Last Colonial Massacre

THE LAST COLONIAL MASSACRE THE LAST COLONIAL MASSACRE Latin America in the Cold War • Updated Edition greg grandin With a New Preface by the Author and an Interview with naomi klein the university of chicago press Chicago and London greg grandin is professor of history at New York University and the author of several books, including Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City and Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Empire. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2004, 2011 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2011. Printed in the United States of America 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5 isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 30690- 2 (paper) isbn- 10: 0- 226- 30690- 9 (paper) The afterword originally appeared as “Body Shocks: A 40th Anniversary Conversation with Naomi Klein” by Greg Grandin, NACLA Report on the Americas, vol. 40, no. 6 (May / June 2008). Afterword copyright © 2008 by the North American Congress on Latin America, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Grandin, Greg, 1962– The last colonial massacre : Latin America in the Cold War / Greg Grandin, with a new preface by the author and an interview with Naomi Klein. — Updated ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-226-30690-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-226-30690-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Guatemala—History— 1945–1985. 2. Guatemala—History—1821–1945. 3. Massacres—Guatemala— Panzós. 4. Indians of Central America—Guatemala—Government relations. 5. Communism—Guatemala—History—20th century. 6. Insurgency— Guatemala—History—20th century. 7. Social confl ict—Guatemala— History—20th century. 8. United States—Relations—Latin America. 9. Latin America—Relations—United States. I. Title. f1466.5.g73 2011 972.81′04—dc22 2010049461 o This paper meets the requirements of ansi / niso z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). for mg a victory described in detail is indistinguishable from a defeat. Jean- Paul Sartre Contents ix List of Illustrations xi Preface to the Updated Edition: A New Enlightenment xix Preface to the First Edition xxv A Note on Interviews and Archives 1 introduction: The Last Colonial Massacre 19 chapter one: A Seditious Life 47 chapter two: An Uncorrupted Life 73 chapter three: Unfi nished Lives 105 chapter four: Clandestine Lives 133 chapter five: An Unsettled Life 169 conclusion : Children of Abel: The Cold War as Revolution and Counterrevolution 199 Acknowledgments 201 Appendix: List of the Dead from Operación Limpieza and the Panzós Massacre 203 Glossary 207 Notes 283 Bibliography 303 Afterword: An Interview with Naomi Klein 311 Index Illustrations maps 1 Guatemala 21 2 Polochic Valley 23 figures 1 San Pedro Carchá, early twentieth century 25 2 Demonstration in support of October Revolution 41 3 Vagrancy exemption 42 4 Alfredo Cucul 56 5 Carchá’s Comunidad Agraria 57 6 Crime sketch, 1954: reported suicide 67 7 Crime sketch, 1954: drowning 68 8 “A Considerable Success” 99 9 Execution of Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez 100 10 Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez 102 11 Leonardo Castillo Flores 103 12 Efraín Reyes Maaz 107 13 Adelina Caal, or Mamá Maquin 138 14 Panzós, ca. 1860 141 15 Military occupation of Panzós 147 16 Hauling away the dead 154 17 Burial site 155 18 Exhumation of remains 156 19 Protest following Panzós massacre, I 157 20 Protest following Panzós massacre, II 158 21 Municipal council minutes 165 Preface to the Updated Edition: A New Enlightenment What explains Latin America’s seemingly inescapable reversion to violence? How to account for the weakness of its democratic culture? For over half a century, attempts to answer these questions have defi ned much of the writing produced in the United States on Latin America, as social scientists and intellectual historians have created an entire scholarly subfi eld dedicated to gently guiding—or, if gradualism failed, abruptly inducing through “shock therapy”—the region’s post–Cold War “transition to democracy.” But these questions are exactly backward. The real challenge is not to answer why Latin American democracy is so fragile but to explain its inextinguish- able strength. For nearly four decades following World War II, union members, peasant activists, reformist politicians, liberation theologians, and educators were hunted with such ferocity that the continent became synonymous with state terror. Security forces, supported by the United States with money, training, political cover, and, at times, moral justifi cation, tortured hundreds of thou- sands of citizens, many of whom were disappeared without a trace. Many people in South and Central America were driven into exile—including more than a million people in Central America alone. In other areas of the world, comparable repression fed extremism and despair, giving rise to what some U.S. and European intellectuals argue is an epic clash of civilizations, a fi ght between liberal moderns and religious anti- moderns. Not so in Latin America. