Full Issue 14.2

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Volume 14 Issue 2 Denial Article 2

9-4-2020

Full Issue 14.2

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Recommended Citation (2020) "Full Issue 14.2," Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 14: Iss. 2: 1-181. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2

Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol14/iss2/2

This Front Matter is brought to you for free and open access by the Open Access Journals at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Full Issue 14.2

Erratum Footnotes omitted in "'The Jews love numbers': Steven L. Anderson, Christian Conspiracists, and the Spiritual Dimensions of Holocaust Denial" are available for download in Supplemental Content as errata.

This front matter is available in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol14/iss2/2 ISSN 1911-0359 eISSN 1911-9933

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Volume 14.2 - 2020 ii

Volume 14.2 - 2020

Editorials

Articles

Yasmeen Jabeen Denying the Animosity: Understanding Narratives of Harmony from the Nellie Massacre, 1983...... 2

Dilşa Deniz Re-assessing the Genocide of Kurdish Alevis in Dersim, 1937-38...... 20

Matthew H. Brittingham “The Jews love numbers”: Steven L. Anderson, Christian Conspiracists, and the Spiritual Dimensions of Holocaust Denial...... 44

Nora Nunn Rose-Colored Genocide: Hollywood, Harmonizing Narratives, and the Cinematic Legacy of Anne Frank’s Diary in the United States...... 65

Ñusta P. Carranza Ko Making the Case for Genocide, the Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Peoples of Peru...... 90

Lauren J. Eichler Ecocide Is Genocide: Decolonizing the Definition of Genocide...... 104

Eitan Ginzberg Genocide and the Hispanic-American Dilemma...... 122

Jean-Damascène Gasanabo, Donatien Nikuze, Hollie Nyseth Brehm and Hannah Parks Rwanda’s Inyangamugayo: Perspectives from Practitioners in the Gacaca Transitional Justice Mechanism...... 153

Sources of Holocaust Insight by John K. Roth, reviewed by James J. Snow...... 173

Morris and Ze’evei TheThirty-Year Genocide by Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi, reviewed by Steven A. Usitalo...... 176

The Greek Genocide in American Naval War Diaries: Naval Commanders Report and Protest Death Marches and Massacres in Turkey’s Pontus Region, 1921–1922 by Robert Shenk and Sam Koktzoglou, reviewed by Thomas Blake Earle...... 179

Sources of Holocaust Insight by John K. Roth, reviewed by James J. Snow...... 173

Morris and Ze’evei TheThirty-Year Genocide by Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi, reviewed by Steven A. Usitalo...... 176

The consistent problem of widespread genocide denial is not matched by a wealth of scholarship examining the dynamics of its denial. This issue of Genocide Studies and Prevention is thus divided into two parts; one, which seeks to address this lacuna with articles that address a range of case studies, from the Holocaust to lesser known examples including violent events in India and Turkey, and the other, case studies which reflect various aspects tangential to the issue of denial. In doing so, these articles deepen the scholarly conversation on genocide denial. Termed as the “final stage of genocide,” the denial of genocide is not simply a case of genocidal perpetrators promulgating a revised version of history or stating events did not occur. Rather, as the articles in the first part of this symposium suggest, we must reflect on what we understand when the label of genocide is denied or applied to particular events. With such a wide range of historical and contemporary case studies, the potential is clear for sparking new lines of inquiry and new frames to investigate the issue of genocide denial. It is also our hope that the selected contributions will encourage further research, expanding and delving into denials’ many contexts and forms. The second part of this issue has a few articles that do not fall entirely within the theme of denial. However, these submissions are well within the themes and topics we address in GSP and, therefore, have been included in this issue. This was all the more appropriate given how aspects of denial are implied and, specifically when the discussions in some of these submissions problematize the (legal) definition of genocide. GSP recognizes and celebrates the increasing creativity academics engage in to express their arguments, from in-depth case study work using qualitative interviews, archives, and ethnographic methods to an analysis of social and audiovisual materials including cinema, online videos, and discussion platforms. This innovation reflects the diverse fora through which the dynamics of genocide denial manifest. Taken together, the editorial board welcomes a stimulating discussion based on these diverse submissions on the issue of genocide denial as well as the issues raised by the other articles included in this issue. We would like to extend a hearty thanks to our Guest Editor, Thomas Earl Porter, for his work and collaboration with us in making this special issue possible. Lastly, we also extend a special thanks to our anonymous peer reviewers and the authors themselves for their considerable time and efforts in the review and editorial process in bringing these articles through to publication.

Christian Gudehus Fiza Lee Winter Laura Collins Daniel Bultmann Georgina Holmes Roland Moerland Diana I. Popescu JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz Bablu Chakma Liam Scott Filip Strandberg Hassellind

Christian Gudehus, Fiza Lee Winter, Laura Collins, Daniel Bultmann, Georgina Holmes, Roland Moerland, Diana I. Popescu, JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz, Bablu Chakma, Liam Scott andFilip Strandberg Hassellind. “Editors’ Introduction.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, 2 (2020): 1. ©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1801 Denying the Animosity: Understanding Narratives of Harmony from the Nellie Massacre, 1983 Jabeen Yasmeen Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Maharashtra, India

Introduction In early 2019, India geared up for another general election that would decide if the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi would return to power.1 On the one hand, supporters of Modi vouched for his charisma and the realization of developments promised in the campaigns during the last general election in 2014; but on the other, critics predicted that the threat to the constitutional pillar of secularism may be reinforced with renewed vigor if the BJP returned to power.2 This fear was based on varied developments in the country from 2014–2019. One of them was the fear of the disenfranchisement of about four million people in the state of Assam. The release of the National Register for Citizens (NRC) in Assam had almost four million names missing from its final draft, which threatened to create the largest potential cluster of stateless people, a majority of them being Muslims of East Bengal origin.3 In addition, the Citizenship Amendment Bill of 2016 proposed that citizenship be given to refugees belonging to six persecuted communities from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, which excluded Muslims. These both signal the dangerous shifting of India toward the idea of a pro-Hindu right-wing nation.4 The Citizenship Amendment Bill of 2016 was passed into an Act on December 2019, which led to widespread protests throughout, as well as beyond India;5 these protests were ongoing during the writing of this paper in 2019/2020. Observers equate the Act’s exclusion of Muslims, along with the provisions of the NRC as an early stage of genocide.6 It resonates with Gregory H. Stanton’s identification of the early stages of genocide, which may not be linear.7 The atmosphere of fear generated during the first term of the BJP government became more tangible during its second term. As the country shifts towards non-secularism, it is useful to understand how the fracture has occurred in a nation that has always seemingly been at peace with its multiethnicity and multi- religiosity. Was this peace merely on the surface? Gyanendra Pandey contends in Remembering Partition that in narratives that assert harmony, “the slippages occur in the very accounts that signal such a mutual constitution and that the communities are necessarily fragile and open to question.”8 This article tries to understand this idea of “mutual constitution”9 and fragility through oral narratives from certain periods in recent Indian history. Doing so makes it possible to reflect on how societies in India adhere to a narrative of harmony that had existed between different communities before a conflict breaks out, which denies the existence of any palpable enmity or differences among the communities. This article

1 Joanna Slater and Nisah Masih, “India’s 2019 Elections: What You Need to Know,” The Washington Post, May 22, 2019, accessed January 30, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/03/11/indias-elections-what-you-need- know/. 2 Ibid. 3 Agence France-Presse (AFP), “Assam NRC: Over Four Million People Left Off-Draft Since Enforcement of Exercise, Muslims Majority Among Those Who ‘Fear for Future,’” Firstpost, July 14, 2019, accessed July 15, 2019, https://www. firstpost.com/india/assam-nrc-over-four-million-people-left-off-draft-since-enforcement-of-exercise-muslims-majority- among-those-who-fear-for-future-6989831.html. 4 The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill of 2016 (Bill No. 172 of 2016, July 15, 2016), (Rep. of India), accessed January 20, 2020, https://www.prsindia.org/sites/default/files/bill_files/Citizenship_(A)_bill,_2016_0.pdf. 5 The Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019 (Act No. 47 of 2019, December 12, 2019), (Rep. of India), accessed December 16, 2020, http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2019/214646.pdf. 6 G. Sampath, “Are Fears over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act Misplaced?” The Hindu, December 19, 2019, accessed December 20, 2019, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/are-fears-over-the-citizenship-amendment-act- misplaced/article30341818.ece. 7 Gregory H. Stanton, “The Ten Stages of Genocide,” Genocide Watch, accessed August 1, 2020, https://www.genocidewatch. com/ten-stages-of-genocide. 8 Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India (Contemporary South Asia), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 188. 9 Ibid. Jabeen Yasmeen. “Denying the Animosity: Understanding Narratives of Harmony from the Nellie Massacre, 1983.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, 2 (2020): 2-19. ©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1732 Narratives of Harmony from Nellie, India 3 further seeks to analyze the “slippages” and see where and how societies are “open to question” chiefly in the context of the Nellie Massacre of 1983.10 I also refer to two recent forms of violence in contemporary India, while drawing from the Partition of India in 1947.11 I analyze oral narratives from Nellie to understand how and why the narrators from a conflict-affected society unfailingly emphasize a familial structure to refer to their relationship with members of other communities such as “brothers,” “sisters,” “father-like,” or “mother-like.” In this paper, I argue that, their emphasis on a familial structure hints at the fact that nations and ethnic communities imagine themselves as a family despite underlying problems. Does this choosing to remember only the harmony of the past contribute to a (genocide) denial? If it is indeed denial, does it fuel the conditions for further genocide in the present, or is it an attempt to mend existing fault lines to achieve a saner society? Is there any difference between a Hindu, belonging to the majority (Sikhs, in the case of Partition), asserting peaceful co-existence and a Muslim, belonging to the minority, doing the same? I argue that there is. While both may stand in a position of geographical constraint due to the sharing of neighborhoods and may emerge from values of secularism inculcated in them from being part of a multiethnic society, members of the minority community may also be affected by fear of retaliation from the majority. This paper is divided into three sections. The first section introduces the Nellie Massacre of 1983. It considers oral narratives from Nellie, almost thirty-three years after the event took place. This section underscores how many of the testimonies tend to hold on to a narrative of harmony, but few refer to the problems that had existed before the conflict. The second section goes back in time to narratives from the Partition in 1947 and tries to understand how the concepts of “family” and “brotherhood” is recurrent in these narratives. This section makes it clearer that a sense of perpetual denial exists in consigning the violence to a suddenness and in not accepting that it erupted from within the society. The third section returns to the present to analyze the concept of secularism prevalent in post-Independence India and how this ideal influences the narratives of harmony along with the reality that communities in mixed societies, such as in India, have to coexist with one another. This section also leads to the perpetual challenge of Muslim minorities being seen as the foreigner, which affects narratives in post-conflict societies. These three sections together imply that although conflict-afflicted societies try to project the picture of a harmonious family, there are faultlines that exist and require acknowledgment to heal.

Method This paper chiefly draws upon oral narratives from Nellie as a primary source. They were collected using a non-probability snowball-sampling methodology over the period of a year, primarily between March 2016 and September 2016. The names of the respondents from Nellie I use throughout the paper are fictional. While I stick to a logic of naming the respondents according to their community and gender affiliations, I choose to use fictitious names so as not to endanger the respondents who still live in a sensitive society through the use of their real names. This society still hangs on a delicate balance of harmony, years after the massacre discussed in this paper. In trying to choose, link, and analyze the narratives, I employ the idea of secularism, as embedded in post-Independence Nehruvian ideals, to which scholars such as Needham and Sunder Rajan refer.12 Despite attempts to promote these ideals of secularism in a mixed society such as in India, fractures in society have led to what Gregory Stanton identifies as the early stages of genocide: classification, symbolization, discrimination, and organization.13 In trying to understand the oral narratives from Nellie, I also refer to the scholarship of Gyanendra Pandey, Urvashi Butalia, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Paul R. Brass, Raheel Dhattiwala and others.14 Lastly, in my discussion of recent

10 Ibid.; the Nellie Massacre may also be referred to as “Nellie” throughout the article. 11 Pandey, Remembering Partition, 188. 12 Rajeswari Sunder Rajan and Anuradha Dingwaney Needham, “Introduction,” in The Crisis of Secularism in India, ed. Anuradha Dingwaney Needham and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2009), 1-42. 13 Stanton, The Ten Stages of Genocide. 14 Pandey, Remembering Partition, 188; Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1998); Paul R. Brass, “The Partition of India and Retributive Genocide in the Punjab, 1946-47: Means, Methods and Purposes,” Journal of Genocide Research 5, no. 1 (2003), 72, accessed December 20, 2019, doi: https://

incidents of violence, I draw on secondary sources and, particularly reports from newspapers, many of which are digital publications. The oral narratives collected from my field research will be interspersed throughout the paper.

The 1983 Nellie Massacre and All is Well Nellie is a cluster of approximately sixteen villages in Morigaon in Assam. On February 18, 1983, Hindu Assamese and indigenous tribal neighbors attacked Nellie killing almost 2,000 people in just a span of a few hours. The attacked residents primarily belonged to the Bengali-speaking Muslim community whose predecessors had migrated from former East Bengal, now Bangladesh, from as early as the 1930s. The attack happened at the peak of the Assam Agitation, a movement that had sought to oust infiltrators from neighboring Bangladesh.15 Those attacked were perceived as foreigners. As one of the worst mass-killings in post-Independence India, the Nellie massacre has not gained much representation in mainstream discourse, or academic, and journalistic or popular writings despite its scale and political significance. It is debatable whether the Nellie massacre should be referred to as a massacre and not a genocide. I have observed that although it is referred to as a massacre it should rather be named a genocide due to the assailants’ intent to wipe out a certain community. It was the death of a Parliamentary representative, Hiralal Patowary, in 1979 that became the immediate context of the Assam Agitation or Assam Movement. During the re-election process that followed his death, the number of voters increased significantly. The All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) assumed that that this surge was due to the enlistment of illegal foreigners and demanded that the elections be rescheduled, and the list be revised.16 Nevertheless, assembly elections were declared–almost 45,000 enrolled voters were proved to be foreigners. AASU demanded that voters’ lists for other constituencies also be released.17 Despite prevailing tensions and warnings from senior police officials, elections were held on February 14 and 17, 1983. The leaders of the Assam Movement called people to boycott the elections. While most of Assamese society abstained from voting, a section of the Bengali-speaking Muslim minority voted, which enraged the Assam Movement leaders.18 The participation in the elections by a section of the Bengali-speaking Muslim minority is believed to have led to the massacre. Scholars, such as Makiko Kimura, Sanjoy Hazarika, Monirul Hussain, also cite that the local Lalung (Tiwa) tribe and other scheduled caste19 Hindus in and around Nellie were provoked to believe that the land abandoned by the Bengali-speaking Muslims would become theirs after the massacre.20 Most of the land in Nellie and its neighboring areas had belonged to the Tiwas traditionally but was sold off to the Muslims of East Bengal, who had started migrating into Assam from as early as the 1930s.21 Makiko Kimura argues in her book, The Nellie Massacre of 1983: Agency of Rioters, (the lone academic monograph on the Nellie massacre), that the attackers, which constituted the Tiwas, the Karbis, and the Hindus in the area, had attacked in self-defense22–it was a particularly troubled time in Assam and rumors were rife that the Bengali-speaking Muslims were planning to attack the Tiwa village and the Assamese Hindu villages in the area.23 The locals, both survivors as well as perpetrators, do not assign a historicity

doi.org/10.1080/14623520305657.; Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Remembered Villages: Representations of Hindu-Bengali Memories in the Aftermath of the Partition,” Economic and Political Weekly 31, no. 32 (1996), 2143, accessed October 4, 2018, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4404497; Raheel Dhattiwala, Keeping the Peace: Spatial Differences in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 15 Makiko Kimura, The Nellie Massacre of 1983: Agency of Rioters (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2013), 1. 16 Diganta Sharma, Nellie, 1983 (Jorhat: Ekalabya Prakashan, 2007), 6. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 7. 19 “Scheduled caste” refers to constitutionally recognized groups of people who are considered as lower caste according to Hindu scriptures and practices. 20 Kimura, The Nellie Massacre of 1983, 101. 21 Ibid., 96. 22 Ibid., 106. 23 Ibid., 107.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1732 Narratives of Harmony from Nellie, India 5 to the massacre–they see it as an isolated incident. For them, the cause was more immediate–the elections and self-defense, respectively. A tone of fond remembrance can be detected when Abdul Kazi, a Bengali-speaking Muslim villager from Muladhari in the Nellie area, recalls in an interview with me, how a villager from the Hindu neighborhood offered to escort him back to his village on a dark night.24 This event was before the massacre. Kazi remembers how he was often addressed as Bhai or brother on those days and how his Hindu neighbors worried the roads might not be safe for him to travel at night. They would give him a torch to help him walk back in the darkness.25 Another Muslim respondent, Riyazuddin, in his late fifties recalled his childhood. As children, they did not have any sense of being religiously different. He would visit his friend’s house and be served food by his friend’s mother in their kitchen. Even now, thirty years after the massacre, there would be exchanges of curries with his Hindu neighbors.26 Despite such bonhomie in the past and present, the respondent is forced to question the nature of the harmony that had allowed for such a massacre to happen. The reception of a community, seen as the alien, into the domestic space (in stark contrast to the society before the Partition, as I discuss later), does not seem to guarantee the acceptance of their political identity. Nor does it, as a result, guarantee their acceptance into the social and political space. The simultaneous coexistence of bonhomie and acrimony in a society can be seen as resembling contradictory behavior. Bradley Campbell points out how an individual can be both the savior and the perpetrator during a genocide.27 The pre-massacre society of Nellie seems to reflect this contradictory behavior of being the friendly neighbor as well as the attacker. While Abdul Kazi and Riyazuddin are members of the survivor community, narratives of the community of the accused also reference this sentiment of bonhomie. Lovingly called “father” by all, Mahen Das is a venerated figure for both Hindus and Muslims in the area. While discussing the long history of migration and settlement of the migrant Bengali speaking Muslim community in the interior villages of Nellie, he clarifies, “one cannot say Hindu and Muslims to be different here.”28 He delights in the fact that everyone, irrespective of religion, comes and pays obeisance to him as a community elder as they also accept that he was indicted as one of the major accused in the cases that were filed in court. The respondents in the survivors’ villages refer to how this old man was tied to a pillar in his house when he had tried to protest the massacre, but the old man never brings it up even in a two-hour long discussion. The survivors prefer to believe that the venerated fatherly figure had tried to protect them, while the same father figure remains seemingly oblivious to this myth-making. A Tiwa man, Ramesh Pator, from the neighborhood reports,

[t]he brotherhood among people is very strong here. There was an all-India Muslim istema [religious congregation] organized here. We also co-operated in there. […] People from Upper Assam29 had come. They were expecting the Hindus here to be hostile. They later told that, when they had to walk such a long distance, had difficulties eating and drinking, all were resolved. The little differences remaining in the society was dissolved due to theistema . It was held in 2013.30

As Pator tries to ascertain whether all is well, it slips into his narrative that all might not have been well: the differences are solved gradually. Despite such deliberate slippages, he prefers tocall the bond a brotherhood, while hinting emphatically at the harmony that had consolidated only decades after the massacre.31 This claim to brotherhood is contested in the account of the father of

24 Abdul Kazi, interview with author, September 16, 2016. 25 Ibid. 26 Riyazuddin, interview with author, March 10, 2016. 27 Bradley Campbell, “Contradictory Behaviour During Genocides,” Sociological Forum 25, no. 2 (2010), 296-314, accessed December 22, 2019, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40783395.pdf. 28 Mahen Das, interview with author, September 23, 2016. 31 “Brotherhood” is a very gendered term in these narratives. It speaks of a society where male-to-male inter-community interactions are more prevalent. Bonding amongst women of the two communities in Nellie was not referenced

a person who had dropped out of school due to bullying from the children of other communities. This event was during another phase of violence which happened in the state in the early 2000s against the Bengali-speaking Muslim community. He says,

[d]uring that time, these children could not study in peace. They were threatened that they will be cut into pieces. “Do not come to school.” The teachers were given complaints. He would come to me and say, “Father, how do we go to school?” They would pull his hair, pull his clothes from behind, pinch him. They would hit from behind if he sits in the front, take away his pen or copy. He would come and tell us; we would ask him to go to the teacher since we know no one else. Even if the teacher would scold them, it continued. So, my son stopped going to school.32

This account seems to reiterate an oft-heard statement of children who have been bullied at school: “children are cruel.” Such cruelty may be what children bring and emulate from their elders, their family, and society in general. Bullying may be a situation where the filtered narratives of harmony slipped to reveal how the children are conditioned to perceive and treat someone from a different community. The violence underlying this bullying is a replay of the violence of the Nellie massacre. Both communities must have passed down the memory of the massacre to younger generations. Such threats of violence, likely bullying, indicate how society continues to recover years after the conclusion of violence. Friction in the pre-conflict society is referred to again when a local tribal (Tiwa) leader remembers the social conditions right before the massacre.

These people [Bengali-speaking Muslims] started creating nuisance in our villages around. Nobody would have cows in their shed, they would be stolen. They would steal in people’s houses too, putting the people in trouble. We had our fields where the people were settled. When the paddy would be ripe for harvest, they would reap them off at night. There were some troubles and then Assam Agitation also came in. As far as I know, our people were not very willing to participate in it but, there were instigations of Assam Agitation as well as some influence of the RSS. So, the incident of February 18, 1983 happened.33 This local leader’s version comes dangerously close to denial by blaming the victim community for what happened. He makes it certain that he does not intend to incriminate the Assamese Muslims with whom he shares a very cordial relationship when he refers to them as those “whom we even address as uncles, my father’s friends and all.”34 As one of the leaders of the communities, he seems to be well aware of the fact that his version has to be balanced. He does not want to negate the differences that existed in the pre-conflict society, but he is careful not to implicate his own community. Most of the narratives from Nellie prefer to remember a society in which the neighboring communities coexisted peacefully. Even though they try to conform to the practice of brotherhood and harmony, their narratives complicate the picture of idealistic coexistence. In doing so, sometimes one becomes close to denial by blaming the victims for the problems that led to the attack. When the narrators of both the communities accept that there were, and still are, problems existing within the communities, they tend to indicate an awareness of the possible reasons of animosity and a willingness to prevent it in the future. When they prefer to characterize a society as like a family–brothers, uncles, and fathers–they repeat what is common in many post-genocide survivor narratives: they deny the root cause of the conflict, hence denying the event itself. This pattern of denial of the problem through re-enacting familial bonds with members of the other community as “uncles,” “father,” and “brothers” is an attempt to rearrange the society in a

during the interviews. 32 Muslim Man 2, interview with author, September 16, 2016. 33 Tribal Leader, interview with author, September 24, 2016. 34 Ibid.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1732 Narratives of Harmony from Nellie, India 7 familial structure while also trying to normalize any conflict because families do have everyday minor conflicts. The “rhetoric of family” serves as a “discursory anchor for a host of non-familial references,” observes Leslie J. Miller.35 According to Miller, the “ideal of the harmonious domestic or ‘bourgeois’ family is among the sturdiest set pieces in the modern cultural repertoire,” and we are “overwhelmingly committed to upholding a unified and harmonious image of family life.”36 The idea of a family, thereby, is an image to be “upheld” to the outer eye. What goes on inside may be different from what meets the eye, but the surface has to appear harmonious. The recurring pattern of being a family in a community afflicted by violence therefore may be a façade and thus a denial.

The Partition, 1947, “Brotherhood,” and Denial The denial of violence within and the consignment of violence to the outside is a recurrent pattern in Partition narratives, as Gyanendra Pandey observes.37 This denial occurs with standard stories of exceptional peace and harmony. Such denial is repeated in most of the narratives where the societies fail to address what Pandey remarks as “disorders that is somehow a part of our history too.”38 In 1947, British India was divided into India, and East and West Pakistan.39 Along with a mass exodus, this division, known as the Partition, also led to an episode of unprecedented violence and bloodshed when the communities–Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims–killed, maimed, and raped individuals of the other communities.40 Paul R. Brass considers the Partition a retributive genocide.41 The “genocidal massacres” during the Partition were not ordered by the state nor were they unorganized and spontaneous.42 The violence between the communities was mutual.43 If one considers the Partition a genocide, even though the violence lacked “genocidal intent,” hearing survivors mostly choosing to remember a society that was harmonious right before the Partition becomes increasingly intriguing.44 Urvashi Butalia’s book, The Other Side of Silence, recounts many such narratives where the survivors, regardless of their community, remember the “brotherhood” that existed right before the violence of Partition took over. Butalia cites an interview from Satti Khanna and Peter Chappell’s film on the Partition, A Division of Hearts (1987).45 Murad was a child in Lahore when the Partition happened. He recounts,

[i]n the past Hindus and Muslims lived like brothers, and looked after each other. Even a big landlord would offer all kinds of help when a poor menial worker was getting married. [...] There was a lot of fellow feeling. But when Partition took place, everything got turned upside down. They pierced even infants with their spears […] they started hating each other. There was such harmony before this.46 Murad’s narrative continues to emphasize that there was a strong camaraderie and brotherhood amongst the communities before the Partition violence. Despite referring to the monstrosity of infants being “pierced”, Murad’s narrative returns to underscore that “there was such harmony before this.”47 Along with the violence of the Partition, Murad also chooses to remember a society

35 Leslie J. Miller, “Violent Families and the Rhetoric of Harmony,” The British Journal of Sociology 41, no. 2 (1990), 265, accessed May 6, 2019, https://www.jstor.org/stable/590873. 36 Ibid., 263-264. 37 Pandey, Remembering Partition, 188. 38 Ibid., 174. 39 Gyanendra Pandey, Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories (California: Stanford University Press, 2006), 133 40 Brass, The Partition of India, 76. 41 Ibid., 72. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Satti Khanna and Peter Chappell, dirs., A Division of Hearts (New York: Icarus Films, 1987), 57 minutes. 46 Butalia, The Other Side of Silence, 294. 47 Ibid.

where there was no conflict, thus choosing to overlook that there might have been already existing tensions brewing in pre-Independence India that led the way to the Partition. Even if one discounts Murad’s narrative as the recollections of an adult who was a child then, there are other narratives which came from an adult during the Partition, such as Basant Kaur. Although she speaks of the violence inflicted during the Partition, she also remembers how different communities had lived in close geographical proximity and attended functions with each other’s families–“in our village there were a few Musalmaan [Muslim] families, but we never had any problem. We lived together, there were marriages, we would attend them, we lived fairly close to each other. Close by there were other villages where you would find Musalmaans, Tihai, Saintha, Sadiok, Sadda, small villages.”48 Bir Bahadur Singh, Basant Kaur’s son, also references social proximity in his account, but his narrative gradually addresses what Kaur had preferred to gloss over— the underlying discrimination in the narratives of harmony. Singh starts with how the Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs were a close community with frequent social and economic exchanges. Despite this relationship, there were instances when the Hindus treated the Muslims differently. This was most evident in the exchange of food between the Hindus and Sikhs and the Muslims. The Muslims would have to offer uncooked food to the Hindus and Sikhs when the latter would visit them during any function or otherwise, because the Hindus and Sikhs would not eat food cooked in a Muslim house or with a utensil used by a Muslim. Singh remembers, “you see we used to drink milk from their houses, but the milk had to be in an unused utensil, a new one.”49 He further elaborates that if the Muslims were served food in a Hindu or Sikh house, the bread would be thrown to their plates, so the server does not become polluted. Such differential treatment can be equated with untouchability and caste-violence, as posited by Kalpana Kannabiran.50 Singh’s account is filled with similar instances of such treatment meted out to the Muslims, which he believes was the reason for Partition. His narrative fractures the notion of brotherhood and camaraderie as superfluous and opportunistic: “they would call our mothers and sisters didi [sisters], they would refer to us as brothers, sisters, fathers, and when we needed them they were always there to help, yet when they came to our houses, we treated them so badly.”51 An interviewee in Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasin’s work Borders and Boundaries says, “we neither broke bread with them, nor inter-married, but the rest was fine.”52 Although the Hindu woman must have intended to underline “the rest” where everything was fine, her narrative ends up highlighting the differences and hierarchies–the communities did not have relations that were cordial enough to inter-dine or inter-marry. They were not equal or similar enough. Menon and Bhasin remark that forgetting “deep seated prejudices and taboos” and “deep affection and amity” existed alongside each other is easy.53 Such narratives of a pre- Partition society try to adhere to the idea that all was well in the society. The killings and rapes were seen and projected as a sudden rupture in their peaceful everyday life. Such narratives tend to overlook that fault-lines can be mended only if they are recognized. A genocidal event such as the Partition could not have taken place, if all had lived harmoniously side by side. Although the Partition had left a deep sense of resentment, it simultaneously evoked a “considerable sense of nostalgia.”54 Pandey observes that it is often referred to as the “partition of siblings.”55 Clinging to such nostalgia, communities choose to overlook the bitter fact that the Partition was meant to be a solution to “the ‘Muslim’ answer to ‘Hindu Oppression’ and ‘Hindu Capitalism.’”56

The repeated evocation of brotherhood (or similar familial relations) is a convenient

48 Ibid., 203. 49 Ibid. 50 Kalpana Kannabiran, “Introduction: The Habitations of Violence in India,” in Violence Studies, ed. Kalpana Kannabiran (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016), 18. 51 Ibid., 222. 52 Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 12. 53 Ibid. 54 Pandey, Remembering Partition, 2. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., 27.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1732 Narratives of Harmony from Nellie, India 9 euphemism to express one’s obliviousness to the reality of the situation. Certain narratives of the 1971 Bangladeshi war also resorted to such a tool. Yasmin Saikia interviewed Pakistani army men who had been involved in the war, for her book Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971. She found that the rhetoric of the Bangladeshis as brothers occupied the same space as them being “betrayers.”57 Saikia often encountered an explanation as to why the war had happened–“the Indians had infiltrated and manipulated the Bengalis.”58 The revolt of the Bengali officers in the East Bengal Regiment in March 1971 still perplexes the Pakistani Military academy– they still refer to the revolt as “Brothers killing Brothers.”59 Pakistan was territorially divided into East and West Pakistan. Punjabis dominated the west while Bengalis constituted the majority in the east. The Punjabi factor slowly established its prominence in Pakistan’s identity and politics with the support of the Urdu-speaking immigrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The state increasingly began to favor the Urdu-speaking groups in West Pakistan with inequitable distribution of wealth between the East and West, economic exploitation, restrictions on Bengali speech in public sphere, and lack of political representation in the country’s national parliament.60 These political and social realities were sidelined when the Pakistani army men still tried to grasp why and how the war had happened. Reference to their brotherhood and explaining the war as a result of India’s interference seems to obliterate the “physical, emotional, political and cultural” divisions that had seeped into the two divisions of Pakistan.61 Similar denial of violence in pre-genocide societies by post-genocide narratives such as in Nellie and after the Partition may be illustrated with Dipesh Chakrabarty’s explanation of the tussle between nostalgia, trauma, and history. Chakrabarty explains in the context of survivors of Partition in the east, viz. Bengal, that “a traumatized memory has a narrative structure which works on a principle opposite to that of any historic narrative,” and the memory has to “place the [e]vent within a shared mythic construction of the past that gives force to the claim of the victim.”62 Chakrabarty refers to a collection of essays called Chere Asha Gram (The Abandoned Village). The essays were written with a sense of tragedy where the Partition is “an inexplicable event” for the survivors.63 They express a sense of “stunned disbelief” at the Partition.64 A running theme in this book reads, “how inexplicable it all was—neighbours turned against neighbours after years of living together in bonds of intimacy and affection, friends took up arms against friends. How did this come to pass?”65 Chakrabarty argues that the difference between history and memory is that “history seeks to explain the event, the memory of pain refuses the historical explanation and sees the event causing the pain as a monstrously irrational aberration.”66 Genocides and events of conflict in mixed societies thus become “irrational aberration” that cannot be explained by history.67 The members of the majority community may want to believe that the aberration was unaccountable, notwithstanding the overt or subvert subjugation that they might have subjected the minorities to. Chakrabarty points out how secular meant the members of the minority community had to adapt the ways of the majority, not the other way around. Such subtle coercions in a mixed society indicate how the idea of secular can become narrow and less accommodating.

57 Yasmin Saikia, Women, War and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971 (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2011), 265. 58 Ibid., 272. 59 Ibid., 72. 60 Ibid., 46. 61 Ibid. 62 Chakrabarty, Remembered Villages, 2143. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., 2144. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid.

Secularism, Coexistence, and the “Foreigner” In post-Independence India, the idea of secularism can be attributed to Jawaharlal Nehru.68 Syed Mufti observed that “the ideal of the new Indian nation for Nehru was based on a non-identitarian ‘Indian-ness’ which would bear (only) the marks of modern citizenship.”69 Such secularism was difficult to implement in a country where even the ideologies of the leaders of the “official nationalism” before independence was predominantly Hindu, such that “the terms of national self-identifications tended to privilege Hindu identifications over those of other communities.”70 Hindu-Muslim conflicts were not uncommon in pre-Independence India. One of the first Hindu-Muslim conflict recorded was in 1859, when Hindus had taken out processions which passed mosques during the time of prayer. Ganapati (Ganesh of the Hindu pantheon) festivals had become a medium to realign the idea of an Indian with that of a Hindu.71 It was the beginning of the formulation and absorption of the extreme Hinduism ideals. The census taken by the British administration further strengthened the “self-awareness of numerical strength and territorial reach objectifying Hindu-Muslim consciousness.”72 When the Hindu political parties in the 1980s rose into power, a notable section of the majority in post-Independence India had begun to believe in this “homogenous Hindu identity and culture as coterminous with the nation, India.”73 They all clamored to achieve Gandhi’s vision of a Ramrajya, an ideal state under Lord Ram, the incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the Hindu god, ignited by a national imagination where “Muslims and Christians remain foreigners and outsiders until such time as they give up their religious difference.”74 India had become a nation where the majority Hindu perceived minority rights as an “appeasement” of the minority rather than as an attempt to ensure protection of all religions in “a hugely heterogenous nation.”75 The political mobilization of the Hindus in the name of achieving Ramrajya was cunningly, as well as ironically, rooted in the idea of the equalitarian Ramrajya envisioned by Gandhi. Gandhi’s usage of the term to propagate the dream of a secular, peaceful, and efficient nation has been appropriated by the hate politics of post-Independence India to arrive on December 6, 1992 at the demolition of Babri Masjid (Mosque), which allegedly stood in the place of a Ram temple and also led to the flaring up of the communal riots soon after in several parts of the country. Observing such recurring violence in post-independence India, I would posit that implementation of secularism in India is almost an unattainable utopia–complicated and asserted further by recurrent incidents of communal violence. It is within such parameters of secularism that narrators recounting incidents of communal violence, such as the Nellie massacre, can be understood. It is the ideal of coexistence that a mixed society is expected to follow, which makes the narrators fall back on the narratives of harmony, relegating the fault-lines behind it. Raheel Dhattiwala explains how neighboring practices in mixed societies affect occurrences and narratives of violence. In her book, Keeping the Peace, aptly subtitled Spatial Differences in Hindu- Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002, Dhattiwala refers to the Hindu-Muslim equation in Ahmedabad, a city in Gujarat. In contemporary India, Gujarat witnessed one of the worst incidents of violence (or rather, pogrom), namely the Godhra riots.76 Dhattiwala investigates two neighborhoods in Ahmedabad in Gujarat. One, Ram Rahim Nagar, remained unaffected by the riots in the city in 2002, and the other, Santoshnagar, adjacent to Ram Rahim Nagar, witnessed casualties. Dhattiwala finds that there might be “ethnic resentment” between the two communities, but in Ram Rahim Nagar harmony prevailed due to the local leadership. Violence was put in check through “informal

68 Sunder Rajan and Needham, Introduction, 1-42. 69 Ibid., 7. 70 Ibid. 71 Shabnum Tejani, Indian Secularism: A Social and Intellectual History 1890–1950 (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2007), 55. 72 Dhattiwala, Keeping the Peace, 11. 73 Tejani, Indian Secularism, 88. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid., 20. 76 Dhattiwala, Keeping the Peace, 3; Pandey, Remembering Partition, 187.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1732 Narratives of Harmony from Nellie, India 11 monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms.”77 In some scenarios, victims and perpetrators are forced to live as neighbors because they cannot go anywhere else.78 In riot-prone cities in Gujarat, The Disturbed Areas Act, 1986, “forbids the exchange of property between Hindus and Muslims to prevent distress selling.”79 Living in close proximity is not a choice for many. Dhattiwala concludes that people in conflict affected societies learn to maintain “superficial relations” with their neighbors, even when they do not trust one another.80 Even if the 1986 Disturbed Areas Act does not apply to Nellie, the compulsion of coexistence does influence the narration of harmony—the survivors cannot leave Nellie (or their homes) after the massacre. In Nellie, the villages of the Bengali-speaking Muslims are surrounded by the Assamese Hindu and tribal villages. Many narrators would reflect that they have a single road via the Hindu villages to connect themselves to the outer world. If they were to express their grief and anger, they imagine that it would inevitably put them in a geographically vulnerable position. At the same time, the Hindu and tribal attackers also realize that they have to coexist with their Muslim neighbors, and they constantly remind themselves of the brotherhood that exists amongst them.81 The idea of coexistence reinforces the narrative of peace. Narratives of survivors, when they recollect the peaceful times and familial affinity before an event of conflict, may be speaking out from different positions, which may include fear of retaliation, being ostracized, or revoking and thereby encouraging further violence. Taking an optimistic view, one can also consider this as a holding on to the values of humanism and secularism, however idealistic they might be, inculcated during the conception of the nation by early leaders such as Nehru and Gandhi. Two recent stories elaborate on how narratives of violence and denial of animosity are affected by spaces of coexistence. On March 27, 2018, Asansol, a town in the Indian state of West Bengal, erupted into violence over a Ram Navami procession (a Hindu festival that marks the birth of Lord Ram).82 Three people were killed. A year after the riots, a report cites the residents of Sinthla Dangal and the adjoining Ram Krishna Dangal, a Hindu-majority pocket involved in the riots, claiming that all is well after the riots of March 2018. However, the reporter senses that “there might not be any surface tension but a strong undercurrent is palpable.”83 This undercurrent is hidden in the story of Sandeep Raut, who lost his mother during the riots and asserts that the Bihari (referring to the Hindus) population will not attend the public meeting of West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, who is accused of being pro-Muslim.84 Contrary to what is seen as an “undercurrent,” the riots in Asansol were in the news due to the exemplary act of a Muslim cleric, Imam Imdadul Rashidi, who lost his sixteen-year old son, Shibghatullah Rashidi, in the riots. When the riots broke out, Shibghatullah was studying in the nearby Madrassa (Muslim religious school). He rushed out for the safety of home but ended up entering the Hindu colony. Imam Rashidi was informed by the authorities near midnight that a “mutilated body of a teenaged boy” was found that could be his son.85 The Imam requested that the news not be made public, believing “if people get to know, hot-headed boys will attack the Hindus in the darkness.”86 When an estimated 10,000 people gathered for the burial later that day,

77 Dhattiwala, Keeping the Peace, 135. 78 Ibid., 139. 79 Ibid., 137; The Gujarat Prohibition of Transfer of Immovable Property and Provision for Protection of Tenants from Eviction from Premises in Disturbed Areas Act of 1991 (Gujarat Act No. 12 of 1991, April 4, 1991), (State of Gujarat, Rep. of India), accessed January 20, 2020, https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/4609/1/disturbedareasact. pdf. 80 Ibid., 145. 81 Villagers in Nellie and Silchang, interview with author, September 22, 2016. 82 Arshad Ali, “Lok Sabha Election 2019: Riot-hit Asansol Split Between TMC, BJP,” DNA, April 28, 2019, accessed May 13, 2019, https://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-lok-sabha-election-2019-riot-hit-asansol-split-between-tmc-bjp-2743835. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 85 Harsh Mander, “Miracles in Asansol: As Coal City Burnt in Hatred, a Muslim Cleric and Hindu Temple Healed with Love,” Scroll.in, 12 April, 2018, accessed May 13, 2019, https://scroll.in/article/875325/miracles-in-asansol-as-coal-city- burnt-in-hatred-a-muslim-cleric-and-hindu-temple-healed-with-love. 86 Ibid.

the crowd was angry and baying for revenge. Imam Rashidi pleaded to the crowd, “if you love me then I ask from you at this moment only one promise. That with your tongue or with your hand, none of you will cause any harm to any Hindu.”87 Another report quotes him saying, “if you love me then don’t indulge in any violence and let peace prevail. I don’t want any more lives to be lost. If you resort to any violence, then I will leave the mosque and the city.”88 His address placated the crowd in such a way that Muslim boys from the neighborhood took turns guarding the few Hindu properties in the Muslim-populated area of Raniganj, where the incident happened. Imam Rashidi’s plea for peace came to be heralded as heroic. He had even refused to name his son’s killers. His act is said to have saved Asansol, or possibly India, from another bloodbath.89 Reports on Imam Rashidi simultaneously reminded one of a similar act of refusal to be involved in the web of violence by Yashpal Saxena, father of Ankit Saxena, a Hindu boy from Delhi, who was murdered by the relatives of his Muslim girlfriend right in front of his parents.90 Despite political pressures from some right-wing parties to turn it into a cause for riots, Yashpal Saxena refused to blame the entire Muslim community for the crime of a few. In a few months, Yashpal Saxena went on to organize Iftar, the event when Muslims break their fast during the holy month of Ramadan, as a call for peace and brotherhood.91 Both Rashidi and Saxena have been hailed as heroes who mitigated what could have turned into larger events of violence. Rashidi and Saxena called for peace in their cities: no other family should suffer what their families have. Saxena says that Ankit had friends from all religions, and he would frequently visit all places of worship. These were values instilled in his upbringing. Asansol, the city where Rashidi lives, has the phrase “City of Brotherhood” written over the gate that stands at its entrance.92 This narrative of harmonious dwelling and brotherhood incongruously exists amidst the incidents of violence. The idea of a secular nation still holds strong throughout these narratives despite the bitterness experienced by the various affected communities. But, what does peace mean in such settings? As both fathers call for peace in the society and requests not to politicize the deaths of their sons, can we find a difference between their emphasis on unity and forgiveness based on the communities they belong to? Are their positions different because one belongs to the minority while the other belongs to the majority? Rashidi’s plea could have been based on the genuine gesture of forgiveness or on a canny calculation of fear as a minority. The insistence on peace finds a place even when they would want justice to be implemented. Both the fathers say that they would want justice for their sons’ deaths while remaining unwilling to incriminate the other community.93 Amidst such mobilization toward peace, a minute crack exists in the narrative. Despite being hailed as a national hero, in an interview with Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), Rashidi speaks of how certain people question his citizenship.94 They accuse him of being a Bangladeshi. In response, Rashidi has to emphasize that his forefathers were freedom fighters during India’s struggle for

87 Ibid. 88 Suvojit Bagchi and Soumya Das, “Asansol Imam’s Call for Peace Comes in for Praise,” The Hindu, April 2, 2018, accessed May 13, 2019, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/asansol-imams-call-for-peace-comes-in-for-praise/ article23408750.ece. 89 Sumanta Ray Chaudhuri, “Won’t Name Anyone as Suspect, Says Imam Whose Son was Killed in Asansol Clashes,” Hindustan Times, April 2, 2018, accessed May 13, 2019, https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/won-t-name- anyone-as-suspect-says-imam-whose-son-was-killed-in-asansol-clashes/story-OCxGUgVrgDLWZjg9v932tJ.html. 90 India Today Web Desk, “Delhi Photographer Ankit Saxena’s Murder: All You Need to Know In 10 Points,” India Today, February 4, 2018, accessed May 15, 2019, https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/delhi-cm-kejriwal-condemns-ankit- saxena-s-murder-all-you-need-to-know-in-10-points-1161619-2018-02-04. 91 Harsh Mander, “With his Multi-Faith Iftar in Delhi, Ankit Saxena’s Father Sets an Example for These Fraught Times,” Scroll.in. 7 June, 2018, accessed May 15, 2019, https://scroll.in/article/881477/with-his-multi-faith-iftar-in-delhi-ankit- saxenas-father-sets-an-example-for-these-fraught-times. 92 Shiv Sahay Singh, “Communal Divide to the Fore in Asansol,” The Hindu, April 27, 2017, accessed May 17, 2019, https:// www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/communal-divide-to-the-fore-in-asansol/article26960631.ece. 93 Ibid.; Mander, With his Multi-Faith Iftar. 94 Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), “Watch: Even After His Son was Killed, He Appealed for Peace,” Imam Imdadul Rashidi interviewed by CJP, YouTube video, uploaded 11 April, 2019, 00:02:37, accessed May 14, 2019, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=wTj1TN0_A7w.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1732 Narratives of Harmony from Nellie, India 13 freedom, and he loves his country because it is in his blood. Saxena, on the other hand, never had to address this question of belonging, even when he challenges the Hindu-right wing heavy- weights by refusing to toe their line. The Hindu-right may see him as a betrayer or a coward, but his identity and his right to belong in the nation are never questioned. The ideas of secularism are exhausted when Rashidi’s act of forgiveness quickly transforms into a challenge to his citizenship. He has to invoke his ancestral identity and his lineage, as well as right to belong. Being a member of the Muslim minority, Rashidi has to be ready to defend his identity as an Indian. For a Muslim, the threat of being denounced as the outsider who does not belong is omnipresent.95 In a society torn by violence, when narrators assert the presence of harmony, their assertions may sound similar, but such declarations may arise from different origins. For a member of the Muslim minority, these statements of harmony may be based out of fear of retaliation simply by being the minority, and at other times, to claim their belonging. As Dipesh Chakrabarty said, the minority has to adapt to the ways of the majority to appear secular.96 For a member of the Hindu majority, this might not be the case. For a Muslim, it might be an attempt to not be reminded, to not remind others, or to not be ostracized as a foreign invader who lingered for too long. The perception of the Muslim as the foreign invader has become deep-rooted in places such as Gujarat. The Gujarati Hindu majority has pathologically imbibed the perception of the Muslim as the foreign invader throughout the centuries. Dhattiwala cites Gujarati linguist and author Ganesh Devy, who says, “there is only the deep, almost genetic, knowledge of Somnath and the invasions and an accumulation of prejudices.”97 Thus, it becomes a given in Gujarat that Muslims are still the invaders who do not belong. The pattern of not belonging is reiterated in the narratives from Nellie, when Riyazuddin remembers the years of the Assam Agitation.98 The processions during this period would have slogans such as, “Mukhe daari haate paan/Chalo Miyan Pakistan” (Beard around the chin and betel- leaves in hand/Miyan, let us send you to Pakistan).99 Miyan is a term of reverence in Urdu but has come to derogatorily mean the Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam, especially those whose ancestors had migrated from the district of Mymensingh in Bangladesh.100 In the Hindu-right narrative, Pakistan is often evoked as the space where Muslims rightfully belong.101 Although the Assam Agitation was not explicitly communal, Hindu-right ideas gradually influenced it as the Rashitriya Swayam Sevak (RSS) penetrated it. The Nellie massacre is believed to be an outcome of the provocative speeches of the Hindu right, as well as extremist Muslim leaders.102 In the documentary film What the Fields Remember, 103 a survivor remembers how his little daughter was killed in the massacre. A day earlier, she had joined one of the processions of the Assam Agitation with placards that said, “foreigners go away.” In the heart-breaking moment when she lay dying, after the attack the next day, she asked her father, “Are we the foreigners, then?” The stoic father today remembers how the little girl did not realize who was considered the foreigner and why.104 Despite being of such political importance, the little girl’s death went unaccounted for. The killings of Nellie massacre were hushed in the public memory. Of the 688 cases filed, the

95 Thus, for a Muslim, the threat of being denounced as the outsider who does not belong is omnipresent. 96 Chakrabarty, Remembered Villages, 2149. 97 Dhattiwala, Keeping the Peace, 76; Gujarat experienced extreme Hindu-Muslim violence not during the 1947 Partition, but in the years after. In September 1990, the nation-wide campaign to construct a temple in Ayodhya in honor of Hindu god, Ram, was officiated form the city of Somnath in Gujarat. Somnath temple was a frequent target of Mahmud Ghazni during the eleventh century, which shaped the memory of the Muslim being an invader in Gujarat. See, Dhattiwala, Keeping the Peace, 13-15. 98 Riyazuddin, interview with author, March 10, 2016. 99 Ibid. 100 This is based on my observation as a local resident of Assam. 101 Pandey, Routine Violence, 132. 102 Monirul Hussain, The Assam Movement: Class, Ideology and Identity (New Delhi: Manak Publications, 1993), 132. 103 Subashri Krishnan, dir. What the Fields Remember (Public Service Broadcasting Trust, 2015), YouTube video, 00:51:58, uploaded March 13, 2016, accessed Aug 10, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=599LmFwHJwU. 104 Krishnan, dir., What the Fields Remember, 00:29:34-00:30:32.

police submitted charge-sheets for 310 cases.105 When the Assam Accord was signed in 1985,106 the perpetrators were given total impunity, a major aspect that indicates denial. The state fails to acknowledge the wrong done. The state is perpetually nervous to permit dialogue regarding the massacre. In an interview with journalist Diganta Sharma, who wrote a very informative book on the massacre, I was told how Makiko Kimura’s talk at a reputed institute in Assam was canceled thirty minutes before the scheduled time.107 Kimura reports in her book that police had asked her not to visit Nellie for research without them accompanying her.108 The state’s precautions are further accentuated by facts such as that the Tiwari Commission report on the massacre was never publicly released. Commission reports on violence in India often face this fate: Jaganmohan Reddy Commission of Inquiry on the Gujarat riots of 1969, judicial inquiry by S.B. Bhansle after the Worli riots in 1974 in Mumbai, Justice Saxena Commission report on the 1980 Moradabad Riots, inquiry commission after Bhagalpur riots in 1989, Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission report on Mumbai riots 1992-93 are a few of the reports that have not been given due attention.109 The refusal to permit discussions around such instances of violence is also a negation of the possibility to address the differences in the society and thereby a denial of the responsibility to hold the guilty accountable. Such caution is especially employed when the guilty is a majority. The refusal to attend to reports of the several commissions over the period of time has not diminished the possibility of recurring violence. Does the state really deny the existence of fault-lines, or is it the bias inherent in the state controlled by the majority? Such silences by the state influence the narrators’ position and ability to speak in the aftermath of violence; the minority becomes conscious of possible retaliation, while the Hindu majority, though, can be sensitive toward the conflict situation, can also bask in a state- propagated idea of immunity. The confidence provided by having a state-supported appearance of having immunity, especially when a person belongs to the majority, was evident during the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. On October 31, 1984, when the prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by two Sikh security guards, a three-day pogrom ensued. Sikhs were hunted down throughout Delhi in a series of planned attacks, mostly by Hindu mobs, supervised by Congress (I),110 the political party in power.111 It was primarily neighbors and other locals involved in the attack, but the survivors feared further attacks if they pointed them out. The survivors, however, did not hesitate to “freely and unjustifiably” blame the Dalits and Muslims.112 That the survivors were scared of implicating the Hindu perpetrators seem understandable, given that the latter had a certain protection from the state. The threat of having to share space as neighbors in the future also triggered the fear. In contrast, incriminating the Muslims and the Dalits, who had no participation in the attack, is noteworthy. As marginalized communities, the Muslims and the Dalits were vulnerable and definitely had no state protection. Implicating them seemed to be the next possible thing to attaining justice by the Sikhs, who were considered a part of the Hindu majority before the anti-Sikh riots. The fear of the majority Hindu in power and in the neighborhoods, along with the callousness toward the minorities influenced the survivor narratives. Thus, narratives of survivors and perpetrators emerge from different places of securities and insecurities, which leads to the determination on whether these narratives will reflect the discord or the patterns of harmony and brotherhood.

