globally relevant factors in regard to the analysis of vigilante violence. This approach leads to the book being a little strange for the ethnographically inclined as chapters become less localised and less personal as the book progresses.
In this introductory chapter, I will describe the two attacks and contextualise them against the backdrop of a wave of lynchings which began in 1996 in the immediate aftermath of the Guatemalan civil war. The chapter begins with a detailed account of both lynchings in order to unpick the various layers of context and analysis throughout the rest of the book. The chapter ends with the discussion of the wave of lynchings that swept across Guatemala, how they relate to other forms of collective violence, and wider regional practices of vigilantism (Mendoza 2003; Pratten & Sen 2007).
The process of unpacking these lynchings begins in the second chapter. This chapter provides local contextual detail regarding Todos Santos, exploring the history of the town, how the war deconstructed local social structures, and the increasing levels of labour migration that underpin deep divisions within the community regarding threats to local Mam-speaking Maya identities. This chapter unpicks the social changes, locally referred to as los cambios – spanning rejection of Maya typical clothing, language, media consumption, and the emergence of gangs – and how these changes played into the two attacks: the first attack targeted a tourist, the second targeted one of the first wave of labour migrants. This chapter contextualises the history of the town to provide a sense of how and why this history resonates in contemporary disputes and violence.
The third chapter explores the relationship between lynchings and the violence of the conflict that preceded them. As lynchings began so distinctly in the same year the civil war ended, there is a clear relationship between old and new violence. This chapter explores how the lynchings in Todos Santos, and Guatemalan lynchings more generally, can be seen as a continuity of violence from the civil war. With lynching participants often consisting of former civil patrollers who were armed and forced to police and patrol their own communities – vigilante violence is often seen as a continuation of their war-time policing roles. But as urban areas without civil patrols are also experiencing lynchings and with similar vigilantism now emerging throughout Central America in response to gangs, the relationship between patrollers and lynchings is not so straightforward. With issues of individual and collective trauma affecting responses to threat and the shift from military to civilian policing also contributing to the make-up of lynchings, how much can we (or should we) blame the war? The ubiquity of the term “post-war” is critiqued in this chapter as a reductionist explanation that flattens understandings of reactive violence. Here, the war and the human rights abuses of the past are approached as significant but often overstated factors in the fomentation of lynchings at both local and national levels.
The fourth chapter explains the relationship between lynchings, a form of non-state justice, and the Guatemalan state. As Abrahams established in Vigilant Citizens, vigilantism is a frontier phenomenon. For vigilantism to thrive there must be widespread dissatisfaction with justice. As with other forms of vigilantism, lynchings embody a complex relationship between citizens and the Guatemalan state. Lynchings critique state inaction regarding crime, while paradoxically enunciating a desire for better provision of state justice. State apathy towards lynchings is seen to legitimise them, while state-led anti-lynching campaigns seek to stigmatise them. The Guatemalan state has used lynchings as a mask for death squads and as a tool to critique suggestions for expanding the provision of customary law for indigenous Maya communities and has simultaneously outlawed patrol-based vigilantism while also encouraging civilian patrols in areas where gangs have gained territorial control. Drawing upon literature on Weberian (Weber 1958) and Giddensian (Giddens 1985) ideas of monopolies of legitimate state violence and Andersonian anthropology on imagining the state (Anderson 1991; Hansen & Stepputat 2001; Das & Poole 2004), this chapter explores the interplay between contrasting conceptions of law and justice (Rawls 1999), including rule of law, customary law, “indigenous justice”, popular justice, mano dura (Godoy 2006), and how they play out in dissonant understandings of the “justice” in lynchings in Todos Santos and beyond.
The fifth chapter explores the lynchings in relation to gossip and rumour. The two lynchings discussed in this book were driven by hearsay in ways that will become clear by the end of this introduction. This chapter will explore the role of hearsay as the mechanism at the heart of the scapegoating and targeting seen in vigilantism on a global scale.