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then continuing past 9 / 11, activists turned the continent into the frontline of the international social- justice movement, with global events confi rming their assessment of the threats facing the world. Latin Americans were early critics of what they call neoliberalism, an extreme version of Reaganomics—de- regulation, privatization, the extension of cheap credit to make up for falling wages, and the gutting of labor rights and social spending—which drove the world over the edge in 2008 into the current protracted period of recession and austerity. Latin Americans dissented from George W. Bush’s unilateral, preemptive, and preventive war doctrines, correctly predicting that they would lead to disaster. And they have been ahead of the curve in challenging the impunity of mining, oil, natural gas, and other resource extraction corporations. U.S. citizens are rightly angry over the destruction of a large area of marine habitat of the Gulf of Mexico by BP. But Native Americans in Ec- uador and Peru have witnessed Occidental Petroleum and other oil compa- nies turn their Amazon homelands into an ecological waste, pouring cad- mium, lead, and other toxic chemicals into water supplies, poisoning a vibrant and sustaining rainforest. Starting around 1998, Latin American social movements gained political traction, as voters in one country after another elected governments com- mitted to some form of social democracy. Beyond a resurgent political left, there have been, in South America as well as in Mexico, important advances in gay and women’s rights, including same- sex marriage and access to safe abortions. This expansion of rights at a moment when conditions elsewhere appear to be moving in the opposite direction should force a reconsideration of the foundational premises of scholarly literature on “democratization” in Latin America. Latin American activists largely continue to spurn funda- mentalism, defending modernist ideals such as self- determination, solidar- ity, liberty, equality, individual dignity, and popular democracy. In Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras, and Bolivia, indigenous movements have rejected a descent into particular- ism, becoming the best bearers of their country’s social democratic traditions and advancing a tolerant, inclusive, and environmentally viable vision of so- ciety. Violence continues, seemingly out of control in northern Mexico and the continent’s sprawling metropolises. So do some of the most extreme cases of economic inequality and poverty on earth. In El Salvador, Guate- mala, Honduras, Mexico, Colombia, southern Chile, and Peru, political repression persists, executed in some areas by a revival of the old Cold War alliance between death squads and the landed class. A June 2009 coup in Honduras, legitimated by Washington, served as a grim reminder of where the limits of dissent and democracy lay. Yet the landless continue to demand land; peasants continue to fi ght the efforts of corporations such as Monsanto to monopolize seed strains, and fi ght the extension of harmful biofuel cultivation; and Native Americans struggle to save the Amazon rain forest. Gay, lesbian, and transgendered activists work to prevent the consolidation of the coup government in Hondu- xii The Last Colonial Massacre ras. (The fi rst person executed following the June 2009 coup was Vicky Hernández Castillo, previously known as Sonny, a transgendered activist. Since then, out of the scores of pro- democracy activists executed by coup supporters, at least eighteen have been gay or transgendered.) Activists in northern Mexico fi ght the privatization of water, even in the midst of inde- scribably brutal drug- related killings; students protest the U.S. wars; and many politicians, such as Brazil’s last president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who attempted to broker a Middle East peace process, continue to promote a sustainable and peaceful diplomacy. In the face of unrelentingly bleak news from the rest of the world, at times it seems as if Latin America is the last bas- tion of the Enlightenment. The fi rst edition of The Last Colonial Massacre attempted to explain the per- sistence of the democratic ideal in Latin America, focusing closely on one case study, the multigenerational land struggle in Guatemala’s Polochic Valley, which lasted seven decades and resulted in the 1978 Panzós massacre, the book’s end point. That killing claimed dozens of Q’eqchi’ Mayan lives and is commemorated to this day by Guatemalans for ushering in the most bloody phase of their country’s nearly four- decade- long civil war. Often- times the kind of social history that helps reveal the complexity of events similar to the ones here described is, by necessity, narrowly focused. But I believed that the story of Panzós, along with other episodes of mobilization in Latin America, had something to say about world history beyond just fur- nishing another example of postcolonial cruelty.

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