105 Kimura, The Nellie Massacre of 1983, 74. 106 Problem of Foreigners in Assam, Memorandum of Settlement (August 15, 1985), (State of Assam, Rep. of India), accessed August 19, 2020, https://assamaccord.assam.gov.in/sites/default/files/swf_utility_folder/departments/ assamaccord_medhassu_in_oid_3/portlet/level_1/files/The%20Assam%20Accord%20-%20English.pdf. 107 Diganta Sharma, interview with author, March 11, 2016. 108 Kimura, The Nellie Massacre of 1983, 133. 109 “1984 is a Symptom of a Bigger Disease,” Livemint, August 27, 2018, accessed January 20, 2019, https://www.livemint. com/Opinion/Ejr322Pwxl1qOPs7bTayZO/1984-is-a-symptom- of-a-bigger-disease.html. 110 The political party Congress split in 1978 to form two fractions, Congress (O), ‘O’ signifying old, and Congress (I), ‘I’ stands for Indira (Gandhi). 111 Anshu Saluja, “Reading ’84 Through the Lens of Oral History,” in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 75 (2014), 1362-1369, accessed January 23, 2020, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44158530. 112 Ibid; Dalits are constitutionally considered to within the Scheduled caste.

The insecurity that accompanies being the vulnerable and lesser minority and belonging to the community perceived as the foreigner who needs to be ousted shaped the narratives of the survivors of the Nellie massacre. This fear is renewed and further affirmed during the updating of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam. NRC was prepared for the first time under a directive of the Ministry of Home Affairs during the Census of 1951. The census documents containing information on the relevant particulars of every person enumerated were copied in registers. In 2013, the process of updating the NRC had begun in Assam. Citizens had to prove their family-tree and their connection to a legacy data, a number that had been given during the NRC of 1951. The first draft of the updated NRC was released on December 31, 2017 andthe complete draft on July 3, 2018. The complete draft left out nearly four million people, creating a potential pool of the world’s largest stateless population. The final draft released on August 31, 2019 finally left out almost 1.9 million applicants.113 The threat of religion-based citizenship in India goes against the very foundational ideas of secularism that Nehru had envisioned, “a non-identitarian ‘Indian-ness’ which would bear (only) the marks of modern citizenship,” as embedded in the Constitution of India.114 The Citizenship Amendment Act, 2020 (CAA) became a major instrument in asserting “the homogenous Hindu identity and culture as coterminous with the nation, India.”115 CAA indicates that India has entered an early stage of genocide.116 Genocide Watch marks India as having reached stage five of genocide, i.e., organization, when the state uses militias, formal or informal, to provide deniability of state responsibility, organizes police to spy, arrest, torture, and murder people suspected of opposing the dominant leaders, and motivating to target the religious majority, namely the Hindus, through mass media.117 Due to the CAA along with the NRC, India is simultaneously undergoing several stages of genocide—classification: distinguishing people by religion; symbolization: distinguishing the target group by dress and appearance; and discrimination: a dominant group using laws to deny rights to other groups.118 The NRC becomes the instrument of classification of “the alien” by their religion and descent, and together with the CAA of 2019, it has the potential to become an instrument of discrimination by taking away citizenship rights. Along with classification and discrimination, symbolization and polarization can also be seen as conspicuously present in today’s India. When I began my field visits in Nellie in early 2016, the process of applying to be included in the NRC had just begun. Many individuals, even those who were well-educated, were struggling to understand the different clauses and requirements of the application process. In Nellie, most of the people are not very literate. There were bound to be confused about the application process and the paperwork involved, anomalies were thus inevitable. In the interviews during the early phase of my research, there were scattered references to the process and how it has made them fearful of being underlined as the foreigner, even if they have all the proper documents. For them, the process of applying to be included in the NRC list was a repetition of the rigorous process of which they had to endure in order to prove their citizenship when they were declared a doubtful voter (D-Voter)–individuals who were classified as D-voters would be discredited as citizens and have their voting rights challenged. Nevertheless, they also welcomed the decision to update the database of citizens, since doing so would prove that they were not foreigners but rather rightful citizens. In subsequent years as I visited them, the community became more careful in discussing the massacre and the documents they might or might not have. While traveling in public auto-

113 Home and Political Department, White Paper on Foreigner’s Issue, Government of Assam, 2015, accessed January 20, 2019, http://onlineedistrict.amtron.in/web/home-and-political-department/white-paper. 114 Sunder Rajan and Needham, Introduction, 7; The Constitution of India, (January 26, 1950), (Rep. of India), accessed August 19, 2020, https://www.india.gov.in/sites/upload_files/npi/files/coi_part_full.pdf. 115 Tejani, Indian Secularism, 88; Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019, (Act No. 47 of 2019, December 12, 2019), (Republic of India), accessed December 16, 2020, http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2019/214646.pdf 116 CAA of 2019. 117 “Ten Stages of Genocide Interactive World Map,” Genocide Watch, accessed January 1, 2020, https://www. genocidewatch.com/ten-stages-of-genocide-world-map; Stanton, The Ten Stages of Genocide. 118 Stanton, The Ten Stages of Genocide.

rickshaws crowded with other passengers, I would overhear how someone’s daughter had to rush to her parental home in Nellie for verification of documents, and other similar instances. Toward the end of my research period by 2019, people were cautious with their responses during interviews; they were suspicious, and they vocalized their suspicion, too. The interviewees in later stages were dismissive of the question of whether all was or has been well. The missing names in the NRC list becomes a threat to the Muslim community when seen together with the CAA of 2019, which has provisions to bestow citizenship upon people of six communities, namely Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians, Jains and Buddhists, from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.119 If we read the NRC together with the provisions of the CAA, it becomes logically comprehensible that the Hindu-Bengali community may or may not make a large share of those left out of the NRC list, but if they indeed are left out, they might be able to reapply for citizenship, even without any documents. Similarly, it can be understood that the Bengali-speaking Muslims, left out of the NRC can be deprived of their citizenship, if the NRC and CAA are read together. The Bengali-speaking Muslim community has become more wary of being at the receiving end yet again. Over the years, the Nellie massacre had become a metonymy for all the injustices meted out to them. Although the media has repeatedly evoked the massacre as a significant political moment for the community, the community remained tight-lipped. A gradual polarization in the discourse has emerged over the years. For instance, individual artists have made music videos replete with hate-inducing images and songs that threaten foreigners with dire consequences. Although a song occasionally evokes the concept of “Hindu-Muslim Bhai Bhai,” i.e., Hindus and Muslims are brothers, it simultaneously falls back on the image of the Bengali-speaking Muslim as the infiltrator who needs to be killed and not merely chased away or deported.120 In the backdrop of such changing political and social dynamics, the narrative in Nellie becomes even more cautious—a society once seared by such large-scale violence cannot be immune to the prospect of its repetition.

Conclusion The various narratives of survivors and perpetrators of various violent events in India prove that violence afflicted societies are situated on a fragile balance. This fragility is revealed in the caution the narrators exercise in their narratives, whether they be narratives from the Partition, the Gujarat Pogrom, or the Nellie Massacre. The narratives from these events can be seen as representative of the numerous other events of violence and the societies and communities that evolve after the occurrence of such events. These narratives emerge from various positions of the narrators. When a narrator acknowledges the fault-lines that exist or might have existed before the event to the interviewer, most often an outsider, the narrators express an understanding that recognizing the differences is an important step towards preventing similar occurrences of violence in the future. In contrast, when the narrators try to hold on to narratives of harmony from the past– often grasping on to the image of a family and presenting the events as normal family skirmishes– they may be trying to assuage violence in the present or prevent violence in the future. Besides the fact that it may be a willful overlooking of the reality, such narratives of harmony can also emerge from various political and social locations of the narrators On the one hand, assuming that both communities are sincere in their assertion of a harmonious past in their narration is judicious, their claim to brotherhood may indeed be true. However, the narrator, belonging to the politically dominant majority, also speaks from a position of security. Although they might fear that the opposing communities may attack them, they are mostly secure in the knowledge that they are the numerically stronger community. They may be aware of the restrictions of geography in a mixed society, but they know they will have more power to retaliate in case of any unforeseen incident. On the other hand, the minority community does not have numbers in their favor, which they know. Their narratives of harmony may originate from a point of fear of numbers. Similar to the

119 CAA of 2019. 120 Suraj Gogoi and Abhinav Borbora, “In the Guise of Protest Music, Assamese Artists Churn Out Hate Speech,” The Wire, May 9, 2019, accessed May 15, 2019, https://thewire.in/the-arts/assam-protest-music-citizenship-bill-hate-speech.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1732 Narratives of Harmony from Nellie, India 17 majority, they are sensitive to the realities and vulnerabilities of coexisting and the challenges that could stem from communal conflict. As the minority, the Muslims in India, and particularly the Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam, have to constantly encounter challenges with regards to their identity, their right as citizens, and the slur of being foreigners. Many times, conflicts arise out of this challenge itself. When the narrators speak in a post-conflict society, they are mindful of these environments in which they stand. Although the positions from which they speak may justify their narratives, not addressing the reality of the fragility and the existing differences will only further deepen the divide.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my PhD supervisor Dr. Paulomi Chakraborty for her feedback on the article and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay for funding my attendance in the conference “Denial: The Final Stage of Genocide” at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where parts of this paper were first selected and presented.

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©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1732 Re-assessing the Genocide of Kurdish Alevis in Dersim, 1937-38 Dilşa Deniz University of California San Diego, California, USA

Introduction In the process of nation-state formation, many governments have engaged in homogenization policies in order to establish political, social, and cultural hegemony. The Turkish state’s intensive efforts to Turkify and Islamize Anatolia represent a prime example of this phenomenon. Using census data to estimate casualties, I argue that the events of 1937-38, in the province that was then called Dersim, in Eastern Turkey, should be classified as a genocide. Although state documents of that period remain inaccessible, we know that military operations continued for more than a period of two years, employing a large number of army troops.1 They used militaristic technology including poisonous gas and heavy bombardments,2 and they destroyed the living conditions of Alevi Kurds of Dersim through the burning of forests, fields, and villages.3 Children were forcibly removed from their natal families.4 While the numbers of those killed still remain lost in history, I examine archival records, memoirs, and first-hand accounts to arrive at estimated figures. These make it clear that the actions of the Turkish military led to mass killings and had a devastating impact on survivors, both mentally and physically.

Dersim: The Center of Kurdish Alevis As a strategic and unique highland characterized by deep valleys, forests, and rivers, Dersim served as a true refuge for Kurdish Alevis.5 Since the period of the Ottoman Empire to the present, Dersim has “stood markedly at odds with the politico-cultural landscape of 1930s Turkey,”6 for its non-Turkish ethnic character and, more importantly, for the predominance of the “heretic religion” of the Alevis, who represented for the Turkish state a population that “needed to be corrected and their savagery to be dispel[led].”7 As such, this article discusses the Dersim genocide as part of the Turkish nation state’s homogenization policies and, particularly those that took place inside its borders soon after its foundation between 1920-1923. The policies implemented since 1930—especially those that followed the Iskan Kanunu/Resettlement Law of 1934 (hereafter Resettlement Law)8—laid the foundations for the systematic, continual, and violent Turkification and Islamization of Anatolia. Dersim was targeted soon after by the Kemalist cadres because of its inhabitants’ religion and Kurdish ethnic background.

1 Kaynak Yayınları, Genelkurmay Belgelerinde Kürt İsyanları II (Istanbul: Kaynak Yayınları, 2011), 109-132; Bilal N. Şimşir, İngiliz Belgeleriyle Türkiye’de Kürt Sorunu (1924-1938): Şeyh Sait, Ağrı, ve Dersim Ayaklanmaları (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1991), 301; Kendal, “Kurdistan in Turkey,” in People Without A Country, The Kurds and Kurdistan, ed. Gerard Chaliand (London: Zed, 1980), 67. 2 Dersim Gazetesi, “Zehirli Gazlar Nazi Almanyası’ndan Alınmış!,” Dersim Gazetesi, May 15, 2019, accessed July 8, 2020, http://dersimgazetesi.net/zehirli-gazlar-almanyadan-bombardiman-ucaklari-amerikadan-alinmis/; “Dersim Katliamı Ile Ilgili Yeni Belgeler Ortaya Çıktı: Dersim’de Nazi Gazları,” Pirha, May 11, 2019, accessed July 7, 2020, https://www. pirha.net/dersim-katliami-ile-ilgili-yeni-belgeler-ortaya-cikti-dersimde-nazi-gazlari-171973.html/11/05/2019/; Nuri Dersimi, Kürdistan Tarihinde Dersim (Diyarbakır: Dilan, 1991), 301; Kendal, Kurdistan, 67. 3 Kaynak, Genelkurmay Belgeleri II, 202; Faik Bulut, Dersim Raporları (Istanbul: Evrensel Basım Yayım, 2009), 341; Mahmut Akyürekli, Dersim Kürt Tedibi 1937-1938 (Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2012), 159. 4 Nezahat Gündoğan and Kazım Gündoğan, Dersim’in Kayıp Kızları (Istanbul: İletişim, 2016), 17; Özgür Fındık, Kara Vagon, Dersim-Kırım ve Sürgün (Istanbul: Fam, 2012), 215; Hüsnü Gürbey and Mahsuni Gül, “Dersim’de Nazi Gazı,” Rojnameya Newroz, May 16, 2019, accessed April 4, 2020, http://rojnameyanewroz2.com/dersimde-nazi-gazi-h-gurbey- m-gul-14583.html. 5 The region’s altitude averages between 1,000 and 1,500 meters in inhabited areas and exceeds 3,000 meters in the high and rocky mountains. 6 Hans-Lukas Kieser, “Dersim Massacre, 1937-1938,” Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence, July 27, 2011, accessed April 5, 2019, https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/dersim-massacre-1937-1938. 7 Barış Ünlü, “Kürdistan/Türkiye ve Cezayir/Fransa: Sömürge Yöntemleri, Şiddet ve Entellektüeller,” in Türkiye’de Siyasal Şiddetin Boyutları, ed. Güney Çeğin and İbrahim Şirin (Istanbul: İletişim, 2014), 425. 8 Iskân Kanunu (Turkish Resettlement Law) of 1934 (Law No. 2510, June 21, 1934), (Rep. of Turkey), accessed July 7, 2020, http://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/arsiv/2733.pdf. Dilşa Deniz. “Re-assessing the Genocide of Kurdish Alevis in Dersim, 1937-38.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, 2 (2020): 20-43. ©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1728 Dersim 1937-38 Genocide 21

Hamit Bozarslan, however, made it clear that the official ideology of Turkey was not Kemalism but rather Turkish Islamic Synthesis (TIS), an ideology whose roots can be traced back to the ideas expressed by Ziya Gökalp between 1910 and 1920. The TIS in its current form was developed by a club of right-wing intellectuals (Aydinlar Ocağı/Home of Intellectuals) in the 1970s and was subsequently adopted by the generals of the 1980s coup.9 Henry Barkey observed that the primary objective of state policy at that time was the assimilation of the Kurds. This state assimilation policy contained both repressive and inclusionary dimensions, with the latter applicable only to those who accepted the dominant Turkish identity.10 In 1934, the state adopted the Resettlement Law to establish a juridical basis for resettling the country’s population according to cultural and linguistic groupings. As such, the state referred to the regions around Dersim as East and South East Anatolia, refusing to identify it as Kurdistan. Furthermore, its residents were referred to euphemistically as the population whose mother tongue was not Turkish and who should therefore be forced to migrate for purposes of assimilation,11 in accordance with the Islahat/reforms. To promote demographic change in Anatolia and Kurdistan in particular, the non-Turkish areas were to be repopulated through the state-sponsored resettlement of Turkish immigrants in order to trigger the subsequent assimilation of the non-Turkish population. Accordingly, the country was divided on June 14, 1934 into three zones:

Zone 1: The areas desired to increase the density of the culturally Turkish population. Zone 2: The areas deposited for the transference and resettlement of the populations that desired to be assimilated into Turkish culture. Zone 3: The areas that had been decided to be evacuated for the health, economic, cultural, political, military and discipline reasons and where resettlement asw prohibited.12 Dersim was in the third zone, which meant it was to be evacuated and closed to inhabitants. For that reason, in 1936, the Fourth Inspectorate was established and lieutenant general Abdullah Alpdoğan “was granted the highest judicial and administrative powers to facilitate the implementation of the reform program”13 in Dersim. Through this program, non-Turks and non-Muslims would be removed from where they collectively resided and relocated to zones in which they could be assimilated. The Resettlement Law was used in conjunction with Takrir-i Sükun Kanunu (the Law of the Maintenance of Order),14 another important legal tool of that period. To promote Turkification, state policies sought to rearrange the non-Turkish population such that it would not exceed ten percent of the Turkish population in any one location. Thus, from 1930s on, the state increased these operations, which reached their peak in Dersim in 1938.15

9 Hamit Bozarslan, “Political Crisis and the Kurdish Issue in Turkey,” in The Kurdish Nationals Movement in the 1990s, Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East, ed. Robert Olson (Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky,1996), 137. 10 Henri Barkey, “Under the Gun: Turkish Foreign Policy and the Kurdish Question,” in The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s: Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East, ed. Robert Olson (Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 66. 11 Taha Baran, 1937-1938 Yılları Arasında Basında Dersim (Istanbul: İletişim, 2014), 26. 12 Iskân Kanunu, Art. 2 (translation by the author). 13 Zeynep Türkyılmaz, “Maternal Colonialism and Turkish Woman’s Burden in Dersim: Educating the ‘Mountain Flowers’ of Dersim,” Journal of Women’s History 28, no. 3 (2016), 165, accessed July 7, 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/ jowh.2016.0029. 14 Takrir-i Sükun Kanunu (Law of the Maintenance of Order) of 1925 (Law No. 578, March 4, 1925), (Rep. of Turkey), accessed July 7, 2020, https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/tutanaklar/KANUNLAR_KARARLAR/kanuntbmmc003/kanuntbmmc003/ kanuntbmmc00300578.pdf. This law was planned to be valid for two years first, then on March 2, 1927 was extended for two more years, to March 4, 1929. The law conferred extraordinary powers of authority upon the state rulers, including jurisdiction over the death penalty and the pardoning of those convicted. These powers were harshly employed against the Kurdish opposition, including what took place in Dersim (Tunceli) in 1937/8. See Erik J. Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017), 177. 15 Serhat Aslan, “Kürdistan’da Doga / Ekoloji Katliamı,” Toplum ve Kuram: Lêkolîn û Xebatên Kurdî Dergisi 9, (2014), 65, accessed July 7, 2020, https://www.mezopotamyaekoloji.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Kurdistanda_Doga_Ekoloji_ Katliami.pdf

The Genocide in Dersim16 Shortly after Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in 1943,17 Turkey was among the countries that ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (hereafter referred to as “Genocide Convention”) on July 31, 1950 as a member state of the United Nations.18 Nevertheless, Turkey has never acknowledged or accepted responsibility for the Turkish state’s part in such mass crimes, including those taking place before the convention’s ratification. On the contrary, Turkey has systematically denied the crimes and continues to do so. In addition to systematically blaming and dehumanizing the victims, the state has mobilized discourses that portray the state itself as the victim in these scenarios. Despite the existence of strong evidence to support the classification of the militaristic operations in Dersim as genocidal acts, according to the definition set forth in the Genocide Convention, Turkey has denied and minimized these allegations and sought to portray the events of 1938 as a necessary act to civilize the region.19 In addition, given the contemporary political climate, few dare to discuss these incidents. As such, neither researchers nor politicians have examined or fully acknowledged the events that took place in Dersim in 1938 as a genocide until recently.20 Among these few, Martin van Bruinessen, a Dutch anthropologist who focuses on Kurdish issues, argues that “the brutal Dersim campaign was but the culmination of a series of measures taken in order to forcibly assimilate the Kurds.”21 He thus offers the term of ethnocide to characterize the operations. Although Bruinessen rightly shows that the main aim of the state was assimilation rather than extermination,22 this does not contradict the classification of the act as a genocide itself, particularly in relation to the case of Kurdish Alevis. Alevi Kurds, in general, and those in Dersim in particular, have remained a great concern for the state’s homogenization policies. The Governor of Elaziz,23 Cemal Bey, had raised concerns in his report regarding the Kurdishness of Alevis,24 while Civil Inspector Hamdi Bey had warned about the rise of Kurdish idealism and identity in Dersim and concluded that civilizing Dersim was a fantasy, in his report referring to Dersim as a boil requiring

16 In recent years, local authors started to use tertele, a Kurdish term in both dialects (Kurmanci and Kirmancki) for the events in Dersim between 1937-38. However, this term does not meet the meaning of genocide. Tertele refers to depredation, the physical destruction of the property. Old Dersimian used “Qirkirin” (Kurmanci), “Qirkerdan” (Kirmancki) for the events of 1937-38, meaning mass killings/genocide. They would say “Milet qirkirin, malê Dêsim tertele kirin” (Killed people and depredated the property of Dersim). Therefore, the term of tertele is not appropriate to use and also comes with risk, as in the future, it can be used to the refute the mass killing of people in order to deny the genocide. 17 Raphaël Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944). 18 United Nations (UN), General Assembly Resolution 260, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention), December 9, 1948 (UN Doc. A/Res/260(III)). 19 Gökçen Başaran İnce, “Zamanında Dersim Nasıl Haber Olmuştu?” December 15, 2011, Birikim, accessed July 30, 2020, https://www.birikimdergisi.com/guncel/577/zamaninda-dersim-nasil-haber-olmustu; Erdoğan Aydın, Ölüm ve Medeniyet Paradoksunda Dersim, Dersim Gazetesi, November 17, 2017, accessed July 31, 2020, http://dersimgazetesi. net/olum-ve-medeniyet-paradoksunda-dersim/; Baran, Yılları Arasında Basında Dersim, 92. 20 İsmail Beşikçi, Tunceli Kanunu (1935) ve Dersim Jenosidi (Istanbul: Belge, 1990); Barış Ünlü, “‘Turkishness contract’ and Turkish left,” Perspectives: Political analysis and commentary from Turkey, no. 3.13, eds. Ulrike Dufner, Özgür Gürbüz, Semahat Sevim, Yonca Verdioglu (Istanbul: Henrich Böll Stiftung, December 2012), 23, accessed July 31, 2020, https:// www.boell.de/sites/default/files/perspectives_turkey_3_eng.pdf; Bilgin Ayata and Serra Hakyemez, “The AKP’s engagement with Turkey’s past crimes: an analysis of PM Erdoğan’s ‘Dersim apology’,” Dialect Anthropology 37 (2013), 131-143, accessed July 31, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-013-9304-3. 21 Martin van Bruinessen, “Genocide in Kurdistan? The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937-38) and the Chemical War Against the Iraqi Kurds (1988),” in Conceptual and Historical Dimensions of Genocide, ed. George J. Andreopoulos (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 149, Academia.edu, accessed June 6, 2019, https://www.academia.edu/2521265/Genocide_in_Kurdistan_The_Suppression_of_the_Dersim_Rebellion_in_ Turkey_1937-38_and_the_Chemical_War_Against_the_Iraqi_Kurds_1988. 22 Ibid., 9. 23 Presently Elazığ. 24 Reşat Hallı, Türkiye Cumhuriyetinde Ayaklanmalar (1924–1938) (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1972), 375.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1728 Dersim 1937-38 Genocide 23 excision.25 In accordance with those reports, The Şark Plan to promote the assimilation of the Kurds26 was formulated by İbrahim Tali Öngören, one of the top architects of the state’s homogenization policies.27 The Commander of General of Staff Fevzi Çakmak summarize this plan for Dersim as follows: “Dersim should primarily be accepted as a colony, Kurdishness should be melted into Turkishness, and then should be subjected to particular Turkish jurisdiction.”28 Following a seven-year period of preparation for Dersim that began in the 1930s, the implementation of the plan began in 1937. Therefore, the militaristic operations in Dersim during the period of 1937-38 represented an attempt to exterminate the population. Although state documents mainly emphasize the Kurdish character of Dersim, it was not targeted solely because of its ethnic composition but also due to the city’s central significance for Kurdish Alevis.29 Therefore, the main seyid30 families were among those specifically targeted for killing and exile. Seyid Riza, one of the most respected religious and political leaders of Dersim, was one of them. In addition, the main target of the state was the political structure of Dersim which was based upon two main institutions: the Ocax system and the tribe system. The Ocax system is a religious institution unique to Kurdish Alevi social life, functioning to address major societal issues without the need for any governmental oversight. According to the second article of the Genocide Convention, to classify an event as a genocide does not require a certain number or percentage of a particular group be killed, but, rather, hinges on the calculated intention of the act. Thus, by the definition provided in the second article, the actions of the Turkish state clearly meet the criteria to be classified as genocidal not just because of the intention to kill a number of people but because the intervention was intended to dismantle Kurdish Alevi social structures,31 to remove the population from the region, and assimilate those remaining, as clearly stated by Celal Bayar, the Prime Minister, in a speech to Parliament in 1938.32 Taking a closer look at Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as:

[A]ny of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing

25 Ibid. 26 Baskin Oran, “Ulus Devlet ve Dersim,” in 1. Uluslararası Tunceli (Dersim) Sempozyumu Bildiriler, ed. Hıdır Özdemir, et al. (Tunceli: Tunceli Universitesi, 2010), XXVI. 27 Jandarma Umum Komutanlığı Raporu (JUK Report) (Istanbul: Kaynak, [1932] 2010), 239. Jandarma Umum Komutanlığı hereby (JUK) will be used as the abbreviation. 28 Original text as follows: “Dersim evvelâ Koloni gibi nazarı itibara alınmalı, Türk camiası içinde Kürtlük eritilmeli, ondan sonra tedricen öz Türk hukukuna mazhar kılınmalıdır,” JUK Report, 242. 29 Recent efforts to argue that the 1937-38 operations in Dersim were not targeting Kurdish identity but only the Alevi community are not accurate. Dersim was targeted because of its position at the intersection of two identities, both equally non grata within a Turkish Islamic ideological state. In addition to the sources referenced in the article, there are quite important witness statements and memoirs containing accounts from soldiers who took part in the operations. One of them writes: “[W]e have started to move on the Kurds in Dersim on July 27, 1938,” see, Zeynep Türkyılmaz, “Dersim Soykırımı ve ‘Kötülüğün Sıradanlığı,’” Agos, November 11, 2019, accessed March 8, 2020, http://www.agos.com.tr/tr/yazi/23286/dersim-soykirimi-ve-kotulugun-siradanligi. In a documentary film on Dersim 1937-38, Özgür Fındık, “Fındık - 38 Dersim Sürgünleri,” aired on May 4, 2011, YouTube video, 01:06:39, uploaded on December 6, 2018, Can TV, accessed March 8, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao-_qvFXcVg, a Turkish soldier who participated in the operations recalls and says “we came here and gathered, took the Kurds to a stream and killed them,” Fındık, Kara Vagon, 00:21:07. The same soldier recollects that their commander stated that “there are four traitors in the world. Do you know them? One is the rat, one is the wolf, one is the pig and the other is the Kurd,” Fındık, Kara Vagon, 00:22:09-00:22:30. A villager in a western city of Turkey that hosted those exiled from Dersim adds that “we were told that Kurds came from the caves, we went to see,” Fındık, Kara Vagon, 00:50:19. Despite previous references, recently, state sources have joined scholarly efforts to downplay Dersim’s Kurdish character. See Fındık, Kara Vagon, 01:06:39. 30 Members of a sacred lineage/caste who have the rights and duties to perform religious services. Dilşa Deniz, “Kurdish Alevi Belief System, Rêya Heqî/Raa Heqi: Structure, Networking, Ritual, and Functions,” in Kurdish Alevis and the Case of Dersim: Historical and Contemporary Insights, ed. Erdal Gezik & Ahmet Kerim Gültekin (Lexington, London, 2019), 53. 31 The political structure (ashirets) and the religion structure (the seyids) were attacked first. Leaders were executed and the societal survival mechanisms were ruined. 32 Suat Akgül, Yakın Tarihimizde Dersim İsyanları ve Gerçekler (Istanbul: Boğaziçi, 1992), 155.

serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.33 With the exception of part (d) – which cannot be assessed due to lack of information – all other acts referenced within the article took place. Thus, in contrast to van Bruinessan’s argument calling the event ‘ethnocide’ due to the assimilation policy of the State targeting the Kurds, it is evident that not just Kurdish identity but most importantly Kurdish Alevi identity and the population were targeted. Nearly all state reports about Dersim from that time expressed the opinion that the seyids represented a danger and exerted a negative effect on the society.34 Seyids are the members of an important institution of Kurdish Alevism. Accordingly, operations in Dersim were direct attacks on the survival of the Kurdish Alevi community and also sought to eradicate its political and societal structures, which are uniquely shaped by a combination of tribal and religious affiliation. Therefore, given that Dersim operations deliberately targeted the Kurdish Alevi society, which ultimately resulted in the mass killing of between a minimum of twenty percent and fifty percent of the Alevi Kurd population in Dersim, this article argues that the whole process should be considered a genocidal act. According to theories of genocide, the denial stage is ranked as the last or tenth stage of most genocides.35 In Dersim, this stage actually preceded the genocide when the city of Tunceli was formed officially by law 2884 in parliament in 1935 (hereafter Dersim/Tunçeli Law)36 one year before the city was physically established, as show below in Figure 1.37 Derived from the Turkish words for iron (tunç) and hand (el), respectively, the city’s name carried with its connotations of the iron hand or fist (of the Turks). This is strong evidence suggesting the genocide was already being carefully planned prior to 1937-38 and Tunceli was the name given to the region where the planned genocide would take place. Thus, Tunceli and Dersim have always been two dissenting terms and political markers: while Dersim represents the name of the past, evoking Kurdishness, religious belief, and autonomy, Tunceli continues to be reminiscent of the state’s intent to Turkify and Islamize, and the culmination of these efforts in the 1938 Dersim genocide.

Figure 1. Map of Tunceli/Dersim. Part of the Dersim region was designated as Tunceli city for the military operation of 1937-38.

33 UN, Genocide Convention, Art. 2. 34 Ömer Kemal Ağar, Tunceli-Dersim Coğrafyası (Istanbul: Türkiye Basımevi, 1940), 32; Akgül, Yakın Tarihimizde Dersim İsyanları, 162. 35 Stages of genocide: 1. Classification; 2. Symbolization; 3. Discrimination; 4. Dehumanization; 5. Organization; 6. Polarization; 7. Preparation; 8. Persecution; 9. Extermination; 10. Denial. See Gregory Stanton, “The Ten Stages of Genocide,” Genocide Watch, accessed July 6, 2020, https://www.genocidewatch.com/ten-stages-of-genocide. 36 Tunçeli Vilâyetinin Idaresi Hakkında Kanun (Law on the Administration of the City of Tunçeli) of 1935, (Law No.2884), January 2, 1936, (Rep. of Turkey), Resmi Gazete, accessed July 7, 2020, https://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/arsiv/3195.pdf. 37 Derived from the Turkish words for iron (tunc) and hand (el), respectively, the city’s name carried with its connotations of the iron hand or fist (of the urks).T This is strong evidence suggesting the genocide was already being carefully planned prior to 1937-38 and Tunceli was the name given to the region where the planned genocide would take place.

Assessing the Harm Inflicted Not only did the state plan the genocide, but they also made explicit efforts to suppress knowledge of the death toll and prevent its inclusion in official documents or publications. Considering the Law on the Maintenance of Order (1925) through which the state controlled any actions that might upset the application of their plan before and after Dersim 1937-38, including the media. The British ambassador at the time, Percy Loraine, noted “the Turkish press, … has preserved a complete silence”38 with exception of “the Son Telegraf, which published on the 14th May an article hinting at trouble in the eastern vilayets. The newspaper was promptly suspended and did not reappear until several days later.”39 The only voice raised in that period was Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, a conservative religious poet, who was in conflict with the Kemalist cadres. While Kısakürek refused to recognize the Kurdish and Alevi identity of Dersimians, and, like the Kemalist/nationalists faction, referred to the residents as “Muslim,” he claimed that the events in Dersim in 1938, “had no similar example in history and at least 50,000 Muslims were killed.”40 Years later on February 19, 1942, the Prime Minister, Ibrahim Refik Saydam, condemned the mass killings due to the use of poisonous gas in a telegram to the Chief of General Staff Fevzi Çakmak. “The gas that [has been] used against its own people has caused mass killings of civilians. As a doctor and a human, I must express that I am very ashamed of it.”41 This telegram clearly shows that a high number of people were killed, although no information is available to indicate exactly how many, as the state kept the records strictly private. As such, there are only two distinct state records, both gleaned from indirect sources, as the state never officially accepted or rejected responsibility for these mass killings. While scholars and the public lack access to the official records, Serap Yeşiltuna, a Turkish nationalist scholar and politician42 is the only one who has been granted access to these documents and she estimated the casualty figure to be 13,801.43 In contrast, Necip Fazil Kısakürek suggests this figure likely exceeded 50,000, a figure four times higher than the official records. Since the state continues to prevent access to the archives, ambiguity continues to surround the number of causalities and the number of wounded and forcibly relocated individuals. As such, researchers have mainly used official census data preceding and following the period between 1937-38 to infer the approximate number of causalities. However, in an effort to prevent researchers from using this method, the state sources—most likely deliberately—from 1930 onward, have provided dramatically contrasting estimates, sometimes even provided by the same persons, as discussed below. Since the city itself was newly designed and not yet formally established, official census data remain unavailable. Thus, many individuals counted as part of the population of the towns that came to be considered Tunceli, were later added a second time to the population count to reach the exact number of casualties. Estimating how many were killed, injured, and exiled is not only challenging due to the state’s efforts to suppress the records. Though census data could provide another means of calculating the possible death toll, reports on the regional population vary significantly. The Ministry of Interior indicated that somewhere between sixty-five and seventy thousand individuals were living in Dersim in December 1935.44 In contrast, in the book published by Gendarmerie General Command in 1932, this figure was given to be 150,000 by the same minister.45 This book was prepared by

38 Şimşir, Ingiliz Belgeleri, 303. 39 Ibid. 40 Hasan Demir, Dersim’den Tunceli’ye 38 Katliamı Tanıklıkları (Istanbul: Belge, 2011), 55. 41 “Başbakan: Tunceli’de kendi halkına karşı kullanılan zehirli gaz düşmana bile uygulanamaz, utanç duyuyorum!,” T24, November 19, 2014, accessed September 7, 2019, https://t24.com.tr/haber/basbakan-tuncelide-kendi-halkina-karsi- kullanilan-zehirli-gaz-dusmana-bile-uygulanamaz-utanc-duyuyorum,277596. 42 She was an independent candidate for Parliament in the 2011 election in her birthplace, Balıkkesir. Though independent, she was actually supported by the Ulusal Party, one of the smallest ultra-nationalist party. She used very anti-Kurdish slogans and gave hate speeches against Kurds. For instance, her billboard slogan was “Rescue Balıkkesir from the Kurds.” Another said, “[w]ho should fear, Turks or the Kurds?” See Beyazgazete, “12 Eylül’ün acıları yetmedi mi? Irkçı afişten sonra darbe çağrısı,” Beyazgazete, February 2, 2012, accessed April 8, 2020, http://beyazgazete.com/ haber/2012/2/2/12-eylul-un-acilari-yetmedi-mi-irkci-afisten-sonra-darbe-cagrisi-1038130.html. 43 Serap Yeşiltuna, Devletin Dersim Arşivi (Istanbul: Ileri Yayınları, 2012), 29. 44 İsmail Beşikçi, Tunceli Kanunu,10. 45 JUK Report, 251; Yeşiltuna, Devletin Dersim Arşivi, 1115.

Kazim Orbay, a high-ranking army officer who was later commanding the operations in Dersim46 and only a hundred copies were distributed to particular state officials who would later play a key role in military operations in Dersim. This figure should therefore be considered the most accurate source. The same number was also cited by Naşit Uluğ, a Turkish journalist (and intelligence agent),47 one of only a few outsiders who had the opportunity to travel to Kurdistan during that period. Nevertheless, Martin van Bruinnesen has relied on estimates that place the population between sixty-five and seventy thousand, a calculation justified by his claim that the historical district of Dersim included parts of much larger neighboring cities such as Sivas, Erzincan, and Elazığ provinces. Therefore, contemporary authors cite the “much higher population figure of 150,000, apparently referring to larger Dersim.”48 Baki Öz, a pro-Turkish writer, also argues that Dersim should not be understood only as the nucleus land around Tunceli, but Dersim’s tribes dispersion area should also be included.49 As such, van Bruinnesen suggests that casualty estimates exceeding forty thousand are greatly exaggerated. Although both authors are correct in their attempts to account for all those residing within the large geographical area historically referred to as Dersim, the given population figures do not actually contain all the areas they refer to. On the contrary, these figures are based on the actual population of the eight districts,50 which later included Tunceli city. Therefore, van Bruinessan’s theory is shown to be inaccurate. The population estimate of 150,000 is actually derived from the districts falling within the region of Tunceli, an area outlined for military operations, which Şükrü Kaya, the Ministry of Interior, clearly describes as “the 150,000 population of districts that contains Dersim.”51 This is clear evidence that state sources referenced two very different figures when addressing different audiences. Although state officials were provided with the 150,000 figure, the publicly shared estimates remained at 65-70,000, a figure that likely accounts for only half of the actual population, leading to the intended confusion among scholars. This also suggests that the number of people to be killed had been planned and calculated prior to the event. Nuri Dersimi, a Kurdish politician from that period, indicates that the Turkish state surveyed Dersim’s population in 1927 and estimated the population to number approximately 270,000, excluding residents of the city of Pülümür. He also criticized Erzincan’s Governor, Ali Kemali, for exaggerating the size of the Turkish population in Erzincan while underrepresenting the Kurdish one.52 Ömer Kemal Ağar, an important state official of the region in that period, cited the population of Dersim (excluding Pülümür) as 93,117 in 1935 and 105,911 in 1936, a figure that must also be recognized as a misrepresentation due to the large segment of the population that sought to remain unregistered to avoid compulsory military service and taxation.53 To support Dersimi’s claim, Uluğ offers the following example: “Kureyşan’s population reaches 2000. If you ask them, this number does not exceed 700. You cannot learn the exact population of any of these tribes; they are afraid that the tax would be raised, thus we cannot hide from the government.”54 A similar opinion has been expressed by Munzur Çem, a contemporary Dersimian writer, who argues that “Kurds are the people who tend to keep their relation with the state to a minimum—as it is seen as a foreign power- and to avoid paying tax or performing military service.”55 Ibrahim Tali described Dersim as “very crowded and armed. To disarm Dersim is not a matter of days, weeks or months. It is a two-year job.”56 Such a claim clearly demonstrates the length of

46 Akgül, Yakın Tarihimizde Dersim İsyanları, 157-158. 47 Beşikçi, Tunceli Kanunu, 145. 48 Bruinessen, Genocide in Kurdistan, 4. 49 Baki Öz, Dersim Olayı (Istanbul: Can, 2004), 8. 50 The eight districts are as follows Pertek, Çemişgezek, Çarsancak (Pêr/Akpazar), Hozat, Ovacık, Pülümür, Nazimiye. 51 JUK Report, 251. 52 Dersimi, Kürdistan Tarihinde Dersim, 57-58. 53 Ağar, Tunceli-Dersim Coğrafyası, 19. 54 Naşit Hakkı Uluğ, Derebeyi ve Dersim (Istanbul: Kaynak, 2009), 64. 55 Munzur Çem, Dersim Merkezli Kürt Aleviliği (Istanbul: Vate, 2010), 392-393. 56 JUK Report, 232.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1728 Dersim 1937-38 Genocide 27 time that was necessary for the state to prepare for the operations of 1938 and also accounts for the exact two-year length of time for the operations in Dersim. Both Ağar and Uluğ rely upon the state’s population estimates, that exceeded one hundred thousand. The same approach has been adopted by contemporary ultra-nationalist Turkish sources, who estimate the population of Dersim in 1935 to be 107,723,57 to quell recent discussions surrounding the suppressing of census data to mask casualty numbers in that period. Thus, to derive casualty estimates using the few available sources, one must consider: a state record dated November 11, 1939 indicating that 13,801 persons had been killed and Kısakürek’s figure of 50,000.58 Raffi Bedrosyan, an Armenian writer, noted death tolls as “rang[ing] from 13,000 according to Turkish sources—40,000 to U.S. and 80,000 to Kurdish sources.”59 Despite the lack of the reference, this is the first time the US mentioned a figure. These are the only figures available. The nationalist scholar Yeşiltuna argues that even the figure of 13,801 is high and does not fit the order of the documentation of 155 folders, a series of reports documenting the years between 1935 and 1938, beginning from August 13, 1935 and ending on September 12, 1939. She argues that the casualty figures should be accepted as 2,000- 3,000 at most,60 suggesting that the currently accepted figure is nearly three to four times higher than the actual figures and argues for the replacement of the documents.61 However, she fails to explain why and how the documents on Dersim 1937-38 in the folder were replaced in the General Chief Staff’s archive, the most secure building in Turkey. If there was a switch, as she suggests, then it must have taken place with the complicity of state officials. In that case, it is the state that changed the figures, meaning they either reduced or increased the numbers. If, on the one hand, the figure was reduced, that means the actual number is higher by more than two or three times. On the other, if the state increased the numbers, it implies that they did not correctly document the actual number of casualties in 1938 and thus gradually increased this figure as they became aware of more accurate estimates. In both cases, it is clear that the state, alone, has the power to alter the figures and any change taking place has the necessity to be in congruence with the interests of the state. The second of the two scenarios is the more probable. As discussed below, the death reports were completed mostly after the 1940s, between five and ten years after the events of 1938, and thus it is important to compare these numbers with the yearly census to determine the most accurate casualty figures.