Chapter 6 discusses the role of the media in the spread of lynchings. While the arrival of the rumour regarding Satanism into Todos Santos via Mam language radio broadcast is a stark part of the make-up of that particular lynching, the relationship between vigilantism and broadcast media is an old one. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film Birth of a Nation (alongside the media coverage of the death of Mary Phagan) is widely credited with the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. In writings on vigilantism (Starn 1999; Pratten 2007) it is often noted that specific groups of vigilantes got the idea through seeing or hearing reports of others in the news. Yet the role played by the media in spreading the notion of, and specific blueprints for, vigilantism has gone almost entirely unexplored. This chapter addresses this by exploring the role played by the media in the messy mimesis of specific forms of violence. In the 21st century the relationship between vigilantism and the media is becoming increasingly intertwined through the promulgation of new social medias. Exploring diverse groups spanning Anonymous, the “Real Life Superhero” movement, and cyber vigilantes such as Letzgo Hunting, this chapter unwraps the wider relationship between vigilantism and the media and explores the role of media in the spread of Guatemalan vigilantism.
Chapter 7 explores how lynchings are not a finite phenomenon and how they interpenetrate other forms of violence. The term linchamientos only came into being in 1996, taking the name from the racially motivated lynchings of the Deep South of the United States (Rothenberg 1998). Vigilante attacks that occurred before this date are not considered part of this wave of lynchings despite striking similarities. But such temporal omissions are not the only place where the boundaries between lynchings and other forms of violence are blurred. There are fine lines between lynchings and riots; between organised vigilantism and spontaneous attacks; between gangs who patrol their territories and vigilantes who police their communities. Collective violence is inherently chaotic and the language we use to describe it is inevitably imperfect. This chapter explores how these forms of collective violence pass across these porous divides and how this affects our understanding and analysis of violence.
The concluding chapter of this book will interrogate what might be done in light of these observations. Based on the premise that less fatal violence is preferable, the book finishes by exploring viable ways in which the worst excesses of this violence might be diminished.
As the main purpose of this book is to unpick and then recontextualise these two lynchings, I am forestalling on the contextual background to get to the lynchings first. As such this chapter now turns to those attacks.
Two lynchings in Todos Santos
The accounts of these two lynchings given here draw upon wide ranging interviews conducted in the first few months of my time in Todos Santos. In these first months I tried to gain a detailed picture of how the violence arose and what occurred during the attacks. These included fifteen more “formal” interviews (where informants were happy to have me take notes), alongside around twenty other “less formal” interviews, which were “reconstructed” after the conversations had taken place, and additional conversations from throughout my research. Interviews included seven witnesses’ testimonies for the first attack (as well as a detailed account from the victim), and six witnesses of the second attack. This “less formal” approach to interviews was something that emerged slowly through experience. It became clear that experiences in the aftermath of the second lynching had left Todosanteros (the collective noun for people from Todos Santos) mistrusting journalists, and this caution was often extended to others due to suspicions regarding undercover journalists or if an interviewee had diffuse misgivings about sharing their account with outsiders. This was sometimes expressed by declining to be interviewed and at other times through a desire not to be seen being interviewed, so tape recorder or note taking sometimes made interviewees uncomfortable. This frequently led to me listening to accounts then having to (often literally) run to the nearest available toilet, bench or other amenable space to download as much as could be recalled from the conversation in its immediate aftermath. This was not the case for all interviews, but enough for it to be a notable feature of my methodology.
These experiences were my first tentative steps as an ethnographer and represented me feeling my way into my research site. It had taken six months to find a research site where I felt both an openness amongst locals to discuss lynchings coupled with a sense of safety that made it viable. Having explored many other possible research sites, I was met off the bus in Todos Santos by a representative from one of their three language schools; within hours I had a family to stay with and was talking openly with someone who had witnessed one of the lynchings in Todos Santos and another in a neighbouring town. It was clear that the aftermath of the second lynching had led to an openness to discuss the violence (although as noted above – this had its limits) which I had not encountered elsewhere. Research participants pointed me in the direction of others who were willing to talk, and sitting in Parque Central turned out to be a viable way of instigating conversation and interviews.
What became clear throughout these interviews and conversations was that while there was a “core story” around which narratives were told and retold, there was profound variation in many of the details: these were contentious and unstable narratives. To maintain this inherent instability for further unpacking throughout this book, especially in Chapter 5, the ambiguities are left largely intact for the time being, while some of the more tangential assertions are saved for later chapters. I shall also be drawing on written accounts of the lynchings by Jennifer Burrell (2005; Burrell & Weston 2007) (who was present for the first lynching), Robert Sitler (1999, 2001), Jim Handy (2004), Daniel Valencia Caravantes (2011), and Marta Gutiérrez and Paul Kobrak (2001) as my aim is to capture this multiplicity. Narratives of both lynchings differ depending on a variety of factors, including who the narrator is, who their audience is, where the interchange took place, how well the narrator knows their audience, and many other interrelated issues spanning the general and the incredibly specific. This applies as much to myself as it does to those who have recounted the story to me, as I myself have a variety of versions of the lynchings to select from and the aspects I choose to stress and the way in which I convey the narrative varies substantially from one occasion to the next. Recognising that everybody who I interviewed did exactly the same, it must be noted that this is just one assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari 1988) of events riddled with ambiguities.
