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faLL 2010 | winter 2011 harvard review of Latin america guatemala legacies of violence editor’s letter ZocaloLegacies Hed of Violence26 pt Zocalo deck 14 point one line BY The diminutive indigenous woman in her bright embroidered blouse waited proudly for her grandson to receive his engineering degree. His mother, also dressed in a traditional flowery blouse—a huipil, took photos with a top-of-the-line digital camera. As each student in the small graduating class at Guatemala’s San Carlos University Engi- neering School briefly presented his thesis project, the grandson showed how water systems could both bring potable water and create recreational spaces for his hometown in rural Guatemala. Then Alejandro Valle Rosal praised another grandmother—the courageous journalist Irma Flaquer—in his acceptance speech, citing her as inspiration. She had been kidnapped and her voLume X no. 1 son—Alejandro’s father—had been killed when he was a toddler. My first book,Disappeared, David Rockefeller Center A Journalist Silenced, was about Alejandro’s grandmother. I hadn’t expected him to mention for Latin American Studies her when he received his degree. The silence had been broken. The legacies of violence were director slowly being overcome. Merilee S. Grindle After the graduation, Irma’s sister, Anabella Flaquer, and I went to see the Guatemalan Police associate director Archives (see Kate Doyle’s article, p. 10). Anabella lives in Miami, and this was the only chance Kathy Eckroad we would get to visit them. “I feel my sister is here,” she told me. “There is no silence here.” It was a day of many emotions. Watching the young indigenous man willing to return to ReVista his community instead of seeking an engineering job in Guatemala City or Mexico; listening to editor in-chief Alejandro thank his grandmother; looking at the piles of records diligently being processed in June Carolyn Erlick the archives—all these things made me think that Guatemala was changing. copy editor Yet Guatemala faces serious new challenges, most of which have emerged from the lega- Anita Safran cies of violence of both the distant and recent past. Drug trafficking, youth violence, environ- Publications interns mental damage, loss of remittances from the United States, corruption and impunity, natural Jai C. Beeman disasters and their consequences: the list is exhausting. William N. Forster For days now, friends, acquaintances and sources had been telling me that Guatemala was a design basket case, a failed state, with both organized and common crime permeating every aspect of 2communiqué life. Yet all throughout my visit, I thought of the old proverb about the glass being half empty or www.2communique.com half full. I decided it was half full, and returned to Cambridge to work on this issue of ReVista. Printer Almost that very week, Nancy McGirr’s Fotokids studio in Guatemala was robbed of all P & R Publications its computers and cameras (see p. 44). Then terrible news came: my friend journalist Felipe contact us Valenzuela had been shot through the head. It was not clear if it was an attempt on a valiant 1730 Cambridge Street journalist’s life or a bungled robbery. No one knew if Felipe would survive. And then there Cambridge, MA 02138 was a volcanic eruption with ashes clogging the drains, piled high like drifting snow. And then Telephone: 617-495-5428 came the hurricane, washing away crops, destroying housing. Facsimile: 617-496-2802 Then Carlos Castresana, the head of the United Nations group that had helped extradite Subscriptions and reader forum former president Alfonso Portillo on corruption charges, resigned (see Paul Goepfert’s article [email protected] on p. 41). Political scandals deepened. Drug trafficking was said to escalate. website The glass was half empty, I thought. As my friend and ReVista author Edelberto Torres- www.drclas.harvard.edu/publications/ revistaonline Rivas once observed, Guatemala suffers not from a lack of reality, but from too much of it. The articles for this issue began to arrive. Felipe went back to work without any grave facebook ReVista, the Harvard Review of Latin America permanent damage; the investigation concluded it was a bungled robbery, and journalist friends concur. And as I read the incoming articles, I wondered, is the glass half full or half This issue of ReVista is made possible empty? Guatemala is exploding with projects and ideas and filled with brave men and women through the generous support of Banco intent on transforming society. It is also filled with sadness and corruption and underdevelop- Santander ment and inequalities and all the legacies of violence that it has inherited over the centuries. I Copyright © 2010 by the President and don’t know. Dear reader, I leave it to you and these pages to decide about Guatemala