Year Population 1940 94,639 1945 90,446 1950 105,759 1955 121,743 (Fırat Development Agency 2013).62 As evident above, the rate of population growth between 1940 and 1945 reveals a negative trend with the overall population decreasing by 4,193. Between 1945 and 1950, the population increased by 15,313 (seventeen percent)—a figure which represents the most dramatic increase— while during the period between 1950 and 1955 an increase of 15,984 (fifteen percent took place).

57 Yeşiltuna, Devletin Dersim Arşivi, 13. 58 Demir, Dersim‘den Tunceli‘ye, 55. 59 Raffi Bedrosyan, “Dersim: A First Step in Facing the Past in Turkey,” The Armenian Weekly, December 1, 2011, accessed April 4, 2020, https://armenianweekly.com/2011/12/01/dersim-a-first-step-in-facing-the-past-in-turkey/. 60 In a documentary about the events in Dersim in 1938, Haydar Yıldırım, a Turkish soldier in that period indicates that the army had tied 500-600 people to each other, fired upon them with machine guns, and threw their bodies into the river. See Fındık, Kara Vagon, 00:25:54-00:26:08. 61 Yeşiltuna, Devletin Dersim Arşivi, 28-29. 62 Fırat Development Agency, Tunceli, December 31, 2003, accessed June 13, 2019, http://investintunceli.gov.tr/tr/files/ rakamlarla-tunceli.pdf.

Şükrü Aslan, who interestingly refers to the 1935 census as the last census before the great exile,63 a term by which he avoids any reference to the violence and mass killings that took place64 explains this increase in the 1950 census as partially emanating from the return of those exiled.65 If we take the average of the two to be 16% growth, that means the population in 1945 (94,639 plus 15,144 (%16)) should be 109,781, revealing the unexpected absence of 19,335 individuals. If we combine the estimate of 13,810 causalities with the figure of 19,335, the total number of individuals missing from Dersim during this period is roughly 33,145. Moreover, if we include the missing population between 1935 and 1940 using the same methods of calculation as employed above, 107,723 minus 94,639 is 13,084. Thus, combining these figures, (33,145 plus 13,084, which represents the normal growth of the population) suggests that 46,229 people were killed at minimum. In another calculation, if one considers the population of 150,000 in contrast with the 1945 figure, it appears that 59,554 individuals are missing (150,000 – 90,446; 59,554 – 11,818-the forcibly moved population - equals 47,736). If we were to add at least 15,000 to account for normal population growth, the figure of the missing population would reach 62,736. Thus, it is clear that according to two different calculations based on the state sources regarding the census in 1937-38 in Dersim, minimum between 46,000-63,000 people were killed and over one and a half thousand people, mostly children, are missing. Even the figures calculated above, since they are based on the registered population, do not account for all children. Young children in that period were not usually registered in the census and therefore were not included in figures employed in both calculations. As Dersimians mostly sought to avoid encounters with the state, the registration of young children in particular was irregular and infrequent. Since the penetration of the state was not total, the state mainly put pressure on muhtars66 to register the population. Muhtars registered people on an irregular basis to balance the competing demands of the state and the community. Ağar and Uluğ both argue that “a large number of the population is not registered,”67 a fact supported by the document below. The document belongs to the family of Bertal Axa, as shown in Figure 2, who was a merchant. The document was provided at the behest of his grandson, upon the condition that it be used only for cadastral and inheritance purposes. Subsequently, such documents were rarely furnished given their potential to be used as evidence of crimes.68

63 I have italicized the term the great exile for emphasis. In the original, Şükrü Aslan refers to “Büyük sürgün” (the great exile). See Şükrü Aslan, “Genel Nüfus Sayımı Verilerine Göre Dersim’de Kayıp Nüfus,” in Herkesin Bildiği Sır: Dersim, ed. Şükrü Aslan (Istanbul: Iletişim, 2010), 404. 64 Several sentences later, he cites a figure which estimates the death toll to be 13,100. 65 Aslan, Genel Nüfus Sayımı Verilerine, 404. 66 These elected village and neighborhood representatives act on behalf of state officials. See International Foundation for Electoral Systems, Elections in Turkey: 2019 Local Elections: Frequently Asked Questions (Washington DC: Middle East and North Africa: International Foundation for Electoral Systems, March 25, 2019), 1, accessed July 31, 2020, https://www. ifes.org/sites/default/files/2019_ifes_turkey_local_elections_faqs_final.pdf 67 Uluğ, Derebeyi ve Dersim, 64; Ağar, Tunceli-Dersim Coğrafyası, 18. 68 Baskin Oran, “1938 Dersim: Bir belge de Nazimiye Nüfus Müdürlüğü’nden!,” Radikal, August 28, 2014, accessed July 29, 2019, http://www.radikal.com.tr/yazarlar/baskin-oran/1938-dersim-bir-belge-de-nazimiye-nufus- mudurlugunden-1209663/.

Figure 2. Document belonging to family of Bertal Axa. See Radikal, 29/08/2014.69

Based on the above document, Ağci (1912), Zöhre (1913), and Azime (1914)70 were registered on the same date of 1941, while the first four people have not been registered at all, indicating that approximately seven people out of twelve may not have been registered before 1936,71 which would amount to nearly half the population. This, in turn, supports the previous estimates of the unregistered population and the state’s estimate that 150,000 individuals resided in Dersim before the genocide. The fact that so many people were registered after 1941, three years after the genocide, explains why it was not possible to count the causalities from bombings, poisonous gas, burning of forests, stabbing, and the use of machine guns in indiscriminate mass killing at that time. It is clear from the document that, particularly in 1938, no exact count of the causalities had been attempted. The state then began its efforts to determine the approximate death toll, as potential victims would have been registered a few years later. According to the document above, only three out of twelve people were registered in the 1935 census. Therefore, neither the population figures below a 100 thousand are correct, nor the given casualty figure of 13,810. In another report, the Third Army Inspectorate indicated that “in two searches and a total of seventeen days, 7,954 persons have been taken out of the searched region, dead or alive.”72 If we compare these seventeen days with the larger two-year timeframe, it is not hard to imagine that the true number of casualties must have

69 Ibid. 70 The correct Kurdish spelling is Axcê, Zöra, and Ezime. 71 In the news given about the document, it was indicated this document was only provided for purposes of cadastre and family hereditary transmission. Later, when the state realized that it could reveal the number of causalities, it was not permitted to be given to individuals. This is further evidence for the exact number of causalities. See Oran,1938 Dersim. 72 Kaynak, Genelkurmay Belgeleri II, 203, 205.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1728 30 Deniz been significantly higher. Because of the massive number of causalities, the state, perhaps either reluctant or unable to provide the exact number of causalities, has chosen to employ a definition that relies upon the distinction of dead or alive. Regarding the 11,818 people forcibly removed, which was a figure common to all reports,73 particularly that by Öngören, it is clear that the state had initially planned the removal of 2,000 people, then went on to add an additional 5,000,74 and subsequently, once again doubled this figure, further evidence that mass extermination was the state’s ultimate intention. These figures could indeed be at least partially accurate, as the process of removal had to be more carefully planned and carried out.75 Nevertheless, this figure cannot represent the entirety of affected persons because it does not account for the thousands of young children who were removed from their families76 and forcibly adopted by Turkish military officials for Turkification and Islamization. In the document above, two children were killed in 1938, while two were declared as a closed record, meaning they are lost persons. Since both of them were young women, this effectively means that they were either abducted and likely engaged in compulsory sex work, committing suicide to avoid this end,77 or were killed but were not found. Thus, excluding Ali and Zöhre, ten members of a family of twelve78 were killed or lost in the years 1937 or 1938. If we carefully study these records, we note that there were five children under the age of sixteen, and five adults between twenty-four and twenty-nine, so there were only two males that could have potentially been involved in the fighting from that family: the father and Ali. As we know, the father was a merchant and his son worked with him, indicating that none of these family members could be considered a “rebel” in any sense of the word, and so were unlikely to be targeted for removal. Moreover, the father Bertal was actually a tradesman and collaborating with the state by providing feed for their horses.79 As such, this document clearly reveals that this family was likely subject to a planned but indiscriminate killing of whomever the state could access and target effectively. As indicated above, newborn babies and the unborn population (not knowing how many women were pregnant) have also not been added to the figures. There are many eyewitness testimonies recalling the killing of pregnant women with bayonets by the soldiers and their unborn children as well as the killing of young infants.80 According to a careful study of the Dersim/Tunçeli Law (1935), article 34 allows for any person associated with the “crimes” committed by any other individual either from Dersim who has traveled to the provinces of Elazığ, Malatya, Sivas, Erzincan, Erzurum, Gümüşhane, Bingöl, or persons from there who committed such related crimes in Dersim, to be included under the jurisdiction of the special courts located in Tunceli.81 This provision made it possible for the state to target specific, particular individuals even those residing outside of Tunceli’s borders. Furthermore, these cities used to be largely populated by Kurdish Alevis, suggesting that—although the operation was portrayed as applying chiefly to the area renamed Tunceli—in fact, the jurisdiction of Tunceli Law and associated operations included nearly the whole Kurdish-Alevi region. This suggest that figures accounting only for the Tunceli population would not include the population killed in these additional cities nor the Dersimians killed in other parts of Turkey. For instance, a majority of the young males taken for military service in that period never returned.82 To date there has been no research on this matter.

73 JUK Report, 13-17. 74 Hüseyin Aygün, Dersim 38 Resmiyet ve Hakikat (Ankara: Dipnot, 2010), 99. 75 Yeşiltuna, Devletin Dersim Arşivi, 300-301. 76 Rose Polat Agum, Bego-Dersim 1938 ve Sonrası (Istanbul: Belge, 2018), 70. 77 Ibid, 59. 78 Oran, 1938 Dersim. Actually, fifty-four members of the family were killed and the grandmother committed suicide when she heard that the family had been massacred, making a total of fifty-five lives lost. The document is based on the account of only one of the nucleus family members from within the broader family. See Oran, 1938 Dersim. 79 Munzur Çem, Qurzeli Usiv’in 70 Yılı (Istanbul: İletişim, 2014), 68-69. 80 Demir, Dersim’den Tunceli’ye 38, 179. 81 Beşikçi, Tunceli Kanunu, 18. 82 Agum, Bego, 85.

Apart from the killed or forcibly removed populations, the remaining residents must also be considered a population deeply and negatively affected by the events of 1938, a matter which is included in the definition of genocide. Thus, the studies focused only on the final death toll, a partial acknowledgement of the true impact of a genocide or mass killing. In the case of Dersim, all the leaders and the nearly half of the population of the community were killed and/or forcibly displaced from their community. In her memoir, Ane Xatun, the surviving granddaughter of a former member of parliament Diyap Axa, describes how she suffered from insomnia as she tried to answer researchers’ questions about the events of 1938.83 There is additional evidence that more killings were planned following the initial operations. A message from the Ministry of Interior to the Prime Ministry office dated May 18, 1937 indicates that, “instead of settling our troops in the heartland of Dersim to struggle until they give up, it was better to undermine their living conditions by destroying villages, herds 84and crops.” As such, to increase the ultimate number of long-term causalities, they sought to destroy the material bases of the population’s survival and livelihood such as livestock by burning crops,85 bombing the natural environment, and looting and burning houses, leaving many survivors to suffer from hunger, malnutrition, and at risk of infectious disease. Moreover, state operators were also actively engaged in the deliberate killing of the wounded.86 The lack of medical care and accommodation during the exceptionally long and harsh winter conditions that characterized mountain life caused more suffering and indirect causalities87 than are able to be accounted for in the overall death figures. There are various testimonies addressing the trauma of genocide88 and its effects on mental health including suicidal tendencies, crying to the point of blindness and eye damage, complete silence, as well as psychosomatic consequences that appear in various oral history studies, deep interviews,89 and more recently published literature on the Dersim genocide and forced displacement.90 All of this speaks clearly to the heavy trauma inflicted upon Dersimian society.91 Moreover, the problems resulting from widespread sexual violence against women92 and potential pregnancies, suicides, and the killing of babies93 is not accounted for and there is total silence from both Dersimians and the Turkish state on the matter. While the state has kept silent to hide its crimes, larger society also remains silent because of the shame and trauma surrounding sexual crimes.

Prior to the Nazis, Gas was Used for Mass Killing in Dersim The first documented use of poisonous gas in Dersim is described by Nuri Dersimi, where “the region was covered by a thick veil of mist due to the poisonous gas bombs from planes, where no living creature was left, and the scene was of houses and the forests set on fire, which looked like a state of hell.”94 Because of his books, in which he gives very important and detailed information

83 Fatma Betül Günday, “Adın Perihan Olsun” Diyap Ağa‘nın Torunu Ane Hatun‘un Hikayesi (Istanbul: İletişim, 2016), 152. 84 Yeşiltuna, Devletin Dersim Arşivi, 511. 85 Demir, Dersim‘den Tunceli‘ye, 192; Agum, Bego, 32. 86 Akyürekli, Dersim Kürt Tedibi 1937-1938, 187. 87 Agum, Bego, 68. 88 Aygün, Dersim 38, 100; Günday, Adın Perihan Olsun; Agum, Bego, 72. 89 İhami Algör, Ma Sekerdo Kardaş? “Dersim 38” Tanıklıkları (Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2010); Cemal Taş, Dağların Kayıp Anahtarı-Dersim 1938 Anlatıları (Istanbul: İletişim, 2011); Fındık, Kara Vagon, Dersim- Kırım ve Sürgün, 43-219; Celal Yıldız, Dersim Dile Geldi-Dersim Otuz Sekiz‘in Çocukları Konuştu (Ankara: Nika, 2012); Gündoğan and Gündoğan, Dersim’in Kayıp Kızları, 2016. 90 Emirali Yağan, Dersim Defterleri – Beyaz Dağ’da Bir Gün (Istanbul: İletişim, 2013); Hasan Sağlam, Yasak Mıntıkanın Çocukları (Istanbul: Totem, 2015); Hasan Sağlam, Toprağına Tutunanlar-Yasak Mıntıkanın Çocukları II (Istanbul: Totem, 2018); Günday, Adın Perihan olsun, 2016; Agum, Bego. 91 Mustafa Erdoğan, “Dersim 38,” interview by Dilşa Deniz and Hasan Kaplan (September 2009), in Mazgirt, Dersim, unpublished audio-visual recording. 92 Agum, Bego, 60. 93 Agum, Bego, 42, 43, 58. 94 Dersimi, Kürdistan Tarihinde Dersim, 291.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1728 32 Deniz in relation to Dersim and other Kurdish massacres, Dersimi himself has been targeted in an effort to discredit him. As such, for nearly seventy years, the role of poisonous gas in mass killings was not taken into consideration seriously until it was officially referenced by a former Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then Police Chief, Ihsan Sabri Çağlayangil, in 1986. In an interview, Ihsan Sabri Çağlayangil stated that “through the entrance of the caves they poisoned them like rats.” 95 In a news report by Tan Gazette dated August 3, 1937, it is indicated that there was a training course in Elazığ for that same purpose.96 Thus, rumors still circulate that this gas was actually tested in Dersim97 prior to its use in Nazi Germany.98 Furthermore, in a telegram from the general inspectorate and commander of the operation in Dersim, Abdullah Alpdoğan, to Ankara a request for supplies of gas was formally made, as shown below in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Request for gas supplies. Source: Dersim Gazetesi99

In the communication, twenty tons of “Chloracetophenon, Iperit and so on” were ordered, and the request was signed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on August 7, 1937.100 This request makes it clear that a formal plan was made in 1937 after the initial series of operations in Dersim, and was implemented in 1938, which resulted in the planned mass killings. Another document from the Second Directorate Undersecretaries of Air Force to the Prime Ministry office, dated October 20, 1937, indicates that the final parts required for the construction of the latest air force fleet had arrived from the United States and the necessary annual equipment—worth $200,000 —would be

95 “Çağlayangil: Ordu Dersim Kürtlerini kesti, fare gibi zehirledi!” T24, November 19, 2011, accessed July 9, 2020, https:// t24.com.tr/haber/caglayangil-ordu-dersim-kurtlerini-kesti-fare-gibi-zehirledi,182465. 96 Murat Aydın, “Dersim”de kimyasal izi ortaya çıktı,” CNNTürk, December 4, 2013, accessed June 8, 2019, https://www. cnnturk.com/guncel/dersimde-kimyasal-izi-ortaya-cikti. 97 Nesimi Aday, “Karga Bülbül Olmaz,” Dersim Gazetesi, June 27, 2017, accessed April 4, 2020, http://nesimiaday.com/ index.php/2017/06/27/karga-bulbul-olmaz/. 98 For a detailed discussion, see Gürdal Aksoy, “Gas at ‘Home,’ Gas in the World, On the Use of Poison Gas by the Turkish State in Dersim,” Academia.edu, March 7, 2020, accessed March 18, 2020, https://www.academia.edu/42159488/Yurtta_ Gaz_Cihanda_Gaz_Tc_Devletinin_Dersimde_Zehirli_Gaz_Kullanmas%C4%B1_%C3%9Czerine_Gas_at_Home_Gas_ in_the_World_On_the_Use_of_Poison_Gas_by_the_Turkish_State_in_Dersim. 99 Pirha, Dersim Katliamı; Dersim Gazetesi, Zehirli Gazlar Almanya’dan. 100 Ibid.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1728 Dersim 1937-38 Genocide 33 purchased by the Turkish Embassy in Washington, DC.101 All these preparations were made in the same year in which the Prime Minister İnönü had stated that the government already exercised full control over Dersim, as evident in the headlines of Son Haber on June 15 and Haber on June 18, 1937.102

Denial Process, Methods and Results The hyperbolic rhetoric of a threatened uprising in an uncontrolled area was used to rally popular support for the destruction of Kurdish Alevis in Dersim. Until recent years, documents providing evidence of the use of poisonous gas received little public attention. In addition, many Dersimians were successfully convinced that neither M. Kemal, nor Ismet Inönü, had been involved in these events. Diyap Axa, one of the six first Dersim Members of Parliament (MP) in the first parliament (1920-1923), was invited by Mustafa Kemal to be representative of Dersim. Six years after his death, his family was massacred in 1938 too. His grandaughter Ane Xatun was the only family member who survived. Ane Xatun, in her memoir, expresses her strong opinion—common among Dersimians—that the Chief Commander of General Staff, Fevzi Çakmak, who was particularly hostile to the Kurds and Alevis, ultimately acted to rescue the surviving population in their final hour. Without mentioning his name, Ane Xatun recalls her meeting with a minister in which she expressed her support of a person connected to Fevzi Çakmak’s family for election. This surprised the minister greatly, leading him to inquire about the underlying reason. In response, she noted that, “we owe him if a few of us have survived.” He subsequently asked: “Do they really know that it happened just like this?” When she responded affirmatively, the minister recounts the following story:

I am a minister now but I was a lieutenant in ‘38 and was responsible for the telexes. It was not Fevzi Çakmak, it was Iran’s Shah who rescued you…When the army was transferred to Elaziğ Uluova, they prohibited any press members’ entrance. An Iranian journalist reports to Iran that he has heard that Alevis have been massacred in Dersim. In that evening at 6 pm there was a note from Iran in which they asked for a stop to the massacre of Alevis. This note was discussed among the General Staff personnel for a while but later nobody paid any attention. The second note arrived at 4 am in the morning in which Iran said they were going to call back all their embassies and stop all relations with Turkey due to the massacre of Alevis in Dersim.103 In that period Turkey was heavily dependent on Iran’s petrol, gas, even sugar and tea—all were imported from Iran. Fevzi Çakmak was in the General Staff office in Ankara that time, and after that second note he flew to Elazığ and stopped the massacre.104 These remarks illustrate that the perpetrators were personalities such as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, İsmet İnönü, and Fevzi Çakmak105 despite widespread opinion to the contrary. These remarks also demonstrate the prevalence of narratives denying the nature of the Dersim events as a planned genocide. More importantly, it suggests that, if not for the intervention by the Shah of Iran, the state would have continued these indiscriminate massacres. Given Çakmak’s role, as the planner and commander of the Dersim genocide, his widespread last-minute depiction as the savior is in contrast to the actual, devastating consequences of his actions. Such portrayals make sense in the context provided by Ane Xatun’s memoir, although we lack additional supporting sources. Iran’s connection must also be considered carefully here given their historical connection to Alevis in the

101 Ibid. 102 Baran, Basında Dersim, 206, 213; Dersimi, Kürdistan Tarihinde Dersim, 277. 103 Due to the Alevi’s support of the Prophet Muhammed’s son in-law Ali, and thus the Safadi, Alevis have long represented a fault line between the Safadi and Ottoman periods. In particular, after the defeat of Seljuk by the Safadi, Ottomans became suspicious of Alevis and their connection with Safadi. Thus, during the Yavuz period (1512-1520), more than 40,000 Alevis were massacred. Although Safadi were successful in forming the 12 Imam Shia sect of Islam, they became somewhat distanced from the Alevis. However, Iran continued to disseminate propaganda among the [mostly Turkish] Alevis. In contrast, Kurdish Alevis kept their distance. 104 Günday, Adın Perihan Olsun, 134-135. 105 I personally heard the story of Fevzi Çakmak’s “rescuing” recounted by many people during my childhood, including my father and mother. It struck me as quite strange indeed and it only began to make sense in the larger context provided by Ane Xatun’s memoirs.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1728 34 Deniz past, which could have been a resource to attract international attention. The Turkish state must have been aware of this potential and likely intervened to prevent such actions, at least to some degree.

“Fighting Feudalism” as Denial of Genocide: The Leftist Movement and State Policy in Dersim Although the air bombardments were mostly focused in areas where some tribes resisted the operations—referred to as the prohibited zone—in the majority of Dersim no resistance to speak of was present. Death squads went into towns, villages, and hamlets to seek out local leaders—both religious and otherwise—as well as individuals whose names appeared in official records, such as in the gendarmery, police, or in court records.106 These individuals were rounded up and killed in certain locations used as execution centers. Several testimonies provide eyewitness accounts of this process. These accounts, as well those of survivors, report that machine guns and rifles were used in the executions. Moreover, many were executed with bayonets to save bullets, indicating the enormous number of executions. Machine guns were used to ensure there were no accidental survivals. While executions continued to take place, the media coverage sought to dehumanize the victims, invoking the ultra-nationalist Turkish ideological approach which has persisted to this day.107 The local population/victims were portrayed as bandits and savages who robbed people, refused to pay their taxes and complete military service, and believed in a “primitive” religion and who were, in essence, themselves primitive.108 Moreover, they were portrayed as being manipulated by the axas109 and seyids who resisted the reforms and civilization110 promoted by the Turkish state for their own benefit. This dehumanization process succeeded in disseminating perceptions of Dersim as an area of savagery and banditry,111 metaphorically represented as an open sore, a medical problem to be cured or excised.112 All of these factors support the classification of the events as a genocide. All media outlets, including those considered progressive, such as the Tan Gazete,113 expressed support for the Kemalist policies against Kurds and Dersim in 1937-38. In various news reports, Tan employed a language of dehumanization to describe Dersim and its inhabitants. For instance, in a news segment by Latif Erenel, Dersimians were referred to as “the people who are slaves and stripped of any rights. They spend their life in darkness, benightedness and fear like something more animal than human.”114 Similarly, a Tan headline dated June 24, 1937, read “The Head Plunderer, Brigand Seyid Rıza115 Pleaded for Mercy.”116 Cumhuriyet, which was also considered a progressive daily newspaper, had become one of the most nationalist and thus supportive of ultra- nationalist ideology in Turkey and of the Dersim genocide. On June 27, 1937, Cumhuriyet’s headline read: “Tunceli’s scoundrels have been exterminated.”117 After 1938, the phrase “Dersim hadisesi (Dersim incident)” was widely used to deny the genocidal nature of the events and downplay the atrocities that took place. While the terms genocide or mass killing simultaneously encompass the ethnic, religious, and political aspect of the killings, the term incident does not suggest such connection or imply the existence of any perpetrators. On

106 Fadime Deniz, Dersim 38, personal communication with author, Istanbul (October 2009). 107 See the hate speech in Uluğ, Derebeyi ve Dersim, 49; Beyazgazete, 12 Eylül’ün acıları yetmedi. 108 Baran, Basında Dersim, 109. 109 Bulut, Dersim Raporları, 269. Axa refers to someone who is a tribal leader. It can also refer to someone who owns large amounts of land. In the Dersim case, axa, refers mostly to the name of the tribal leader. 110 Baran, Basında Dersim, 92. 111 Bulut, Dersim Raporları, 211, 267. 112 JUK Report, 224. 113 Baran, Basında Dersim, 113. 114 Ibid., 125. 115 The Kurdish leader of Dersim. 116 Baran, Basında Dersim, 224. 117 Ibid., 219.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1728 Dersim 1937-38 Genocide 35 the contrary, it remains a neutral term and implicitly represents all parties as equals. In the case of Dersim, this term was particularly useful in concealing the state’s role as the perpetrator of genocidal acts against Kurdish Alevis. Rather, the dominant narratives sought to represent these acts as a relatively minor event to manage a small faction of rebels. Thus, the term suggests the victims, as instigators, were to blame, while suggesting that the state was compelled to act in favor of societal order, despite the resulting casualties. As such, the contradictions and discrepancies between the credible sources and Turkish archival sources, and Turkish nationalist narratives118 need to be taken into account, and thus especially in the case of the Dersim genocide and in the contemporary climate of Turkish academia, where the available sources remain heavily censored. To buttress the denial process, the term incident always accompanied narratives describing the “uprising” in Dersim, not just in the language used by the state but also by the Turkish leftist movement in the only region where progressive politics dominate. Although there was some resistance to the heavy military operations, there was, in fact, no real uprising.119 Nevertheless, the rhetoric of an uprising was widely employed by the media. This idea was employed ironically alongside narratives claiming the tribes of the region were disarmed,120 almost all leaders were arrested121 and seven of them hanged in 1937, including Seyid Rıza and his son.122 These narratives also emphasized that the state was in full control of the region, a conviction that is also clearly apparent in Prime Minister İsmet İnönü’s speech in Parliament in 1937123 and also in Prime Minster, Celal Bayar’s speech, in 1938,124 and still used effectively for mass killings in 1938. The uprising discourse was also the prominent discourse invoked by the leftist movement following the genocidal process from the 1970s until the 1980 coup, though it has become less prominent today. During the Dersim genocide, the leader of the Turkish Communist Party (TKP), Ismail Bilen, and a political refugee in the Soviet Union, published Yeni bir Kürt Ayaklanması (A New Kurdish Uprising), using the pseudonym Rasim Davaz, in which he clearly defends the military operations in Dersim.

It has been more than two months that the Ankara Government fights against a backward uprising by the Kurdish tribes in Dersim region. The feudal components, despite the reforms by the Kemalist Party, succeeded in surviving in this far-off region of the country. This region was renamed Tunceli last year. Dersim’s dominant classes have succeeded in securing their privileges despite the laws in force.125 Like all the Alevi regions, Dersim suffered from extreme poverty and possessed little land suitable for agriculture, being largely comprised of a rough highland where Alevis took refuge to avoid attacks from the Ottoman and later Turkish state and attempts to forcibly convert Alevis to (Sunni) Islam. Given the limitations inherent to a region with insufficient arable land, inhabitants resorted to some plundering in Dersim as well as in the neighboring towns.126 In Halis Paşa’s report it is clearly indicated that, in these acts, they avoided killing127 and never committed sexual attacks, prohibited as these were by their religion and culture. The raids were thus restricted mostly to food-based plundering to secure livestock, wheat, and other subsistence items and were ultimately driven by the poverty resulting from the Turkish-Islamic pressure on the region. Despite conditions of acute poverty and starvation, there were no capitalist-style classes, and thus communists were ideally situated to defending a better life for the suppressed population.

118 Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi, The Thirty-year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924 (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2019), 8. 119 Baran, Basında Dersim, 213. 120 In a state document, it is indicated that before the genocide the state had intelligence on approximately 5,000 firearms in Dersim, and thus was forced into obtaining a certain number of arms. See Uluğ, Derebeyi ve Dersim, 56-68; Yeşiltuna, Devletin Dersim Arşivi, 13. 121 Yeşiltuna, Devletin Dersim Arşivi, 526. 122 Akyürekli, Dersim Kürt Tedibi 1937-1938, 140. 123 Baran, Basında Dersim, 206. 124 Akgül, Yakın Tarihimizde Dersim İsyanları,155. 125 Beşikçi, Tunceli Kanunu, 141. 126 Dilşa Deniz, “Dersim’in Ekonomi Politiği İçinde Talanın Yeri: Antropolojik Bir Yaklaşım,” in Dört Dağa Sığmayan Kent, Dersim Üzerine Ekonomi-Politik Yazılar, ed. Şerif Gürçağ Tuna and Gözde Orhan (Istanbul: Patika, 2013), 87, 90, 103. 127 JUK Report, 250.

Despite this fact, Ismail Bilen, chair of the TKP, justified the mass killings that involved tens of thousands of people in one defenseless region as necessary for the sake of Turkish modernism. The Turkish leftist movement’s Kemalist/nationalist character becomes apparent in this particular example and has been criticized by a relatively small number of leftist intellectuals and organizations. Ismail Beşikçi, a Turkish academic who served seventeen years in prison due to his research on Kurdish issues in Turkey, has criticized the leftist movement “as the partner of Turkish State’s colonialist massacres over the Kurdistan,” remarking that:

They [leftists] are against the Kurdish nation who have struggled against conquests, and colonialism, those who have struggled for the right to self-determination. The Kurdish national movement was discredited in every sentence of their reports. Accordingly, they designed reports in which they praised it’s [Kemalist secular nationalism] acts and evaluated them as ‘progressive’ and ‘revolutionary.’128

Both the Kemalist state and various leftist groups suppressed Kurdish political organizations operating in Dersim. In that period, the only Turkish leftist group supportive of the thesis of Kurdistan’s status as a colony129 and critical of the leftist movement for its Kemalist characteristics was the Kurtuluş130 movement.131 As such, it gained support and Dersim become its stronghold for a short period of time between the 1970s and 1980s. Interestingly, this group was targeted and nearly all its cadres were assassinated between 1976-1980, including the first and the only assassinated woman, an engineering student from Dersim (Aynur Sertkaya), and the first high school student executed by hanging (Necdet Adalı).132 Some of the deaths were suspicious “accidents.” Most of the perpetrators were never found and so the deaths remain labeled as unknown killings, like hundreds of other political killings inculpating the deep state. Gradually, Kurtuluş’s members were eradicated from the city, alongside other Kurdish political organizations such as Kawa and Tekoşin.133 Another Kurdish leftist organization, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), was blamed for being ilkel milliyetçi (primitive nationalist) and thus heavily attacked by some of these leftist organizations as well as the state. While the organizations sensitive to the Kurdish and Alevi identity have left Dersim, even those who had engaged in Kurdish politics on a legal basis were hunted by the state. Other groups resistant to these identities have for the most part been left to freely engage in their activities. It should be further noted that the most effective persons among the leftist organizations in favor of Kurdish identity or themselves in Kurdish national were all brutally killed by the state, such as Huseyin Cevahir (in Istanbul 1971), Ibrahim Kaypakkaya (in Diyarbakır 1973), and also an Armenian, Orhan Bakır (Armenak Bakırciyan, in Karakoçan/Elaziğ1980). In Dersim, the great majority of the political ideology was shared between the most leftist organizations’ policies and the state’s official TIS ideology. The Kemalist tone within the leftist movement provides additional evidence of the state’s homogenization policies and its efforts to influence and manipulate the leftist movement as well as its associated discourses. As Beşikci points out, “the success of the Kemalists’ is to make itself be defended by the socialists,”134 while Ahmet

128 Beşikçi, Tunceli Kanunu, 145. 129 Ünlü, Kürdistan/Türkiye, 429. 130 Known as the Emancipation movement in English. 131 Joost Jongerden and Ahmet Hamdi Akkaya, “The Kurdistan Workers Party and a New Left in Turkey: Analysis of the revolutionary movement in Turkey through the PKK’s memorial text on Haki Karer,” European Journal of Turkish Studies 14 (2012), accessed July 31, 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.4000/ejts.4613. 132 Dilşa Deniz, “1978 yılında sevdiğimiz elimizden alındı: Seyfettin Deniz, Kurtuluş Hareketi ev diğer cinayetler,” Dersim Gazetesi, December 30, 2017, accessed July 8, 2020, http://dersimgazetesi.net/tag/seyfettin-deniz/. 133 Both Kawa and Tekoşin’s leaders and members were killed by the state despite Kawa being located in Syria, near the Turkish border. See Joost Jongerden and Ahmet Hamdi Akaya, “Kürdistan Devrimcilerinin İlk Yılları-PKK: Grup Oluşumu, Türkiye Solu ve Kürt Siyasal Partileri ile İlişkiler,” academia.edu ([2013] 2015), 479-507, 488-489, accessed July 31, 2020, https://www.academia.edu/13163085/Kurdistan_Devrimcilerinin_ilk_yillari_-_PKK_Grup_Olusumu_ Turkiye_Solu_ve_Kurt_Siyasal_Partileri_ile_iliskiler. 134 Müjgan Halis, “Bir kitap yazdı, 17 yıl yattı,” Sabah, March 6, 2011, accessed June 20, 2019, https://www.sabah.com.tr/ pazar/2011/03/06/bir_kitap_yazdi_17_yil_yatti.

Kahraman, a Kurdish intellectual, argues that the Kemalist cadres of the Turkish state founded the Turkish Communist Party (TKP) to obtain financial aid from the Soviet Union. After succeeding, they killed the communists on their way back to the Black Sea.135 The state and leftist organizations used rhetoric to mobilize Dersimian youth against their own society that resembled the discourses used during the Dersim military attacks, such as mobilizing around the fight against feudalism. In this fight against feudalism, the state attacked derebeyis,136 meaning the aşîret leaders and seyids, before and during the period between 1937 and 1938. The various leftist organizations in the 1970s attacked the very same institutions, the aşîrets (axa) and Ocax/seyidship, and similarly defined their struggle as one against the patron-ağa state. Axaship of the tribe system was crucial for Kurdish ethnic survival, while the Ocax system (seyids) was important for the survival of Alevism. Thus, both together were central to the functioning of the governing body of Kurdish Alevi society in Dersim. While the axaship in Dersim does give the axa some authority in the representation of the tribe, they do not own the land of the tribe, though they do maintain ownership of some personal land. Designated tribal land cannot be sold to anyone outside of the tribe. As such, this system of land ownership does not entail the kind of feudal lordship 137 that both the Turkish state in the 1930s and leftist organizations in the 70s used in their rhetoric to delegitimize and support attacks on social organization in Dersim.138 In addition to attacking the axaship, the seyids, members of a sacred genealogy within the tribes who solved internal disputes, were also portrayed as backward institutions that were inherently opposed to a modern Turkish state. In line with this argument, both leftists and the state were simultaneously pointing out the inferiority of Kurds, who they claimed could not progress and were thus exploited by the axas and seyids, the representatives of “primitive/heretic” religion. This discourse was further invoked by the state to portray the 1938 genocide as an effort to bring civilization to Dersim. Interestingly, this was also the Ottoman’s motto: to fight against backwardness and bring civilization to Dersim, as is underlined in the words of Kazim Ateş who pointed out “the continuation between the Abdülhamid period’s modernizing concept (in general, 19th Century Ottoman modernism concept) and Kemalist modernism.”139 The socialist project was also a project of modernism by the leftist movement and justified itself as necessary to bring socialism and rescue Dersimian from patron-axas’ exploitations.140 The situation in Dersim was, in fact, better characterized as one of land scarcity, in which nosuch feudal land ownership system existed to exploit others. In other Sunni regions, where feudal land ownership and exploitation was, in fact, severe, such as in Çukurova, Urfa, Antep, there was no such fight against feudalism by the state, nor did leftist organizations engage in comparable activities. This suggests that these activities were not principally an effort to bring socialism to a region suffering under feudalism, otherwise leftist organizations and the state would have targeted these other regions as well and, perhaps, more aggressively, rather than focusing solely on Dersim and other Kurdish Alevis sites. In the Dersim case, by contrast, the majority of internationalist leftist movements and the nationalist Turkish state surprisingly shared the same ideas and the same strategy, outlining the seyids and axas as exploiters, and the ones to be fought against. A Turkish sub-lieutenant, Hüseyin Özalp, in memoirs recounting his military service in Dersim, expressed that “the institution of dedeship141 which Alevism depended on, was collapsing…[t]he effect of Partizan’s142 propaganda

135 Ahmet Kahraman, “Şu dünyanın kulpuna bakın siz!,” Yeni ÖzgürPolitika, July 2, 2019, accessed July 2, 2019, http:// yeniozgurpolitika.net/su-dunyanin-kulpuna-bakin-siz/. 136 Derebeyis refers to feudal lords. Baran, Yılları Arasında Basında Dersim, 209; Uluğ, Derebeyi ve Dersim, 9-10. 137 Dilşa Deniz, Yol/Rê: Dersim İnanç Sembolizmi, Antropolojik Bir Yaklaşım (Istanbul: İletişim, 2012), 46-47. 138 Ünlü, Turkishness contract, 24. 139 Kazım Ateş, “Necip Fazıl’ın Dersim’i,” Birikim, December 11, 2011, accessed March 7, 2019, https://www.birikimdergisi. com/guncel-yazilar/575/necip-fazil-in-dersim-i#.XWgYsJNKgnU. 140 Doğan Munzuroğlu, Toplumsal Yapı ve İnanç Bağlamında Dersim Aleviliği (Ankara: Kalan, 2004), 55. 141 Another name used for the Seyids. 142 Partizan was and still is one of the strong leftist organizations in Dersim.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1728 38 Deniz of the years cannot be denied on that matter.”143 As it is clear, while the leftist aspired towards a socialist revolution, in which neither ethnic nor religious difference existed,144 the Turkish state promised to bring civilization exclusively to Dersim, where no feudal exploiters such as the—axas and seyids—would no longer exist. While the leftists promised a socialist country with no ethnic or religious differentiation—in effect rendering Turkishness hegemonic—the state was promising equality after civilization and a process of homogenization that would eventually assimilate the entirety of the population as Muslim Turks. As argued above, while many leftists and the communist party were supportive of the genocide, later on, many leftist organizations played a significant role in denying the genocide by preventing any connection with ethnicity and religion and glorifying the genocide as an “uprising against the system.” As such, Kurdish Alevi youth were successfully led by these organizations to target their own societal structures instead of the nationalist State. Represented as an uprising against the system, without any mention whatsoever of the number of people massacred, the Kemalist/ nationalist cadres were successfully cleared of culpability. Subsequently, leader cadres of the CHP145 such as Mustafa Kemal (the president, the planner), İsmet İnönü (the Prime Minister) and Fevzi Çakmak (the Chief of General Staff) were not only cleared of their responsibilities in the genocide, but also (and more importantly) were rendered heroes, even saviors of the surviving population.146 CHP was subsequently labelled a progressive party in Turkey and Dersim itself. Mustafa Kemal’s portrait hung in Dersimian homes and to this day remain in all Alevi institutions and cemevis.147 Streets, schools, hospitals, bridges and neighborhoods were named after the perpetrators: Atatürk, İnönü, and Çakmak. Until the 2000s, when the Kurdish movement was strengthened and allowed to participate in the elections, nearly all of the MPs and mayors of Dersim were elected from the CHP. As such, all of the MPs and mayors further served to absolve and exculpate the perpetrators of their roles in the crimes committed against the people of the city. Genocide thus remains the worst kept secret, while the CHP continues to be labelled a progressive party that many leftists, Alevis, Alevi organizations, and NGOs in Turkey and Dersim have affiliated themselves with. No mention is made of the crimes CHP leaders committed in Dersim or of their involvement in other crimes against non-Turkish and non-Muslim communities. By suppressing their Kurdish and Alevi identity, the Alevi Kurds were able to become members of the party. Thus, many Alevi and Dersim NGOs remain heavily controlled by CHP, which effectively means the support of the TIS ideology.

Conclusion The evidence discussed here suggests that the 1937-38 military operations in Dersim clearly meet the criteria to be classified as a genocide according to the nd2 Article of the Genocide Convention. This evidence includes: the long durée (duration) of the preparations and planning that began in the 1930s, the significant military action as represented in the number of soldiers involved and the military equipment employed,148 the two-year duration of these events, and, finally the ultimate military directive “to hit anything live.”149 In addition, the assertion of genocide is further supported by estimates that place the number of casualties in the tens of thousands, the number of Dersimian residents subject to forced displacement to the Western cities of Turkey, the thousands of female

143 Hüseyin Özalp, Desim Günlükleri (Ankara: Tanyeri Kitap, 2012), 20. 144 Munzuroğlu, Toplumsal Yapı, 55. 145 Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party) was founded by M. Kemal and Kemalist cadres in 1923 and was the single ruling party until 1945. 146 Günday, Adın Perihan Olsun, 134. 147 Cemevis are Alevis’ sites of worship following urbanization. 148 This equipment included the most advanced technology of the time period such as military aircraft and poison gas. 149 Sabiha Gökçen, the first women pilot in Turkey who was an Armenian orphan and the god daughter of Mustafa Kemal, in an interview by Halit Kıvanç published in Milliyet on November 25, 1956, noted that they were commanded to hit anything live. Thus, they even hit the goats, which were perceived to be the food of the rebels. Şerıf Karataş, “İnsanları Fare Zehirler Gibi Öldürdüler,” Evrensel Gazetesi, May 4, 2012, accessed July 31, 2020, https://www.evrensel. net/haber/28393/insanlari-fare-zehirler-gibi-oldurduler.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1728 Dersim 1937-38 Genocide 39 children taken from their families and raised by army personnel150 to encourage their assimilation, the damage to the city of Dersim and the calculated destruction of her social structures to prevent the survival of the remaining population, the lack of any adequate medical and/or psychological support for orphaned children, the wounded, and all others affected by these devastating events. It is also clear from both official reports and other documents based on academic writings, news, witnesses’ statements, memoirs, and exile literature that the military operations in Dersim between 1937-38 were primarily launched to enact policies of Turkification and Islamization. The UN definition stresses the intention of the crime above its quantitative impact upon the population or its duration. The main aim of these operations is apparent in the legal process that preceded the genocide, such as the Law of Maintaining Order (1925), Resettlement Law (1934), Dersim/ Tunçeli Law (1935), and the related official documents, interviews, official statements made by high-ranking officials. Due to state-sponsored policies of homogenization, it is clear that at least between forty-six and sixty-three thousand people, including the remaining Armenian population, were killed and more than thirteen thousand Dersimians were forcibly evacuated and resettled in the Western cities of Turkey for the purpose of assimilation. In attempts to justify or deny the large number of casualties and population displacement, media outlets have systematically produced dehumanizing portrayals of residents of the region as bandits and savages participating in an uprising against civilization and state reforms. The degree of overlapping policies and discourses through which Kurdish ethnicity and Alevi religion were targeted and denied, reveals that the Turkish state exerted significant control over the policies of the leftist movement in Turkey and, particularly in Dersim. Both sides relied upon almost the same discourse, attacked the same structures, and justified their actions as a fight against feudalism only in the Kurdish Alevi regions, where, in fact, no western-type feudalism exists. Using this same argument, a rhetoric of uprising served as the basis for the denial of the mass killings of unarmed civilians. The state as well as various leftist organizations were hostile to Kurdish leftist organizations that focused on Kurdish identity, forcing them out of Dersim, while others were permitted to remain and co-opted into the state’s efforts to suppress Kurdish identity demands and deny the genocide. Thus, while expunging organizations and persons in favor of Kurdish identity from the region, other organizations, and their discourses were permitted to survive in order to suppress the Kurdish identity. As such, until 1980, the rallying cry in Dersim remained: “[w]e are socialist who are internationalist and atheist [not Kurdish or Alevi],” while, between 1990 and 2000, this slogan became “[w]e are Alevis, and Alevis are not Kurdish,” and then between 2000 and 2020, the slogan widely echoed throughout Dersim has been “[w]e are Zaza and Zazas are not Kurdish.” Efforts to clear Dersim of Kurdish and Alevi identity through the genocide in 1937-38 have been successfully enacted with devastating consequences but not yet completed. Such efforts continue in the form of ethnocide, culturicide, and ecocide, alongside a denial of the 1937-38 genocide.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my friend and colleague, Nancy Postero, for suggesting the title for this article, and for reading the article and providing me with great feedback. I would also like to thank the Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF) and Scholar at Risk Network (SAR) for their great support. Thanks to Leanne W. Green and Morgen A. Chalmers for their English language editing.

Dedication This article is dedicated to Nuri Dersimi, a Dersimian Kurdish intellectual and politician, who spent his life struggling for Dersim and, as a result, died in exile. Today, he is still helping us understand what took place in Dersim.

