The Power of Memory and Violence in Central America

Rachel Hatcher

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319897844
• eBook ISBN: 9783319897851
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the power of words in post-Peace El Salvador and Guatemala—their violent and equally liberating power. The volumeexplores the entire post-Peace Accords era in both Central American countries. In "post-conflict" settings, denying or forgetting the repressive past and its many victims does violence to those victims, while remembering and giving testimony about the past can be cathartic for survivors, relatives, and even for perpetrators. This project will appeal to readers interested in development, societies in transition, global peace studies, and Central American studies.

© The Author(s) 2018

Rachel HatcherThe Power of Memory and Violence in Central Americahttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89785-1_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: On the Calle del Olvido

Rachel Hatcher¹

(1)

Montreal, QC, Canada

End Abstract

La 3a Avenida (Third Avenue) funnels traffic north and south through the heart of Guatemala City to its more far-flung zones and suburbs. It is an unexceptional street and bears a striking resemblance to the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Seventh, and other nearby avenues. ¹ And like many of these other avenues, and the streets that cross them perpendicularly, la 3a Avenida has another name, one likely to be found in a stroll through Gabriel García Marquéz’s Macondo or, closer to home, in the pages of Guatemala’s Nobel prize-winning author, Miguel Ángel Asturias’ works—the Calle del Olvido. What exactly is being forgotten on the Street of Forgetting is, however, unclear, for few remember or ever knew why it is called that (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

Photo by author. 1 October 2013

The Calle del Olvido is lined with houses, shops, and businesses whose frequently painted walls are little more than blank canvases for street artists and activists armed with paint, stencils, posters, and glue, as well as others who are less artistically or politically minded but have similar tools in their hands. The walls are the ideal space on which to make demands on the government or on society, or for these others to lay claim to territory or leave evidence of their presence. Given the tendency—one that seems to border on obsession—of property and business owners to paint over the words and pictures artists, activists, and gang members ² leave in their wake, these are more often than not ephemeral; once painted over, they will be little more than a faint memory in the minds of those who saw them, a memory passersby must work to remember as they travel down the Street of Forgetting .

This book is about words—including the ones street artists paint and plaster on city walls—and the power these words possess to be as violent as they are liberating. It is about how discursive scaffoldings are constructed, word by word, and even stone by stone, to dictate how the violent past is talked about in the present. In times of conflict, the power of words is obvious. Repeated declarations that the members of another group are less than human or that their very existence is destroying the nation and “our” way of life are enough to rally one group to do unspeakable things to another. Germany, Rwanda, and Kosovo are clear examples of this. In “post-conflict” settings, including in what I label post-Peace Central America, ³ words remain violent and can perpetuate physical violence. Violence is not limited to bodily harm. Denying or forgetting the repressive past and its many victims also does a great deal of violence to those victims and their relatives. Paul Ricouer made this point quite clearly when he warned that “forgetfulness” risks killing the victims a second time. ⁴ On the other hand, giving testimony about the past or denouncing what happened can be a life-affirming or even cathartic experience for survivors, relatives, and sometimes even perpetrators (Fig. 1.2).

Fig. 1.2

Photo by author. 12 December 2013

Carlos Ernesto Cuevas Molina was not given the opportunity to tell his story or denounce what he suffered. Relatives and human rights activists have taken on this task, conducting investigations into the events surrounding his forced disappearance and condemning the state for its responsibility. They have worked to prevent forgetfulness from killing Cuevas Molina twice. Twenty-nine years after he was disappeared, his gaze reminds those traveling along the Street of Forgetting that he existed. He reminds us that he, his partner, Rosario Godoy de Cuevas , their son, and tens of thousands of other Guatemalans and Salvadorans were targeted by each countries’ repressive governments and militaries during Cold War-era conflicts that pit those governments and militaries against anyone who fought with either words or weapons to upend these exclusionary and exploitative regimes and usher in more just systems.

Acts of violence, including Cuevas Molina and others’ forced disappearance, form the backdrop of this book, while “act[s] of defiance”—as Liepollo Lebohang Pheko described remembering in the South African context ⁵ —and the instinct of erasure that inspires these acts form the project’s core. The focus is on what happens after devastating violence has torn society apart, on how people in Guatemala and El Salvador have proposed to grapple with, overcome, or work through ⁶ such violent and divisive pasts. The question is exceedingly important, yet the answer is far from simple. Different societies have responded in different ways over the years. Some opt for trials, others create commissions to investigate the “truth ” of the past, and still others simply refuse to address it. Lying behind these more technical questions related to transitional justice mechanisms is the larger question of whether societies with violent histories will remember or forget their pasts. Is memory the best way to achieve the hoped-for goal of “never again ,” or would oblivion be better? Closely linked to this is the question of what parts of the past will be brought to the forefront and remembered, or pushed to the margins and forgotten. Yet another interrelated question revolves around how the past is talked about in the public sphere.