The first lynching: Jorge Mario
In 1997, Jorge Mario Ramirez Matias returned to Todos Santos having spent over a year working in the United States. He was there to visit family and friends in and around Todos Santos and to enjoy and show off his newfound wealth. While Jorge Mario had always been of a greater build than the average diminutive Mayan (although of a relatively average height), through construction work in the United States he had bulked out even more. Already standing out due to his size and aura of self-confidence, he compounded this by becoming the first Todosantero to return from the United States appearing visually changed. His ears were pierced, three times in one ear and twice in the other, and his hair had grown long past his shoulders. Alongside these other changes he had also got tattoos on his arms. While tattoos in a wider context represent youthful rebellion, machismo, or “alternative” lifestyle choices, they were becoming at the time, and even more so today, widely considered a symbol of gang membership among Guatemalans both in the United States and in Guatemala. While it would perhaps be misleading to state that Jorge Mario was not a gang member, he was not a gang member in the context of the very real problem of maras in Guatemala and throughout Latin America. I have been assured by someone who was close to him in the United States that he was never involved in gang culture whilst there, and his gang membership in Todos Santos amounted to little more than the petty misbehaviour. However, as Burrell notes, Jorge Mario himself helped to produce an ambiguous position as he would frequently refer to himself as a gang member in order to gain a degree of prestige both with local youths and visiting tourists, even boasting of (possibly non-existent) gang contacts in the United States (Burrell & Weston 2007). Other Gringos (a term used by locals and a term of self-reference used by Americans and Europeans throughout Guatemala) who were in Todos Santos during my stay heard him contradictorily claim to be a gang member and to have never been a gang member, making different assertions depending on who he was talking to and in what context.1 When I tried to talk to Jorge Mario about this, he sheepishly shrugged and gave a guilty smile. He was very much aware of the problems this particular strategic instability had brought upon him.
In Todos Santos in 1997, when Jorge Mario was “lynched”, the activities of gangs amounted to little more than groups of youths naming themselves in ways that aped gang culture, that is M2 (Emé Dos), the Mendoza Gang, or the Pajone Clan. They were not involved in drugs or thefts, they did not own guns and were not responsible for violence outside of drunken brawling (which are not limited to gangs of youths) and territorial bullying of other local youths.2 As Burrell notes, gang activity in Todos Santos, in contrast to the rest of Latin America, is a pursuit for the relatively affluent, restricted to those who need not work and have ample leisure time available (Burrell 2005; Burrell & Weston 2007), making Todos Santos gangs very much a middle-class pursuit. Through loitering and the intimidation of other youths they were viewed as threatening. Despite the fact that Jorge Mario was not connected to any real criminality, outside of alcohol-fuelled altercations, his appearance and association with general trouble marked him out as a social misfit, something out of place in a Mayan village which prides itself on its tradición and custumbre.
His return to Todos Santos set off ripples of gossip concerning his appearance and his behaviour. From working in the United States he was relatively wealthy and spent his money freely amongst his friends, getting drunk and having fun. He and his friends would stay up late holding barbecues, listening to loud music, and drinking beer by the crate-load at the ancient Mayan ruins (a local ritual centre) near his house. Rumours eventually started, which at some stage encompassed recent local and regional crimes, ranging from local petty thefts and later even encompassing hold-ups on pick-up trucks.
On 20 December 1997, the day he was lynched, around a month and a half after his return, he was having his hair cut in direct response to the attention it was receiving. Before his haircut was finished his father arrived visibly upset and asked him whether it was true that he was involved in robberies, because the alcalde (mayor) was in the town square with a loud-hailer saying he and his friends were criminals. Jorge Mario was furious and went down to the town square to see what was happening. It was a market day and a large crowd was gathered listening. The mayor was making allegations against Jorge Mario and his friends regarding thefts; precisely which thefts he was being accused of at this point i...