150 Gürbey and Gül, Dersim’de Nazi gazı.

Bibliography Aday, Nesimi. “Karga Bülbül Olmaz.” Dersim Gazetesi, June 27, 2017. Accessed April 4, 2020. http:// nesimiaday.com/index.php/2017/06/27/karga-bulbul-olmaz/. Agum, Rose Polat. Bego- Dersim 1938 ve Sonrası. Istanbul: Belge, 2018. Ağar, Ömer Kemal. Tunceli-Dersim Coğrafyası. Istanbul: Türkiye Basımevi, 1940. Akgül, Suat. Yakın Tarihimizde Dersim İsyanları ve Gerçekler. Istanbul: Boğaziçi, 1992. Aksoy, Gürdal. “Gas at ‘Home,’ Gas in the World, On the Use of Poison Gas by the Turkish State in Dersim.” Academia.edu, March 7, 2020. Accessed March 18, 2020. https://www. academia.edu/42159488/Yurtta_Gaz_Cihanda_Gaz_Tc_Devletinin_Dersimde_Zehirli_ Gaz_Kullanmas%C4%B1_%C3%9Czerine_Gas_at_Home_Gas_in_the_World_On_the_ Use_of_Poison_Gas_by_the_Turkish_State_in_Dersim_. Akyürekli, Mahmut. Dersim Kürt Tedibi 1937-1938. Istanbul: Kitapyayınevi, 2012. Algör, İhami. Ma sekerdo Kardaş? “Dersim 38” Tanıklıkları. Istanbul: Doğan Kitap, 2010. Arslan, Serhat. “Kürdistan’da Doga/Ekoloji Katliamı.” Toplum ve Kuram: Lêkolîn û Xebatên Kurdî Dergisi 9, (2014), 61-73. Accessed July 7, 2020. http://zanenstitu.org/uploads/dosyalar/ Kitaplar/Toplum%20ve%20Kuram/9sayi/Ku%CC%88rdistan%E2%80%99da%20 Dog%CC%86a%20_%20Ekoloji%20Katliam%C4%B1%C2%A0.pdf. Aslan, Şükrü. “Genel Nüfus Sayımı Verilerine Göre Dersim’de Kayıp Nüfus.” In Herkesin Bildiği Sır: Dersim, edited by Şükrü Aslan, 397-412. Istanbul: İletişim, 2010. Ateş, Kazım. “Necip Fazıl’ın Dersim’i.” Birikim, December 11, 2011. Accessed July 3, 2019. https:// www.birikimdergisi.com/guncel-yazilar/575/necip-fazil-in-dersim- i#.XWqxppNKgnU. Ayata, Bilgin and Serra Hakyemez. “The AKP’s engagement with Turkey’s past crimes: an analysis of PM Erdoğan’s ‘Dersim apology’.” Dialect Anthropology 37 (2013), 131-143. Accessed July 31. Doi: 10.1007/s10624-013-9304-3. Aydın, Erdoğan. “Ölüm ve Medeniyet Paradoksunda Dersim.” Dersim Gazetesi, November 17, 2017. Accessed July 31, 2020. http://dersimgazetesi.net/olum-ve-medeniyet-paradoksunda- dersim/. Aydın, Murat. “Dersim“de kimyasal izi ortaya çıktı.” CNNTurk, December 4, 2013. Accessed Aygün, Hüseyin. Dersim 38 Resmiyet ve Hakikat. Ankara: Dipnot, 2010. Baran, Taha. 1937-1938 Yılları Arasında Basında Dersim. Istanbul: Iletişim, 2014. Barkey, Henri. “Under the Gun: Turkish Foreign Policy and the Kurdish Question.” In The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s: Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East, edited by Robert Olson, 65-83. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996. Bedrosyan, Raffi. “Dersim: A First Step in Facing the Past in Turkey.” The Armenian Weekly, December 1, 2011. Accessed April 4, 2020. https://armenianweekly.com/2011/12/01/dersim- a-first-step-in-facing-the-past-in-turkey/. Beşikçi, İsmail. Tunceli Kanunu (1935) ve Dersim Jenosidi. Istanbul: Belge, 1990. Beyazgazete. “12 Eylul‘un acıları yetmedi mi? Irkcı afisten sonra darbe cagrısı.” Beyazgazete, February 2, 2012. Accessed April 8, 2020. http://beyazgazete.com/haber/2012/2/2/12-eylul- un-acilari-yetmedi-mi-irkci-afisten-sonra-darbe-cagrisi-1038130.html. Bozarslan, Hamit. “Political Crisis and the Kurdish Issue in Turkey.” In The Kurdish Nationals Movement in the 1990s, Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East, edited by Robert Olson, 135- 153. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996. Bulut, Faik. Dersim Raporları. Istanbul: Evrensel Basım Yayım, 2009. Çağlayangil, Ihsan Sabri. “Çağlayangil: Ordu Dersim Kürtlerini Kesti, Fare Gibi Zehirledi!” T24, November 19, 2011. Accessed July 9, 2020. https://t24.com.tr/haber/caglayangil-ordu- dersim-kurtlerini-kesti-fare-gibi-zehirledi,182465 Çem, Munzur. Dersim Merkezli Kürt Aleviliği. Istanbul: Vate, 2010. ------. Qurzeli Usiv‘in 70 Yılı. Istanbul: İletişim, 2014. Demir, Hasan. Dersim‘den Tunceli‘ye 38 Katliamı Tanıklıkları. Istanbul: Belge, 2011. Deniz, Dilşa. Yol/Rê: Dersim İnanç Sembolizmi, Antropolojik Bir Yaklaşım. Istanbul: İletişim, 2012. ------. “Dersim’in Ekonomi Politiği İçinde Talanın Yeri: Antropolojik Bir Yaklaşım.” In Dört Dağa Sığmayan Kent, Dersim Üzerine Ekonomi-Politik Yazılar, edited by Şerif Gürçağ Tuna and Gözde Orhan, 71-111. Istanbul: Patika Kitap, 2013.

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©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1728 “The Jews love numbers”: Steven L. Anderson, Christian Conspiracists, and the Spiritual Dimensions of Holocaust Denial Matthew H. Brittingham Emory University Atlanta, Georgia, USA

From a once largely unknown preacher with a YouTube channel, Steven Anderson’s media presence has grown sizably in less than a decade. From his pulpit at Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona (Independent Fundamental Baptist, or IFB), his vitriolic preaching on religious and social issues has garnered public attention. On a local area news broadcast, Anderson went on record saying that the state should execute homosexuals.1 He also gained national notoriety by praying for the death of President Barack Obama.2 Praying for the death of a president is a far cry from how many conservative Christians usually, at least in theory, discuss prayer for those in authority, namely praying for the well-being of their leaders or praying that their leaders would follow God’s commands.3 He was even featured in a BBC mini-documentary that covered his daily life and ministry, entitled “America’s Hate-Preachers.”4 Interest in Anderson’s YouTube videos has grown in part due to increased production quality. Paul Wittenberger, owner of Framing the World, a small-time film production company, joined Anderson’s cause sometime in the last decade. Steven Anderson is a conspiracist who is also a fundamentalist Christian. He melds his post-tribulation premillennialism with conspiracies about the United Nations, the 9/11 attacks, translations of the Bible, the Masonic Lodge, and more.5 In recent years, Anderson has shown an increased interest in talking about the relationship between Christianity, Judaism, and the State of Israel, culminating in a film entitled Marching to Zion (2015). In this film, Anderson, who firmly embraces replacement theology, also known as supersessionism, championed a wide range of antisemitic stereotypes.6 Marching to Zion did not substantively address the Holocaust, however. Whether simply curious about his thoughts or as a counterpoint to his claims, Anderson’s viewers brought up the Holocaust, and Anderson felt compelled to share his views. The preacher produced a nearly 40-minute video, “Did the Holocaust Really Happen?,”7 in which he espoused what Deborah Lipstadt has called “hardcore” Holocaust denial, “den[ying] the facts of the Holocaust” in an “outright and forceful fashion.”8 Though his “scientific” evidence for the “Holocaust

1 USA Today, “Pastor Defends His Anti-homosexual Sermon,” interview by Mark Curtis, December 6, 2014, YouTube video, 5:33, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbSM_kxpObc. 2 Rob Boston, “Pastor Of Hate: When Religious Right Rhetoric Goes Too Far,” Wall of Separation (blog), Americans United for Separation of Church and State, September 2, 2009, accessed March 1, 2020, https://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of- separation/pastor-of-hate-when-religious-right-rhetoric-goes-too-far. 3 Conservative Christians in the United States often cite 1 Timothy 2:1-7 as the biblical approach to those in authority. However, several conservative Christian pastors were quite open in praying for the death of President Obama; see, Lilly Fowler, “Praying for Obama’s Death,” Salon, November 24, 2009, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.salon. com/2009/11/24/praying_for_obama_death/. 4 See the BBC documentary, originally televised October 11, 2016, on YouTube: BBC, “America’s ‘Hate’ Preacher: Pastor Steven Anderson—BBC Documentary,” YouTube video, 23:29, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=K4PvxG2Kh4E; also see Hannah Livingston, “‘Hell’s Gonna be Pretty Hot for you’: My Summer with a Christian Hate Preacher,” BBC, July 24, 2017, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/2e465c60- cdd3-48f5-8944-e9b2786e3ce9. The IFB has experienced some recent controversy, see Sarah Smith, “Hundreds of Sex Abuse Allegations Found in Fundamental Baptist Churches Across U.S.,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, December 9, 2018, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.star-telegram.com/entertainment/living/religion/article222576310.html; Alexander Kacala, “Anti-gay Pastor Resigns After Allegedly ‘Being With Prostitutes’,” NBC News, January 7, 2019, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/anti-gay-pastor-resigns-after-allegedly-being-prostitutes-n955926. 5 BBC, America’s ‘Hate’ Preacher; also see Paul Wittenberger, dir., Babylon USA (Phoenix, AZ: Framing The World Productions, 2017), 94 mins., accessed Aug 6, 2020, https://archive.org/details/BabylonUSA and Paul Wittenberger, dir., New World Order Bible Versions (Phoenix, AZ: Framing The World Productions, 2014), 99 mins., accessed July 30, 2019, https://archive.org/details/NewWorldOrderBibleVersionsFullMovie720. 6 Apart from the film itself, see Steven L. Anderson, “Israel Moments 11-20,” Faithful Word Baptist Church, August 2014, accessed May 13, 2019, http://www.faithfulwordbaptist.org/israel_moments_11_20.html. 7 Steven L. Anderson, “Did the Holocaust Really Happen?,” Archive.org video, 37:09, 2015, accessed July 30, 2019, https:// archive.org/details/PastorStevenAndersonDidTheHolocaustReallyHappen. 8 Deborah Lipstadt, “The Trump Administration’s Flirtation With Holocaust Denial,” The Atlantic, January 30, 2017, accessed March 1, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/the-trump-administrations-softcore- Matthew H. Brittingham. ““The Jews love numbers”: Steven L. Anderson, Christian Conspiracists, and the Spiritual Dimensions of Holocaust Denial.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, 2 (2020): 44-64. ©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1721 Spiritual Dimensions of Holocaust Denial 45 hoax” or “Holocaust myth,” as he often refers to the Holocaust, is mostly a regurgitation of the pseudoscientific arguments made by a more established group of Holocaust deniers, Anderson adds a spiritual dimension to Holocaust denial to make it attractive to Christian viewers.9 In the following article, I argue this very claim—Anderson presents fellow Christians with arguments for Holocaust denial and sets Holocaust denial in a spiritual framework. He depicts Christianity and Judaism in cosmic battle, such that the “Holocaust myth” hinders the spread of Christianity. By examining the spiritual importance Anderson gives Holocaust denial, scholars gain insight into how individuals refashion genocide denial for their own needs and repackage it for particular audiences, an example of “how conspiracy narratives are mobilized within specific religious groups.”10 I begin this article by discussing Christian conspiracists and theoretical issues in analyzing Holocaust denial on the web. I continue by briefly describing Marching to Zion, its production, narrative, and theological goals.11 While Anderson does not espouse Holocaust denial in this film, Marching to Zion shows Anderson’s connection to Texe Marrs,12 a Christian conspiracist more actively involved in a wider network of what I call theocentric Christian conspiracists. I then consider Anderson’s post-Marching to Zion Holocaust denial video, “Did the Holocaust Really Happen?” Through a close reading of this video, I show how Anderson gives Holocaust denial a spiritual meaning because, he believes, the Holocaust negatively impacts one of his ultimate goals, “soul-winning,” or bringing lost souls to faith in Jesus. Though Anderson and fellow Christian conspiracists have a special theologically-driven interest in Jews and the Holocaust, their case shows how the discourse related to denying a particular genocide morphs when applied in specific contexts.

Theocentric Christian Conspiracists and Holocaust Denial on the Web The following section makes several features of Anderson’s Holocaust denial evident. First, Anderson is not alone in making theology central to his Holocaust denial. Anderson exists as part of a connected but still diffuse group of theologically-focused, antisemitic Christian conspiracists who deny the Holocaust. Second, Anderson and those of his ilk draw from (at least) two discursive traditions—Christian theology and antisemitic conspiracy theories. Naturally, these discursive traditions sometimes intersect and sometimes do not. In this particular section, it is important to show how they intersect in the case of Anderson and like-minded Christian conspiracists since it will remain a relevant theme throughout this study. Third, a window of opportunity has emerged for Anderson and similar antisemitic Christian conspiracists to adapt Holocaust denial discourse to their needs in ways that might not have been as readily apparent in the recent past, a product of changing Holocaust denial networks and new technologies.

holocaust-denial/514974/; also see Deborah Lipstadt, “Holocaust Denial: An Antisemitic Fantasy,” Modern Judaism 40, no. 1 (2020), 75, accessed March 1, 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjz019. For Lipstadt’s influential early work, see Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York: Free Press, 1993). Some scholars refer to Holocaust denial as “negationism” and Holocaust deniers as “negationists.” I have decided to use “Holocaust denial” and “Holocaust denier.” 9 Anderson jumped onto YouTube soon after the site appeared and developed a media strategy where associates posted a daily dose of his sermon clips online, see clip Steven L. Anderson, “Hardball Interview with Pastor Steven Anderson,” YouTube video, 00:09:16-00:15:23, posted on June 29, 2017, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?time_continue=280&v=SYWUt6k_Eog. As of August 2019, several of Anderson’s videos I analyze in this article have been removed from YouTube or listed as private because of the site’s changing policies. See Paris Martineau, “YouTube is Banning Extremist Videos. Will it Work?” Wired, June 5, 2019, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.wired. com/story/how-effective-youtube-latest-ban-extremism/. Many of his videos and films can still be found at Archive. org. Where applicable, I reference timestamps for Anderson’s videos according the versions uploaded to Archive.org. 10 David G. Robertson, “Conspiracy Theories and the Study of Alternative and Emergent Religions,” Nova Religio 19, no. 2 (2015), 8, accessed July 1, 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.2015.19.2.5. 11 Paul Wittenberger, dir., Marching to Zion (Phoenix, AZ: Framing The World Productions, 2015), 101 mins., accessed July 30, 2019, https://archive.org/details/PastorStevenAndersonMarchingToZion. 12 Texe Marrs died while this article was being reviewed and edited for publication. I have decided to maintain the present tense when talking about his writing and thought. Dignity Memorial, “Obituary: Texe Marrs, July 15, 1944-November 23, 2019,” Dignity Memorial, accessed August 5, 2020, https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/austin-tx/texemarrs-8938309.

Anderson is an example of what I call theocentric Christian conspiracists.13 By “theocentric,” I am not referring to the term’s use within Christian theological discourse, but as the word commonly appears in English dictionaries, typically a variation of “centering on or directed toward God as a focus of interest, source of authority, etc.”14 As scholars have noted, many conspiracists address religious issues in some fashion, but theocentric Christian conspiracists, I submit, focus their conspiracy narratives first and foremost on religious texts, theology, or divine prophecy. Secularly- oriented conspiracists, on the other hand, generally do not make religious texts, theology, or divine prophecy central to their conspiracies.15 As a fitting example, the above-mentioned Marrs, a close associate of Anderson’s and the conspiracist “star” of Marching to Zion, aptly summarized the centrality of Christian scripture in directing his personal knowledge of conspiracies—“[t]hough I sought the counsel of men wise to the ways of the world, experts in the field of conspiracy science, only the Bible, I found, is able to grant me access to the key that would unlock that heavy door to find the ineffable mystery of iniquity.”16 Scriptural references abound in the work of Marrs, Anderson, and other theocentric Christian conspiracists, and their theological rationale is always forefront. Though I will not delineate the extent of its boundaries here, the concept of theocentric Christian conspiracists is flexible enough to encompass groups and individuals as diverse as Christian Identity and Pat Robertson, which means that theocentric Christian conspiracists can include antisemites and Holocaust deniers and those who are not.17 More specifically, I suggest theocentric Christian conspiracists like Anderson advance theologically-focused “superconspiracies.”18 As Michael Barkun defines superconspiracies, they are “conspiratorial constructs in which multiple conspiracies are believed to be linked together hierarchically… At the summit of the conspiratorial hierarchy is a distant but all-powerful evil force manipulating lesser conspiratorial actors.”19 Once again, superconspiracy is not only evident in the films, preaching, and blogposts of Steven Anderson, but is shared by a group oflike- minded, antisemitic theocentric Christian conspiracist writers, such as Marrs,20 Edward Hendrie,21

13 Michael Barkun defines conspiracy as “the belief that an organization made up of individuals or groups asw or is acting covertly to achieve some malevolent end,” see Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 3. There are legitimate concerns with Barkun’s notion of “conspiracy belief,” but I still find “superconspiracies” particularly helpful. On drawbacks to “conspiracy belief,” see Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), 37. 14 Collins English Dictionary, s.v., “theocentric,” accessed March 1, 2020, https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/ english/theocentric. 15 Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 68. 16 Texe Marrs, Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star: Eye-Opening Revelations and Forbidden Knowledge About Israel, the Jews, Zionism, and the Rothschilds (Austin: RiverCrest Publishing, 2011), loc. 7772, Kindle. 17 Without referring to it as such, Barkun offers an example what I call theocentric Christian conspiracism when addressing the writing of Texe Marrs and Pat Robertson on the Illuminati. On Marrs, Robertson, and the Illuminati, Barkun states, “[i]n the majority of [recent Illuminati literature], the alleged Illuminatist attack on revealed religion is a secondary motif, but in the works of Texe Marrs and Pat Robertson, it emerges as a central theme.” See Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 52. Barkun on Marrs again, see Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, revised edition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 288-289. 18 Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 6. 19 Ibid. 20 Several relevant works by Texe Marrs include: Texe Marrs, Blood Covenant with Destiny: The Babylonian Talmud, the Jewish Kabbalah, and the Power of Prophecy (Austin: RiverCrest Publishing, 2018), Kindle; Texe Marrs, DNA Science and the Jewish Bloodline (Austin: RiverCrest Publishing, 2013), Kindle; Marrs, Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star; Texe Marrs, Feast of the Beast (Austin: RiverCrest Publishing, 2017), Kindle; Texe Marrs, Holy Serpent of the Jews: The Rabbis’ Secret Plan for Satan to Crush Their Enemies and Vault the Jews to Global Dominion (Austin: RiverCrest Publishing, 2016). 21 Edward Hendrie, Solving the Mystery of Babylon the Great: Tracking the Beast from the Synagogue to the Vatican, 2nd ed. (Great Mountain Publishing, 2012), Kindle; Edward Hendrie, Bloody Zion: Refuting the Jewish Fables That Sustain Israel’s War Against God and Man (Great Mountain Publishing, 2012), Kindle.

Michael Hoffman,22 and Peter Christian.23 While they do not hold exactly the same conspiratorial or theological views, they exhibit notable family resemblances, their theologically-focused antisemitism and Holocaust denial being most important for this study. For Anderson and similar antisemitic theocentric Christian conspiracists, they generally recognize Satan as the hidden force driving sinister world events. Satan uses very willing co-conspirators, “the synagogue of Satan” (i.e. Jews, referencing Rev. 2:9 and 3:9, King James Version [KJV]),24 who in turn create or manipulate a number of secret societies, governments, organizations, ideologies, and individuals to do their bidding. Marrs again offers a helpful example, this time of a superconspiracy in action:

The Synagogue of Satan! That’s the evil group that God names. Not the Moslems [sic], not the Mormons, not even the Communists, the Masonic Lodge, or the Bilderbergers. Although each of these groups and others are, at some level, involved and culpable, God says it is the Synagogue of Satan that drives the conspiracy locomotive. The Synagogue of Satan is identified by Almighty God as the blasphemous and murderous entity which is the chief engineer of planetary chaos in the last days.25 It is important to note that Anderson is not at the center of any assortment of like-minded, antisemitic theocentric Christian conspiracists, if it even has a center. Marrs is much more attuned to the work of other theocentric Christian conspiracists than Anderson. However, Marrs and Anderson show their personal connections and family resemblances in Marching to Zion and media about Marching to Zion, as shown below. Anderson’s Holocaust denial is interesting, albeit disturbing, for the fact that he places theological convictions at the fore. While Christianity in particular has played and continues to play a role in the antisemitic rhetoric of many individuals and movements who deny the Holocaust, direct reliance on Christian scriptures and Christian theology has been rare in Holocaust denial discourse. A helpful example of this case can be observed in Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH), an internet forum for Holocaust deniers, which recently hosted a thread about Anderson’s Holocaust denial.26 An experienced participant on the site, Rmbrmb21, brought up Anderson’s Holocaust denial, but also opened the discussion with a notable caveat, “I don’t know how much theology we want to get into on this forum, or how many of us are religious in any sense.”27 Rmbrmb21’s caveat demonstrates how, on one of the premier forums for Holocaust deniers, participants hardly ever address any connections between theology and Holocaust denial. In fact, Rmbrmb21 is entirely unaware of how many fellow forum participants are even religious “in any sense.” Another experienced forum member, borjastick, responded to the thread in a similar fashion, “I hope the Mods allow your post to remain as it does show a wider understanding of the influence jews and I think israeli jews [sic], who I see as somewhat different, have over the Christian masses in the US.”28 Once again, the fact that an experienced forum participant was uncertain whether theological discussions would be welcome on CODOH shows just how few of these discussions take place on the forum. Interestingly, a number of CODOH members appear to have religious convictions, as the thread attracted commenters who affirmed Anderson’s theological views. In light of the CODOH discussion referenced above, it is important to understand Anderson’s place in the history and structure of Holocaust denial online. Aside from scholarship on the legality of legislating Holocaust denial online, few scholars have dealt seriously with Holocaust denial in cyberspace.29 In 2017, however, William Allington published a noteworthy journal article on

22 Michael Hoffman,Judaism’s Strange Gods, 2nd ed. (Independent History & Research Co., 2000); Michael Hoffman, Judaism Discovered: A Study of the Anti-Biblical Religion of Racism, Self-Worship, Superstition and Deceit, 3rd ed. (Independent History & Research Co., 2008). 23 Peter Christian, Lucifer’s Army: An Exposé of Talmudic Tyranny (Barnes Review, 2017); Peter Christian, One Nation Under Zion: Zionist Influence on America (Barnes Review, 2013); Peter Christian, The Work of All Ages: The Ongoing Plot to Rule the World from Biblical Times to the Present (Barnes Review, 2010). 24 Marrs, Blood Covenant with Destiny, loc. 482, Kindle; Marrs, Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star, loc. 751, Kindle. 29 William Allington, “Holocaust Denial Online: The Rise of Pseudo-Academic Antisemitism on the Early Internet,” Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism 1, no. 1 (2017), 35, accessed July 15, 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.26613/jca/1.1.4; also

Holocaust denial online, particularly its structural growth in the early days of the World Wide Web.30 In this article, Allington focuses on “the general hierarchy of the movement; the differences between the creators and consumers of material.”31 His hierarchy divides specifically between what he calls organized Holocaust denial and casual Holocaust denial. Defining organized Holocaust denial, Allington states, “[o]rganized Holocaust denial resembles a school of political or historical thought, with named and identifiable figures at the center and the creation of an infrastructure behind the movement.”32 Put more simply, organized Holocaust deniers are “the writers and original distributors of [Holocaust denial] material.”33 Early organized Holocaust deniers on the web, like their pre-internet counterparts, were obsessed with appearing rational or reasonable. Hence, organized Holocaust deniers have been those who “establish institutions, publish journals, hold conferences, and defend their theories in the public sphere and, if necessary, law courts.”34 Casual Holocaust deniers, on the other hand, tend to be the “anonymous promoters of Holocaust denial” in cyberspace. They “take the material from organized Holocaust deniers and spread it on message boards and via emails and social media so the movement can grow.”35 Casual Holocaust deniers may diffuse Holocaust denial online for a variety of ideological reasons, and Allington does not concern himself with guessing at ideological rationales. While Allington uses the organized versus casual framework in describing the early stages of Holocaust denial online, another scholar, Nicholas Terry, has focused on Holocaust denial in “web 2.0.” Though it might seem that web 2.0, identified by expansions in social media and user- generated content, could be a godsend for Holocaust deniers, in fact “‘Revisionists’ have found it difficult to compete for attention in a crowded marketplace for fringe ideas, and have been eclipsed by a number of new internet-based conspiracy theories.”36 Terry states further,

despite the return of conspiracist anti-Semitism after 9/11 and a rise in anti-Zionism since the start of the Second Intifada in September 2000, Holocaust denial has been unable to profit from these trends and has failed to attract intellectuals or activists in significant numbers in Western societies. Thus, while Holocaust denial continues to have great brand recognition, it now has surprisingly few customers.37 Even one-time stalwarts of Holocaust denial have backtracked on former positions or have ceased contributing to this increasingly unpopular cause. Hardcore Holocaust denial has also become less popular in many far-right circles. Promoting it could prove publicly damaging and would probably interfere with practical political goals.38 Instead, “Holocaust denial has been cut loose to fend for itself as just one of many fringe conspiracy theories peddled on the internet.”39

It is worth considering Anderson’s place in Allington’s relationship between organized and casual Holocaust denial, as well as Anderson’s place in Terry’s description of Holocaust denial in web 2.0. In terms of Allington’s schema, Anderson resembles casual Holocaust denial in many respects. Anderson isn’t invested in sculpting the infrastructural aspects of Holocaust denial and doesn’t talk about Holocaust denial at every opportunity. He is a pastor with a variety of concerns about the state of the contemporary world, and he promotes a number of conspiracy

see Terry, Holocaust Denial in the Age of Web 2.0; Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). 30 Allington, Holocaust Denial Online, 36-37. 31 Ibid., 37. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. For more on pseudo-academic Holocaust denial, see Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, 120, 142. 36 Terry, Holocaust Denial in the Age of Web 2.0, 34. 37 Ibid., 34-35. 38 Ibid., 37-53, especially see 44-46. 39 Ibid., 53.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1721 Spiritual Dimensions of Holocaust Denial 49 theories.40 Anderson has actually been far more invested in propagating broader antisemitic tropes, such as Jews are liars, Jews control the media, Jews own the banks, etc., than talking specifically about the Holocaust. Anderson’s Holocaust denial is bound to his antisemitism and anti-Israel agenda, which emerge from his interpretation of the Bible.41 Likewise, Anderson’s pseudoscientific arguments are taken directly from the writings of prominent Holocaust deniers who put forward the image of being rational, reasonable, and academic. Anderson takes the pseudoscientific work of these organized Holocaust deniers and owns it, so to speak, blending it into his theologically- focused antisemitism and reframing it for his largely Christian viewership. As a public figure with an established audience and lines of communication, he is a casual Holocaust denier who, unlike the casual Holocaust deniers Allington describes, does not rely on the anonymity offered by the internet to spread Holocaust denial. Anderson blurs the lines between the roles historically played by organized and casual Holocaust deniers. He is not one of the “writers and original distributors”42 of Holocaust denial material, but he assumes a more public role than anonymous casual Holocaust deniers. The fact that, as Terry states, “Holocaust denial has been cut loose to fend for itself as just one of many fringe conspiracy theories peddled on the internet”43 offers an explanation for why Anderson can take such a public role in supporting Holocaust denial. With the declining authority of a prior generation of diehard, organized Holocaust deniers, due to infighting, organizational failure, and age, new proliferators of Holocaust denial have begun to fill the vacuum they left behind. Especially notable has been the prominence of conspiracists in filling this void. Terry finds that “The conspiracist scene has in fact become one of the few potential growth areas for negationism in recent years.”44 Further, a number of Holocaust deniers and Holocaust denial websites obsessed with appearing rational, reasonable, and scientific have been willing to risk that image by welcoming Holocaust deniers who present their denial as one of many other “crank” conspiracy theories, such as moon- landing conspiracies, 9/11 conspiracies, JFK assassination conspiracies, etc.45 This is not to say that appearing rational, reasonable, or scientific is not important. Like other conspiracists who peddle Holocaust denial, Anderson clearly feels the need to appear rational or reasonable by citing the work of “scientific” Holocaust deniers. Likewise, like pseudo-academic Holocaust deniers, many conspiracy theorists generally adopt a “quasi-academic style” for “a plausible appearance and an aura of respectability.”46 Anderson is no different in these regards. Yet, as a theocentric Christian conspiracist, Anderson is invested in illuminating the supernatural, which, at least in the eyes of diehard pseudo-academic Holocaust deniers, does not appear rational, reasonable, or scientific. He mixes the supposedly rational, reasonable, or scientific discourse of previous generations of organized Holocaust deniers with the prophetic. I now briefly turn toward examining his theology and connections to other Christians who espouse antisemitic conspiracies and Holocaust denial, exemplified in the film Marching to Zion.

40 Anderson is the visual head of what is called the New IFB, a group of IFB pastors who share particular theological views. He is often engaged in theological infighting with IFB pastors who oppose his teaching. See “What is the New IFB Movement?,” The New Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement, accessed July 30, 2019, https://web.archive. org/web/20191211161128/https://www.thenewifb.com/what-is-the-new-ifb. As of February 2020, infighting may have temporarily halted or permanently damaged the movement, and the New IFB’s website has been shut down. The link I have included is a screen capture dated December 11, 2019. Also see Hatewatch Staff, “In the Midst of Infighting, Anti-LGBTQ Church Network’s Website and Social Media Disappear,” Hatewatch (blog), Southern Poverty Law Center, February 21, 2020, accessed April 15, 2020, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/02/21/midst-infighting- anti-lgbtq-church-networks-website-and-social-media-disappear. 41 See, for example, Anderson’s blog: Steven L. Anderson, “Muslim Hate and Pro-war Propaganda,” Steven L. Anderson (blog), October 9, 2014, accessed July 30, 2019, https://sanderson1611.blogspot.com/2014/10/muslim-hate-and-pro- war-propaganda.html; also see Texe Marrs and Framing the World, “Texe Marrs Interviews Steven Anderson About ‘Marching to Zion’ Part 1,” interview by Texe Marrs, May 5, 2015, YouTube video, 1:03:12, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vbUkXm8K3g. 42 Allington, Holocaust Denial Online, 37. 43 Terry, Holocaust Denial in the Age of Web 2.0, 53. 44 Ibid., 48. 45 Ibid. 46 Jovan Byford, Conspiracy Theories: A Critical Introduction (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 89; also see Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 187.

Framing the World, Marching to Zion, and Texe Marrs The following section considers the 2015 film Marching to Zion. It reveals Anderson’s antisemitic theological views, his association with Texe Marrs, and how he frames Jews, Judaism, and Israel before ever talking about the Holocaust. As noted above, if “Holocaust denial has been cut loose to fend for itself as just one of many fringe conspiracy theories peddled on the internet,”47 this means that Holocaust denial in its most recent iterations and contexts should be understood in relation to relevant conspiracy theories. Furthermore, while Anderson and Marrs might have some nuanced differences on particular theological issues, they showcase significant family resemblances in matters of theology and approach to Jews, Judaism, Israel, and, ultimately, the Holocaust. It is important to understand Anderson’s theology, media, and networks since they are vital to the messages relayed his Holocaust denial video. Since Anderson and Wittenberger teamed up, Framing the World has produced a number of “documentaries” (read: propaganda films).48 Marching to Zion was the first of their films to fully tackle their views on the intersection of Christianity, Jews, Judaism, and Israel. According to Anderson, Marching to Zion is a film that “exposes the fraud of the modern-day nation of Israel and the fraud of the religion known as Judaism.”49 In terms of theological views, Anderson’s Faithful Word Baptist Church is opposed to Christian Zionism, which scholar Stephen Spector broadly defines as “Christians whose faith, often in concert with other convictions, emotions, and experiences, leads them to support the modern state of Israel as the Jewish homeland.”50 Anderson often slips into equating Christian Zionism with dispensationalist theology. Though the two are wedded in the popular imagination, and often in American geopolitics, they are not synonymous.51 Anderson also cares little about the nuanced developments of dispensationalism over time.52 That said, the various iterations of dispensationalist theology have, as academics indicate, generally emphasized “the uniqueness and importance of both Israel and the Church”53 in God’s divine plan. By theorizing a special, ongoing Jewish relationship with God, “Dispensationalism enhanced the conviction that the Jewish people are the apple of God’s eye, set aside for the Lord’s blessing.”54 Opposed to dispensationalist theology, Anderson promotes supersessionism, also known as replacement theology, the belief that the New Covenant of Jesus Christ has superseded the Old Covenant made with Israel. Many who hold to replacement theology generally believe that modern Jews do not constitute God’s chosen people.55 Rather, the Christian church took on the mantle of God’s chosen people with the New Covenant’s inclusion of gentiles into the people of God. Marching to Zion is constructed around a series of arguments against dispensationalist Christian

47 Terry, Holocaust Denial in the Age of Web 2.0, 53. 48 “Framing the World Store,” Framing the World, accessed July 30, 2019, https://framingtheworld.com/store/ols/ categories/dvds. The New IFB is heavily invested in using “documentaries” to reach fellow Christians and the unsaved. See YouTube, “New IFB Documentaries,” YouTube Channel, accessed May 18, 2020, https://www.youtube. com/channel/UCN5OBnOh1-QGZ1sQqOxfIbg/videos. 49 Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen?, 00:00:00-00:00:24. 50 Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3; also see Yaakov Ariel, “An Unexpected Alliance: Christian Zionism and its Historical Significance,”Modern Judaism 26, issue 1 (2006), 74-100, accessed July 10, 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjj005. 51 On the problem with rigidly coupling Christian Zionism and dispensationalism, see Matt estbrook,W “Broadcasting Jesus’ Return: Televangelism and the Appropriation of Israel through Israeli-Granted Broadcasting Rights,” in Comprehending Christian Zionism: Perspectives in Comparison, eds. Göran Gunner and Robert O. Smith. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 79-82; also see Samuel Goldman, God’s Country: Christian Zionism in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 4-11. 52 Mark S. Sweetnam, “Defining Dispensationalism: A Cultural Studies Perspective,” Journal of Religious History 34, no. 2 (2010), 192-194, accessed July 20, 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9809.2010.00862.x. 53 Ibid., 202. 54 Spector, Evangelicals and Israel, 112. 55 Hillary Kaell, Walking Where Jesus Walked: American Christians and Holy Land Pilgrimage (New York: New York University, 2014), 37-38; Yaakov Ariel, An Unusual Relationship: Evangelical Christians and Jews (New York: New York University, 2013), 8, 19-20; also see Yaakov Ariel, “Israel in Contemporary Evangelical Christian Millennial Thought,” Numen 59, no. 5-6 (2012), 471, 481, accessed July 1, 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685276-12341235.

Zionists, attempting to prove that their support for the State of Israel is theologically misguided.56 To prove Christian Zionists wrong, Anderson and Wittenberger interviewed seven Baptist pastors, the owners and operators of a DNA testing company, Texe Marrs, and four Jewish community leaders and rabbis in Arizona (Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, and Humanist).57 Why interview Jewish community leaders if the film focuses on theological debates within Christianity? By interviewing rabbis, Framing the World hopes to demystify, for Christians, what modern Jews believe. Anderson wants to show viewers that Jews are far from being “the apple of God’s eye” because Judaism hardly shares any theological beliefs with fundamentalist or conservative Christians. Framing the World assumes that dispensationalist Christian Zionists have an ossified view of Jews and Judaism. Throughout the film, Anderson and Wittenberger essentially highlight the historic dynamism of Judaism from the Talmud to modern times. The intent, however, is not to show the religious vibrancy of Judaism over millennia, but to show how Judaism became mixed with satanic ideas and practices, as well as how Jews conspired against Christians and the church. Marching to Zion, therefore, exhibits a dual program: (1) deconstructing what many fundamentalist or conservative Christians might believe about Judaism, and (2) reconstructing what Jews and Judaism are from an antisemitic theocentric Christian conspiracist point of view. Because the Jews rejected Jesus, Judaism is the aforementioned “synagogue of Satan.” The synagogue of Satan is a conspiring cabal of Jews attempting to manipulate world affairs, particularly at the end of days. In terms of the interviews with Jewish community leaders, Anderson used these four Jewish figures to speak for all Jews everywhere. According to these interviewees, Framing the World duped them into participating in Marching to Zion.58 Anderson disputes this account and claims that he provided all the interview questions in advance. Nevertheless, he admits to not being forthright about the intentions of the film.59 Anderson and Wittenberger spend considerable time inMarching to Zion talking to Marrs. Marrs, who personally calls his work “conspiracy science,” has long sought to expose the “mysterious ‘they’” directing nefarious world affairs.60 Using the Bible, but undoubtedly influenced by other conspiracists, he personally came to the conclusion that the “synagogue of Satan” (i.e. Jews) was behind the forces of evil in this world.61 In his thought, Jews are part of a cosmic dichotomy.62 In this dichotomy, Christianity professes a spiritual kingdom while Judaism maintains a carnal kingdom, sentiments drawn from a long history of anti-Jewish and antisemitic thought in Christianity.63 Sharing this view with Anderson, they call contemporary Jews “Israel after the flesh.”64 With

56 It is important to note that replacement theology does not necessarily lead to delegitimizing the State of Israel and is not necessarily opposed to Christian Zionism. Again, see Westbrook, Broadcasting Jesus’ Return, 79-82; and Goldman, God’s Country, 4-11. 57 Steven L. Anderson, “New Documentary—Marching to Zion,” Steven L. Anderson (blog), July 27, 2014, accessed July 30, 2019, https://sanderson1611.blogspot.com/2014/07/new-documentary-marching-to-zion.html. 58 Haaretz, “US Pastor Dupes Rabbis into Anti-Semitic Film,” Haaretz, January 1, 2015, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www. haaretz.com/jewish/u-s-pastor-dupes-rabbis-into-anti-semitic-film-1.5346628.Anderson references his interviews throughout a sermon series as well, see Truth in Genesis, “The Jews and Their Lies Part 1 of 2,” YouTube video, 1:04:11, uploaded July 5, 2015, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml-x4VaEaK0; also see Truth in Genesis, “The Jews and Their Lies Part 2 of 2,” YouTube video, 1:05:43, posted July 12, 2015, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYrQXn9IUlM&t=3073s. 59 Steven L. Anderson, “Live Phone Q&A with Pastor Steven L Anderson (11/25/14 6:00pm),” YouTube video, 3:00:10, uploaded November 25, 2014, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFhxXngZ2i8, 02:00:50- 02:03:11; also see David Neiwert, “Arizona Pastor Boasts about Tricking Rabbis into Participating in Anti-Semitic Film,” Hatewatch (blog), Southern Poverty Law Center, December 12, 2014, accessed May 18, 2020, https://www. splcenter.org/hatewatch/2014/12/12/arizona-pastor-boasts-about-tricking-rabbis-participating-anti-semitic-film. 60 Marrs, Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star, loc. 7705, 7742, Kindle. 61 Ibid., loc. 7775, Kindle; also see loc. 751. 62 Ibid., loc. 8664, Kindle. 63 On Christianity and the understanding of Jews as materialistic rather than spiritual, see Stephen H. Norwood, “Convergent Anti-Zionisms: The American Far Left and Far Right,” in Anti-Judaism, Antisemitism, and Delegitimizing Israel, ed. Robert S. Wistrich (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), 119. 64 Anderson used the words “Israel after the flesh,” see Marrs,Texe Marrs Interviews Steven Anderson About ‘Marching to Zion’ Part 1, 00:44:07-00:44:27; Marrs asserts the same, see Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star, loc. 347, Kindle.

Christianity and Judaism locked in cosmic battle, the State of Israel is the latest realization of a Jewish carnal kingdom on earth. Because Christianity seeks a spiritual kingdom, Judaism’s desire for a carnal kingdom means that it must be aligned with Jesus’ opposite, Satan. Marrs sees all non- Christian religions as satanic, but Judaism appears particularly pernicious in his writings. Anderson is similar on this account. On the one hand, he claims Islam is “just as satanic as Judaism”65; on the other hand, he considers Jews to have a special relationship with Satan. In an interview with Marrs, Anderson affirmed this notion:

Israel after the flesh is an abomination today. You know, they’re wicked. They are the most blasphemous people toward our Lord Jesus Christ. When it comes to the religions of the world, the religion that is the most blasphemous is Judaism. And that’s why God identified Judaism as the synagogue of Satan.66

In Marrs and Anderson’s understanding of Jewish history, Judaism’s embrace of satanic elements can be recognized in anti-Christian sentiments in the Talmud.67 Through various means, such as Kabbalah and Zionism, Judaism spread its pernicious, pagan-inspired practices and materialism into other religious groups, ideologies, social movements, political institutions, and secret societies, like post-Vatican II Catholicism, the New Age movement, the Masonic Lodge, and even dispensationalism.68 Secular Jews are not necessarily exempt either. Rather, there is a sense in which secular Jews still do Satan’s work. Marrs and Anderson suggest that secular Jews inherit the sinful heritage of Judaism through their connection to supposedly evil ideologies and movements inspired by Judaism, such as socialism and Zionism. They believe Jews control the publishing industry, Hollywood, the news media, and much of global finance.69 These two theocentric Christian conspiracists make sure to claim that not all Jews knowingly participate in the global Jewish conspiracy; many Jews might be duped by Jewish leaders, e.g. rabbis, the Israeli government, Jewish socialists, Jewish philanthropists, etc.70 Despite attempting to hedge their bets, Anderson and Marrs often utilize all-encompassing antisemitic rhetoric to demonize all Jews who have not accepted Jesus as messiah, the one way Jews can disentangle themselves from Judaism’s satanic tentacles. By now, it should go without saying that Anderson is clearly an antisemite. He fits the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) “working definition of antisemitism” in “making stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective.”71 He especially fits the working definition in two ways I explore in the next section, namely by “denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust),” and by “accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.”72

“What’s the real Holocaust?”: Steven Anderson’s Holocaust Denial This final section presents the meat of my discussion on Anderson and how he frames the spiritual

65 Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen?, 00:34:20. 66 Marrs, Texe Marrs Interviews Steven Anderson About ‘Marching to Zion’ Part 1, 00:44:07-00:44:27. 67 Marrs, Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star, loc. 457, 534, 706, 871, 1160, 1236, 1332, Kindle. 68 Ibid., loc. 460, 532, 906, 4938, Kindle; especially loc. 7787, 8524. Similarly, Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 67. 69 Texe Marrs and Framing the World, “Texe Marrs Interviews Steven Anderson About ‘Marching to Zion’ Part 2,” YouTube video, 1:02:46, uploaded May 6, 2016, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3HaBBRsHTOY, 00:05:32 and 00:06:28-00:06:38. 70 This is a theme in, for example, Marrs, Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star, loc. 3145, Kindle; also see Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen? 71 American Jewish Committee,The Working Definition of Anti-Semitism: What Does It Mean, Why Is It Important, and What Should We Do With It? (New York: American Jewish Committee, n.d.), see page 6, accessed February 10, 2020,https:// www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Religion/Submissions/JBI-Annex1.pdf. 72 Ibid., 7.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1721 Spiritual Dimensions of Holocaust Denial 53 implications of the Holocaust. While I have been building to this point, the broader scope of his theological views, antisemitism, and similarities to other theocentric Christian conspiracists remains relevant. One could surmise that, in a sense, Anderson needs to deny the Holocaust. I do not suggest that it is a theological imperative. Instead, the Holocaust could represent the epitome of potential resistance to his religious aims. The Holocaust can be seen as a challenge to Christianity (because of the Christian history of anti-Judaism and antisemitism), as a force for cementing Jewish identity, and as generating sympathy for Jews, Judaism, and Israel. Denying the Holocaust wipes away these potential obstacles and others like them. While Anderson has some different views than Marrs, they both draw on similar arguments for their Holocaust denial. In “Did the Holocaust Really Happen?,” Anderson exhibits some of core traits of Holocaust denial outlined by Allington (referencing the work of Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman): Anderson denies “any ‘Final Solution’ to exterminate the Jewish people,” denies “the existence of any extermination facilities,” especially the gas chambers, and denies “the accepted death toll of five to six million Jews.” He is ignorant, willfully or not, of the nuances of the Holocaust as “not a single event but rather a collective term describing a long series of events spread over many nations.”73 Apart from what he denies, the strategies Anderson uses for popularizing Holocaust denial among Christians need to be considered more thoroughly. Anderson begins his video by appealing to Christian viewers with biblical references. He first tells the viewer not to “get upset, and angry, and emotional”74 before hearing his case for Holocaust denial. Anderson quotes the Book of Proverbs as justification, “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.”75 In other words, or so the prooftext goes, the viewer needs to listen to Anderson before closing the video simply because he’s questioning whether the Holocaust happened. Anderson uses these prooftexts, and others like it, to try and keep the Christian viewer tuned in, even potentially guilting them into hearing his case. While such biblical prooftexting is certainly uncommon among most historic and contemporary Holocaust deniers, in light of his likely audience, the consistent use of biblical references helps Anderson construct his image as a religious authority figure with spiritual insights into the Holocaust. Anderson mixes his biblical appeal with strategies other Holocaust deniers regularly employ to deflect immediate criticism. Throughout the video, he insists that viewers do the research for themselves, rather than follow intuition, popular opinion, or the research of reputable scholars. Presumably, the viewer will discover holes in what he calls the “official version” (described below) of the Holocaust by digging deeper into the so-called facts; at least as he defines what digging deeper entails.76 In another example of deflection, Anderson appears to plead ignorance, making claims like “it is impossible for me… you know, in 2015 America, to tell you exactly what happened over there on the other side of the world seventy years ago.”77 Still, he consistently doubles down on his denial because “the story doesn’t add up.”78 Whether consciously tapping into strategies employed by other Holocaust deniers or other conspiracists more broadly, these strategies allow Anderson to appear simply like an interested individual (though simultaneously a religious authority figure) who notices discrepancies and wants to explore them. In this way, Anderson self-fashions the image of a reasonable layman, signifying he will dispassionately dissect the facts for viewers. The “reasonable layman” image works in concert with the “religious authority figure” image, the latter of which recognizes the deeper impact of the Holocaust, its spiritual significance. Anderson utilizes another strategy for diffusing criticism, one he shares with Marrs and similar antisemitic Christian conspiracists. As briefly alluded to above, Anderson seeks to distance himself from racists and neo-Nazis. Basically, from the start of “Did the Holocaust Really Happen?,”

73 Shermer and Grobman in Allington, Holocaust Denial Online, 35. 74 Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen?, 00:01:45-00:02:40. 75 Ibid., 00:01:45-00:02:40; citing Proverbs 18:13, King James Version (KJV). 76 Ibid., 00:00:38-00:00:55. 77 Ibid., 00:15:45-00:16:07. 78 Ibid., 00:16:02-00:16:12.