The book explores the intersection of these questions. This book is in some ways a mnemohistory, as Jan Assmann labeled his exploration of the grand narrative of Western monotheism, and the place of an idolatrous Egypt in that narrative. ⁷ Like Assmann, I am less concerned with the past as it happened, but with how it is remembered and talked about, how it is recalled and used in the present. I explore the discursive scaffoldings that exist and that determine how contemporary Guatemalans and Salvadorans talk about memory and forgetting and how they frame the usefulness of one or the other in achieving the broad goals of transitional processes, i.e., reconciliation ⁸ and non-repetition .

The idea of discursive scaffolding draws on William Roseberry and his discussion of (un)common discursive frameworks . Roseberry bases his argument on Antonio Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony as struggle, and more specifically as the struggle between elites —most often the state—and subalterns in the political process. Hegemony , Roseberry points out, does not describe subalterns ’ consent to their position in society, for they do not accept their subordination. Rather, they resist it, and so hegemony refers to the process in which the terms of the relationship between subalterns and the state are negotiated. It relates to “the ways in which the words, images, symbols, forms, organizations, institutions, and movements used by subordinate populations to talk about, understand, confront, accommodate themselves to, or resist their domination are shaped by the process of domination itself.” ⁹

The hegemonic process, thus, creates neither consent nor a belief system that the state and subalterns both embrace; rather, it works to create “a common material and meaningful framework for living through, talking about, and acting upon social orders characterized by domination.” This framework is partly discursive; it describes the common language that can be used in struggles. ¹⁰ Subalterns cannot simply use any vocabulary or type of protest to oppose their subordination; rather, they must use the “languages of domination in order to be registered or heard.” In this scheme, the state’s discourse becomes the discourse subalterns must use to challenge the status quo. ¹¹ Roseberry concludes that the creation of this kind of common discursive framework is rare. ¹² Thus, rather than view it as something that the state has achieved, it is best to see it as something the state hopes to achieve.

I use discursive frameworks to think about how distinct groups of Guatemalans and Salvadorans talk about the past and express their views on remembering and forgetting . I argue that questions about the role of the past in the present have been answered in different ways in the two countries. Members of Guatemala’s different sectors—from the most conservative with ties to the perpetrators and economic elite , to the most adamant advocate of exhumations and justice —insist very broadly that the past be remembered so that it never happens again. Promoting the work that memory does to prevent repetition is Guatemala’s common discursive framework . This scaffolding shapes and so limits how different groups interact and struggle with each other, always within the context of unequal, but also unstable, social power.

Students of transitional justice processes, and especially of restorative justice , ¹³ will be familiar with this refrain of never again. While peace processes like Guatemala’s are, broadly speaking, oriented toward non-repetition , truth commissions and other more specific transitional justice mechanisms are more particularly rooted in the belief that knowing, and remembering, the long silenced truth about the human rights violations committed during a particular period will prevent repetition, for the now “more knowledgeable citizenry will recognize and resist any sign of return to repressive rule.” ¹⁴

Importantly, and counter to Roseberry, it is non-state actors who have to a large extent determined how the past is framed in Guatemala. Insisting on the importance of memory in preventing repetition is the discourse of the country’s two truth/historical commissions and the domestic, and international, human rights community. Though commissioners and leaders of the human rights community can be considered elite because of their above average knowledge of how the state operates and their greater access to the international community and its funding opportunities, they are also certainly subalterns in terms of their domestic economic and political influence. Conservatives and those with an agenda counter to the human rights community’s must use the human rights community’s discourse to oppose that sector’s ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: On the Calle del Olvido
• 2. The Speakers, Writers, Painters, and Plasterers
• 3. Schizophrenic Memory in the Land of La Eterna Primavera
• 4. Nunca Más in Guatemala
• 5. Verdad or Olvido in El Pulgarcito de América
• 6. The Past as Monument in El Salvador
• 7. Contested Discourse in El Salvador and Guatemala
• 8. Conclusion: The Power of Words, and of Remembering
• Back Matter