and the Fellows of Harvard College. proverbial glass. ISSN 1541–1443 ReVista is printed on recycled stock. harvard review of Latin america fall 2010 | winter 2011 volume X no. 1 Published by the david Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Harvard university guatemala in every issue First TAKES Guatemala, Guatebuena, Guatemaya By Edelberto Torres-Rivas 2 Never Again: A Photoreflection By Jean-Marie Simon 6 MAKING A dIFFERENCE Learning Through Libraries 74 BREAKING THE SILENCE By Debra Gittler Guatemala’s Police Archives By Kate Doyle 10 A History of Violence, Not a Culture of Violence By Michelle Bellino 13 BooK TALK Reading La Masacre de Panzós in Panzós By Victoria Sanford 17 Colombia’s Civil War 75 20 A Journey Back to Guatemala By Emily Callier Sanders A Review By Chris Kraul INdIGENouS LIVES Out of the Glass Closet? 77 Indigenous Rights and the Peace Process By Santiago Bastos 24 A Review By James R. Martel A Tale of Structural Racism By Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj 27 Multiple Windows on Mexico 78 Maya Weaving Heritage by Holly Nottebohm 30 A Review By Nancy Abraham Hall An Ixchel Museum Educational Program by Fabiana Flores Maselli 32 Researching Mayan Languages in Guatemala By Adam Singerman 34 REAdER FoRuM 80 VIoLENCE Postcards from a Drug-Trafficking Country By Julie López 36 Portraits of Daily Violence By Dina Fernández 39 oNLINE The International Commission Against Impunity In Guatemala 41 Look for more content online at By Paul Goepfert drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline. Cyclones of Violence: Nature and Beyond 44 A Photoessay by Nancy McGirr and the Fotokids Team Securing the City By Kedron Thomas and Kevin Lewis O’Neill 46 dEVELoPMENT ANd BEyoNd A Beauty That Hurts A Photoessay by Carlos Sebastián 50 In Petén, Interesting Times By Mary Jo McConahey 54 Two Paths to Development By David Daepp 57 Making of the Modern An Architectural Photoessay by Peter Giesemann 60 Central America Competitiveness Project By Emmanuel Seidner 62 Development Strategies and the Peace Accords By Leah Aylward 63 ImmigratioN Guatemalan Immigrants: Increasing Visibility By Susanne Jonas 68 on the cover The Postville Immigration Raid By Greg Brosnan 70 Guatemala’s many legacies of violence must be overcome for the future of Guatemala’s children... A Mayan Financial Crash By David Stoll 72 Photograph by Carlos Sebastián/Prensa Libre. drclas.harvard.Edu/PublicatioNS/revistaoNLINE ReVista 1 first takes Guatemala, Guatebuena, Guatemaya BY EDELBERTO TORRES-RIVAS “GUATEMALA IS MORE OF A LANDSCAPE THAN A of the most beautiful places in the world. Arbenz was forced out of government nation,” a friend observed in 1996 when I And not far from Panajachel, in San Mar- through the betrayal of his fellow colo- returned to the country after thirty years tín Chile Verde, on this very same lake, the nels and U.S. pressure; for others, the pe- of on-and-off absence. I knew as much as novel describes the life of Celestino Yumi, riod of strife began in 1964, when Cuban anyone could know about events in the a Quiché Indian who sold his wife to the influence stimulated the rise of the guer- country in the pre-Internet era: massa- Tazol devil, only to get caught up in the rilla movement, and hundreds of young cres, democracy, military groups, guer- clutches of “that mulata woman.” Mulata people with more convictions than arms rillas, elections, and yet that particular de tal is perhaps our Miguel Angel’s fin- took to the mountains. I experienced this remark lingered in my mind. Just before est novel. Then, shortly after my arrival, period myself, and I would place its be- my plane landed in La Aurora Airport in I learned that on these verdant shores ginning with the fratricidal urban riots in Guatemala City, I glanced down at a tour- of the lake and in San Martín, there had March and April 1962. The military po- ist pamphlet and a novel by Miguel An- been many, many deaths, those of local lice and the army killed more than fifty gel Asturias I was holding. The pamphlet peasants, guerrillas and soldiers. demonstrators in the streets of Guatema- showed a beautiful reality transformed la City. Lieutenant Marco Antonio Yon into commerce to attract foreigners, while “THE GuERRILLA MoVEMENT Sosa made his appearance during this up- the book evoked a fantasy built by Asturias’ that doES NoT LoSE, WINS” heaval, and one has to remember that the words to reach another reality, the indige- That particular year of 1996 was a special first guerrillas were military men, young nous world. In the tourist pamphlet, Lake one; “the internal armed conflict,” as of- rangers who organized the Revolution- Atitlán looks glued by its green water to ficious history would keep calling it, was ary Movement November 13 following an its three volcanos, Tolimán, Atitlán and coming to an end.