Anderson ensures viewers, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body” and “I am not pro-Hitler or pro-Nazi or pro-National Socialist.”79 On other occasions, Anderson has shown an awareness of the fact that the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center have labeled him a racist and an antisemite. Throughout his ministry, Anderson has been consistent in claiming he isn’t a racist or an antisemite.80 In fact, Anderson and theocentric Christian conspiracists in his circle are outspoken in denouncing racism and racist movements as wholly unbiblical. In an interview between Marrs and Anderson, for example, Anderson stated, “I am not going to glory in being a white person, the Bible says ‘God forbid that I should glory save for the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’… The only thing that matters is: are you in Christ? If you’re not in Christ, I don’t care what your pedigree is you’re not one of the chosen.”81 Marrs and Anderson, as well as other Christians with similar views, often pat each other on the back for supposedly being against racism and antisemitism, which, in their eyes, are labels opponents use to silence biblical truth. As Christians who believe Jesus offers the only path to salvation, Marrs, Anderson, and their coterie arenot afraid to state they are anti-Judaism, but they ardently reject being called racist or antisemitic, the latter of which they clearly understand to be exclusively race-based Jew hatred. As an example of their self-congratulatory language, in the same interview just mentioned Marrs commended Anderson for his anti-racism, saying “It seems to me… that you oppose racism. You’re sort of a civil rights leader, in a favorable way, biblically… You’re opposed to somebody that says this group or that group is, uh, God’s chosen because of the color of their skin or their race or whatever.”82 It is important to note, however, that in the context of the interview the hidden sentiment is that Jews who believe they are God’s chosen people are the true racists, also a common view held by like- minded, antisemitic theocentric Christian conspiracists.83 To explore the issue of race further, in Marching to Zion Anderson uses genetic testing to scientifically prove a spiritual claim attributed to the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians, that “there is neither Jew nor Greek” in God’s kingdom.84 According to Anderson, genetic testing shows how every human has ties to a variety of ethnic groups. So, as the logic goes, genetic testing definitively proves there are no racial, ethnic, or genealogical barriers to all people becoming united in Jesus Christ. In other words, God gave Paul’s claim about spiritual unity a physical manifestation—the genetic code of every human. In one scene in Marching to Zion, Anderson and Wittenberger visit a laboratory to have their own DNA tested. Anderson celebrates his results, which apparently indicate African, Asian, and Jewish ancestry. As he interprets his results, modern genetic testing proves that Anderson himself is a kind of microcosm of scripture’s teachings.85 The fact that Anderson revels in being ethnically or racially mixed distinguishes his approach from that of Holocaust deniers with explicit neo-Nazi or white supremacist leanings. Further in “Did the Holocaust Really Happen?,” Anderson states that he does not doubt Hitler

79 Ibid., 00:00:56-00:01:23. 80 For example, Marrs and Framing the World, Texe Marrs Interviews Steven Anderson About ‘Marching to Zion’ Part 1, 00:23:35-00:23:40; there, he says, “This has nothing to do with race, and they will try to play that race card, but I believe that God has made all nations of the earth of one blood.” 81 Ibid., 00:26:50-00:27:19. 82 Ibid., 00:22:28-00:22:58; also see Wittenberger, Marching to Zion, beginning at 00:58:18. 83 The notion that Jews are the real racists appears often in Marrs’ writing. Marrs, DNA Science and the Jewish Bloodline, loc. 471, Kindle; Marrs, Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star, loc. 6104, Kindle; Marrs, Blood Covenant With Destiny, loc. 1967, Kindle; also see Hoffman,Judaism Discovered. 84 Citing Galatians 3:28, KJV; Faithful Word Baptist Church, “‘Marching to Zion’ Full Movie Transcript,” Faithful Word Baptist Church, May 14, 2015, accessed August 1, 2019, https://www.faithfulwordbaptist.org/m2z_full_english.html. 85 Wittenberger, Marching to Zion, 01:13:16-01:30:48; also see Steven L. Anderson, “I’m North African!” Steven L. Anderson (blog), August 14, 2014, accessed July 30, 2019, https://sanderson1611.blogspot.com/2014/08/im-north-african. html; Steven L. Anderson, “I Have Jewish DNA!” Steven L. Anderson (blog), September 2, 2014, accessed July 30, 2019, https://sanderson1611.blogspot.com/2014/09/i-have-jewish-dna.html; Steven L. Anderson, “I’m Blacker than I Thought!” Steven L. Anderson (blog), September 3, 2014, accessed July 30, 2019, https://sanderson1611.blogspot. com/2014/09/im-blacker-than-i-thought.html; Steven L. Anderson, “My Mom is Part Asian!” Steven L. Anderson (blog), September 4, 2014, accessed July 30, 2019, https://sanderson1611.blogspot.com/2014/09/my-mom-is-part-asian.html; Steven L. Anderson, “My 92 Year-Old Grandma’s DNA Results,” Steven L. Anderson (blog), September 15, 2014, accessed July 30, 2019, https://sanderson1611.blogspot.com/2014/09/my-92-year-old-grandmas-dna-results.html.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1721 Spiritual Dimensions of Holocaust Denial 55 hated Jews and was a racist; he also does not doubt that Jews died in WWII.86 Rather, he disputes that six million Jews died at the hand of the Nazis. In terms of evidence, he largely regurgitates the pseudoscientific arguments of organized Holocaust denial, the arguments marshaled to make Holocaust denial appear reasonable or rational. However, he occasionally imbues these more historically common pseudoscientific arguments with spiritual meaning. The most notable example emerges from his discussion of Auschwitz. Claiming that Auschwitz was a labor camp and not a death camp, his primary evidence rests on the memorial plaques various governments placed and replaced at Auschwitz after the war. A fairly common focal point for Holocaust deniers, when the plaques at Auschwitz were replaced or updated, the stated number of those murdered changed, from 4 million to 1.5 million to 1.1 million. Yet, Anderson finds, the overall figure of six million always stays the same in public discourse. How is that possible? Anderson’s understanding of the history and politics of these memorial plaques is superficial, and reputable scholars have already addressed seeming discrepancies.87 For Anderson, however, the six million total always remains unchanged because the number was “foreordained.” By “foreordained,” Anderson hints at two levels of numerical significance, one historical and one spiritual. First, Anderson’s use of “foreordained” relies on a dubious interpretation of newspaper reports from before WWII, which reportedly hinted at six million Jews eventually dying in massive European conflict. In other words, Jews had already arrived at the six million figure long before Hitler ever came to power. Again, this so-called historical evidence harkens to the work of a generation of Holocaust deniers obsessed with using “rational” or “reasonable” arguments in their denial. The second sense of “foreordained” adds a spiritual dimension to the six million number. Citing the Kabbalah and gematria as examples, Anderson claims that “the Jews love numbers” and the number six is of particular importance—“that number is like a magic number to them… it’s not really based on real history or science.”88 Anderson then cites the Six-Day War, the six-pointed Star of David (a satanic symbol according to Anderson), and the six main death camps of the “Holocaust myth,” to show how Jews are obsessed with the number six.89 Although Anderson does not reference other theocentric Christian conspiracists who write about Jews and the numerological meaning of “six,” it lies in the backdrop of his analysis. Other theocentric Christian conspiracists who are Holocaust deniers discuss the supposed Jewish obsession with the number six, which they associate with Satan and carnality.90 The interpretation of hidden signs and symbols, especially satanic signs and symbols, forms a key part of many of Anderson’s sermons and films on the end times. The idea of six being “like a magic number”91 rests on Anderson’s persona as a religious authority; he appears to be unmasking hidden spiritual knowledge directly connected to definitive historical and scientific “evidence.” Since, in his mind at least, “six million” is not based on “real history or science,” Anderson emerges as the authority on the real history and real science behind the number’s meaning. By injecting a deeper spiritual or prophetic meaning into “six million,” Anderson asserts his interpretive authority over and above other Holocaust deniers. There is a sense in which “rationalist” Holocaust deniers found the evidence of “Jewish lies,” yet they apparently do not realize the deeper spiritual dimensions of the “Holocaust myth.” The majority of the middle section of “Did the Holocaust Really Happen?” primarily raises easy to debunk pseudoscience and a profound misunderstanding of the Holocaust and WWII history.

86 Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen?, 00:02:40-00:03:05; juxtaposed to Holocaust deniers with neo-Nazi inclinations, Anderson has denigrated Hitler on several occasions, see Steven L. Anderson, “Hitler was NOT a Christian!,” YouTube video, 14:04, uploaded December 28, 2017, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=NjfoFRB-qWw. 87 James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 141. 88 Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen?, 00:05:40-00:06:50. 89 Ibid., 00:06:02-00:06:27. 90 Marrs emphasizes the spiritual significance of six as well, see Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star, loc. 313, 588, Kindle; also see recording of Texe Marrs’ radio show, Power of Prophecy, where he discusses the Holocaust: Texe Marrs, “Texe Marrs—Holocaust Dogma Unmasked,” Archive.org audio, 59:31, uploaded December 14, 2011, accessed February 15, 2020, https://archive.org/details/TexeMarrs-HolocaustDogmaUnmasked_979/TexeMarrs-HolocaustDogmaUnmasked- Part3.flv.mp3. On the Star of David as a satanic symbol, see Wittenberger, Marching to Zion, 00:41:30-00:43:47. 91 Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen?, 00:06:38-00:06:50.

To reiterate, most of Anderson’s “evidence” is primarily taken directly from the arguments of a prior generation of organized Holocaust deniers, and he does not necessarily illuminate spiritual truths at every turn. For example, he claims other death camps besides Auschwitz were simply labor camps, the gas chambers are fake, the number of bodies cremated was impossible, Zionists collaborated with the Nazis, survivors and eyewitnesses lie for monetary gain, etc.92 But, it should be noted that according to Anderson the “official version” of the Holocaust is as follows: “[the] story of the Holocaust is that the Jews were just rounded up and brought straight to a death camp and straight to their death.” As evidence against the “official version,” Anderson cites photos of the emaciated survivors, inquiring, “why would they look skinny and emaciated? It takes months to get that skinny and emaciated. You know, you don’t get that way overnight.”93 In Anderson’s mind, since survivors were so emaciated they clearly were not rounded up and sent straight to the death camps, as the “official version” maintains. Like other Holocaust deniers, Anderson shows “a deep and abiding ignorance of the overwhelming majority of recent Holocaust research” and fights against “hallucinated debate partners.”94 After this middle section that centers on fairly standard pseudoscience in Holocaust denial, Anderson’s video concludes by circling back to the spiritual implications of the “Holocaust hoax.” The mass extermination of Jews in WWII is a lie “they” or “these people” tell. “They” or “these people” is intentionally vague, but Anderson is signaling “Jews,” the synagogue of Satan and the ultimate liars in human history. According to Anderson, people should not be surprised that Jews would lie. He asserts this claim with another biblical prooftext, “the Bible says who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ,”95 and then elaborates, “why would it surprise you that the people who deny the Christ, they deny that Jesus is the Messiah, would lie to you about something else?”96 Anderson and similar theocentric Christian conspiracists who are Holocaust deniers often cite 1 John 2:22 when claiming that Jews are chief among liars.97 Engaging in the ultimate lie, i.e. denying Jesus as messiah, it is self-evident to Anderson that Jews would invent the Holocaust as well. Like Marching to Zion, “Did the Holocaust Really Happen?” is not really intended for non- Christians or Jews. Once again, Anderson ultimately wants to convince Christian Zionists, who he often equates with dispensationalists, that they are theologically misguided and should oppose the State of Israel. Conversion is central to Anderson’s attempt to debunk Christian Zionism.98 Because some Christian Zionists, most notably dispensationalist Christian Zionists, believe that Jews have a unique and ongoing relationship with God, they are sometimes hesitant to share the Christian message with Jews, which would, as Anderson understands it, save Jews from eternal damnation. In not sharing the Christian message of universal redemption exclusively through Jesus, such Christian Zionists have crossed a boundary into non-Christian territory. Anderson did not invent the fear of Christian Zionism’s boundary crossing out of thin air, and he is not alone in this fear. On the boundaries between Judaism and Christianity, Daniel Boyarin has noted, “the borders between Christianity and Judaism are as constructed and imposed, as artificial and political as any of the borders of the earth.”99 Though Boyarin was referring primarily to the

92 Anderson reveals one of his direct influences when he tells viewers to read Victor L. Thorn, The Holocaust Hoax Exposed: Debunking the 20th Century’s Biggest Lie (Independent Publisher, 2012). 93 Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen?, 00:24:22-00:25:02. 94 Terry, Holocaust Denial in the Age of Web 2.0, 43. 95 Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen?, 00:26:27-00:27:00; citing 1 John 2:22, KJV. 96 Ibid., 00:26:27-00:27:00. 97 Examples include Marrs, Conspiracy of the Six-Pointed Star, loc. 719, Kindle; Hendrie, Bloody Zion, loc. 259, Kindle; Hendrie, Solving the Mystery of Babylon the Great, loc. 4779, Kindle. 98 Anti-dispensationalism and anti-Zionism are key components of the New IFB, see “What is the New IFB Movement?” As stated above, the New IFB appears to have fallen on hard times. The New IFB website disappeared in February 2020. My citation in the works cited includes a screen capture of the website dated December 11, 2019. Again, see Hatewatch Staff, In the Midst of Infighting, Anti-LGBTQ Church Network’s Website and Social Media Disappear. 99 Faydra L. Shapiro, “The Messiah and Rabbi Jesus: Policing the Jewish–Christian border in Christian Zionism,” Culture and Religion 12, no. 4 (2011), 464, accessed July 10, 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2011.633537. For the quote from Boyarin, see Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1721 Spiritual Dimensions of Holocaust Denial 57 boundaries between Christianity and Judaism in antiquity, notable Christian communities and Christian movements in modern history occasionally challenge what appear to be rigid boundaries between Christianity and Judaism. Religious studies scholar Faydra L. Shapiro recently extended Boyarin’s work to the contemporary relationship between Jews and Christians, suggesting that the boundaries between the two might be more flexible than most people assume, academics and non- academics. Shapiro states that the “Jewish-Christian border—fence, if you prefer—is both still alive and still being undermined: scaled, dug under, peered through, gaped at and crossed over.”100 A key example is the prominent dispensationalist and Christian Zionist John Hagee. Shapiro shows how Hagee was criticized by many evangelical Christians for apparently claiming that “Jews are saved through their own covenant with God,” which signified he was possibly “denying the universal Messiahship of Jesus Christ.”101 In the eyes of these evangelical Christians, Hagee had transgressed a boundary dividing Christianity from Judaism. Anderson, a strong critic of Hagee, tends to depict all dispensationalist Christian Zionists as following in the footsteps of Hagee. In reality, not all dispensationalists align with Hagee’s view. Anderson takes the notion of boundary crossing a step beyond most Christian critics of Hagee. According to Anderson, dispensationalist Christian Zionists have drifted toward a bastardization of Christianity that mirrors Judaism itself in seeking to establish a kingdom on earth, the State of Israel. In light of the cosmic dichotomy between Jews (carnal) and Christians (spiritual), Christians who support Israel are deviants from the true Christian path. While dispensationalist Christian Zionists might be to blame for boundary crossing, it was prominent Jews who supposedly realized that dispensationalism was advantageous to achieving their earthly kingdom. Anderson and Marrs believe a secret society filled with wealthy American Jews backed the modern popularizer of dispensationalism, Cyrus I. Scofield, underwriting the publication of his Scofield Reference Bible, which had a major impact on the growth of dispensationalism in the United States.102 Jews might not have necessarily invented dispensationalism, but Jews supposedly recognized that this theological view could secure their new material kingdom in Palestine. In other words, Jews used their conspiratorial machinations to “Judaize” Christianity through dispensationalism.103 Dispensationalist Christian Zionists in particular, therefore, need a course correction from a material focus to a spiritual one, which would sever their relationship with the State of Israel. To convince fellow Christians of his position, Anderson attempts to put the Holocaust in an eternal perspective, very crassly one might add. Jews, he says, should fear, “The real Holocaust… the real burnt offering is going to be when all of these Jews who don’t believe in Jesus Christ go to hell for eternity. That’s the oven that they ought to be worried about.”104 In seeking to convert Jews to Christianity, and thereby save them from damnation, Anderson claims he is actually loving Jews—“I don’t hate Jews at all, I want them to be saved.”105 In Anderson’s mind, if certain Christian Zionists believe God has a special relationship with Jews, whereby Jews do not need Jesus, then those Christian Zionists are the real antisemites. They hate Jews by allowing Jews to go to hell without hearing the Christian gospel. If a Christian really wants to hate a Jew, they should remain quiet when they have an opportunity to save a Jew’s soul from hell. In “Did the Holocaust Really Happen?,” Anderson emphasizes his “love” for Jews in contrast to his theological opponents: “If

of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 1; also see Faydra L. Shapiro, Christian Zionism: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2015). 100 Shapiro, The Messiah and Rabbi Jesus, 464. 101 Ibid., 467. 102 In Marching to Zion, Marrs said of Cyrus I. Scofield: “He had Jewish retainers who made him a member of the Lotus club—sort of a secret society—and suddenly he had plenty of money… With that amount of money, the [Scofield] Bible took off, and it basically sealed the deal for the Jews.” From Faithful Word Baptist Church, Marching to Zion Full Movie Transcript. 103 Marrs, Blood Covenant With Destiny, loc. 2296, Kindle; also see Anderson, Israel Moments 11-20. 104 Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen?, 00:28:20-00:28:45; also see Steven L. Anderson, “How to Hate a Jew,” YouTube video, 4:04, uploaded October 2, 2017, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyOhrl_ lrIA. [Removed from YouTube as of August 2019]; Marrs and Framing the World, Texe Marrs Interviews Steven Anderson About ‘Marching to Zion’ Part 1, 00:18:49-00:19:08. 105 Marrs and Framing the World, Texe Marrs Interviews Steven Anderson About ‘Marching to Zion’ Part 1, 00:18:49-00:19:08.

you really love Jews, instead of talking about this myth of six million… why don’t you worry about the real oven, which is the oven that God made—hell, and warn these Jews before they go to the burnt offering, before they go to hell… let’s warn them about the satanic religion that they are wrapped up in, Judaism.”106 In the backdrop of this statement is Anderson’s emphasis on “soul-winning,” a preoccupation shared by other New IFB pastors. The New IFB is a movement within the IFB that is explicitly anti-Zionist and anti-dispensationalist. For all intents and purposes, Anderson is the head of this movement. As Anderson describes soul-winning, it is a belief and a practice. It is a belief in the immediate necessity to save as many people from hell as possible, which in turn drives soul-winning practices, like soul-winning marathons, i.e. going door-to-door to bring lost souls to Christ. Anderson and other New IFB pastors travel around the United States to help one another’s churches run soul-winning marathons.107 For Anderson, true love means being willing to win any and all souls. In Anderson’s eyes, the Holocaust is a myth that has collective or global impacts on soul- winning. That is, the impacts go beyond potentially stifling the individual Christian’s willingness to convert Jews.

This lie of the Holocaust does a lot of damage to a lot of people, and let me tell you why, because Jewish children are brainwashed with this thing and they are taught this is what the Christians, even though Christianity obviously had nothing to do with it in the Third Reich, but that’s what they will say… you know, Christianity has done this to you and they teach their children that Christians have murdered their ancestors and they’ve always hated and killed you and it culminated in the Holocaust and so they basically demonize Christians to these Jewish children.108

Here, Anderson states that the Holocaust keeps Jewish children at a distance from Christianity because Jews teach their children that Christians and Christianity were to blame for the Holocaust. Scholars who study the Holocaust have long noted historic connections between the genocide and the actions and inactions of Christian denominations, Christian laymen and laywomen, and Christian leaders, not to mention the role Christians played in fostering anti-Judaism and antisemitism more broadly. As quoted, Anderson says in the video that “Christianity obviously had nothing to do with it in the Third Reich.”109 Thus, though the Holocaust was a myth, Christianity is even further exonerated from anything and everything associated with Hitler and the Nazis. With this in mind, there is a sense in which the “Holocaust myth” is normal in history. Even though he denies the Holocaust took place, it functions as a means for Jews to frame Christianity as destructive. Elsewhere in films and sermons, Anderson subtly, though sometimes not so subtly, draws attention away from the historic role Christians have played in fostering anti-Judaism and antisemitism. For example, in Marching to Zion, Anderson never blames Christians for violence against Jews during the Middle Ages since, in his view, Jews were to blame for their blasphemy and “predatory lending practices.”110 The “Holocaust hoax,” akin to other ways Jews appear to demonize Christianity, must be reexamined and demolished for future generations of Jews to find their way to Jesus. It is not only Jews who are negatively impacted by the “Holocaust myth” in Anderson’s estimation. The Holocaust enabled Jews to acquire land in Palestine and became a factor in Christian

106 Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen?, 00:30:21-00:30:53; also see Anderson, Israel Moments 11-20. 107 One just need search “soul-winning” on Anderson’s blog: sanderson1611, Steven L. Anderson (blog), July 30, 2019, https://sanderson1611.blogspot.com/search/label/soul-winning; also see Steven L. Anderson, “A Strategy to Evangelize the Entire World 1: Exponential Soul-winning,” Steven L. Anderson (blog), April 5, 2017, accessed July 30, 2019, https:// sanderson1611.blogspot.com/2017/04/but-he-that-received-seed-into-good.html. 108 Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen?, 00:33:21-00:33:53. 109 Ibid., 00:33:29. 110 Wittenberger, Marching to Zion, 00:32:18.

Zionist support for Israel.111 Christian Zionists, influenced by international Jewry, continue to support an Israeli government that oppresses Palestinians. Because the American government has historically supported Israel, which is at odds with majority Muslim countries in the Middle East, geopolitical entanglements lead Muslims to associate Israel with the United States, which in turn causes them to conceptually link Isreal with its American Christian supporters. Therefore, Muslim hearts become hardened toward faith in Jesus by associating Christianity in general with Israel. Said more succinctly, Christian Zionists, influenced by Jews, stifle soul-winning among Muslims. Or, as Anderson summarizes, “fourteen million Jews and one billion Muslims are affected by this Holocaust hoax, and basically it affects how they view Christianity.”112 In other words, a significant portion of the world presently rejects Jesus because they have been presented a supposedly false image of Jesus, one influenced by Jewish leaders and supported, knowingly or unknowingly, by everyday Jews and Christian Zionists. According to Anderson, Jews—deniers of Jesus Christ and the ultimate liars in history—are responsible behind the scenes for the demonization of Christianity on a global scale.113 There is another layer to how supposed Jewish lies about the Holocaust negatively impact non-Jews. This time, the impact is felt at the societal or national level. It is certainly the case that a number of Christian Zionists affirm the idea that political support for Israel is pleasing to God and God will bless them in return. Such Christian Zionists often cite Genesis 12:1-3 as scriptural proof for the promise of God’s return blessing when one blesses Israel, a passage in which God tells Abram (later, Abraham), “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”114 This approach to Israel taken by some American Christian Zionists has prompted one scholar to suggest that “Israel becomes a symbol of assent, a redemptive totem that provides a vicarious source of American redemption.”115 Anderson and his coterie assert the direct opposite of Christian Zionists on this point, which they address more thoroughly in Marching to Zion. The fact that America has been apparently sliding into greater moral decay is a sign God hasn’t blessed America or American Christians for their ardent love of Israel.116 The extended implication is that Jews are perhaps one of the primary causes, if not the primary cause, of declining Christian morality in the United States. The “Holocaust myth,” a tactic for garnering support for Israel, is a vital factor in the diminishing influence of Christianity in America. Christian Zionism, a form of “Judaized” Christianity, curses and condemns the very nation (America) it purports to bless.117 With this last point in mind, it is helpful to consider Gregory H. Stanton’s understanding of denial in his now famous “Stages of Genocide.” Stanton notes how genocide denial often involves both denying a genocide took place and blaming victims for whatever did occur (though not claimed to be a genocide).118 As a form of genocide denial, Holocaust denial commonly involves both tactics as well. Holocaust deniers will state that there was no genocide and then claim that whatever occurred was understandable or justified because Jews were traitors, Bolsheviks, internationalists, etc. Anderson, however, takes his denial into spiritual dimensions—supposed Jewish lies have eternal reverberations.

Conclusion What will be the results of Steven Anderson’s Holocaust denial? Why discuss Anderson’s

111 Anderson, Did the Holocaust Really Happen?, 00:31:30-00:32:20. 112 Ibid., 00:34:40-00:34:55. 113 Ibid. 114 Genesis 12:3, KJV. 115 Sean Durbin, “‘I am an Israeli’: Christian Zionism as American redemption,” Culture and Religion 14, no. 3 (2013), 341, accessed July 10, 2019, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004385009_008. 116 Wittenberger, Marching to Zion, 00:31:31-00:32:17. 117 Anderson, Israel Moments, 11-20. 118 Gregory H. Stanton, “The 10 Stages of Genocide,” Genocide Watch, 1996, accessed July 30, 2019, https://www. genocidewatch.com/ten-stages-of-genocide.

Holocaust denial at all?119 Anderson does not intersect prominent Christian circles and he is rigidly uncompromising in his theological views. It is presently unlikely, though not impossible, that his theologically-centered Holocaust denial will gain traction in broader Christian movements, denominations, organizations, or churches, let alone make headway into the wider American culture. However, the networks he intersects—the New IFB and theocentric Christian conspiracist communities—have been constructing a fairly robust infrastructure over the last decade. Both networks give Anderson an expanded platform as he seeks to influence a much larger section of the Christian populace. Will Christians run to Anderson’s “loving” embrace? Probably not. Regardless, Anderson has perhaps made Holocaust denial more palatable for some believers. The bigger threat, however, is that with Holocaust denial cut loose from the figureheads and institutions of a prior generation of Holocaust deniers, Anderson and fellow antisemitic theocentric Christian conspiracists might open an avenue for spiritual arguments to become more widely accepted in Holocaust denier circles and among internet conspiracists. Particularly if the antisemitic theocentric Christian conspiracist infrastructure can continue expanding and adapting, and such conspiracist deniers can remain united by their family resemblances, they might become a significant group within Holocaust denial. The spiritual significance Anderson gives Holocaust denial has already circled back into Holocaust denier spaces in some interesting ways. In the CODOH forum mentioned above, forum participants affirmed that Anderson is onto something in emphasizing the Jewish control of American Christianity. The aforementioned Rmbrmb21 wrote about a pastor at their church who holds to replacement theology but “still buys into the holocaust [sic].” In seeking to influence their own pastor and other Christian religious leaders, Rmbrmb21 then said, “Hopefully, we can reach more religious people in America. If you could convert half of American Christians to reject the holocaust [sic] as a fact, and embrace that it’s a myth, you would be converting about 1/6th of the population.” Rmbrmb21 continued their post by emphasizing the value of theology in Holocaust denial and the demonization of Jews, “I understand a lot of people will be very disinterested in reading about theology, it is important to our cause as Christianity is being excessively curbed in order to support the Jewish agenda.”120 Another regular contributor to the forum responded, “If this rotten situation is to be turned around, and this Holohoax is to be exposed, we need more people like Pastor Anderson in the Christian evangelical community who have the courage to look into the evidence and speak out about it.”121 Anderson’s Holocaust denial, therefore, returns to the already faithful and reenergizes them in new ways. They now have explicitly religious arguments and a religious advocate/“authority” for spreading Holocaust denial.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Eric Goldstein, Dr. William Allington, Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, Holocaust Denial on Trial (HDOT), and the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University for their support and encouragement. I would also like to thank Dr. John Cox and the Center for Holocaust, Genocide, & Human Rights Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for allowing me the opportunity to present a previous iteration of this paper at their 2019 conference “Denial: The Final Stage of Genocide.”

Bibliography Allington, William. “Holocaust Denial Online: The Rise of Pseudo-Academic Antisemitism on the Early Internet.” Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism 1, no. 1 (2017), 33-54. Accessed July 15, 2019. Doi: 10.26613/jca/1.1.4 American Jewish Committee. The Working Definition of Anti-Semitism: What Does It Mean, Why Is It

119 I follow Allington in suggesting that, “it is important to determine how Holocaust denial is promoted, where it is promoted and how successful it is.” See Allington, Holocaust Denial Online, 34. 120 Rmbrmb21, July 2, 2017, 01:36 AM, comment on “Re: How Pastor Steven Anderson became a Holocaust Revisionist,” CODOH Forum, accessed July 30, 2019, https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?t=11215. 121 diaz52, July 2, 2017, 9:26 AM, comment on “Re: How Pastor Steven Anderson became a Holocaust Revisionist,” CODOH Forum, accessed July 30, 2019, https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?t=11215.

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Terry, Nicholas. “Holocaust Denial in the Age of Web 2.0: Negationist Discourse Since the Irving- Lipstadt Trial.” In Holocaust and Genocide Denial: A Contextual Perspective, edited by Paul Behrens, Nicholas Terry, and Olaf Jensen, 34-54. New York: Routledge, 2017. The New Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement. “What is the New IFB Movement?” Accessed July 30, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20191211161128/https://www. thenewifb.com/what-is-the-new-ifb. Thorn, Victor L. The Holocaust Hoax Exposed: Debunking the 20th Century’s Biggest Lie. Independent Publisher, 2012. Truth in Genesis. “The Jews and Their Lies Part 1 of 2.” YouTube video, 1:04:11. Uploaded July 5, 2015. Accessed July 30, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml-x4VaEaK0. ------. “The Jews and Their Lies Part 2 of 2.” YouTube video, 1:05:43. Uploaded July 12, 2015. Accessed July 30, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYrQXn9IUlM&t=3073s. USA Today. “Pastor defends his anti-homosexual sermon.” Posted on December 6, 2014, YouTube video, 5:33. Accessed July 30, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbSM_kxpObc. Westbrook, Matt. “Broadcasting Jesus’ Return: Televangelism and the Appropriation of Israel Through Israeli-Granted Broadcasting Rights.” In Comprehending Christian Zionism: Perspectives in Comparison, edited by Göran Gunner and Robert O. Smith, 61-83. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014. Wittenberger, Paul, dir.Babylon USA. 2017; Phoenix, AZ: Framing The World Productions, 2017. 94 mins. Accessed Aug 6, 2020. https://archive.org/details/BabylonUSA. ------. Marching to Zion. Phoenix, AZ: Framing The World Productions, 2015. 101 mins. Accessed July 30, 2019. https://archive.org/details/PastorStevenAndersonMarchingToZion. ------. New World Order Bible Versions. Phoenix, AZ: Framing The World Productions, 2014. 99 mins. Accessed July 30, 2019. https://archive.org/details/ NewWorldOrderBibleVersionsFullMovie720. Young, James E. The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. YouTube. “New IFB Documentaries.” YouTube Channel. Accessed May 18, 2020. https://www. youtube.com/channel/UCN5OBnOh1-QGZ1sQqOxfIbg/videos.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1721 Rose-Colored Genocide: Hollywood, Harmonizing Narratives, and the Cinematic Legacy of Anne Frank’s Diary in the United States Nora Nunn Duke University Durham, North Carolina, USA

Introduction Concluding a film about the Holocaust on an uplifting note seems counterintuitive. Yet, more often than not, films about genocide, especially those made in Hollywood, rely precisely on what critic Dominick LaCapra calls a “harmonizing narrative,” a story that provides the reader or viewer with “an unwarranted sense of spiritual uplift.”1 LaCapra points to Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List as an example, citing its stubborn insistence on a Manichean goodness in the midst of atrocity.2 This phenomenon is articulated through the character of Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), who proclaims to Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) of the eponymous document, “The list is absolute good.”3 In the face of genocide, optimism proves stubborn—at least according to representations of the crime constructed by Hollywood. But the strategy of narrative uplift concerning genocide predates Schindler’s List by several decades. Indeed, perhaps the most famous case of such a harmonizing narrative is the Americanized version of the story of Anne Frank, a young girl who went into hiding in the Netherlands during World War II but was ultimately captured and exterminated in the Nazi camps. Interpretations of her diary shape-shifted in the postwar years. Throughout the 1950s, U.S. adaptations of the diary flattened and infantilized its teenage author, who had died, probably of typhus, in Bergen- Belsen concentration camp in 1945.4 In 1955, the diary appeared as a Broadway play. Four years later, in 1959, George Stevens, known for screwball comedies, melodramas, and Westerns such as Penny Serenade,5 The More the Merrier,6 and Giant,7 oversaw the Hollywood adaptation.8 A list of cultural taboos governed both of these U.S. productions. American publishers and producers of the play and film suppressed direct references to Judaism (such as Yom Kippur), anti-Semitism (the Nazi capture of the Jewish community in Amsterdam), and adolescent complexities (including menstruation, sexual desire, and descriptions of female anatomy).9 Such bowdlerization distracted from inconvenient truths, such as the fact that, due to bureaucratic “red tape” and “national security concerns,” the Frank family had been unable to enter the U.S. as refugees under President Roosevelt in 1941 or that Anne was among the nearly six million Jewish individuals who had perished in the Nazi concentration camps.10

1 Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 14. 2 Ibid., 14; Steven Spielberg, dir., Schindler’s List (Universal Pictures, 1993), 195 mins. 3 Spielberg, Schindler’s List, 02:25:15. 4 For more on the role of Anne Frank’s father, Otto, in the publication and shaping of the story, see Cynthia Ozick, “The Misuse of Anne Frank’s Diary,” The New Yorker, September 29, 1997, accessed September 6, 2018, https:// www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/10/06/who-owns-anne-frank. As Ozick writes, Otto Frank, who survived the Holocaust, “confessed that his daughter’s diary made him feel he ‘did not know’ her, but that did not stop him from altering the diary before publication and approving a play that falsified it further.” See also, CarolAnn Lee, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank,reprint edition. (New York: Harper Perennial, 2003). 5 George Stevens, dir., Penny Serenade (Columbia Pictures, 1941), 104 mins. 6 George Stevens, dir., The More the Merrier (Columbia Pictures, 1943), 120 mins. 7 George Stevens, dir., Giant (Warner Brothers, 1956), 201 mins. 8 For more on the role of George Stevens (and several other major directors, including John Ford, William Wyler, Frank Capra, and John Huston) and the relationship between Hollywood and the U.S. government in producing war propaganda, see Mark Harris, Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War (New York: Penguin, 2014). 9 In 1991, eleven years after Otto Frank’s death, the “restored” diary was published, including references he had expunged, such as descriptions of masturbation, Yom Kippur, Anne’s anger toward her mother (“the most rotten person in the world”), etc. See Ozick, The Misuse of Anne Frank’s Diary; see also Alvin H. Rosenfeld, The End of the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 105-106. 10 Rebecca Erbelding and Gertjan Broek, German Bombs and US Bureaucrats: How Escape Lines from Europe Were Cut Off (Anne Frank House & United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, July 2018), 4, accessed July 15, 2020, https://www. annefrank.org/es/downloads/filer_public/94/3e/943ed001-ba04-4e2a-9360-e642d0d82006/ushmm_afh_july2018.pdf. For more on the circumstances surrounding Otto Frank’s foiled attempts to take refuge in the United States, including Nora Nunn. “Rose-Colored Genocide: Hollywood, Harmonizing Narratives, and the Cinematic Legacy of Anne Frank’s Diary in the United States.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, 2 (2020): 65-89. ©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 66 Nunn

But the edits were not just a matter of censoring material to avoid cultural taboos. The writers and directors insisted on ending the film on an uplifting note, concluding with Frank’s reflection that “people were really good at heart”—much as Itzhak Stern’s character would insist, years later, in Schindler’s List, that the list of names was “absolute good.”11 Consequently, these American adaptations rendered Frank a one-dimensional, cardboard cut-out onto which audiences could project their own ideas of girlhood innocence. Hollywood’s strategy of harmonizing a narrative such as Frank’s story left an indelible imprint on subsequent films about historic genocides, including The Killing Fields12 and Hotel Rwanda.13 While these films may raise popular awareness about historical genocides, they do so at a price. By bowdlerizing the past and implicitly promising a better future, they can blind us to atrocities taking place in the present. Drawing from literary and cultural studies, I examine the narrative alchemy through which a historical trauma ending in a Dutch teenager’s death was spun into a U.S. morality play. Tracing the metamorphosis of Frank’s own diary from play to film adaptation, this article builds on existing scholarship to focus on how, in the wake of what has become known as the Holocaust, Hollywood began to construct popular and simplified understandings of complex genocidal crimes—all in the name of celebrating a globalized humanity.14 In the first part of the article, I take a longer view of these adaptations by situating U.S. interpretations of Frank’s diary within a lineage of other Hollywood versions of historical genocide. I argue that in making Anne Frank’s story morally simplistic and ultimately uplifting for U.S. audiences—in other words, shaping it into a “harmonizing narrative”—these Broadway and Hollywood adaptations prioritized rose-colored narratology that would influence future mainstream cinematic representations in dangerous ways. The second part of this article considers cinematic alternatives from outside of Hollywood (such as Canada, Rwanda, and Spain) that challenge these harmonizing narratives by enlisting a mise en abyme structure—the nesting of stories within stories—that ultimately suggest the full representation of genocide is impossible. By making false promises of harmony, Hollywood’s interpretation of Frank’s story has, in turn, limited our understanding of subsequent genocides. On the other hand, alternative modes of cinematic storytelling—most notably, ones that fracture a coherent narrative—compel the audience to grapple with questions of spectatorship, agency, and above all, the problems of representation.

Entertainment and Evidence George Stevens, the American director of the 1959 Hollywood film The Diary of Anne Frank,15 was no stranger to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps. As a major in the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps, Stevens had personally documented the aftermath of Dachau, which he had likened to “wandering around in one of Dante’s infernal visions.”16 The footage gathered led to two documentary films, which were entitledThe Nazi Plan17 and Nazi Concentration Camps.18 In the 1945 Nuremberg Trials, during which a tribunal tried twenty-four of the political leaders of the Third Reich, prosecutors screened Stevens’ documentary evidence “on the grounds that it was necessary

barriers such as quotas on refugees and U.S. government concerns about spy networks, see Erbelding and Broek, German Bombs and US Bureaucrats. 11 Spielberg, Schindler’s List, 02:25:15. 12 Roland Joffé, dir.,The Killing Fields (Warner Brothers, 1984), 142 mins. 13 Terry George, dir., Hotel Rwanda (United Artists, Lions Gate Films, 2004), 122 mins. 14 For examples of such scholarship, see Rosenfeld, The End of the Holocaust, 90-162. 15 George Stevens, dir., The Diary of Anne Frank (Twentieth Century Fox, 1959), 180 mins. 16 Quoted in Harris, Five Came Back, 444. For more on the role of Stevens (and several other major American directors, including John Ford, William Wyler, Frank Capra, and John Huston) and the relationship between Hollywood and the U.S. government in producing war propaganda, see Harris, Five Came Back. 17 George Stevens, dir., The Nazi Plan (20th Century-Fox, 1945), 127 mins. 18 George Stevens, dir., Nazi Concentration Camps (documentary film, 1945).

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 Rose-Colored Genocide 67 in order to offer proof of the unprecedented horror of the 19 crimes.” After French, British, and American newspaper reports of German atrocities during World War I had proved to be “the prevarications of propagandists,” jurists such as American Robert H. Jackson, chief counsel for the Allied prosecution, felt compelled, as he said in a letter to President Truman in June 1945, to “establish incredible events by incredible evidence.”20 Nuremberg hence marked the first time that documentary film had been used in court as evidence of mass atrocities.21 According to film historian Mark Harris, directly after the war, Stevens filed away his wartime footage, ranging from locations including North Africa to D-Day to Dachau, storing it in a facility in North Hollywood.

The footage had never been shown publicly. He carefully labelled each canister with titles like ‘Eyewitness at Dachau’ or simply ‘Atrocity.’ He retrieved the reels only once, in 1959, when he was preparing to direct The Diary of Anne Frank. Alone in a screening room, he started to watch what he had shot, but turned the projector off after the first minute, returned the canisters to North Hollywood, and locked them away once again… It remained in storage until his death.22 Indeed, the commercial needs of late 1950s Hollywood proved different than those of the evidentiary ones of the international courts. But perhaps Stevens, too, wishing to avoid revisiting the black and white footage of Dante’s visions, chose to see a young Jewish girl’s life—and death—en rose, or rose-colored. Directly after the war, Stevens, a longtime Hollywood director known for his pre-war musicals and comedies such as Woman of the Year23 and Swing Time,24 returned to the movie sets of Los Angeles. He would go on to direct what was known as his “American Trilogy”—the melodrama A Place in the Sun25 and the iconic Westerns Shane26 and Giant.27 In 1959, he returned to the topic of the Holocaust with the film version ofThe Diary of Anne Frank, in which he originally sought to cast Audrey Hepburn in the title role.28 After screening an early version of the film in San Francisco, Stevens eliminated the final scene, which featured a shot of Anne in a concentration camp, “swaying in a numb miasmic fog;”29 the director felt it was “too tough in audience impact and against 20th- [Century] Fox’s desire to have the film considered ‘hopeful’ despite all.”30 Instead, the final cut of the film concludes with Anne’s father, Otto Frank (Joseph Schildkraut), studying a tattered page that included what would become the most famous line of his daughter’s diary—“[i]n spite of

19 Kristi M. Wilson and Tomás F. Crowder-Taraborrelli, eds., Film and Genocide (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), 8. 20 Quoted in Lawrence Douglas, “Film as Witness: Screening Nazi Concentration Camps before the Nuremberg Trials,” The Yale Law Journal 105, no. 2 (November 1995), 451-452. In his opening statement, Jackson discussed the role that the documentary would play—“[w]e will show you the concentration camp in motion pictures, just as the Allied armies found them when they arrived…Our proof will be disgusting and you will say I have robbed you of your sleep…I am one who received during this war the most atrocity tales with suspicion and skepticism. But the proof here will be so overwhelming that I venture to predict that not one word I have spoken will be denied.” Quoted in Douglas, Film as Witness, 450. 21 Douglas writes: “[t]his use of film in a juridical setting was unprecedented. Crime scene photography was well established in Anglo-American courts; and while the turn to filmic proof was perhaps a logical extension of available technology, it nevertheless marked a wholly new method of documenting criminality. Though motion pictures had been submitted as trial evidence as early as 1915, prior to Nuremberg, one can find no records of any court using graphic film of atrocities as proof of criminal wrongdoing.” Quoted in ibid., 450-451. 22 Harris, Five Came Back, 444. 23 George Stevens, dir., Woman of the Year (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1942), 114 mins. 24 George Stevens, dir., Swing Time (RKO Radio Pictures, 1936), 103 mins. 25 George Stevens, dir., A Place in the Sun (Paramount Pictures, 1951), 122 mins. 26 George Stevens, dir., Shane (Paramount Pictures, 1953), 118 mins. 27 Stevens, Giant. 28 Marilyn Ann Moss, Giant: George Stevens: A Life on Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 247. 29 Quoted in Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler; How History Is Bought, Packaged, and Sold, 1st ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000), 34. 30 Ibid.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 68 Nunn everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”31 His following line, “She puts me to shame,” implies that to react with anything other than the optimism found in that line in the diary is, to use Otto’s word, “shameful.”32 This uplifting ending complemented Stevens’ stubborn insistence on Frank’s symbolism of universal goodness and hope. In an on-set interview in 1959, he informed a reporter, “our emphasis is on the wonderful little girl who was Anne…She had an inner light, a warmth that not even the terrible experience of confinement could douse.”33 The same journalist wryly remarked of the Broadway and cinematic adaptation: “It should have been a grim play, but it was not. And the movie will not dwell on the depressing aspects of the story either.”34 As Holocaust scholar Alvin Rosenfeld writes of the diary’s adaptation, “by emphasizing the tender and more ennobling aspects of youthful sentiment in the book and deemphasizing its darker dimensions, it became possible to project an image of Anne Frank that softened somewhat the revulsion and horror that otherwise might have directed readers’ responses to the diary.”35 In the world of these U.S. screenwriters and directors, optimism trounced pessimism. As evidenced by the critical acclaim, many Americans welcomed this sanitized version of history: both productions received accolades, including the play’s 1956 Pulitzer Prize and the film’s multiple Academy Award nominations in 1960.36 Stevens, however, was not the first Hollywood director to portray aspects of the Holocaust through feature film.37 Fred Zinnemann’s The Search,38 which tells the story of Karel, a young Czech boy (Ivan Jandl) displaced from a concentration camp, earned critics’ praise and seemed to embody the postwar zeitgeist with its British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for “best embodying the principles of the United Nations Charter.”39 As historian Lawrence Baron writes, the plot of the film, shot on location in the remnants of bombed German cities, is “an exercise in unabashed sentimentality” that results in a “contrived happy ending”—a reunion between Karel and his mother Hanna (Jarmila Novotná).40 In 1953, Kirk Douglas starred as Hans Muller, a concentration camp survivor who arrives in Israel, in Edward Dmytryk’s melodrama The Juggler,41 a film adapted from the novel of the same name. Three years later, Max Nosseck’s Singing in the

31 George Stevens, dir., The Diary of Anne Frank, 02:53:38-02:53:45. 32 Ibid., 02:53:45-02:53:48. 33 Quoted in Paul Cronin, ed., George Stevens: Interviews (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2004), 16. 34 Quoted in Ibid., 16. 35 Rosenfeld, The End of the Holocaust, 103-104. 36 The film’s Academy Awards included Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Shelley Winters) and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (William C. Mellor). It was also nominated for Best Picture (George Stevens) and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Ed Wynn). See also Judith Doneson, “The American History of Anne Frank’s Diary,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 2, no. 1 (1987), 154. 37 These films were not the first to portray historical genocide on the Hollywood screen, as evident in Ravished Armenia, directed by Oscar Apfel, produced by William Selig (First National Pictures, 1919), a 1919 silent film based on the memoir of Aurora Mardiganian, a survivor of what would become known as the Armenian genocide. As Donna-Lee Frieze has pointed out, Mardiganian has retrospectively been called the “Anne Frank” of the Armenian genocide. Donna-Lee Frieze, “Arshaluys Mardigian/Aurora Mardiganian: Absorption, Stardom, Exploitation, and Empowerment,” in Women and Genocide: Survivors, Victims, Perpetrators, ed. Elissa Bemporad and Joyce W. Warren. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 59; for more on the adaptation, screenplay, and history of Apfel’s silent film, see Aurora Mardiganian and Henry Leyford Gates, Ravished Armenia and the Story of Aurora Mardiganian, ed. Anthony Slide (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2014). 38 Fred Zinnemann, dir., The Search (Loew’s, Inc., 1948), 105 mins. 39 Bosley Crowther, “Straight to the Heart: ‘The Search’ a Great Film Drama With Vital Appeal,” New York Times, April 4, 1948, 1. Crowther’s review in The New York Times assured future spectators that emotional uplift of the film would outweigh its depressing subject matter: “[r]egarding that other anxiety as to possible distress in this film, let us add this further assurance the compensations far outweigh the pain. Among these compensations are the insight this picture gives into the nature of decent people who have compassion and time for sufferers.” Crowther,Straight to the Heart, 1. 40 Lawrence Baron, Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 30. 41 Edward Dmytryk, dir., The Juggler (Columbia Pictures, 1953), 86 mins.

Dark,42 the story of a cantor’s son and Holocaust survivor (Moyshe Oysher) suffering from amnesia who immigrates to the United States, was released.43 Still, treatment of the Holocaust was relatively rare in the postwar years, and American viewers were shielded from many of the harsher realities of the historical atrocity. Scholars such as Eric Goldman have shown that in the wake of the war, “influential members of the Los Angeles Jewish community”44 were reticent to draw attention to the plight of Jewish individuals on screen, even calling a meeting at Warner Brothers to discourage the making of the film Gentleman’s Agreement. They feared that “by drawing attention to anti-Semitism in a film, anti-Semitic feelings might be enhanced.”45 Historian Peter Novick attributes this relative absence of representation of the Holocaust during the 1950s to several reasons, including a historicization of the Holocaust as “a terrible feature of the period that had ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany,”46 an aversion to what seemed to many like an “unhealthy voyeurism” of atrocities, and the advent of the Cold War, which transformed Germans “from implacable foes to indispensable allies.”47 For example, in 1959, when Judgment at Nuremberg first screened as a teleplay on Playhouse 9048 (prior to Stanley Kramer’s Hollywood film version in 196149), all references to the gas chambers were cut due to objections from the American Gas Association, one of the show’s sponsors.50 Indeed, compared to the films that preceded it—which focused on postwar issues such as displaced persons, courtroom prosecution of war criminals, and the psychological aftermath of surviving the concentration camps—Stevens’ cinematic adaptation of Frank’s diary shifted the focus of cinematic storytelling by “plac[ing] the dangers of Jewish existence in wartime Europe at the center of its narrative.”51 But even after documenting the aftermath of the concentration camps on film in 1945, Stevens chose to tell the story of the young Frank, even in its dangerous moments of Nazis pounding at the annex doors, through a rose-colored lens. The film footage of Dachau remained locked in North Hollywood, and the director had decided to never again use the key.

Americanizing Anne Frank As early as the book’s U.S. publication in 1952, American readers and critics had already begun to metonymize Frank as a symbol of both hope and suffering. In the book’s introduction, Eleanor Roosevelt framed the story as one to which any American reader could relate. “These are the thoughts and expression of a young girl living under extraordinary conditions, and for this reason her diary tells us much about ourselves and our own children. And for this reason, too, I felt how close we all are to Anne’s experience.”52 Here, Roosevelt enlisted the plural pronoun “we,” insisting on the universality of the teen diarist’s experience. Certain Jewish critics, however, focused on the particularity of Frank’s religious identity. In June of that same year, The New York Times Book Review published a piece by novelist Meyer Levin,

42 Max Nosseck, dir., Singing in the Dark directed by (A.N.O. Productions, 1956), 104 mins. 43 See Jeffrey Shandler, Jews, God, and the Videotape: Religion and Media in America (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 42-43. 44 Eric A. Goldman, American Jewish Story through Cinema, 1st ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), 4. 45 Ibid. Darryl F. Zanuck, the head of production at the studio, insisted on producing Gentleman’s Agreement, the adaptation of Laura Z. Hobson’s novel of the same name. As Goldman writes, Zanuck, “by his very character, was no conformist, and understood that, by virtue of not being a Jew, he could take liberties that Jews would not take.” Goldman, American Jewish Story, 3. Directed by Elia Kazan, the film version of Gentleman’s Agreement, which stars Gregory Peck as a non-Jewish journalist who goes undercover to expose anti-Semitism in the United States, won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1947. See Elia Kazan, dir., Gentleman’s Agreement, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck (Twentieth Century Fox, 1947), 118 min. 46 Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 103 47 Ibid., 86. 48 Playhouse 90, Los Angeles, aired on CBS from 1956-1960. 49 Stanley Kramer, dir., Judgement at Nuremberg (Roxlom Films Inc., 1961), 179 minutes. 50 Annette Insdorf,Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust, 3rd ed. (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 3. 51 Baron, Projecting the Holocaust, 39. 52 Eleanor Roosevelt, “Introduction,” in Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1952), 8.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 70 Nunn who suggested that her story could stand in for all of the Jewish people who had perished in the Holocaust—“[b]ecause the diary was not written in retrospect, it contains the trembling life of every moment—Anne Frank’s voice becomes the voice of six million vanished Jewish souls.”53 Soon after, however, it was precisely Frank’s Jewish identity that the team of U.S. playwrights sought to minimize, describing the Hanukkah ceremony as “eight days of presents” and replacing the religious hymn “Rock of Ages,” with a “spirited and gay” jingle. Garson Kanin, the director of the Broadway version of the diary, claimed that any use of Hebrew would “simply alienate the audience.”54 Broadway and Hollywood producers effectively shoehorned the story of the Holocaust into classic cinematic tropes, including, in the words of Annette Insdorf, “a confined theatrical setting, superfluous dialogue, star turns, classical editing (mainly with close-ups), and musical scores whose violins swell at dramatic moments.”55 Along with films such as Stanley Kramer’s 1961 courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg,56 Stevens’ production of The Diary of Anne Frank “essentially fit the bristling new material of the Holocaust into an old narrative form, thus allowing the viewer to feel complacent instead of concerned or disturbed.”57 Indeed, these aesthetic cues anesthetized the historical accuracy, bowdlerized Frank’s death in Bergen-Belsen, and suggested to U.S. audiences that a representation of the Holocaust could end as most Hollywood films did— happily. As anthropologist Liisa Malkki writes, in the transnational sphere, the figure of the child often performs “ritual and affective work” that may invoke a “human community” andthe “embodiment…of a basic human goodness.”58 The case of Anne Frank was no exception. The edits made by American producers kept Frank safely in the cocoon of childhood, away from the murky psychological waters of adolescence or rage at the world around her, which might muddle her personification of goodness. Writer Cynthia Ozick counts the ways in which American producers altered the diary’s content in the decades since its publication. “The story of Anne Frank…has been bowdlerized, distorted, transmuted, traduced, reduced; it has been infantilized, Americanized, homogenized, sentimentalized; falsified, kitschified, and, in fact, blatantly and arrogantly denied.”59 Many Jewish intellectuals in the late 1950s and early 1960s shared these concerns, balking at what they perceived as the whitewashing of history for the edification of the American audiences.60 For instance, in an essay published in the Chicago-based Critic in 1960, Martin Dworkin expressed concern that because the playwrights minimized Frank’s Jewish identity and emphasized her budding romance with Peter, the quintessence of the story would be lost on the American audience. “To these people, this Anne Frank may not represent the millions of Jews who were obliterated, as much as the popular image of youth’s indictment of the adult world that perpetually interferes with the romantic fulfillment of adolescent dreams.”61 Dworkin went on to criticize how the book’s “central poignance has been subtly diluted in order to give a familiar

53 Meyer Levin, “The Child Behind the Secret Door,” The New York Times Book Review, June 15, 1942, accessed July 15, 2020, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1952/06/15/93375295.html?pageNumber=93. For more on Levin’s relationship to the adaptations of the diary and his complicated—even litigious—relationship with Otto Frank, see Ozick, The Misuse of Anne Frank’s Diary; Rosenfeld, The End of the Holocaust, 133-134; Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, 103-123. 54 Quoted in Ozick, The Misuse of Anne Frank’s Diary. 55 Insdorf, Indelible Shadows, 6. 56 Kramer, Judgement at Nuremberg. 57 Insdorf, Indelible Shadows, 6. 58 Liisa Malkki, “Children, Humanity, and the Infantilization of Peace,” in In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care, ed. Ilana Feldman et al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 59-60. Malkki suggests that children consistently occupy five registers in the humanitarian imagination: “(1) as embodiments of basic human goodness (and symbols of world harmony); (2) as sufferers; (3) as seers of truth; (4) as ambassadors of peace; and (5) embodiments of the future.” Quoted in Malkii, Children, Humanity, and the Infantilization, 59-60. For a discussion of portrayals of the Holocaust in children’s literature, see Ruth Franklin, “How Should Children’s Books Deal with the Holocaust?,” The New Yorker, July 16, 2018, accessed July 15, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/23/ how-should-childrens-books-deal-with-the-holocaust. 59 Ozick, The Misuse of Anne Frank’s Diary. 60 Rosenfeld, The End of the Holocaust, 131. 61 Martin Dworkin, “The Vanishing Diary of Anne Frank,” The Critic 18, no. 4 (February 1, 1960), 76.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 Rose-Colored Genocide 71 soft-drink flavor,”62 stating his concern that the majority of U.S. theatergoers or filmgoers “know little of the facts of the extermination of six million Jews by Nazis and will not be led to [such] knowledge in the theaters.”63 In Harper’s Magazine that same year, Austrian-Jewish psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim (himself a former prisoner of Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps) resisted the logic of the American adaptations’ implicit message, writing that Frank’s story “found wide acclaim because…it denies implicitly that Auschwitz ever existed. If all men are good, there was never an Auschwitz.”64 Indeed, in the immediate postwar years, most U.S. citizens, even those who were Jewish, were reluctant to grapple publicly with the facts of what would become known as the Holocaust until the 1970s.65 The film’s final words about the goodness of peoples’ hearts—one of Frank’s most enshrined quotations—epitomize what seems an unshakable faith in humanity. Yet Frank was more complicated—indeed, more human—than that single line suggests. As Samantha Power observes, these U.S. productions banished Frank’s lines that expressed profound doubt about the future.66 In a line penned on April 11, 1944, Frank articulated despair, writing, “[w]e are Jews in chains.”67 The following month, on May 3, she described humanity’s Hobbesian side, writing, “there’s a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder, and kill.”68 That summer, on July 15, 1944, Frank wrote, “I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death.”69 Lines such as these, threads in the diary’s tapestry, remind us of the story’s darker elements. As Ozick writes of the document, “its reputation for uplift is, to say it plainly, nonsensical.”70 We would do well to recall that in spite of U.S. producers’ attempts to universalize Frank’s story through such an uplifting, optimistic understanding of her life (and death), this approach was far from universal. Zooming out from the United States, it becomes clear that national context shaped local understanding of the diary, the play, and the film. In fact, Frank’s story serves as a type of Rorschach test—responses to it tell us at least as much about the sociohistorical circumstances of the audience as about the life of Frank herself. For instance, in mid-century South Africa, productions of the play staged in English and Afrikaans diverged from the American script in order to accentuate Frank’s Jewish identity, thus “emphasizing the story’s particularity and deflecting local connotations” of the apartheid racialized state for white audiences.71 More recently, Caribbean writers such as Michelle Cliff have written “under the sign of Anne Frank” through novels such asAbeng, 72 in which a Jamaican girl, fascinated with the Dutch diarist, embarks upon a “quest to come to terms with the Holocaust,”73 all the while grappling with the particular legacy of colonialism and racism in her own country.74 In an entry in Zlata’s Diary dated March 30, 1992, the eponymous writer, a young girl living in wartime Sarajevo, indirectly aligns her own story with Frank’s, confiding, “[h]ey,

62 Ibid., 16 63 Ibid., 77. 64 Bruno Bettelheim, “The Ignored Lesson of Anne Frank,” Harper’s Magazine, November 1, 1960, 46. 65 Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell:” America and the Age of Genocide, reprint ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2013), 72- 73. Power describes the climate of reticence in “the immediate postwar period … [in which] the singular genocide so well-known today was barely discussed. American Jews who would later become a potent force in promoting Holocaust commemoration and education were reticent, eager to assimilate, leery of fueling further anti-Semitism, and determined not to be depicted as victims. Other Americans were uncomfortable with the topic of extermination.” Quoted in Power, A Problem from Hell, 72. 66 Ibid., 73. 67 Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, ed. Otto H. Frank, trans. Susan Massotty (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), 262. 68 Ibid., 281. 69 Ibid., 333. 70 Ozick, The Misuse of Anne Frank’s Diary. 71 Shirli Gilbert, “Anne Frank in South Africa: Remembering the Holocaust During and After Apartheid,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 26, no. 3 (December 23, 2012), 368. 72 Michelle Cliff, Abeng, First Plume Printing ed. (New York: Plume, [1984] 1995). 73 Sarah Phillips Casteel, “Writing Under the Sign of Anne Frank: Creolized Holocaust Memory in Michelle Cliff and Caryl Phillips,” Modern Fiction Studies 60, no. 4 (December 29, 2014), 798. 74 Ibid.

Diary! You know what I think? Since Anne Frank called her diary Kitty, maybe I could give you a name, too,” before choosing the name of Mimmy.75 Thus, in spite of U.S. producers’ attempts to universalize Frank’s diary, uses of her story—whether as pedagogical tools, literary adaptations, or generic inspiration—were (and still are) far from homogenous.76 Still, the diary’s quintessence unites these disparate and global interpretations of the young girl’s diary. Frank’s legacy in Hollywood extends well beyond the 1959 film. As we will see, harmonizing narratives such as Stevens’ production were harmful not only because of their bowdlerization of history but also their foreclosure of our ability to encounter representations of genocidal atrocity when it happens in the future.

Rose-Colored Hollywood The paradigm of harmonizing narratives surrounding U.S. adaptations of Frank’s story has since left its trace on several more recent Hollywood-produced films about genocide.77 Examples include acclaimed films such as Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda78 and Roland Joffé’s The Killing Fields.79 Hotel Rwanda80 features a linear, teleological plot with very little historical context for its intended audience before insisting on an uplifting ending, much like its cinematic kin, Schindler’s List.81 As one critic explained, Hotel Rwanda’s absence of historical background for the Rwandan genocide “makes the violence meaningless and reproduces the ‘Dark Continent’ narrative trope of Africa, where violence is portrayed as a way of life.”82 In fact, much of the film’s paratextual publicity grafted the story of Oskar Schindler, the German Nazi with a heart of gold, onto the story of how Kigali’s Belgian-owned Hôtel Mille Collines became a haven for Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the midst of the 1994 genocide. Publicity for the film crowned its hero, Hutu hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle), as “Rwanda’s Schindler”—in spite of his controversial legacy in Rwanda and the contestation of his heroism by Hôtel Mille Collines survivors, an internationalist journalist, and United Nations troops who were in Kigali at the time of the genocide.83 The film leans on a plot

75 Zlata Filipovic, Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Wartime Sarajevo, trans. Christina Pribichevich-Zorie. (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 27. Indeed, as Katherine Wilson points out in her study of the global reception of Anne Frank’s story, localized cultural context often determines the nature of its reception—“[i]f we look at the Diary’s circulation, what we actually see are (at least) three separate modes of transnational reception: first, as translation affecting the way non-Western communities represent their experiences of genocide; second, as a text read by protagonists of novels; and third, as an authorizing force resulting in the rise of multiple foreign ‘Anne Franks’.” Quoted in Katherine Wilson, “Anne Frank Abroad: The Emergence of World Atrocity Literature,” World Literature Today 87, no. 3 (June 2013), 32. 76 See also Robert Sackett, “Memory by Way of Anne Frank: Enlightenment and Denial Among West Germans, Circa 1960,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 16, no. 2 (September 1, 2020), 243-265; on reception of the text in 1960s Germany, see Youssef Ben Lamia Zayzafoon, “Anne Frank Goes East: The Algerian Civil War and the Nausea of Postoloniality in Wacing Laredj’s ‘Balconies of the North Sea’,” College Literature 37, no. 1 (2010), 61-80; on the connection between Anne Frank’s legacy and the Algerian Civil War, see Angela Coutts, “Remembering Anne Frank in Japan: Akazome Akiko’s Otome No Mikkoku/The Maiden’s Betrayal,” Contemporary Women’s Writing 8, no. 1 (March 2014), 71-88; also on the literary use of the diary in Akazome Akiko’s 2010 novel Otome no Mikkoku (The Maiden’s Betrayal) which also grapples with questions of war and memory in Japan. 77 Spielberg’s film is also an adaptation. It is based on Thomas Keneally’sbook, Schindler’s Ark (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982), which was released in the United States as Schindler’s List. 78 George, Hotel Rwanda. 79 Joffé, The Killing Fields. 80 George, Hotel Rwanda. 81 In contrast to Hotel Rwanda, Haitian director Raoul Peck’s 2005 Sometimes in April, a feature film also about the Rwandan genocide, provides at least some overview of the colonial history in the century preceding the genocide, alluding to the Hamitic hypothesis, a racialized myth that privileged the Tutsi because of their perceived genetic proximity to Europeans, and its poisonous legacy. See Raoul Peck, dir., Sometimes in April, (HBO Films, 2005), 140 min. 82 Okaka Opio Dokotum, “Re-Membering the Tutsi Genocide in Hotel Rwanda (2004): Implications for Peace and Reconciliation,” African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review 3, no. 2 (Fall 2013), 130, 134. 83 For more on Rusesabagina’s contested legacy in Rwanda, see Dokotum, Re-Membering the Tutsi Genocide, 132-144. As Zylberman and Sánchez-Biosca noted, by describing Hotel Rwanda as “the black version” of Schindler’s List, such reflexive comparisons between Schindler and Rusesabagina “thus marginalize any possible discussion regarding the historical figure of the main character.” Quoted in Lior Zylberman and Vicente Sánchez-Bosca, “Reflections on the Significance of Images in Genocide Studies: Some Methodological Considerations,”Genocide Studies and Prevention 12, no. 2 (2018), 6. For more on the parallels between Schindler’s List and Hotel Rwanda, see Madelaine Hron, “Genres of

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 Rose-Colored Genocide 73 that concludes with an uplifting scene of an improbable family reunion and survival in a refugee camp—with key details that differ from the facts in Rusesabagina’s own memoir, whose accuracy itself has been questioned.84 Thematically, Hotel Rwanda’s ending of reunion, survival, and the triumph of “good over evil” synchronizes with the final scene of The Killing Fields, a film made twenty years prior about the Cambodian genocide. Here, American photojournalist Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston) reunites in a Thai refugee camp with the man he calls his “best friend,” Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor), who has lived through the Khmer Rouge genocide. Schanberg apologizes for leaving his friend behind during the 1975 American evacuation from Phnom Penh, having fled what he earlier called “the sad little country.”85 Pran in turn absolves any sense of guilt—“[n]othing to forgive, Sydney,” he says—before the two men embrace.86 Because the two characters metonymically represent their respective countries, the film’s ending wriggles away from any serious self-examination of what Power calls “American reticence in face of the Cambodian horrors” that took place between 1975 and 1979.87 In the aftermath of the genocide, hope has the last word. In spite of harmonizing narratives, some of these Hollywood films include fleeting moments that self-reflexively question the role of the camera and storytelling in the midst of atrocity. Occasionally, these scenes include snippets of what is known as mise en abyme. In this narrative technique—literally “placed in the abyss”—stories are embedded within stories.88 For instance, in one scene of Hotel Rwanda, Rusesabagina watches documentary footage of genocidal carnage, taken by Jack Daglish (Joaquin Phoenix), an American photojournalist, from the relative safety of the hotel. The hotel manager expresses his hope that visual evidence of collective violence in the streets of Kigali will incite Western action. “How can they not intervene when they witness such atrocities?,” he asks.89 Puncturing Rusesabagina’s optimism, the journalist responds, “I think that if people see this footage they’ll say, ‘Oh my God that’s horrible,’ and then go on eating their dinners.”90 The film makes a subtle suggestion here: will the audience of Hotel Rwanda respond in kind to this story of the Rwandan genocide? This scene opens up critical space that interrogates the nature of documentation, evidence, spectatorship, and atrocity. Although only for a brief moment, the mise en abyme fractures the arc of the harmonizing narrative.

‘Yet Another Genocide’: Cinematic Representations of Rwanda,” in Film and Genocide, ed. Kristi M. Wilson and Tomás F. Crowder-Taraborrelli (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), 140. 84 In the film, the family is escorted to the refugee camp by United Nations peacekeepers and finds their young relatives in relatively good, well-kept conditions. In Rusesabagina’s autobiography, on the other hand, the family is escorted by the Rwandan Patriot Front to the Kabuga refugee camp and finds Rusesabagina’s brother-in-law’s children, Anaise and Izere, “covered in dirt…starving, and barely alive.” Paul Rusesabagina and Tom Zoellner, An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography (New York: Viking Penguin, 2006), 166. For more on the collaboration between director Terry George and Rusesabagina as well as the contestations against the hotel manager from Hôtel Mille Collines survivors, troops from UNAMIR (United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda), and an international journalist, see Dokotom, Re- Membering the Tutsi Genocide. 85 Joffé, The Killing Fields, 00:08:07-00:08:11. 86 Ibid., 02:15:41-02:15:44. 87 Power, A Problem from Hell, 91. For more on the context of the “U.S. policy of silence” in Cambodia see Power, A Problem from Hell, 128, even in the face of analogies to the Holocaust, see Power, A Problem from Hell, 87-154 . 88 Oxford English Dictionary Online (Oxford University Press), s.v., “mise en abyme,” accessed May 16, 2018, http://www. oed.com/view/Entry/245796. In 1989, Lucien Dällenbach revisited and revised Gide’s concept in The Mirror and the Text. Unlike Gide, who never actually spelled out the meaning of mise en abyme, preferring to offer only examples of it, Dällenbach helpfully provided his readers with a working definition: “a ‘mise en abyme’ is any aspect enclosed within a work that shows a similarly within the work that contains it.” Lucien Dällenbach, The Mirror in the Text, trans. Jeremy Whitely and Emma Hughes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 8. 89 George, Hotel Rwanda, 00:43:50-00:43:53. 90 Ibid., 00:43:54-00:44:04. The Killing Fields also includes a subplot in which U.S. photojournalist Al Rockoff (John Malkovich) tries to forge a British passport for Pran’s escape by taking his photo, a series of scenes which also demonstrate the power (or, conversely, the powerlessness) of the camera in the face of mass atrocity (Joffé, The Killing Fields, 01:08:30-01:19:01). For more on the Western coverage (or lack thereof) of the Rwandan genocide, see Noam Schimmel, “An Invisible Genocide: How the Western Media Failed to Report the 1994 Rwandan Genocide of the Tutsi and Why,” The International Journal of Human Rights 15, no. 7 (2010), 1125-1135, accessed July 15, 2020, https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13642987.2010.499728.

Yet, for its fleeting moments of meta-narration—its half-hearted interrogation of American spectators’ apathy regarding international atrocities—the film leans on a teleological plot with a conclusion that is regretful yet ultimately uplifting. On a similar note, in the final scene of The Killing Fields, John Lennon’s sad yet hopeful song “Imagine” plays in the background.91 An intertitle informs the viewer that “Dith Pran returned, with Sydney Schanberg, to America to be reunited with his family.”92 The narrative closes with a note of harmony, a sense of hope—the Western journalist returns home weary, but also wiser.93 In both films, the loose ends are tied up. As several critics have noted, these predominant narrative tropes and patterns in Hollywood films about Rwanda, Cambodia, and the Holocaust constitute their own genre—what might be called genocide cinema. In their introduction to the critical anthology Film and Genocide, Kristi M. Wilson and Tomás F. Crowder-Taraborrelli observed that most genocide films “seem to straddle a very fine line between depicting the lack of power to stop these kinds of events and small glimmers of hope (in most cases characterized by the heroic behavior of a small number of individuals).”94 These films adapt, blending into different subgenres, and, as Lior Zylberman and Vicente Sánchez- Biosca write, “melodrama, the different subgenres of drama, thrillers, art films, TV series, or even Hollywood blockbusters managed to crystallize an iconography and spectacular narrative form.”95 More recent examples include The Promise,96 a romance set against the backdrop of the Armenian genocide (also directed by Terry George of Hotel Rwanda), and Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father,97 a drama based on Loung Ung’s memoir of the Cambodian genocide.98 Such optimism invests stock in the promise of never again, a mantra that aims to ward off future acts of collective violence, which, in the world beyond Hollywood, rings hollow time after time. These patterns, so finely etched into the genre of genocide cinema, make the mise en abyme structure of a film such as Ararat,99 which focuses on the Armenian genocide, all the more jarring. By refusing to harmonize the narrative of a historical genocide, it offers an alternative mode of storytelling.

Embracing Dissonance: Ararat Directed by Atom Egoyan, Ararat is a disorienting and dizzying film. A film about a film, Ararat depicts the attempt of Armenian-Canadian director Edward Saroyan (Charles Aznavour) to cinematize the Armenian genocide based on the 1917 memoir of missionary Clarence Ussher, entitled An American Physician in Turkey: A Narrative of Adventures in Peace and War. While directing his film (also entitled Ararat), Saroyan must also grapple with the opposing political convictions of his lead Turkish-Canadian actor (Elias Koteas) who plays the role of Jevdet Bey, a Turkish government official who oversaw the massacre of Armenians during the Siege of Van in 1915, and denies off-screen that the Armenian genocide ever took place. Throughout, Egoyan consistently enlists the narrative technique of mise en abyme that was so fleetingly featured in Hotel Rwanda. Characters argue about the ethics of the screenplay, compare the Armenian genocide to the Holocaust, and even debate whether the massacre at Van ever occurred. By enlisting the mise en

91 Joffé, The Killing Fields, 02:14:31-02:17:02. 92 Ibid., 02:16:24. 93 In Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost, Gamini, a citizen of Sri Lanka, reflects on this dynamic of the esternW hero in U.S. cinema: “American movies, English books—remember how they all end? Gamini asked that night. ‘The American or the Englishman gets on a plane and leaves. That’s it. The camera leaves with him. He looks out the window at Mombasa or Vietnam or Jakarta, someplace now he can look at through the clouds. The tired hero. A couple of words to the girl beside him. He’s going home. So the war, to all purposes, is over. That’s enough reality for the West. It’s probably the history of the last two hundred years of Western political writing. Go home. Write a book. Hit the circuit.” Quoted in Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost (New York: Knopf, 2000), 286. 94 Wilson and Crowder-Taraborrelli, Film and Genocide, 5. 95 Zylberman and Sánchez-Biosca, Reflections on the Significance of Images, 12. 96 Terry George, dir., The Promise (Open Road Film, 2016), 135 mins. 97 Angelina Jolie, dir., First They Killed My Father, (Netflix, 2017), 136 mins. 98 For a consideration of the parallels between the Hollywood depiction of the Armenian genocide in The Promise and Ravished Armenia, see Michelle Tusan, “Promises, Promises: The Strange History of Film and the Armenian Genocide,” Los Angeles Review of Books, May 25, 2017, accessed September 16, 2019, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/promises- promises-strange-history-film-armenian-genocide/. 99 Atom Egoyan, dir., Ararat (Miramax, 2002), 115 minutes.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 Rose-Colored Genocide 75 abyme as a structural scaffold,Ararat exposes the ethical quandaries, political struggles, and artistic riddles of attempting to narrate a story about the historical trauma of genocide. Ussher’s memoir features an account of the 1915 Siege of Van, beginning in the spring of that year, when Jevdet Bey, the Turkish governor of Van, commandeered approximately 4,000 Armenian soldiers, allegedly for work battalions. Bey then refused the Armenians’ offer—a tenth of their number as hostages and a fee to exempt the rest—before massacring 55,000 Armenians by Ussher’s estimate.100 Ussher recounts a conversation in which Bey commands the Turkish forces to go to the town of Shadakh and “wipe out its people” before “savagely” telling the American, “‘I won’t leave one, not one so high,’ holding his hand below the height of his knee.”101 The memoir, which includes maps, photographs, and illustrations of the bombarded buildings, vividly describes the mass slaughter led by Bey’s Turkish forces, known as the Kasab Taburu, or the Butcher Regiment.

They were mounted, armed with daggers, automatic pistols, and modern repeating rifles. When they saw a mother nursing her babe they shot through the babe and the mother’s breast and arm. They would gallop into a crowd of fleeing women and children, draw their daggers, and rip the unfortunate creatures. I forbear to describe the wounds brought to me to repair.102 Here, Ussher catalogues some—but not all—of the atrocities committed by Bey’s forces. In refusing to describe the wounds he tended, the physician intimates a horror too great to record. In spite of his refusal to document the full extent of the carnage, Ussher’s memoir is considered one of the most detailed eyewitness accounts of the genocide, and it explicitly accuses the Turkish government of planning to exterminate the Armenian population.103 Egoyan’s Ararat dramatizes this failure of global witnessing through the staging of the filming of a scene on the set of Saroyan’s Ararat. In this scene, one of the consultants for Saroyan’s film, Ani (Arsinée Khanjian), an Armenian-Canadian art historian who specializes in the paintings of Armenian-American artist Arshile Gorky, is incredulous.104 Ani feels that the film’s director has taken too many artistic liberties, such as making the mountain of Ararat visible from Van, which would have been, as she has told Saroyan, “not true.”105 Later in the film, an enraged Ani barges through the set, where the actor Martin (Bruce Greenwood) playing Clarence Ussher is tending to a maimed child in the fog of apocalyptic violence. In this moment of crossing the threshold of the set, Ani literally breaks the frame of the narrative; she catalyzes a catastrophic collision of past and present, fiction and non-fiction. Angered by this interruption, the actor Martin, speaking as the character of Ussher, from the vantage of Van in 1915, explodes at twenty-first-century Ani.

What is this? God damn it! We’re surrounded by Turks. We’ve run out of supplies, most of us will die. The crowd needs a miracle; this child is bleeding to death. If I can save his life, it may give us the spirit to continue. This is his brother…his pregnant sister was raped in front of his eyes, before her stomach was slashed open, to stab her unborn child. His father’s eyes were gouged out of his head and stuffed into his mouth. And his mother’s breasts were ripped off. She was left to bleed to death. Who the fuck are you?106

100 Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response (New York: Harper Collins, 2003), 202- 207. 101 Clarence Douglas Ussher and Grace Highley Knapp, An American Physician in Turkey: A Narrative of Adventures in Peace and War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), 237-238. 102 Ibid., 238 103 Balakian, The Burning Tigris, 201. 104 Egoyan, Ararat, 00:32:40, beginning of the scene. Gorky fled from Van and eventually settled in the United States, becoming known for his influence on Abstract Impressionism and his paintings such as Arshile Gorky, The Artist and His Mother, c. 1926-c. 1942, oil on canvas, 59 15/16 x 50” (152.3 x 127 cm), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.56935.html. 105 Egoyan, Ararat, 00:32:48-00:32:50. 106 Ibid., 01:21:37-01:22:34.

This spectacular confrontation—between an actor playing a historical “character” and a historical “consultant” who is not an “actor”—blurs the boundaries between present and past, actor and spectator, “expert” and storyteller. The film implicates its audience: what stories do we witness, and how do we act (or not act) in response to them? Ussher’s words, directed toward Ani, could also apply to the audience of Ararat. Whether one watches or turns away, does nothing or does something, questions or accepts the facts, everyone plays a role in the story of genocide—whether they realize it or not. Here, Egoyan’s film-about-a-film interrogates Ani’s roles—as “historical consultant,” asa member of the Armenian diaspora, and as a bystander—on the stage of human events. Martin/ Ussher’s accusatory question (“[w]ho the fuck are you?”) is aimed as much at Ani as at anyone who remains (or remained) oblivious, failing to witness the atrocity at hand. Dori Laub writes of the global failure of witnessing with regards to another historical genocide, the Holocaust:

[I]t was not only the reality of the situation and the lack of responsiveness of bystanders or the world that account for the fact that history was taking place with no witness: it was also the very circumstance of being inside the event that made unthinkable the very notion that a witness could exist, that is, someone who could step outside of the coercively totalitarian and dehumanizing frame of reference in which the event was taking place, and provide an independent frame of reference through which the event could be observed.107 In this cataclysmic scene, Martin’s character, Clarence Ussher, remains inside the event. From the outside, Ani becomes a belated and unintentional witness—from the perspective of the twenty-first century—to an event in which there was no outside witness, at least not in the moment of the 1915 siege. Here, Egoyan inverts the aphorism of Shakespeare’s Jacques in As You Like It: instead of all the world being a stage, here all the stage is the world. The scene interrogates the very nature of storytelling. The film documents a series of transitions and adaptations: we go from the historical events of 1915 to Clarence Ussher’s 1917 memoir to Edward Saroyan’s (contemporary, though undated) film to Atom Egoyan’s 2002 film. The fact that Egoyan takes the title of Saroyan’s film as his title gestures to the impossibility of narrative coherence in the historical wake of the trauma of genocide. Egoyan poses a koan (an impossible riddle): which film—his or Saroyan’s (which is arguably also Egoyan’s film)—tells the story of Ararat? In the absence of many survivors, perhaps the mountain of Ararat is made to symbolize the witness to the event. One might say that the geographic site of Mount Ararat was, in effect, what Pierre Nora would call a “lieu de mémoire,” or “site of remembrance” that is “created by a play of memory and history.”108 Here, Egoyan directs our attention to the slipperiness of narrative, the impossibility of linear, straightforward storytelling for an event such as genocide. Ararat uses the mise en abyme structure as a strategy to resist narrative resolution. Each story nested within another story further fractures plot coherence. In doing so, it straddles both time and space, dwelling simultaneously in 1915 and the present day, in Van and in Toronto. In a chiastic logic, the fractured plot makes the present past and the past present. The film’s concerns with the impossibility of coherent narration in the wake of trauma raise questions about truth, accuracy, and narrative ethics. By telling several fragmented stories, Egoyan’s film resists the narrative closure of a single story.109 In doing so, it offers an alternative mode of storytelling—one that opens possibilities of seeing the world, of seeing history, as a collection of inextricably linked stories within stories. By illuminating narrative dissonance, it refuses to provide the viewer with the asylum of narrative harmony. As director Egoyan reflected on his character, Edward Saroyan, “Edward’s film could

107 Dori Laub, “Truth and Testimony: The Process and the Struggle,” in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. Cathy Caruth 1st ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,1995), 66. 108 Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representation, no. 26 (Spring, 1989), 19. 109 Egoyan, Ararat, 115 mins. In 2007, Egoyan drew from the legacy of the 1919 silent film about Aurora Mardiganian, who, as it has been previously noted, has been called the “Anne Frank” of the Armenian genocide, in a visual installation entitled Auroras, in which seven different women of various ethnic backgrounds recite passages from Ravished Armenia, in effect suggesting what Timothy Long has called a “chorus, a resistant ‘community of witnessing.’” Quoted in Timothy Long, “Atom Egoyan’s Auroras: A Chorus of Witnesses,” in Testimony and Trauma: Engaging Common Ground, ed. Christina Santos et al. (Leiden and Boston: BRILL, 2019), 289.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 Rose-Colored Genocide 77 never tell a proper narrative, such there’s no conclusion to his story.”110 In fact, Ararat suggests that the story of genocide is one that is impossible to tell coherently. Nearly a decade later, the work of a Rwandan filmmaker would suggest a similar conclusion.

Anything but Black and White: Grey Matter Directed by Rwandan filmmaker Kivu Ruhorahoza, Matière Grise (Grey Matter) is a cinematic portrait of an artist. The 2011 film depicts a young Rwandan director’s attempt to create a cinematic portrait of the 1994 genocide.111 Like Ararat, it relies on the narrative scaffolding of mise en abyme. Ruhorahoza intertwines three plotlines, which are, like a Matryoshka doll, nestled within one another. It is the story of Balthazar (Hervé Kimenyi), a young Rwandan director in Kigali struggling to find the financial and emotional reserves to make a movie about the genocide, that bookends the film. Balthazar’s film, which he dreams of producing if he can obtain the funds, is called The Cycle of the Cockroach.112 The two acts of The Cycle of the Cockroach comprise Matière Grise’s other two interconnected narratives: one is the story of Yvan (Ramadhan Shami Bizimana) and Justine (Ruth Shanal Nirere), two young adult siblings orphaned by the genocide and haunted by its ghosts several years later.113 The other is the story of an unnamed member (Jean Paul Uwayezu) of the Interahamwe, or Hutu killing squads, during the 1994 genocide as he rapes and murders Tutsis.114 While the siblings find some sort of healing through both Yvan’s therapeutic painting and the act of burying their parents’ remains, the film ultimately suggests that their wounds will never heal.115 Matière Grise, which switches between French and Kinyarwanda, the country’s national language, defies chronological order and withholds any promise of a peaceful future—in effect, prohibiting either spiritual uplift or closure. Harmonizing narratives are unwelcomed here. Throughout, the film’smise en abyme framework defamiliarizes the very nature of storytelling through its juxtaposition of past and present, real and surreal. More specifically, it interrogates the possibility of representing genocide through a jarring narrative choice: it makes literal a deadly metaphor—inyenzi, or “cockroach,” the epithet used against the Tutsi population leading up to and during the 1994 genocide. In other words, in a shockingly obscene gesture, the film takes an ethnic slur, meaning “cockroach,” at its face value, substituting actual cockroaches in the place of human beings. Before the insects appear on screen, however, the film contextualizes the ethnic slur and accompanying dog whistles—many of which were transmitted over national radio. In Act I of Balthazar’s imagined film, The Cycle of the Cockroach, a radio emits a mellifluous feminine voice into the room where a lone Interahamwe sits.116 The female broadcaster’s words coax her listeners to exterminate their neighbors by casting Tutsis out of humanity—“[p]lease show no mercy. A cockroach is not a human being…Please never forget that a butterfly will not come out of a cockroach’s egg.”117 Following this scene, Ruhorahoza goes on to make these words literal: he replaces certain human beings—members of the Tutsi ethnic group—with cockroaches. In doing so, he exposes the twisted logic of genocidal thought. In the same vein as avant-garde French playwright Antonin Artaud, Ruhorahoza engages in what might be called “a theater of cruelty” in which bodily gestures and even obscene symbols

110 Atom Egoyan, “In Other Words: Poetic Licence and the Incarnation of History,” University of Toronto Quarterly 73, no. 3 (July 2004), 896. 111 Kivu Ruhorahoza, dir., Matière Grise [Grey Matter] (Scarab Studio Films, 2011), 110 mins. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid., 00:39:51 114 Ibid., 00:23:40-00:39:50. 115 Ibid., 110 mins. 116 Along with publishing the “Ten Commandments of the Hutu,” in the Hutu publication Kangura (“Wake Up!”) in 1990, four years prior to the beginning of the 1994 genocide, see Power, Problem from Hell, 338-339, Hutu extremists leaders also commandeered the RTLM (Radio Télévision Libre Mille Collines) radio station in order to propagate hate speech and ultimately exhort fellow Hutus to exterminate Tutsis. See Power, Problem from Hell, 331-339. For more on the role of Rwandan media—specifically propaganda in newspaper and radio—in inciting the 1994 genocide, see Alison Des Forges, “Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda” (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), 75-114, accessed July 23, 2020, https://www1.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/Leave%20None%20to%20tell%20the%20story-%20 Genocide%20in%20Rwanda.pdf. 117 Ruhorahoza, Matière Grise, 00:25:10-00:25:23.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 78 Nunn overtake language.118 More precisely, his character Balthazar enlists surrealism in his own film to expose the grotesque and irrational nature of genocide. Nestled in the middle of Gray Matter,during Balthazar’s dream of his own feature film, a HutuInterahamwe death squad member raves at a lone cockroach after trapping it in a glass jar.119 Later, just as Balthazar envisioned in a conversation with his friend at the bar, the camera frames the Interahamwe’s buttocks and groin thrusting violently above the cornered insect, which serves as a visual metonym for the so-called inyenzi, the Tutsi victim.120 The absurdity of the situation confounds the nightmarish and inexplicable nature of the genocide’s destruction that dehumanized its victims. The fact that the film springs from a dream suggests a surreal, unconscious quality that cannot be encompassed by the conventions of realism. Reality is, in fact, a nightmare. Through the story of Balthazar, who envisions the film of Justine and Yvan, Matière Grise also criticizes the local film industry’s indifference and even hostility toward addressing the past. When Balthazar approaches a Rwandan government official to request funding for his film, the bureaucrat discounts the importance of any art that touches on the genocide, saying, “look, I’m sorry, but your story is kind of irrelevant to us. It’s a story you could say that’s not really important.”121 The official then tells Balthazar that he welcomes public health awareness films about HIV and gender-based violence prevention, thus precluding any room for further conversation. This scene implicitly exposes the film industry’s—and the public’s—disinterest and apathy in films about the genocide, a topic relegated to a lower status in the taxonomy of public awareness. Forced to borrow from a loan shark to finance his film, Balthazar must reckon with the forces—both financial and political—that stand as barriers to the realization of his cinematic dream. The chasm between the film Balthazar wants to make and the ones that are funded underscores not only the problem of representation but also the more logistical question of funding. The name of his film, The Cycle of the Cockroach, suggests a cyclical nature of violence. If we are going in circles, then the mise en abyme structure might be able to break the pattern—or at least temporarily pause it.

New World Genocide: Even the Rain While Matière Grise,122 and Ararat123 address collective violence that occurred during the twentieth century, Spanish director Icíar Bollaín’s También La Lluvia (Even the Rain) turns to an even more historically distant genocide. It considers the legacy of colonialism in present-day Bolivia, where Mexican director Sebastián (Gael García Bernal) and Spanish producer Costa (Luis Tosar) are shooting a film about the violence left in the wake of the arrival of Christopher Columbusin the “New World” in 1492.124 Underscoring the theme of environmental injustice (based on the Cochabamba Water War of 1999-2000), Bollaín’s film refracts a local water problem as remnant of structural violence.125 Through its cinematographic juxtaposition of color with black-and-white, one of the film’s first scenes illuminates the ethical minefield that accompanies the cinematic narration of a historical trauma such as genocide. En route to the film site, director and producer vigorously debate the pros and cons of filming in Bolivia, which, as Costa exclaims with an attention to the market economy of film production, is “full of starving natives, and that means thousands 126of extras.” Like in Matière Grise, in the logic of national film production, capitalism reigns supreme when it comes

118 In his manifesto, Artaud describes the “theater of cruelty” as, among other things, transcending the limits of language: “It ultimately breaks away from the intellectual subjugation of language, by conveying the sense of a new and deeper intellectuality which hides itself beneath the gestures and signs, raised to the dignity of particular exorcisms.” Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1958), 91. 119 Matière Grise, Ruhorahoza, 00:25:11-00:26:26. 120 Ibid., 00:36:33-00:36:37. 121 Ibid., 00:07:25-00:07:42. 122 Ruhorahoza, Matière Grise. 123 Egoyan, Ararat. 124 Icíar Bollaín, dir., También la Lluvia [Even the Rain] (Vitagraph Films, 2010), 103 mins. 125 Ibid. 126 Bollaín, También la Lluvia, 00:06:21-00:06:25.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 Rose-Colored Genocide 79 to stories that are told (or not told) about genocide. Of course, as their assistant María (Cassandra Ciangherotti) notes, Bolivia was far from where Columbus actually landed. Sebastian echoes her concern with “authenticity,” pointing out that the extras are Quechua, not Taino. Costa responds with a flattening homogenization of Indigenous persons—“[f]rom the Andes or wherever, they’re natives...they’re all the same.”127 Strains of the men’s dialogue echoes the mindset ventriloquized through Anton (Karra Elejalde), who later plays the role of Columbus in Sebastián’s film, suggesting that the prejudice of the fifteenth century lives on in the twentieth.128 Meanwhile, María, whose voice is often silenced—and whose camera is pushed away—by men throughout the film, poses questions to both director and producer that expose the Gordian knots of storytelling—such as the fact that the Quechua extras will not be speaking Taino.129 Cinematography mirrors the murkiness of the ethical debate invoked by the characters. The scene pivots from being in color to being filtered through her hand-held camera which captures the world in black and white. This dizzying visual juxtaposition of color draws the viewer’s attention to questions of both literal and figurative import, generating a series of questions: in matters of sharing or crafting a story, does the narrative rest on stark binaries (black and white)? (Conversely, this question could be flipped: is it seen in shades of gray?) Or does the frame of the story embrace the nuance and color of the scene at hand? This particular scene underscores how stories, especially those crafted in cinema, are framed—excluding as much as including—and are always shaped by outside forces. Perhaps, as the film suggests, 1492 was not all that long ago. By tying the plot of Sebastian’s film to the sociocultural climate of Cochabamba, También La Lluvia suggests that the legacy of genocide, structural violence, and colonialism imprints present- day South America. The mise en abyme structure of the film fractures time and space, collapsing the chronological distance between 1492 and 2000. It even suggests that the well-intentioned filmmakers are themselves complicit in questionable motives. The film never explicitly suggests that the neoliberal water industry, which privatizes the city’s water supply, making a basic resource inaccessible, is genocide. The film does, however, suggest that the water crisis is a manifestation of the structural violence—racism, imperialism, and capitalism—registered and promoted by the genocide Sebastian and his crew are documenting.130 The film’s use of linguistic anachronism reveals the political and cultural work invoked by a single word. In one scene, Maria, the crew’s videographer, interviews some of the cast members about their roles in the film. Curiously, Alberto (Carlos Santos), one of the Spanish actors who is playing Bartholomé de las Casas, the colonist and Dominican friar, recites a speech—allegedly by his character—denouncing the treatment of indigenous peoples that he witnessed in the West Indies. Another actor later brings up the critique that de las Casas wanted to import enslaved Africans, emphasizing a thicket of moral contradictions.131 In costume, seen through the black and white lens of Maria’s camera, he reads from his notes the words from de las Casas’ deathbed—“‘I condemn the blindness of those who ignore the genocide and give orders to the world.’”132 He then breaks character, exclaiming to his audience, “[t]his guy was the father of international law, and I’m only in eight scenes!”133 The pronominal slippage between character and actor indicates a fluidity between time and space in the mind of the actor. On the set of the film, as on the streets of Cochabamba, temporal distance between the two eras often collapses. But what is of particular note here is the use of the word “genocide,” or its Spanish cognate, “genocidio” in the quotation attributed to de las Casas. Its existence is impossible. The word did not exist in the sixteenth century. As Raphaël Lemkin’s unfinished history of genocide reminds us,

127 Ibid., 00:06:38-00:06:46. 128 Ibid., 00:20:17-00:20:30. 129 Ibid., 00:07:13-00:07:25. 130 Bollaín, También la Lluvia. 131 Ibid., 00:20:47-00:21:54. 132 Ibid., 00:16:54-00:17:04. 133 Ibid., 00:17:04-00:07:13.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 80 Nunn however, the occurrence of the crime preceded its coinage.134 Whether the director (Sebastian and/ or Icíar Bollaín) intended to employ this anachronism is unclear. Still, this chrono-topic sleight of hand allows us to travel in time with a slightly larger lexicon. It magnifies the word’s power by forcing the audience—at least those who know the word’s etymology and age—to imagine what de las Casas would have said if not that word. The word shoulders an accusation, a story that stands in for violence, extermination, killing, and racial violence. The anachronism emphasizes the amount of cultural, linguistic, and political work that the single word invokes. And its historical inaccuracy also underscores how even well-intentioned filmmakers can revise the lexicon of history.

Parallax Views: The Act of Killing Joshua Oppenheimer, an American-born British director based in Denmark, called his 2012 The Act of Killing “a documentary of the imagination.”135 The film excavates the narrative underworld of Indonesian paramilitary leader Anwar Congo, who personally killed at least one thousand people, and his colleagues, who orchestrated the death squads that began in the 1960s in Indonesia. Invited by Oppenheimer to cinematically stage the historical killings on camera, Congo draws from his favorite American cinematic genres—the Western, gangster films, and the musical. Thus, while The Act of Killing is ostensibly about the localized collective violence in Indonesia, the film gestures to a genealogy of violence that may trace its descent from the United States—Hollywood, to be exact. In one scene, Congo (a devoted fan of Elvis Presley, Al Pacino, and John Wayne) identifies how American cinema influenced his methods of killing decades prior. “Each genre has its own methods. Like in the mafia movies, they strangle the guy in the car and dump the body. So we did that too.”136 Over the course of the documentary, a film within a film emerges. Several times, under Oppenheimer’s direction, the camera pans to Congo, who is watching a production of his own film on a television set in his lavish living room. These moments blur the borders between story and history, make-believe and reality, past and present. This narrative friction generates the most heat in the film’s closing minutes, in which Congo, watching himself on a television screen, becomes emotional and asks Oppenheimer, “did the people I tortured feel the way I feel here? I can feel what the people who have been tortured felt.”137 When the film’s director responds, “actually, the people felt far worse because you know it’s only a film; they knew they were being killed,” Congo insists upon his own suffering—“[b]ut I really felt it, Joshua.”138 Much like the figure of Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler, who, as described by Hannah Arendt in the 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem, turned his “instinctive reactions” of “animal pity” on himself, Congo remains blind to the possibility of others’ suffering.139 In effect, he performs a psychological alchemy that transforms himself from perpetrator to victim. By watching the director watch Congo, the viewer realizes her own role as spectator of a spectator of a spectator. Once again, the mise en abyme device embeds the viewer within the frame. Because of the shared experience of watching a person watching another person, the audience is positioned similarly to Congo. The film suggests that everyone plays a role, both spectator and actor in the drama. For much of the film, the presence of the United States remains indirect—the favorite Hollywood film genres of Congo, for instance. In one scene, in which Congo reenacts an interrogation, he tells his victim, “although we’re only cinema thugs, we want to feel like people

134 Raphaël Lemkin’s unpublished history of genocide included an outline for a three-volume History of Genocide, with included three parts: (1) Antiquity, (2) Middle Ages, and (3) Modern Times. The “Modern Times” outline included “Latin America.” See Raphaël Lemkin, Lemkin on Genocide, ed. Stephen Leonard Jacobs (Lanham: Lexington, 2014), 18-19. 135 Joshua Oppenheimer et al., dir., The Act of Killing (Final Cut for Real, 2012), 166 mins; Joshua Oppenheimer, “Build My Gallows High: Joshua Oppenheimer on The Act of Killing,” interview by Nick Bradshaw, Sight & Sound Magazine, June 5, 2017, accessed July 15, 2020, https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/interviews/build- my-gallows-high-joshua-oppenheimer-act-killing. In the same interview, Oppenheimer said, “I went looking for embodiments of pure evil, but found ordinary people.” 136 Oppenheimer et al., The Act of Killing, 00:30:12-00:30:23. 137 Ibid., 02:33:50-02:34:10. 138 Ibid., 02:34:35-02:34:56. 139 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, 1st ed. (London: Penguin Classics, 2006), 106.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 Rose-Colored Genocide 81 in the movies.”140 The specter of U.S. cinematic archetypes lingers, and in these moments the film forces the spectator to wonder about the extent of the lethality of cultural imperialism. A strange symbiosis between Hollywood and Congo’s livelihood emerges when, while revisiting an abandoned movie theater, he reminiscences about his favorite Hollywood films and how he used to work outside the cinema selling black market tickets. He angrily recounts how the Communists— his enemy—banned American movies, thus diminishing the audiences and hence his stream of income—“without them, the gangsters didn’t make as much money,” his protégé, Herman, chimes in.141 Later, Congo makes clear that the movies he watched in the 1960s influenced the method or mood in which he would murder. “Happy” Hollywood films, “like Elvis movies” would inspire him to kill “happily.”142 In other scenes, however, the United States and its relation to violence and genocide is invoked even more explicitly. While riding in the car, Anwar’s colleague Adi fiercely responds to an inquiry about committing war crimes. When Oppenheimer asks him about his committing war crimes and hence violating the Geneva Convention, he retorts—“[t]he Americans killed the Indians. Has anybody been punished for that? Punish them!”143 However briefly, the pointing finger is turned away from Congo and his colleagues and back at the director and the American audience. His statements, however discomfiting, make a valid point about the U.S. government’s refusal to recognize its own acts of historical genocide. In this moment, Adi shines a mirror away from Indonesia and back at the director and the audience. Here, cinematography plays with the idea of both literal and figurative mirrors and frames. The scene in which Adi drives a car through town and speaks to Oppenheimer, who asks questions from the back seat, employs a variety of camera angles. Side angles from the passenger seat portray Adi steering the wheel, putting him in profile. Alternatively, rear shots show him doubly: his back on the right side of the screen and his eyes in the rearview mirror. This concatenation of cinematography and mise-en-scène suggests a type of parallax view, in which one character is viewed through multiple angles: simultaneously from behind and, thanks to the mirror, from the front. The formal frames in the shot—the rearview mirror, the car windows—dovetail with the content of Adi’s speech.144 In acrobatic acts of sophistry, he justifies his history of violence:

The Geneva Conventions may be today’s morality, but tomorrow we’ll have the Jakarta Conventions and dump the Geneva Conventions. ‘War crimes’ are defined by the winners. I’m a winner. So I can make my own definition. I needn’t follow the international definitions.145 According to his own moral cosmology, all definitions are a question of context and framing. Today’s convention is tomorrow’s history. Words such as “war crimes” and “convention” can be discarded, exchanged, and made anew.

The Harm in Harmonizing This analysis of Hollywood’s harmonizing narratives—most famously, the adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary and its cinematic kindred—shows us that these films pose their own set of dangers. They make false promises. By concluding on an optimistic note emphasizing human goodness,

140 Oppenheimer et al., The Act of Killing, 02:13:47-02:13:55. Oppenheimer has written about the influence of Hollywood on Congo: “I was intrigued by this relationship between cinema and killings, although I had no idea it would be so deep. Not only did Anwar and his friends know and love the cinema, but they dreamed of being on the screen themselves, and styled themselves after their favorite characters. They even borrowed their methods of murder from the screen.” See Joshua Oppenheimer, “Background,” The Act of Killing, accessed September 5, 2019, http://theactofkilling.com/ background/. 141 Oppenheimer et al., The Act of Killing, 00:16:56-00:16:59. 142 Ibid., 00:17:10-00:18:10. 143 Adi explains to Oppenheimer, “I don’t necessarily agree with those international laws. When Bush was in power, Guantanamo was right. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That was right according to Bush, but now it’s wrong.” Oppenheimer et al., The Act of Killing, 01:10:16-01:11:04. 144 The motifs of eyes and sight are explored further in Joshua Oppenheimer, The Look of Silence (Final Cut for Real, 2014), 103 mins. 145 Oppenheimer et al., The Act of Killing, 01:10:34-01:11:05.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 82 Nunn they implicitly occlude the violence of the past. As Bruno Bettelheim pointed out several decades ago in reference to U.S. adaptations of Frank’s diary, the rose-colored logic of such narratives denies the reality of evil in the world—“[i]f all men are basically good…then indeed we can all go on with life as usual and forget about Auschwitz.”146 Of course, literary and visual cultures cannot legally prevent mass atrocities. They can, however, shape collective understandings of human rights violations and the possibilities of political change. It seems that each time films such asHotel Rwanda147 or Schindler’s List148 claim to remember history, they also abet amnesia. Indeed, these films are spectacular; they prompt their spectators to look. Ironically, with each linear, teleological plot concluding in harmonizing uplift, we appear to be going in circles. As investigative journalist Linda Melvern writes of Hotel Rwanda, “there is an inherent danger in repackaging recent history for Hollywood because distortion can creep into the accepted version of events, and fiction readily becomes established fact.”149 Moreover, the risk is that the representations in these films may discourage spectators from recognizing and acting in the presence of future atrocities. Critics, no doubt, will respond with objections. For instance, didn’t adaptations of Frank’s diary serve a purpose in terms of transitioning from the era of near silence about the Holocaust in the United States to growing awareness that began to increase, as some scholars have noted, in the 1970s? Perhaps. After all, as historian Peter Novick has written, “every generation frames the Holocaust, represents the Holocaust, in ways that suit its mood.”150 But we inhabit a different generation than that of George Stevens. In the realm of political rhetoric, the promise of never again, however empty, is invoked with regularity by leaders such as presidents Carter, Reagan, and Clinton, suggesting a collective awareness of select genocides of the past.151 In the United States, collective and institutional awareness of genocide and the Holocaust is greater than it was in the immediate postwar years, with curricula in several states dedicated to the topic (though recent studies indicate a gap in basic knowledge among U.S. adults, a trend especially pronounced among millennials).152 Since its dedication in 1993, more than 44 million people have visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., at least twenty- four percent of whom were school children and approximately ninety percent of whom were non- Jewish.153 But as I have shown, the predominant narrative patterns—from The Killing Fields154 to Schindler’s List155 to First They Killed My Father156 to The Promise157—remain more or less stuck in the framing conventions that suited collective awareness of the Holocaust in the 1950s. If Stevens made his film today, he should have kept his original final scene in which his protagonist was swaying in the fog. He could have embraced the narrative dissonance. Some of his contemporaries, such as director Sidney Lumet, chose to do so in his 1964 film The Pawnbroker,158 notable for its use of footage of the concentration camps introduced through the flashbacks of its protagonist, Sol

146 Bettelheim,The Ignored Lesson of Anne Frank, 46. 147 George, Hotel Rwanda. 148 Spielberg, Schindler’s List. 149 Linda Melvern, “Hotel Rwanda—Without the Hollywood Ending | Linda Melvern,” The Guardian, November 17, 2011, accessed April 10, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/17/hotel-rwanda-hollywood-ending. 150 Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, 120. 151 For examples of such promises and vows from U.S. leaders, see United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Museum Press Kit: Facts and Figures—United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,” last updated June 2019, accessed March 6, 2020, https://www.ushmm.org/information/press/press-kits/united-states-holocaust-memorial-museum-press-kit and Power, Problem From Hell, xxi. 152 Maggie Astor, “Holocaust Is Fading from Memory, Survey Finds,” New York Times, April 12, 2018, accessed June 19, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/us/holocaust-education.html. 153 “Museum Press Kit: Facts and Figures—United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, last updated June 2019, accessed March 6, 2020, https://www.ushmm.org/information/press/ press-kits/united-states-holocaust-memorial-museum-press-kit. 154 Joffé, The Killing Fields. 155 Spielberg, Schindler’s List. 156 Jolie, First They Killed My Father. 157 George, The Promise. 158 Sidney Lumet, The Pawnbroker (Landau Company, The Pawnbroker Company, 1966), 116 mins.

Nazerman (Rod Steiger).159 In an adaptation of Edward Lewis Wallant’s novel about a Holocaust survivor living in Harlem, the film denies its audience an uplift; as film historian Annette Insdorf writes, “by the end of the film,” Sol himself is “a living corpse” and “a broken pawn.”160 Most likely, harmonizing narratives about historical genocide are here to stay. But Hollywood could gain valuable lessons from the fractured, dissonant narratives of films such as Ararat,161 Matière Grise,162 También la Lluvia,163 and The Act of Killing.164 For instance, we need more moments like the one in Hotel Rwanda in which Rusesabagina debates the merits of broadcasting carnage— slivers of time where the viewers must hold a mirror to themselves. The scene raises a question: Is seeing such footage of carnage a good thing if people will just go back, as the photojournalist says, “to eating their dinners”165—or, even worse, to emulate it, as in The Act of Killing? By holding a mirror to the audiences, however briefly, such scenes could prompt questions that hold up outside the theater. The self-interrogation that these moments potentially catalyze might help to puncture the stubborn optimism of these films’ endings—rose-colored reunions and anthems of optimism. The rays of hope proffered in these harmonizing narratives can blind people tothe political implications of the situations before them, often playing out simultaneously elsewhere on the planet. How long will it be before we see a Hollywood film about the genocide of the Rohinga people, probably starring a Western hero, that ends on an regretful yet optimistic note? But as a film such as Ararat166 demonstrates, stories of genocide do not have to be told this way. I have shown how Egoyan, Ruhorahoza, Bollaín, and Oppenheimer employ the mise en abyme as a mode to both resist the Hollywood hegemony of harmonizing narratives and suggest alternative means of storytelling. While this narrative mode may be relatively rare within the genre of genocide cinema, it is significant because of the ways it dismantles and criticizes dominant modes of storytelling. For instance, Ararat queries, portrays, and exposes the contested nature of memory of the events of 1915, as evident in the “heated debates” and “turmoil” surrounding the reception of Egoyan’s 2002 film in Turkey, where, as Özlem Köksal noted, the “ongoing dominant discourse” is a “denialist” one.167 We watch the director stage scenes. We watch the historical consultant contest inaccuracies. We watch the characters watch themselves in the movie theater. The mise en abyme is, in the words of the literary critic Lucien Dällenbach, “the mirror in the text,” throwing the spectator’s reflection back at herself.168 This nesting of stories within stories forces us to question our own role as characters, as voyeurs, as actors. It prompts us to notice the narratives

159 However, as film critic Bosley Crowther points out in The New York Times review, the movie did remove “the detail of the medical experiments upon the hero by the Nazis” that appeared in Edward Lewis Wallant’s 1961 novel of the same name. Bosley Crowther, “‘The Pawnbroker’ Opens at 3 Theaters; Rod Steiger Creates a Tragic Character Camera Seeks Worst Aspects of Harlem,” New York Times, April 12, 1965, 51, accessed July 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes. com/1965/04/21/archives/screen-the-pawnbroker-opens-at-3-theaters-rod-steiger-creates-a.html. 160 Insdorf, Indelible Shadows, 31. For more on the history and adaptation of The Pawnbroker, especially in regard to the representations of African American and Jewish experiences in Harlem, see Wendy Zierler, “‘My Holocaust Is Not Your Holocaust’: ‘Facing’ Black and Jewish Experience in The Pawnbroker, Higher Ground, and The Nature of Blood,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 18, no. 1 (2004), 46-67; Alan Mintz, Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America (Seattle; London: University of Washington Press, 2001), 109-125. 161 Egoyan, Ararat. 162 Ruhorahoza, Matière Grise. 163 Bollaín, También la Lluvia. 164 Oppenheimer et al.,The Act of Killing. 165 George, Hotel Rwanda, 00:43:54-00:44:04. 166 Egoyan, Ararat. 167 Özlem Köksal, “‘Past Not-So-Perfect’: Ararat and Its Reception in Turkey,” Cinema Journal 54, no. 1 (2014), 45-46. Köksal notes that many analyses of the film in Turkey were written before people had seen the film and also were “limited to a number of controversial scenes taken out of context, making it easier for such nationalistic discourses to be produced about the film.” Köksal, Past Not-So-Perfect, 46. For the director’s own reflections on the origins of his film, the nature of memory, and Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide, see Egoyan, In Other Words. For more on the relationship between narrative structure, denial, and dehumanization in Ararat, see Donna-Lee Frieze, “Cycles of Genocide, Stories of Denial: Atom Egoyan’s Ararat,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 3, no. 4 (August 2008), 243-262. 168 Dällenbach, The Mirror in the Text, 169-174.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 84 Nunn we continue to play out without realizing. Sometimes, such as in a film También La Lluvia,169 they also point out the structural violence that continues to perpetuate violence. By exposing the generic seams of Hollywood narratives, these directors shed light on the limits of storytelling in a world where never again so often rings hollow. It is true that the cerebral and esoteric nature of these mise en abyme narratives comes at its own price, both in terms of distribution and narrative coherence. They reach fewer people and can test the patience of viewers.170 Still, their collective embrace of dissonance underscores how films such as Schindler’s List171 or Hotel Rwanda172 sacrifice certain narrative opportunities to make stories about genocide more palatable and bearable for predominantly U.S. audiences. A film such as Ararat reminds us that, whether as a drama, a thriller, or a blockbuster, a complete or coherent representation of historical genocide is impossible.173 The charade of doing so—to create a sense of closure, finality, or understanding—is quite dangerous. First, the charade imparts a sense that like Hollywood, the conflicts outside the theater may sort themselves out, eventually offering a harmonizing ending. Second, this sense of closure bestows an unearned sense of comprehension of an event. The words of Claude Lanzmann, the French director of the 1985 documentary Shoah,174 expand upon this point. Reflecting on his own attempts to document the truth through cinema, Lanzmann once said that “you cannot precisely engender the Holocaust.”175 His statement recognizes the impossibility of fully capturing or documenting the event. Lanzmann reflected on the chasm between truth and falsehood, noting “there is no solution of continuity between the two; there is rather a gap, an abyss, and this abyss will never be bridged.”176 In a similar way, in telling a story about genocide, a director such as Egoyan gestures to the impossibility of telling the entire story. One cannot precisely engender Van in 1915; or Kigali in 1994; or Cambodia in 1979; or Indonesia in 1966; or Amsterdam in 1944. To return to the etymology of the term, mise en abyme, the narrative of genocide is literally “placed in the abyss”—infinitely so. Neither harmonizing narratives nor mise en abyme can necessarily portray the full horror of genocide, but one version implicates its audience and makes them think while the other forecloses the recognition that history may repeat itself again, in spite of the pledges of never again. Holocaust survivor Primo Levi famously said, “one single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces remain in the shadows.”177 He is correct. But a failure to recognize the singularity of Anne Frank—her diary’s textured, messy nuances and its broader sociohistorical context—denies the world the full story not only of her life but also of the circumstances of her death. There is hope and goodness in her diary, but there is also curiosity, pride, desire, and even rage toward the evil forces pounding on the doors in the streets below her annex window and refusing entrance to a ship full of refugees. Paradoxically, in their attempts to universalize the story of a Jewish girl in Amsterdam for an American audience, Hollywood and Broadway producers inadvertently denied Frank her particularity—in other words,

169 Bollaín, También la Lluvia. 170 For instance, The New York Times film critic Stephen Holden praised the film but flagged the intricacy of its plot: “‘Ararat,’ is hands down the year’s most thought-provoking film. But it pays a price for its intricate intellectual gamesmanship. At a certain point fairly early on, its Chinese-box structure begins to seem overly contrived.” Quoted in Stephen Holden, “To Dwell on a Historic Tragedy or Not: A Bitter Choice,”New York Times, November 15, 2002, E18, accessed July 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/15/movies/film-review-to-dwell-on-a-historic-tragedy- or-not-a-bitter-choice.html. 171 Spielberg, Schindler’s List. 172 George, Hotel Rwanda. 173 Egoyan, Ararat. 174 Claude Lanzmann, dir., Shoah (British Broadcasting Corporation BBC, Historia, Les Film Aleph, Ministère de la Culture de la Republique Française, 1985), 613 mins. 175 Claude Lanzmann, “The Obscenity of Understanding: An Evening with Claude Lanzmann,” in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. Cathy Caruth, 1st ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 206. 176 Ibid. 177 Quoted in Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jeffrey Shandler, eds.,Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 312.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 Rose-Colored Genocide 85 precisely what made her so human.178 By attempting to pigeonhole her into a generic mold—a dreamy, sweet, lovesick teenager reminiscent of those in popular American cinema—Hollywood stripped her of her individuality: her descriptions of her anatomy, her rage, her sensuality desire, and her religious practices. In other words, the true Anne Frank, or at least the one she presented to Kitty, was erased. We owe it to Frank to unabridge the narrative of her narrative. The American adaptations of her diary show us that the stakes of literary and cinematic adaptation are high because if we do not pay attention to them, we risk forgetting to remember inconvenient, uncomfortable truths. By implicitly promising a future free of the crimes of the past, Hollywood versions of these stories perpetuate amnesia and lure viewers into a sense of political complacency. All too often, to harmonize is to harm.

Acknowledgements This article benefited from the support, perspective, and suggestions of many: the anonymous peer reviewers, Priscilla Wald, James Dawes, Wesley Hogan, Aarthi Vadde, Tsitsi Jaji, Christine Ryan, Gabriella Levy, Emma Davenport, and Renée Ragin.

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178 This reflexive aversion to graphic, discomfiting details continues into the twenty-first century. The content of the restored fiftieth anniversary “definitive” version of the diary continues to upset U.S. readers. As recently as 2010, the school system of Culpeper County, Virginia, banned the restored fiftieth anniversary “definitive” version due to “complaints about its sexual content and homosexual themes.” For many years, the 1955 play version had been a part of the eight-grade curriculum. See Michael Alison Chandler, “School System in Va. Won’t Teach Version of Anne Frank Book,” Washington Post, January 29, 2010, accessed May 14, 2019, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012804001.html). In 2013 there was a call to ban the diary in Northville school district in Michigan after a student’s mother objected to Frank’s “pretty graphic” description of her anatomy, which made her daughter “uncomfortable.” See, Alison Flood, “Anne Frank’s Diary in US Schools Censorship Battle,”The Guardian, May 7, 2013, accessed May 14, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/07/anne-frank-diary- us-schools-censorship.

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©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1715 Making the Case for Genocide, the Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Peoples of Peru Ñusta P. Carranza Ko University of Baltimore Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Genocide is a word that commissioners involved with Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2001-2003) avoided when defining what had taken place during the two decades (1980-2000) of Peru’s internal armed conflict. The political violence between the state, leftist guerilla forces (i.e., the Shining Path and the Revolutionary Movement of Tupac Amaru), and the civilians that were caught in the middle, resulted in the disappearances and deaths of over 69,000 victims. According to the commissioners, the mass casualties were not a result of a genocide.1 There was no plan either from the Peruvian state—the three administrations of Belaúnde Terry (1980-1985), Alan García (1985-1990), and Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000)—or the guerilla forces to systematically destroy groups of people, making it difficult to bring up the term in connection with the conflict. That is, even though the majority of the victims shared strangely similar characteristics of residing in poor rural areas and speaking indigenous languages as their mother tongue. And yet, a genocide did occur. The destruction of the collective rights of a group of people, however, was not directly tied to the political dynamics of the internal armed conflict, in that it did not involve interactions between the state, leftist subversive groups, and civilians. Nor did it resemble the characteristics of other commonly occurring crimes from this period, such as torture, arbitrary detention or disappearances. For this reason, genocide was not referenced in the seventy-three individual cases of violations that were investigated and published by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report in 2003.2 However, there was a case of genocide that involved the state against the reproductive rights of an ethnic minority, an institutionalized genocide via a state policy. Over the course of five years from 1996 to 2001, under the disguise of the Programa de Salud Reproductiva y Planificación Familiar (Program of Reproductive Health and Family Planning (PSRPF)), the state intentionally launched a genocidal policy that aimed to destroy, in whole or in part, a specific population within Peru. The population consisted of women (and some men) of poor, rural, and Indigenous-languages-speaking backgrounds who were sterilized without consent, misinformed of the practice, and forced to undergo surgery.3 In referring to the bad practices of forced sterilization that emerged from this health program, the executive secretary of the National Coordination of Human Rights, Ana María Vidal described it as “the trashing of human rights, in this case of Indigenous women.”4 The comment reflected the stigmatized situation of the Indigenous population in Peru, as a marginalized group whose status had been fixed in this position since the adoption of the first Constitution of Peru in 1823. Under Article 17, the Constitution conditioned citizenship based on property ownership and literacy in Spanish,5 both hard to reach by Indigenous populations with different linguistic traditions and notions of territory. A century and a half later, the state targeted the Indigenous population with a policy of reproductive health and coercive sterilization that undermined Indigenous women’s ability to reproduce and in doing so, destroy the future generations of Indigenous peoples. And yet, while the signs were there to link this human rights violation to genocide, the case went unnoticed by human

1 Francisco Soberón (former Truth and Reconciliation Commission commissioner and founder of Asociación Pro-Derechos Humanos (APRODEH)), interview by author, Baltimore, May 19, 2019. 2 Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, Final Report (Lima: Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, 2003), accessed August 1, 2019, http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ingles/ifinal/index.php. 3 Defensoría del Pueblo, Decimonoveno Informe Anual de la Defensoría del Pueblo (Lima: Defensoría del Pueblo, 2015), 50-53. 4 Ana María Vidal (Executive Secretary of the National Coordination of Human Rights), interview by author, Lima, June 1, 2017. 5 Constitución Política de la República Peruana Sancionada por el Primer Congreso Constituyente (Political Constitution of the Republic of Peru Approved by the First Constituent Congress) (November 12, 1823), (Republic of Peru), accessed August 1, 2019, http://www.leyes.congreso.gob.pe/Documentos/constituciones_ordenado/CONSTIT_1823/ Cons1823_TEXTO. pdf.

Ñusta P. Carranza Ko. “Making the Case for Genocide, the Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Peoples of Peru.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, 2 (2020): 90-103. ©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1740 Genocide, the Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Peoples of Peru 91 rights and genocide studies scholars. Existing studies on Peru characterize forced sterilization as an example of sexual violence, a violation of Indigenous peoples’ rights6 or at most, a form of crime against humanity.7 Even an expansive usage of the term genocide, such as those used by scholars to explain how all the processes and patterns in the history of “North-American settler-Indigenous relations” were genocidal,8 is missing in the coercive sterilization literature on Peru. In fact, it was not until an audience member (at a talk given by the author) posed a question of whether the Peruvian case could be considered a form of genocide that the author began thinking about the connection between forced sterilization and the human rights norm. That interaction sparked this study on making the case for genocide. This study considers the forced sterilization of Indigenous women in Peru as a genocide. Using the normative definitions from the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (or the Genocide Convention), it first categorically sets forced sterilization victims from this state-led-policy as victims of genocide, considering the effects the health malpractice had on Indigenous women’s reproductive rights and future Indigenous populations. Then, it grounds the discussion of genocide further by arguing for the genocidal intent of the Peruvian state, relying on victims’ testimonies, interviews from human rights experts, archival data from victims’ registries, government documents, and human rights ombudsman office reports. These discussions contribute to the existing body of scholarship on the link between genocide and forced sterilization of Indigenous women—namely in the United States and Canada.9 Making the case for genocide, one of the most heinous crimes in international politics, has not been done previously with this particular case. Even in María Mamérita Mestanza Chávez v. Peru, where a petition was lodged by domestic and international nongovernmental organizations with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) against the Peruvian state for María’s forced sterilization, subsequent health complications, and death on April 5, 1988; there were no references to genocide.10 It is important to acknowledge this crime as a genocide because, first and foremost, this case was the most modern attempt from the governing apparatus of Peru—largely reflecting colonial hierarchies of power with those of European or of mixed European descent in political control— at targeting Indigenous peoples from rural and impoverished regions. Previous genocides involving the groups in power were considerably different in nature. During the historic period of the colonization of the Americas, one might argue that the Spanish empire and its soldiers unknowingly brought upon the genocide of the Indigenous peoples via the spread of diseases from Eurasia (e.g., chicken pox) which led to the death of Indigenous peoples not immunologically prepared to resist new viruses. Nor was coercive sterilization a type of genocide that resulted from the internal armed conflict, when the leftist guerilla group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) killed and disappeared over 5,000 Ashaninka-speaking and Nomatsiguenga-speaking Indigenous peoples from Peru’s Amazon region.11 The evidence that this article lays out confirms that the

6 Ñusta Carranza Ko, “Forcibly Sterilized: Peru’s Indigenous Women and the Battle for Rights,” in Human Rights as Battlefields: Changing Practices and Contestations, ed. Gabriel Blouin-Genest et al. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 149-172. 7 José Burneo Labrín, Justicia de Genero: Esterilización Forzada En El Perú: Delito de Lesa Humanidad (Lima: Editorial Linea Andina, 2008), 14-22. 8 Cynthia C. Wesley-Esquimaux and Magdalena Smolewski, Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2004), 7. 9 Studies on aboriginal women in Canada have determined that they were disproportionately targeted by the state to undergo tubal ligations. The coercive sterilization of Indigenous peoples is best understood within the larger relations of “colonialism, the oppression of women,” and the control of Indigenous peoples’ land and resources, and it is one that constitutes a genocide. Similar studies in the United States have documented how colonizers have historically used sexual violence, such as sterilization abuse, as a primary tool of genocide against Indigenous peoples; see Karen Stote, “The Coercive Sterilization of Aboriginal Women in Canada,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 36, no. 3 (2012), 117; Andrea Smith, Conquest-Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 117. 10 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Report No. 71/03. Petition 12.191. Friendly Settlement María Mamérita Mestanza-Chávez, (Peru: IACHR, 2003), accessed August 1, 2019, http://cidh.org/annualrep/2003eng/ Peru.12191.htm. 11 Julio Davila Puño, Perú: Gobiernos Locales y Pueblos Indígenas (Lima: Tarea Grafica Educativa, 2005), 35.

family planning program was a genocidal policy with the objective of controlling the bodies and those of the children of Peru’s Indigenous peoples. And, as such, it provides a telling case of where Indigenous peoples’ rights stand in Peru today. Second, the weight of the word genocide can bring positive possibilities in dealing with the needs of the victims in receiving some form of justice and reparations related to their case. The state aimed to deliberately prevent future births from the group, and in doing so destroy at least a part of the Indigenous population. However, the search for criminal accountability with this case has faced obstacles of impunity, as evidenced in the 2016 decision by the Public Prosecutor’s Office to shelve 2,074 cases of forced sterilization due to “insufficient information.”12 The acknowledgement of this case as a genocide—a crime of crimes—can provide victims with even more impetus to put forth their case. Notably, referencing genocide for victims that face difficulties in their legal battles against the state, provides them with an additional tool to urge the state to recognize its responsibility in this heinous crime.

Sexual Violence, Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, and Human Rights Studies on coercive sterilization in Peru examine this atrocity under the framework of sexual violations—as a case of women’s reproductive rights and Indigenous peoples’ rights violations. Within these rights violations, some scholars focus on the societal dynamics of discrimination that played a part in the victimhood of the Indigenous population. Ballón documents the cartography of the resistance movement in Peru against forced sterilization.13 She describes how the resistance began when local women’s and human rights groups started receiving information on abuses related to the family planning program. As the situation aggravated, domestic advocacy groups communicated their concerns to international human rights organizations. The message resonated and soon a network of international and domestic advocacy formed, along with the involvement of the artistic community in Peru—who helped maintain the subject of forced sterilization in the public discourse through their artistic representations of art, performance, and exhibitions. In discussing the works of resistance, Ballón explains how the resistance movement embodied a postcolonial criticism, as the family planning policy was built upon abuses of political power, discrimination, classism, racism, machismo (patriarchal notions of society), misogyny, and a depreciation of indigenous culture and identity.14 These were also similar ideas present in other modern family planning programs in countries such as Canada and the United States, where ideas of population control revolved around the history of colonialism, control of “aboriginal peoples’ land and resources,” and the “denial of indigenous sovereignty.”15 Exploring the status of Peru’s Indigenous peoples’ marginalization further, del Aguila discusses how the Peruvian government’s family planning campaign reflected deep-rooted racial discrimination and unequal treatment of this ethnic group.16 Racial inequality and the urban-rural divide from the Spanish colonial period set the Indigenous peoples apart from those of European heritage, with the European side identifying with the urban and superior race and the Indigenous associating with the rural, poor, and weaker race. Such visions were reflected in the Peruvian government’s projection of the family planning policy towards a predominant indigenous population. Del Aguila explains how Fujimori’s discourse was used to manipulate Indigenous peoples in the rural areas and documents malpractices of government health practitioners coming from urban areas, who did not speak Indigenous languages, and who were of mixed European heritage. They subjugated and forced Indigenous women with false information to accept

12 La República, “Denuncia de Esterilizaciones Forzadas Fue Archivada por la Fiscalía,” La República, July 27, 2016, accessed June 2, 2019, http://larepublica.pe/sociedad/789156-denuncia-de-esterilizaciones-forzadas-fue-archivada-por- la-fiscalia. 13 Alejandra Ballón Gutiérrez, “El Caso Peruano de Esterilización Forzada: Notas Para una Cartografía de Resistencia,” Aletheia 5, no. 9 (2014), 15. 14 Ibid., 15. 15 Stote, The Coercive Sterilization, 117. 16 Ernesto Vasquez del Aguila, “Invisible Women: Forced Sterilization, Reproductive Rights, and Structural Inequalities in Peru of Fujimori and Toledo,” Estudos e Pesquisas em Psicología UERJ RJ 6, no. 1 (2006), 109-124.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1740 Genocide, the Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Peoples of Peru 93 sterilization.17 Such societal interactions were made possible in the context of Peru’s society where Indigenous peoples in rural areas were treated as inferiors in comparison to those coming from the urban centers with a lighter skin complexion. Carranza Ko18 extends del Aguila’s argument in connection with other structural factors to argue that the crime of forced sterilization represented the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class dynamics in Peruvian society that dates back to the colonial period. On gender, Mantilla Falcón argues that it is important for the Peruvian state to acknowledge the case as a violation of women’s reproductive rights and recognize the international documents that protect women’s rights.19 These include: the right to reproductive health, right to life without discrimination and violence on the basis of gender, right to education, and the right to liberty and personal security. Using the lens of critical interculturality, De La Cruz Huamán focuses on some of the same intersections, particularly the hierarchy of order and domination (including gender) reproduced from the colonial period in different cultures that have generated multiple inequalities.20 The victim’s identity—a majority of whom are women of Indigenous origin who lived in conditions of poverty, point to these inequalities and intersections, and the Peruvian state partook in the process of abuse as the new oppressor. Ewig emphasizes the economic and societal aspect further, explaining how Fujimori launched his campaign stemming from Thomas Malthus’s idea of overpopulation, resource depletion, and economic downturn.21 Fujimori used the fight against poverty and the messaging of economic advancement as a justification for a family planning campaign which included forced sterilization. Boesten raises similar views, emphasizing how the neo-Malthusian-motivated policies were implemented to address the “Indian problem.”22 This was a well-known practice previously used by population control policies in countries such as South Africa. Kuumba explains how Malthusian-inspired birth control programs blamed African women for “their own poverty and underdevelopment as a result of their population growth,” and targeted “blacks without a concomitant emphasis on the rest of the population.”23 Connecting the ideas of Indigenous peoples’ exclusion in Peru and victimhood, Getgen24 critically evaluates the role of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in not documenting the forced sterilization of Indigenous women and men.25 The TRC’s voluntary omission of the state’s forced sterilization of Indigenous women in the Final Report (2003), reveals the restrictions the Commission faced in presenting an overarching narrative of all the human rights crimes that occurred during the internal armed conflict.26 And, the exclusion of this group of victims in the

17 Ibid., 115. 18 Carranza Ko, Forcibly Sterilized. 19 Julissa Mantilla Falcón, “El Caso de las Esterilizaciones Forzadas en el Perú Como una Violación de los Derechos Humanos,” Ius et Veritas 23, (2016), 19. 20 Rosario B. De La Cruz Huamán, “Análisis de las Esterilizaciones Forzadas en el Perú desde una Perspectiva de Interculturalidad Critica,” Tierra Nuestra 12, no. 1 (2018), 109. 21 Christina Ewig, “La Economía Política de Esterilización Forzada en el Perú,” in Memorias del Caso Peruano de Esterilización Forzada, ed. Alejandra Ballón (Lima: Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, 2014), 17. 22 Jelke Boesten, “Free Choice or Poverty Alleviation? Population Politics in Peru under Alberto Fujimori,” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 82, (2007), 3. 23 Monica Bahati Kuumba, “Perpetuating Neo-Colonialism through Population Control: South Africa and the United States,” Africa Today 40, no. 3 (1993), 80. 24 Jocelyn E. Getgen, “Untold Truths: The Exclusion of Enforced Sterilizations from the Peruvian Truth Commission’s Final Report,” Boston College Third World Law Journal 29, no. 1 (2009), 1–34. 25 The mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission covered all forms of violations of fundamental rights including acts perpetrated by state and armed groups from 1980 to 2000. From its work, the Commission determined that the causes of conflict were instigated by Sendero Luminoso, which had declared a popular war against the Peruvian state. The conflict and resulting human rights violations were one that involved the state, subversive forces (such as Sendero), and civilians who were caught in the middle. From this perspective, forced sterilization practices fell outside the markers of the internal armed conflict, as they did not involve a conflict between the state, subversive forces, and civilian casualties; see Carranza Ko, Forcibly Sterilized, 168. 26 Getgen, Untold Truths, 4. According to human rights experts, while forced sterilization occurred during the internal armed conflict, it fell outside the political systems that defined this period, with violent confrontation between leftist groups advancing their revolutionary goals and the state instituting a militarist response. Soberón, interview by author;

TRC’s Final Report made it significantly more difficult for victims, predominantly poor indigenous Quechua-speaking women, to seek accountability. Other scholars have been more cautious to categorize the Indigenous peoples in Peru as those who were only victimized. Serra explains how victim-centric approaches to the discourse on forced sterilization evolved around a single objective of identifying the victims, revealing the suffering, and urging for justice.27 She argues that this scope of victim-based discourse contributes to stereotyping Indigenous populations as passive vulnerable actors and restricting sterilizations to be examined only through a human rights lens. While existing research on forced sterilization in Peru has extensively documented and analyzed the abuse from a victim-centric, post-colonial, and intersectional perspective, there are no studies that ground coercive sterilization within the context of genocide. Studies that do discuss the violation in relation to human rights argue this to be a case of crime against humanity and not genocide.28 In fact, even the most recent formal complaint from Instituto de Defensa Legal and Estudio para la Defensa de la Mujer (DEMUS) on behalf of victims of forced sterilization against the Peruvian state has been filed under “grave human rights crimes,” and violation of the “right to life,”29 but not genocide. This article aims to complement the literature by introducing a new scholarship of genocide linked to the coercive sterilization of Indigenous women in the Peruvian context. In doing so, it also contributes to existing scholarship on forced sterilization of Indigenous women and genocide in North America (i.e., Canada and the United States). It is important to state the obvious connections that exist between the sterilization of Indigenous peoples and genocide in Peru, using international instruments of human rights, namely the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention. The categorization of the crime and rights violations defined under a genocide lens bring to light the gravity of the crime committed against the Indigenous peoples in Peru and the continued impunity for this case reveals the prevalence of domestic historical roots of racism, sexism, and class-related discrimination that overshadow the genocide.

The Policy Programa de Salud Reproductiva y Planificación Familiar (Program of Reproductive Health and Family Planning (PSRPF)) was a national health program launched in 1996 by Alberto Fujimori’s administration (1990-2000). It aimed to provide services to “promote, prevent, cure, and rehabilitate reproductive health to the highest quality” for all “inhabitants in Peru,” provided that they expressed “free and voluntary consent.”30 Notable program objectives included the reduction of maternal and infant mortality rates, in addition to increased national usage of contraceptive methods to reach the global average fertility rate of 2.5 children per woman.31 The increased access to contraceptive methods and education on family planning were revolutionary policies in a state, such as Peru, with conservative Catholic traditions. Even prior to the PSRPF, the Church expressed opposition to state-led family planning policies, noting that while “responsible parenting” was important, the only acceptable form of contraception was “abstinence.”32 Countering such views from the Church, as Fujimori’s speech during the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women reflected, PSRPF was posited to address the scarcity in maternity related services and information for women to “have at their disposal with full autonomy and freedom,

Carmela Chávez (Superintendencia Nacional de Educación Superior Universitaria (SUNEDU)), interview by author, Lima, May 26, 2017. 27 Ainhoa Molina Serra, “Esterilizaciones (forzadas) en Perú: Poder y Configuraciones Narrativas,” Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana 12, no. 1 (2017), 33-34. 28 The following pages from Labrín are dedicated to the discussion of framing the crime as a form of crimes against humanity and not as a genocide; see Labrín, Justicia de Genero, 14-22. 29 Ministerio Público, “Resolución Formalización Denuncia Caso EEFF Versión Comprimida,” Ministerio Público Fiscalía de la Nación, October 31, 2018, accessed December 1, 2018, http://www.demus.org.pe/wpcontent/uploads/2019/01/12-11- 18-Resoluci%C2%A6n-Formalizaci%C2%A6n-denuncia-caso-EEFFversi%C2%A6n-comprimida.pdf, 1. 30 Ministerio de Salud, Programa de Salud Reproductiva y Planificación Familiar 1996-2000(Lima: Ministerio de Salud, 1996), 3. 31 Ibid., 26. 32 “Por Programa de Planificación Familiar Enfrentamiento Fujimori-Iglesia,” El Tiempo, November 2, 1990, accessed November 1, 2018, https://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-2438.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1740 Genocide, the Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Peoples of Peru 95 the tools necessary to make decisions about their lives.”33 And yet, these progressive premises were quickly undermined during the implementation of the program. Fujimori’s administration manipulated the rhetoric on advancing women’s rights, connected it with the fight against poverty and controlled family planning, and justified the policy of forced sterilization.34 According to the Defensoría del Pueblo (Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office), through the PSRPF, health officials performed 272,028 sterilizations on a majority of poor, rural, Indigenous Quechua-speaking women.35 With the PSRPF, health officials were required to meet obligatory sterilization quotas. The pressure exerted on health officials to meet their obligations, even involved monetary incentives when quotas were met.36 And, when quotas were not met, health officials faced threats of sanctions and the denial of promotions. On certain occasions, in efforts to fill these quotas women who worked in health clinics were also sterilized.37 In this context of pressure and coercion, thousands of individuals were coerced into these practices without consent and at times with false information. Women were misinformed that they would be able to give birth again after surgery, told that they were undergoing surgery to remove a tumor and not tubal ligation, or at times simply forced on a boat, taken to a health post, given anesthesia, and pushed out of the recovery room immediately after surgery.38 At times, there was no information provided. The experiences of forced sterilization were marked with difficulties of communication between the victim, who spoke an Indigenous language, and health officials, who were Spanish speaking. The majority of the victims were “illiterate and only spoke Quechua,”39 which made accessing any legal means to pursue criminal accountability— based in the Spanish system—difficult. This linguistic barrier also became the fallback used by health officials accused of forced sterilization, as they would argue that the victim ought to have asked for a translator (who spoke an indigenous language) if they were misinformed.40 Only in 2016, with the help from human rights organizations such as the Instituto de Defensa Legal and Estudio para la Defensa de la Mujer (DEMUS), 2,074 cases of forced sterilization predominantly of Indigenous women were brought forward to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.41 Although the cases were quickly shelved aside from the Public Prosecutor’s Office for insufficient information, continued pressures from the IACHR, DEMUS, and other advocacy groups helped reopen the cases of forced sterilization victims. District Six Attorney Luis Landa ordered criminal investigations to be reopened against former President Alberto Fujimori on April 25, 2018, and formal criminal complaints have been made from the Public Prosecutor’s Office against Fujimori, his former Health Ministers Eduardo Yong Motta, Ricardo Luis Costa Bauer, and Alejandro Aguinaga, and other related government personnel for the forced sterilization of women.42

The Genocide This is one of the many personal testimonies of the victims of coerced sterilization in Peru–Dionicia Calderón recalls the day in 1996 when she was forcibly sterilized:

33 Alberto Fujimori, “Before The IV World Conference On Women, September 15, 1995, Beijing, China,” (speech, Beijing, September 15, 1995), Beijing Conference on Women, United Nations—unoffical translation from Spanish, accessed May 1, 2019, https://www.un.org/esa/gopher-data/conf/fwcw/conf/gov/950915131946.txt. 34 Ewig, La Economía Política, 57. 35 Defensoría del Pueblo, Decimonoveno Informe, 51. Additionally, 22,004 men were also sterilized via the PSRPF. 36 Comité de América Latina y El Caribe Para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer (CLADEM), Nada Personal: Reporte de Derechos Humanos Sobre la Aplicación de la Anticoncepción Quirúrgica en el Perú 1996-1998 (Lima: CLADEM, 1999), 41. 37 “Las Esterilizaciones Forzadas-un Crimen Que Nadie Quiere Reconocer,” Diakonia, accessed June 20, 2019, https:// www.diakonia.se/es/donde-trabajamos/peru/demus/ . 38 Anonymous interviewee, Quipu Project-All the Testimonies, Interactive Quipu Project, Lima, 2017, accessed July 1, 2019, https://interactive.quipu-project.com/#/es/quipu/listen/83?currentTime=46.01&view=thread. 39 Quipu Project, “The Quipu Project,” Quipu Project, Lima, 2017, accessed July 1, 2019, https://interactive.quipu-project. com/#/en/quipu/intro. 40 Organización Nacional de Mujeres Indígenas Andinas y Amazónicas del Perú (ONAMIAP), “Testimony from Dionicia Calderón Arellano (Campesina),” ONAMIAP Public Forum and Hearing on Forced Sterilizations-Lima, 1st session, 2017. 41 La República, Denuncia de Esterilizaciones Forzadas. 42 “Fiscal Formaliza una Denuncia Penal Contra Fujimori por Esterilizaciones Forzadas,” Agencia EFE, November 12, 2018, accessed June 2, 2019, https://www.efe.com/efe/america/politica/fiscal-formaliza-una-denuncia-penal-contra-fujimori- por-esterilizaciones-forzadas/20000035-3810933.

They took me to the hospital in Cangallo (in the region of Ayacucho) and forced me to undergo surgery… and, when we (Dionicia along with other women) went back to the health post to complain (about the pain after surgery), the nurses would say that we were hypocrites and that it didn’t hurt at all, and saying those things they threw us out. So, we never went back to the health post...we have suffered physical pain and infections, and some of us even rupture in our marriages and families.43 Peru’s legal system is based on a monistic system of law, where international and internal legal systems form a unity. Under Article 55 of Peru’s 1993 Constitution, international law in Peru immediately takes effect once the state becomes party to international commitments.44 All norms enshrined in treaties ratified by the state thus form a part of national law. Peru ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on February 24, 1960, without any reservations or declarations. Article II of the Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”45 Such ideas were also present under Article 319 of Peru’s Penal Code that defines genocide as an act having the intention to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, and social or religious group.”46 Both emphasize the classification of victims as a collective group and the existence of the intent to harm from the contracting parties. By 1996, when the PSRPF was implemented, the norms enshrined in the Genocide Convention and Peru’s domestic legal system were legally binding. Under Section B and D of Article II of the Genocide Convention, genocidal acts include, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” and the imposition of “measures intended to prevent births within the group,” all with the intent to destroy an entire group of population.47 Subsection IV of Article 319 of Peru’s Penal Code reiterates this point, defining genocidal acts as “methods destined to impede the births” from a group with a defined national, ethnic, and social or religious characteristic.48 The story of Dionicia, which is but one of many similar experiences reported by Indigenous women, fits well within this framing of genocide. The surgery administered by state officials was intended to prevent births, caused bodily and mental harm, and impacted a specific ethnic group, which in her case represented the Quechua-speaking Indigenous community in Ayacucho. However, claiming genocide with her single case would be tricky. Genocidal acts may be committed against a few individuals by the state, as noted in the indictment of Goran Jelisic or the “Serb Adolf” who had instigated, ordered, and committed genocide against Bosnian Muslims.49 Nevertheless, making the case for genocide of a collective group based on Dionicia’s story alone could be difficult. Alternatively, arguing for genocide referring to a collection of cases that manifest a pattern of conduct with documents pointing to a government’s intentional targeting of women of indigenous background does expose the PSRPF as a policy of genocide. And, grounding the genocidal intent of the state on the mens rea (the guilty mind), and actus reus (the material facts), allows the policy to be understood within the larger context of genocide. The Peruvian state had both elements, the plan to forcibly sterilize a part of a population and the implementation of the conduct which resulted in the destruction of a large number of individuals of an ethnic minority.50 As previously noted, the state policy was intended to cause bodily harm. Dionicia testified about the pain she suffered after the surgery which was left untreated. Luisa Pinedo Rango, an Indigenous woman of Shipibo descent from Ucayali (in the Amazonian region of Peru), told a

43 ONAMIAP Public Forum, Testimony from Arellano. 44 Título II Del Estado y la Nación (Title II of the State and Nation) (1993), (Republic of Peru), accessed August 1, 2019, http://www4.congreso.gob.pe/comisiones/1996/constitucion/cons_t2.htm. 45 United Nations, General Assembly Resolution 260, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UN Genocide Convention), December 9, 1948 (UN Doc. A/RES/260(III)). 46 Decreto Legislativo No. 635 Código Penal (2016), Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos, (Republic of Peru), http:// spij.minjus.gob.pe/content/publicaciones_oficiales/img/CODIGOPENAL.pdf. 47 UN Genocide Convention, Art. 2. 48 Decreto Legislativo No. 635 Código Penal, 206. 49 Prosecutor v. Goran Jelisic, International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), IT-95-10-A, para. 17, accessed February 1, 2020, https://www.icty.org/x/cases/jelisic/ind/en/jel-ii950721e.pdf. 50 William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 172-175.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1740 Genocide, the Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Peoples of Peru 97 similar story of forced sterilization. Health officials came to her native Amazonian community, urged her and other women to undergo surgery, put her on a boat, and took her and other Indigenous women to the health center. After giving her anesthesia without any information as to what was going on, she recalls, “I woke up and they told me that I could go back home… but I felt pain and I did not know what to do… they did not even give me a pill.”51 The Quipu Project that audio-recorded testimonies of 135 victims and victims’ families of forced sterilization documents similar experiences of twenty-nine women from Ucayali. Many were not provided with post-surgery medication. Some continue to have “abdominal pain and stomach swelling,” others stated that they cannot “work as much as they did before,” and that even daily chores such as cooking have become difficult. Often, victims asked in their testimony why the health officials insisted on the surgery, tricked them, and abandoned them.52 Luisa and other women’s stories from the Quipu Project are corroborated by Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission President Salomón Lerner who observed numerous cases where after coerced tubal ligation there was no postoperative follow-up which increased the possibilities of infections and life-threatening conditions.53 The case of María Mamérita Mestanza Chávez v. Peru mediated by the IACHR also tells a similar story of intentional cruelty. In 1998, María and her husband Jacinto Salazar Suárez were threatened by health officials who claimed that they had broken the law by having more than five children.54 This false information led the couple to decide on the tubal ligation procedure on March 27, 1998. Post-surgery complications led María and her husband to seek help from medical personnel, who dismissed the symptoms as side effects of anesthesia. The denial of medical attention led to María’s death on April 5, 1998. Such was also the experience of survivors, including Dionicia, Luisa, and the 135 from the Quipu Project, that make up the collective narrative from the victims. The refusal of medical personnel to respond to victims’ health conditions reflected a purposeful infliction of bodily harm from the state—a sign of possible implementation of genocide. Conforming to the categorization of genocide under Section D Article II of the Convention, there was a target group by the state that endured the prevention of births from the state. Although original program objectives were to “provide surgical intervention to men and women”55 and vasectomies were more economical and posed a lower health risk, in the process of implementation, government documents outline the wording of genocidal intent that pushed for women to be the subjects of tubal ligation.56 Ministerial Resolution No. 089-98-SA/DM from March 10, 1998 redacts the program’s reserved plans, which included the distribution of family planning methods to no less than fifty percent of the women in fertile age and their partners.57 The specific reference to “fertile” women as the recipients of the family planning policy, coincided with the PSRPF’s push for tubal ligation in comparison to vasectomy. Women were the preferred group by the state that aimed to sterilize this population and prevent future births. This aspect resonates with having the planned intent (mens rea) to get rid of a population and the categorization of genocide under the Genocide Convention. The data from the Registry of Victims of Forced Sterilization (REVIESFO) further supports the argument of the state’s selective focus on women and the outcome (actus reus) backed with the number of victims. REVIESFO was established by the state via the Supreme Decree No. 006-2015, to record the number of victims of forced sterilization from 1995 to 2001. From REVIESFO data, women constituted the majority of the victims of forced sterilization. During the first year of its

51 Organización Nacional de Mujeres Indígenas Andinas y Amazónicas del Perú (ONAMIAP), “Testimony from Luisa Pinedo Rango (Campesina),” ONAMIAP Public Forum and Hearing on Forced Sterilizations-Lima, 1st session, 2017. 52 Anonymous interviewee, Quipu Project, Testimony 1-7. 53 Salomón Lerner Fébres (President of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Peru), interview by author, Lima, May 31, 2017. 54 IACHR, Report No. 71/03. Petition 12.191. 55 del Aguila, Invisible Women, 114. 56 Defensoría del Pueblo, La Aplicación de la Anticoncepción Quirúrgica y los Derechos Reproductivos III: Casos Investigados por la Defensoría del Pueblo (Lima: Defensoría del Pueblo, 2002). 57 Defensoría del Pueblo, La Aplicación de la Anticoncepción Quirúrgica y los Derechos Reproductivos II: Casos investigados por La Defensoría del Pueblo (Lima: Defensoría del Pueblo, 2000), 79.

implementation in 2016, REVIESFO reported a total of 3,580 cases of forced sterilization, 97% of whom were women. In 2017, out of 2,398 registered cases, 96.9% were women. In 2018, 97% of the 94 recorded cases were women and, as of this writing in 2019,58 all five cases of forced sterilization have been women.59 Hence in total, out of 6,077 recognized cases of forced sterilizations by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, an overwhelming majority of 5,893 (97.97%) were women who were forced to undergo surgical procedure against their will or without their consent. Although the policy was structured on women’s reproductive health, not all women were victimized. Hence, this was not a case of femicide—the systematic killing of a population comprised of the female sex. Instead, a group of women based on an ethnic category were singled out and subject to the state’s genocidal measures. This approach conforms to the textual definition of genocide in that the perpetrators—which was the state—planned to use policies of coercive sterilization and effectively did so on an ethnic minority population with the intent to destroy the group. The national family planning program invoking women’s access to medical care was a disguised colonialist policy to prevent the births of Indigenous peoples and diminish the Indigenous population. The colonial vision of society channeled in this program worked well with the justifications used by the state on population control of the poor sectors of society—namely the Indigenous population. This intent from the state to harm the Indigenous population was apparent from the moment the state fertility program was being promoted. The launch of the PSRPF was directed towards eight specific regions with the objective to “better the accessibility” of the local population to health care services. These were the regions of Arequipa, Cusco, Puno, San Martín, Tacna, Junín, Ancash, and Piura.60 All eight were considered non-metropolitan rural areas, and with the exception of Tacna, San Martín, and Piura, were majority-Quechua speaking regions. Additionally, as noted by court documents filed from victims of forced sterilization against the state, irregularities against the reproductive rights of women were manifested in the Amazonas, Ancash, Apurimac, Arequipa, Ayacucho, Cajamarca, Cusco, Huancavelica, Huánuco, Junín, La Libertad, Lambayeque, Lima, Piura, Tarapoto, and Tumbes. Majority Quechua-speaking populations resided in Ancash, Apurimac, Ayacucho, Cusco, Huancavelica, Huánuco, and Junín, and areas with Jíbaro-speaking populations (an Indigenous language) included the Amazonas.61 The emphasis on Indigenous peoples was also evident from the early moments of family planning campaign promotion. Starting from 1996, Ministry of Health officials launched Health and Fertility Festivals in rural and poor communities.62 According to government census data, the majority of individuals who identify their mother-tongue as Quechua, Aymara, or Amazonian Indigenous languages reside in rural areas. These areas include the Amazonian and Andean regions, and this group constitutes 38.8 percent of Peru’s total population.63 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s President Salomón Lerner recalls seeing these festivals during one of his family trips to a rural Andean region.64 The Festival banners included messages of “Festival de ligadura de trompas, vasectomía gratis” (free tubal ligation and vasectomy festival), “Campaña gratuita de ligadura de trompas y vasectomía” (free campaign of tubal ligation and vasectomy), “Por eso elegimos el método de ligadura de trompas y vivimos felices” (That is why we chose the method of tubal ligation and we live happy), or “Campaña de vasectomía y ligadura de trompas para vivir felices” (vasectomy and tubal ligation campaign to live happy).65 The messaging aimed to frame sterilization surgeries as the optimal choice, associating the practice with happiness, “correct choice,” or even monetary gains. And, given the festival locations primarily in rural areas with majority Indigenous populations, it was directed towards women from Indigenous, poor, and rural backgrounds.

60 Ministerio Público, Resolución Formalización, 24. 61 Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo de Pueblos Andinos, Amazónicos y Afroperuanos (INDEPA), “Mapa Etnolingüístico del Perú,” Revista Peruana de Medicina Experimental y Salud Pública 27, no. 2 (2010), 288-291. 62 Ibid. 63 Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática (INEI), Dinámicas Étnicas en el Perú (Lima: INEI, 2017), 30. 64 Fébres, interview by author. 65 Defensoría del Pueblo, Anticoncepción Quirúrgica Voluntaria I: Casos Investigados por la Defensoría del Pueblo (Lima: Defensoría del Pueblo, 1998), 36-38.

The argument for targeting Indigenous peoples from the PSRPF was to control those who were seen by the state as the “cause of poverty,” as the group that was “preventing Peru from modernization.”66 This was an old-Malthusian grounded assumption invoked in post-colonial state settings, where the vulnerable population, primarily women of color or of Indigenous descent were targeted for population “manipulation programs.”67 As such, PSRPF was used by Fujimori’s government to “combat poverty,” via population reduction which they assumed would result in the increase of gross domestic product per capita.68 Economic justifications were used to “destroy, in whole or in part” a socioeconomic minority who were of one ethnic group, the Indigenous population of Peru. REVIESFO’s 2016 data on the reported 3,580 cases of forced sterilization, pinpoints the selection of the Indigenous group apart from others. According to the registry, the majority of the victims of forced sterilization resided in Indigenous language speaking rural areas. These included, 2 cases from Pasco, 2 in Puno, 221 in Junín, 229 from Huancavelica, 342 in Huánuco, 342 in Ayacucho, and 1,293 from Cusco. Comparatively, regions with mixed languages (Spanish and Indigenous languages) registered 33 victims in Moquegua and 680 from San Martín. Other areas with more Spanish-speaking populations also reported forced sterilization cases: 73 in Lima, 101 in La Libertad, 109 in Cajamarca, and 181 in Piura. In total, out of 3,580 reported cases of forced sterilization during the first year of the victims’ registry, 67.9 percent (2,431 cases) were from Indigenous-language speaking areas. And, 56.9 percent or over 2,04069 individuals identified Quechua as their mother tongue. These characteristics of women of Indigenous descent were descriptive of the majority victim group who were coerced into these practices, without consent and at times with false information. The state knowingly focused on the sterilization campaign against these women, whose ethnic identity put them at a more vulnerable position, particularly in the context of a state equating the eradication of poverty with population control. Peru’s case resembled the stories of other post-colonial states such as Canada that depended on the “control over aboriginal peoples’ land and resources,” and indigenous population growth, to fuel their capitalist system built on colonial and racial structural differences.70 The signs of genocidal intent were present from the beginning. By 1997, a year into the PSRPF, government officials were aware of the “irregularities” manifested with the family planning program. Two key pieces of government documents attest to the prior knowledge from the state and provides the basis for the argument of genocidal intent. The Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office—an autonomous organization within the Peruvian government—received complaints of tubal ligation procedures starting in 1997. In response, the Ombudsman’s Office published an investigation of the cases in 1998, that determined the PSRPF’s application involved coercive elements of pressure, insufficient information on family planning options, and a disproportionate push for tubal ligation compared to vasectomies.71 Concluding the findings, the Ombudsman’s Office issued a list of recommendations for the state under Resolution No. 01-98. These included the modification of the program objectives and substitution of tubal ligation, and vasectomy with other family planning methods.72 Initially, the Ministry of Health issued a letter SA-DM-No. 0284-98 published on March 6, 1998, noting their commitment to revise the policy and set up a commission to investigate the “irregularities” of the PSRPF.73 And yet, coerced sterilizations did not stop.

66 Fébres, interview by author. 67 Kuumba, Perpetuating Neo-Colonialism, 80. 68 Ewig, La Economía Política, 57. 69 During the first year when the victims’ registry was implemented, REVIESFO gathered data on the mother tongue of victims of forced sterilization. Those who spoke indigenous languages included: 13—speaking Achuar, 7—Aimara, 6—Ashaninka, 1—Cauqui, 1—Matsigenka, 1—Nomatsigenga, 1—Shipibo-Konibo, and 2,010—Quechua speakers. 1,540 victims identified Spanish as their mother tongue; see Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables, Resumen Estadístico Victimas de Esterilizaciones Forzadas 2016 (Lima: Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables, 2016). 70 Stote, The Coercive Sterilization, 117. 71 Defensoría del Pueblo, Anticoncepción Quirúrgica Voluntaria I, 3. 72 Ibid., 5. 73 Congreso de la República, Subcomisión Investigadora: Informe 01/30/2003, Subcommittee Report from Congress, January 30, 2003, accessed May 1, 2019, http://www2.congreso.gob.pe/sicr/apoycomisiones/informes.nsf/

According to documents from the Congressional Investigative Commission on Crimes related to Voluntary Tubal Ligation Procedures from 1996-2000, the director of the Basic Health Care Unit of Chumbivilcas in the region of Cusco admitted to holding a round of tubal ligations in 1999.74 The surgeries in Chumbivilcas were notorious for being staffed with unqualified surgeons and for not having an anesthesiologist present in the tubal ligation procedures.75 One of the women, Santusa Taype Chlla, who was sterilized in the Santo Tomas Health Center in Chumbivilca on July 10, 1999, died of post-surgery health complications on July 12, 1999. Hence, parallel to the expression of concern issued by the Ministry of Health, the state also continued pushing for coercive sterilizations. Investigations of irregularities in the family planning policies never materialized. Instead, health posts that met sterilization quotas received useful equipment from the Ministry of Health. How was this possible? Fujimori’s government had a goal to accomplish, which was “combating poverty.”76 To do so, the central government set up a family planning policy aimed at preventing the population growth of those who were categorized as the source of poverty. The prejudices that sustained this policy reflected a colonialist mentality embedded in governing hierarchies that regarded the indigenous peoples as a dispensable group, whose lives could be destroyed in part or whole without any repercussions of criminal accountability or justice. Along with the Ombudsman’s Office investigation, forced sterilization was brought up during the fourth meeting of the Second Regular Session of the Legislature on March 18, 1998. As redacted in congressional session notes, Congressman Roger Guerra-García informed the legislature about the government’s population policy, referring to the PSRPF. He explained that a population policy need not be limited to the “control of population growth or the phenomenon of sterilization.”77 This was an indirect criticism at the restricted insights of the government policy that promulgated sterilization as the single best option. Then, Guerra-García noted the existence of complaints against those who “implement” the government policy, referring to the healthcare professionals, and explained the malpractice of coerced sterilizations that have “put at risk the life and health” of many.78 These were comments directed against the human rights violations caused by the state. Both the investigative report from the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office and the congressional speech were delivered in 1997 and 1998. Hence, the state was aware of forced sterilizations and its associated human rights violations from the early phase of PSRPF’s implementation. And yet, the government did not revise the policy and stop the bodily harm. Daily newspapers El Comercio, Diario El Sol, and La República reported on “tricked” and “forced sterilizations” in the province of Cusco that took place in 1999.79 The refusal to revisit the malpractice of sterilization was a consistent signal of genocidal intent from the state, one that prioritized the prevention of births of a population, the majority of whom were women of Indigenous descent. There are questions as to the intentionality of the PSRPF in destroying “in whole or in part” a particular population. Nongovernmental organizations defending the victims of forced sterilization are hesitant to admit a genocide, noting that there is not enough evidence to categorize the state’s intentions as having the goals of annihilating a group of peoples who were impoverished, resided in rural areas, worked the fields, and were of Indigenous or Andean descent. The intentions had more to do with birth control in certain populations.80 It is important to note that reference to “birth control” is not equivalent to the “prevention of births” that is explained in the Genocide Convention. The sterilization practice against women predominantly of Indigenous background

InformesPorComision/C405450DEB310E6C0 5256CBE0076A35E. 74 Ibid. 75 Ministerio Público, Resolución Formalización, 24. 76 Boesten, Free Choice, 15. 77 Congreso de la República, Diario de los debates: Segunda Legislatura Ordinaria de 1997 4ª Sesión Miércoles 18 de marzo de 1998, Congreso de la República, March 18, 1998, accessed May 1, 2019, http://www2.congreso.gob.pe/sicr/ diariodebates/Publicad.nsf/2b66b8a68552546d05256f1000575a5c/05256d6e 0073dfe9052565d1007dcde5?OpenDocume nt. 78 Ibid. 79 Ministerio Público, Resolución Formalización, 30. 80 Labrín, Justicia de Genero, 16-18.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1740 Genocide, the Forced Sterilization of Indigenous Peoples of Peru 101 was not to inform the population of birth control or family planning practices. These experiences were designed to forcibly prevent the births of more children, as had been the case with the indigenous population in Canada.81 The surgical acts in Peru were performed against the women’s will, where at times women would be locked up and, in other instances, forced to take anesthesia.82 There could not be a clearer evidence of state intent to make the case for genocide.

What Remains Over the course of five years from 1996 to 2001, the Peruvian state implemented a family planning program with alleged progressive objectives that focused on educating the public of contraceptive methods, reducing infant and maternal mortality rates, and protecting women’s reproductive rights. However, with the implementation of the program, the objectives changed towards an aggressive campaign of forced sterilization that used coercion and manipulation to target a vulnerable population of society. Indigenous women from poor economic backgrounds constituted most of the victims. Despite the evidence that points to the genocidal intent of the state and the physical evidence of bodily harm caused by the PSRPF, this is a case that has yet to be considered as a crime against humanity, let alone as a genocide. What remains from the family planning policy are the violations endured by the victims and their family members, many of whom remain waiting for justice and reparations. Even the family members of María Mamérita Mestanza Chávez have yet to receive all the different measures of reparations. This is in spite of María Mamérita Mestanza Chávez’s death and the subsequent petition from nongovernmental organizations to the IACHR that led to a friendly agreement in 2003 between the state and the victim’s family. Mamérita’s daughters and sons have not received financial assistance for education. And, other 1,316 women included in the legal complaint filed against Fujimori and his cabinet officials83 have not received any form of criminal accountability or reparations as of the time of this writing. The other factor that remains unspoken within this unacknowledged context of genocide is the identification of the majority of victims—the Indigenous populations of Peru. The targeting of these ethnic groups has gone unnoticed and pushed aside. As conquistadors and colonizers of Peru, the Spanish ruled with the idea of ethnic superiority. Such is symptomatic of the perspective of ethnicity and socioeconomic class from the colonial period of Peru, one which has continued to shape society’s deprecation towards Indigenous peoples and cultures today.84 From this viewpoint, the elimination in “whole or in part” of the Indigenous populations was not a problematic outcome, as it would help the state establish population control and improve national economic standards. That had been the goal of Fujimori’s government. In this context, the Indigenous peoples became a population that need not be replaced, one that could be subject to genocide via coercive sterilization practices and the prevention of births of future generations of Indigenous children. Such was the intended outcome, the policy structured around this plan, and the resulting genocide of indigenous peoples.

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Carranza Ko, Ñusta. “Forcibly Sterilized: Peru’s Indigenous Women and the Battle for Rights.” In Human Rights as Battlefields: Changing Practices and Contestations, edited by Gabriel Blouin-Genest, Marie-Christine Doran, and Sylvie Paquerot, 149-172. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-91770-2_8 Comité de América Latina y El Caribe Para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer (CLADEM). Nada Personal: Reporte de Derechos Humanos Sobre la Aplicación de la Anticoncepción Quirúrgica en el Perú 1996-1998. Lima: CLADEM, 1999. Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación. Final Report. Lima: Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, 2003. Accessed August 1, 2019. http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ingles/ifinal/index.php. Congreso de la República. Diario de los debates: Segunda Legislatura Ordinaria de 1997 4ª Sesión Miércoles 18 de marzo de 1998. Congreso de la República. March 18, 1998. Accessed May 1, 2019. http://www2.congreso.gob.pe/sicr/ diariodebates/Publicad.nsf/2b66b8a68552546d05256f1000575a5c/05256d6e 0073dfe9052565d1007dcde5?OpenDocument. ------. Subcomisión Investigadora: Informe 01/30/2003. Subcommittee Report from Congress. January 30, 2003. Accessed May 1, 2019. http://www2.congreso.gob.pe/sicr/apoycomisiones/ informes.nsf/InformesPorComision/C405450DEB310E6C0 5256CBE0076A35E. Constitución Política de la República Peruana Sancionada por el Primer Congreso Constituyente (Political Constitution of the Republic of Peru Approved by the First Constituent Congress). November 12, 1823. (Republic of Peru). Accessed August 1, 2019. http://www. leyes.congreso.gob.pe/Documentos/constituciones_ordenado/CONSTIT_1823/Cons1823_ TEXTO. pdf. De La Cruz Huamán, Rosario B. “Análisis de las Esterilizaciones Forzadas en el Perú desde una Perspectiva de Interculturalidad Critica.” Tierra Nuestra 12, no. 1 (2018), 105-117. Doi: 10.21704/rtn.v12i1.1272 Decreto Legislativo No. 635 Código Penal (2016). Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos (Republic of Peru). http://spij.minjus.gob.pe/content/publicaciones_oficiales/img/ CODIGOPENAL.pdf. Defensoría del Pueblo. Decimonoveno Informe Anual de la Defensoría del Pueblo. Lima: Defensoría del Pueblo, 2015. ------. Anticoncepción Quirúrgica Voluntaria I: Casos Investigados por la Defensoría del Pueblo. Lima: Defensoría del Pueblo, 1998. ------. La Aplicación de la Anticoncepción Quirúrgica y los Derechos Reproductivos II: Casos investigados por La Defensoría del Pueblo. Lima: Defensoría del Pueblo, 2000. ------. La Aplicación de la Anticoncepción Quirúrgica y los Derechos Reproductivos III: Casos Investigados por la Defensoría del Pueblo. Lima: Defensoría del Pueblo, 2002. del Aguila, Ernesto Vasquez. “Invisible Women: Forced Sterilization, Reproductive Rights, and Structural Inequalities in Peru of Fujimori and Toledo.” Estudos e Pesquisas em Psicología UERJ RJ 6, no. 1 (2006), 109-124. Diakonia. “Las Esterilizaciones Forzadas-un Crimen Que Nadie Quiere Reconocer.” Accessed June 20, 2019. https://www.diakonia.se/es/donde-trabajamos/peru/demus/. El Tiempo. “Por Programa de Planificación Familiar Enfrentamiento Fujimori-Iglesia.” El Tiempo, November 2, 1990. Accessed November 1, 2018. https://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/ documento/MAM-2438. Ewig, Christina. “La Economía Política de Esterilización Forzada en el Perú.” In Memorias del caso peruano de esterilización forzada, edited by Alejandra Ballón, 47–72. Lima: Biblioteca Nacional del Perú, 2014. Fujimori, Alberto. “Before The IV World Conference On Women, September 15, 1995, Beijing, China.” Speech, Beijing, September 15, 1995. Beijing Conference on Women, United Nations—unoffical translation from Spanish. Accessed May 1, 2019. https://www.un.org/ esa/gopher-data/conf/fwcw/conf/gov/950915131946.txt. Getgen, Jocelyn E. “Untold Truths: The Exclusion of Enforced Sterilizations from the Peruvian Truth Commission’s Final Report.” Boston College Third World Law Journal 29, no. 1 (2009), 1-34. Doi: 10.2139/ssrn.1271449

Instituto Nacional de Desarrollo de Pueblos Andinos, Amazónicos y Afroperuano (INDEPA). “Mapa Etnolingüístico del Perú.” Revista Peruana de Medicina Experimental y Salud Pública 27, no. 2 (2010), 288-291. Doi: 10.1590/S1726-46342010000200019 Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática (INEI). Dinámicas Étnicas en el Perú. Lima: INEI, 2017. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). Report No. 71/03. Petition 12.191. Friendly Settlement María Mamérita Mestanza-Chávez. Peru: IACHR, 2003. Accessed August 1, 2019. http://cidh.org/annualrep/2003eng/Peru.12191.htm. Kuumba, Monica Bahati. “Perpetuating Neo-Colonialism through Population Control: South Africa and the United States.” Africa Today 40, no. 3 (1993), 79-85. La República. “Denuncia de Esterilizaciones Forzadas Fue Archivada por la Fiscalía.” La República, July 27, 2016. Accessed June 2, 2019. http://larepublica.pe/sociedad/789156-denuncia-de- esterilizaciones-forzadas-fue-archivada-por-la-fiscalia. Labrín, José Burneo. Justicia de Genero: Esterilización Forzada En El Perú: Delito de Lesa Humanidad. Lima: Editorial Linea Andina, 2008. Mantilla Falcón, Julissa. “El Caso de las Esterilizaciones Forzadas en el Perú Como una Violación de los Derechos Humanos.” Ius et Veritas 23, (2016), 10-20. Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables. Resumen Estadístico Victimas de Esterilizaciones Forzadas 2019. Lima: Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables, 2019. ------. Resumen Estadístico Victimas de Esterilizaciones Forzadas 2018. Lima: Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables, 2018. ------. Resumen Estadístico Victimas de Esterilizaciones Forzadas 2017. Lima: Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables, 2017. ------. Resumen Estadístico Victimas de Esterilizaciones Forzadas 2016. Lima: Ministerio de la Mujer y Poblaciones Vulnerables, 2016. Ministerio de Salud. Programa de Salud Reproductiva y Planificación Familiar 1996-2000. Lima: Ministerio de Salud, 1996. Ministerio Público. “Resolución Formalización Denuncia Caso EEFF Versión Comprimida.” Ministerio Público-Fiscalía de la Nación, October 31, 2018. Accessed December 1, 2018. http://www.demus.org.pe/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/12-11-18-Resoluci%C2%A6n- Formalizaci%C2%A6n-denuncia-caso-EEFF-versi%C2%A6n-comprimida.pdf. Organización Nacional de Mujeres Indígenas Andinas y Amazónicas del Perú (ONAMIAP). Public Forum and Hearing on Forced Sterilizations-Lima. 1st session, 2017. Puño, Julio Davila. Perú: Gobiernos Locales y Pueblos Indígenas. Lima: Tarea Grafica Educativa, 2005. Quipu Project. “Quipu Project.” 2017. Accessed July 1, 2019. https://interactive.quipu-project. com/#/en/quipu/intro. ------. “Testimony 1-10” Quipu Project, 2017. Accessed July 1, 2019. https://interactive.quipu- project.com/#/es/quipu/listen/intronode?currentTime=0&view=thread. Schabas, William A. Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511575556 Serra, Ainhoa Molina. “Esterilizaciones (forzadas) en Perú: Poder y configuraciones narrativas.” Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana 12, no. 1 (2017), 31-52. Doi: 10.11156/aibr.120103 Smith, Andrea. Conquest-Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Stote, Karen. “The Coercive Sterilization of Aboriginal Women in Canada.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 36, no. 3 (2012), 117-150. Doi: 10.17953/aicr.36.3.7280728r6479j650 Título II Del Estado y la Nación (Title II of the State and Nation), 1993 (Republic of Peru). Accessed August 1, 2019. http://www4.congreso.gob.pe/comisiones/1996/constitucion/cons_t2.htm. United Nations. General Assembly Resolution 260, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. December 9, 1948. UN Doc. A/RES/260(III). Wesley-Esquimaux, Cynthia C., and Magdalena Smolewski. Historic Trauma and Aboriginal Healing. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2004.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1740 Ecocide Is Genocide: Decolonizing the Definition of Genocide Lauren J. Eichler Old Dominion University Norfolk, Virginia, USA

Introduction In 1492, European explorers arrived in the Americas, bringing devastating changes to the land, ecosystems, and lives of the Indigenous peoples. Some of these changes were wrought unintentionally, such as the diseases, rats, and invasive plant species that came with the settlers. Other changes, like the clear-cutting of forests to make way for farms and homesteads, the hunting of game animals to near extinction, and the removing of Indigenous peoples from their traditional lands, were more deliberate. For the Indigenous peoples, these changes had long term ramifications for the vitality of their cultures, the effects of which are still being experienced today. According to the worldviews of many Native American cultures, the destruction brought upon the land, water, and nonhuman beings of the Americas was an act of violence against their communities. I argue that this violence should be considered an act of genocide and that the study of genocide and our current responses to it are still largely colonial and anthropocentric. In this article, I demonstrate how the destruction of nonhuman animals, land, water, and other nonhuman beings constitute forms of genocide according to Indigenous metaphysics.1 In environmental studies and genocide studies, the destruction of nonhuman beings and nature is typically treated as a separate, but related phenomenon—ecocide, the destruction of nonhuman nature. In this article, I follow in the footsteps of Native American and First Nations scholars like Donald Grinde, Winona LaDuke, Tasha Hubbard, and Laurelyn Whitt to argue from an Indigenous perspective on nonhuman personhood that ecocide and the genocide of Indigenous peoples are inextricably linked and are even constitutive of the same act. Recognizing that ecocide is a form of genocide challenges the anthropocentricism implicit in the current definition of genocide and expands the concept of genocide without significantly altering its official legal definition. I argue that if justice is to be achieved for Indigenous peoples through the United Nations’ ability to prosecute genocide, then the definition of genocide needs to—at minimum—include ecocide as a recognized act.

Cultural Genocide, Social Death, and Ecocide One of the primary shortcomings of the human rights approach to responding to genocidal violence is that the focus of humanitarian efforts becomes based almost entirely on the wellbeing of individual humans rather than with concern for the natural world that sustains them. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) does not mention the environment, the natural world, or creatures other than humans, even though human life depends on nonhuman nature for sustenance and cultural development. Both the definition of genocide—which accounts only for human groups—and the UDHR exhibit such shortcomings, writing nonhuman animals and other beings out of the ethical and political equation when it comes to atrocities. Yet, such a limited definition of genocide and human wellbeing has not been the only way of interpreting genocide and genocidal violence. Raphaël Lemkin defined genocide in a significantly different way than

1 Two points of note—first, in this article, I will focus primarily on the troubles faced by and the philosophies of Indigenous communities located in North America. However, the philosophies of other Indigenous groups, including the Maori and those located in South America and India, overlap in significant ways and could also be applied to the argument I make. Second, I use various terms to refer to the Indigenous peoples of North America including Native Americans, Indigenous peoples, Natives, First Nations, and American Indians. When possible, I try to use specific tribal/national affiliations, but when I am discussing philosophical positions and experiences held by many tribes in common, I use umbrella terms like those listed above. First Nations refers specifically to Indigenous communities within the borders of Canada while American Indians refer to Indigenous peoples living within the borders of the contiguous US and Alaska. I typically use the term Native Americans when I am referring broadly to Indigenous peoples who live within Canada and the US. Indigenous peoples is likewise used in a similar way to indicate Native peoples and communities within the US generally speaking and at times to be inclusive of Indigenous peoples elsewhere in the world. Though the term “indigenous” is a contested concept, for the purposes of this article and my focus on the North American context, by “Indigenous peoples” I mean communities and peoples who were residing in North America prior to the continent’s colonization by Europeans. Lauren J. Eichler. “Ecocide Is Genocide: Decolonizing the Definition of Genocide.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, 2 (2020): 104‑121. ©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1720 Ecocide Is Genocide 105 the definition eventually adopted by the UN. According to Lemkin, genocide does not necessarily entail the physical destruction of a national or ethnic group. Rather, genocide signifies,

a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objects of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.2

Whereas the UN definition mainly restricts genocide to acts carried out against the bodies and individuals of the targeted human group, Lemkin’s definition accounts for a much broader understanding of what constitutes group destruction.3 In addition to mass murder, preventing births, and physical destruction, Lemkin also includes the dissolution of political parties, colonization, abolition of local law, censorship, restrictions on language, withholding food and medicine, moral debasement, and crippling economic development. Unlike the acts listed in the UN definition, which predominantly describe harms that directly affect the physical body of the group members, these acts are indirect harms that compromise quality of life and the ability of a group to carry on as a group. The acts that Lemkin lists destroy a group not by taking lives per se but by forcefully supplanting one group’s way of being in the world—the principles, institutions, and values that make that group distinct from other human groups—with the principles, institutions, and values held by another group. This broader conception aligns with more recent conversations about genocide. Claudia Card, for example, argues that what distinguishes genocide from other crimes against humanity is its role in bringing about social death.4 According to Card, a social group is not just a collection of individuals but a set of relationships.5 These relationships contribute to the social vitality of a group and are constituted by social, institutional, political, and moral practices.6 Social death involves the breakdown or eradication of these relationships so that what made life as a group meaningful no longer exists. Social vitality not only applies to living members of the group, but also connects members of the group through history and time.7 It is intergenerational. Genocide, both physical and cultural, inhibits the flourishing, growth, and organic development of these relationships. Though social death can be understood within the terms of the UN definition, Lemkin’s definition, which directs attention to the destruction of cultural relationships, makes this particular harm more evident. Recently, genocide scholars have demonstrated renewed interest in Lemkin’s writings. Frustrated by the limitations of the UN definition, researchers like Dirk Moses, Damien Short, and Jürgen Zimmerer see Lemkin’s research as one way of conceptualizing problems related to genocide that have been under-theorized or overlooked, especially regarding colonization.8 These authors note that the UN’s narrow definition does a great disservice to colonized Indigenous peoples who

3 United Nations, General Assembly Resolution 260, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide, December 9, 1948 (UN Doc. A/RES/260(III)), accessed July 16, 2020, https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/ documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20 Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf 4 Claudia Card, “Genocide and Social Death,” in Genocide’s Aftermath: Responsibility and Repair, ed. Claudia Card and Armen T. Marsoobian (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 10-26. 5 Ibid., 10-11. 6 Ibid., 16. 7 Ibid., 20. 8 Dirk A. Moses, “Empire, Colony, Genocide: Keywords and the Philosophy of History,” in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. A. Dirk Moses (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 3-54; Damien Short, Redefining Genocide: Settler Colonialism, Social Death, and Ecocide(London: Zed Books, 2016); Jürgen Zimmerer, “Colonialism and the Holocaust: Towards an Archeology of Genocide,” in Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, ed. A. Dirk Moses (New York: Berghahn Books 2004), 49-76.

were not always killed in the process of colonization but whose group life was forcibly altered and destroyed through the efforts of colonizers. Even acts that were considered “humanitarian” or “humanizing” such as residential schools, reservations, and other efforts at assimilating Native peoples into the new dominant culture often brought about social and cultural death by depriving people of maintaining traditions, language, and relationships not only with one another but also with the land and other elements of nonhuman nature around them. Though there is growing interest in the link between colonization and genocide, the majority of genocide literature, which debates definitions and legal action, perpetuate (often unintentionally) the erasure of the plight of Indigenous peoples as an act of genocide. The experiences of colonized Indigenous peoples are treated as categorically different from genocide. For example, in Native America and the Question of Genocide, Alex Alvarez argues that the term genocide is overused when discussing the harms experienced by the Indigenous peoples of North America. Many of these assertions of genocide, he says, “seem to be based more on a general sense of outrage and horror than on any clear and rigorous understanding about what is or is not genocide.”9 Though he approaches the claims of genocide in North America with some skepticism, Alvarez does not say genocide did not occur. Rather, “care needs to be taken when applying this label to specific historical events.”10 Following a review of various episodes of violence perpetrated against Native Americans, Alvarez concludes that the Trail of Tears, though horrific, was not genocide, while the residential school system was a form of cultural genocide,11 and the massacres of Californian Indians were definitely genocide. Native American scholar Joseph P. Gone of the Gros Ventre Nation makes a similar argument in his article “Colonial Genocide and Historical Trauma in North America,” but he goes a step further than Alvarez in restricting the definition of genocide. Gone argues that for the sake of conceptual clarity, genocide should refer only to instances of violence that involve mass murder. He argues that there are already a variety of terms to describe various acts of violence including ethnic cleansing, colonization, massacres, and human rights violations: “Thus, what seems to be distinctive about the term genocide is its reference to the ‘crime of all crimes,’ namely, group-based mass murder.”12 Given this definition, Gone holds that much of the violence that occurred against Native Americans through colonization is not genocide even though intermittent genocides did occur as colonization proceeded. He specifically calls into question the value of lumping Indian killers, buffalo hunters, and residential school teachers together as perpetrators of genocide.13 In other words, Gone claims that genocide was not “at all typical or representative, of the European project of colonization, or that colonization can be casually equated with genocide.”14 For both authors, the goal of making these distinctions is to ensure that the power of the word genocide does not become diluted. Alvarez and Gone’s reasons for so narrowly defining genocide might be beneficial for bringing about conceptual clarity and might reflect a consideration for the legal standing of the definition, but mass killing hardly exhausts the methods that can be used to destroy a group. Lemkin’s definition, which accounts for the destruction of language, religion, and other cultural institutions, provides a more nuanced account of what happened and is still happening to Indigenous peoples in North America and around the world. Though Lemkin did not specifically talk about the destruction of nature, the environment, or ecosystems in his definition of genocide, his definition leaves room for the inclusion of this issue. This is particularly relevant for Indigenous peoples whose physical and cultural destruction coincided with their removal from their land, the decimation of various

9 Alex Alvarez, Native America and the Question of Genocide (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), 3. 10 Ibid., 4. 11 Notice here that Alvarez uses the term “cultural” to modify “genocide,” implying that residential schools are not examples of outright genocide, a term which he reserves for incidents that typically involve mass murder. For more on his usage of the term “cultural genocide,” see Alvarez Native America and the Question of Genocide, 156-157. 12 Joseph P. Gone, “Colonial Genocide and Historical Trauma in Native North America: Complicating Contemporary Attributions,” in Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America, ed. Andrew Woolford et al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 279. 13 Ibid., 285. 14 Ibid., 284.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1720 Ecocide Is Genocide 107 nonhuman animal species including beaver and bison, and alterations to the landscape including the damming of rivers, deforestation, and the introduction of new pollutants. Because many Indigenous cultures lived in close proximity to the other-than-human world around them and often viewed nonhuman beings as community members, the destruction of these relationships would have constituted a type of social death. The majority of genocide literature does not seriously or thoroughly analyze the connection between genocide and the destruction of nonhuman nature, otherwise known as ecocide. In this respect, most genocide and human rights scholarship remains anthropocentric, such that only the destruction of and the dignity of human life is considered to be of consequence. The term “ecocide” was coined in 1970 by a group of scientists to describe the devastation being wrought to the land in Vietnam as a result of chemical weapons like Agent Orange. Lawyer and activist Polly Higgins later defined ecocide as “extensive damage to, destruction of or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.”15 Because “ecocide” is still a relatively under-theorized subject, the term covers a wide array of acts and harms. Higgins’ definition of ecocide does not stipulate intent like the UN definition of genocide does. This means that humans may commit ecocide unintentionally or as a means to a different end as in the case of businesses that do not intentionally set out to destroy land, forests, or water, but do so negligently or in pursuit of some other goal. Higgins distinguishes between two forms of ecocide: non-ascertainable and ascertainable. The former has no discernible human cause, while the latter does.16 For example one type of non-ascertainable ecocide is extreme weather events related to climate change. These are not directly due to human intent; rather, they are the byproduct of human activities in the world. For the most part, however, the term is commonly used to describe perceivable harms done by humans to nonhuman beings and the planet with the effect of inhibiting the flourishing of human life. As Arthur W. Galston argued in his proposal for an international agreement on banning ecocide, “[i]t seems to me that willful and permanent destruction of environment in which a people can live in a manner of their own choosing ought similarly to be considered a crime against humanity, to be designated by the term ecocide.”17 Thus, examples of ecocide are quite varied, including everything from the mass death of bees due to the overuse of pesticides to the clear-cutting of the Amazon Rainforest for the purposes of creating more farmland to climate change to the poaching of rare species to be sold on the black market as medicine, pets, or delicacies. Though the concept of ecocide has gained traction among environmentalists and advocates for Indigenous rights, ecocide is not considered a crime on the international stage. Only ten countries have adopted laws criminalizing ecocide.18 Even though the inclusion of ecocide as an international crime has been debated at the UN various times between 1973 and 2010, culminating with a proposal to amend the Rome Statute of the Criminal Court to include ecocide as the fifth Crime against Peace, each effort to incorporate it failed.19 However, as the threats of anthropogenic climate change become increasingly real, there has been a resurgence of interest in the connection between ecocide and genocide. As Higgens points out, “ecocide leads to resource depletion, and where there is escalation of resource depletion, war comes chasing close behind.”20 And often with war comes a surge of crimes against humanity like genocide. In Ecocide of Native America, Donald Grinde of the Yamasee tribe and Bruce E. Johansen link ecocide with the genocide of Native Americans and other indigenous peoples. By examining the testimonies of Native People impacted by a variety of environmental disasters that followed

15 Polly Higgins, Eradicating Ecocide: Laws and Governance to Prevent the Destruction of Our Planet (London: Shepheard- Walwyn LTD, 2010), 63. 16 Ibid. 17 Quoted in Short, Redefining Genocide, 40. 18 These include the Republic of Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Moldova, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan, Ukraine, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. 19 Higgins, Eradicating Ecocide, 68-70. 20 Ibid., 62.

colonization including uranium mining, depletion of fisheries, and destruction of plains for ranching, the authors demonstrate how these practices have interfered with traditional indigenous methods of engaging with the nonhuman world and the devastating impact this has had on the future of those communities in physical, spiritual, and cultural ways. According to the testimony of Jewell Praying Wolf James of the Lummi Tribe, the destruction of land, water, and nonhuman life has been central to this experience of genocide.

At one time our plains, plateaus, and ancient forests were respected and not considered a wilderness. The skies were darkened with migrating fowl. The plains were blanketed with massive herds of buffalo. Our mountains teemed with elk, deer, bear, beaver, and other fur- bearing animals. All the rivers were full of salmon and fish—so much that you could walk across their backs to get to the other side. The plants and trees were medicines or food for us. We knew neither hunger nor disease until contact came in 1492, then our holocaust began and that of the plants, animals, and environment.21

Though Grinde and Johansen link ecocide and genocide, their focus is primarily on ecocide and less on how this connects to the problem of genocide more generally. In Redefining Genocide, sociologist Damien Short provides some of this theoretical groundwork by taking a closer look at what he deems the “genocide-ecocide nexus.” Drawing on Lemkin’s definition of genocide that characterizes genocide as the destruction of a group’s culture as well as physical life, Short argues that ecocide has been used in the modern era to destroy Indigenous group life. For Short, ecocide is a method of genocide if “such destruction results in conditions of life that fundamentally threaten a social group’s cultural and/or physical existence.”22 According to Short, humans are “ecologically embedded beings.”23 As such, wrecking the ecosystems in which humans persist would ultimately lead to the destruction of human lives and cultures. Through various case studies he shows how settler colonists put profits and resource extraction ahead of the lives and livelihoods of Indigenous groups who shared and continue to share the territory. Exploitation of land and resources for political and economic gain on the part of the state and businesses becomes a justification for ethnic cleansing, extermination, and forced removal of Indigenous groups. For example, in one case study Short looks at the effects of Canada’s Athabasca tar sands project on nearby First Nations communities. Short reports that in the name of energy security, the US and Canada have pursued opportunities to extract oil and other resources using risky and especially environmentally destructive technologies. The tar sands project in Alberta, Canada involves extracting bitumen, a viscous and dense form of petroleum, through techniques such as strip mining and fracking. The tar sands site, which is as large as the state of Florida, consists of mined pits, pools of oil, and rivers of water that have been redirected from all available nearby sources. The land has been stripped of wildlife, trees, and topsoil. Runoff from the mining procedures contaminates rivers on the level of major oil spills on a regular basis. These lands, which had traditionally belonged to the Cree, Metís, and Dené peoples, are now entirely uninhabitable.24 Though members of these First Nations still live in Alberta not far from the site of the tar sands project, the contamination of the land and water has been so bad that they fear drinking the water, hunting game, and planting on the land. Cancer rates have soared in their communities.25 The Canadian government has repeatedly denied that the tar sands project is the cause of these issues, insisting that the project provides jobs for members of Indigenous communities, even though prior to beginning extraction, the Indigenous peoples were able to survive and carry on their traditional cultural practices through their relationship with the land and subsistence hunting. Short demonstrates that the oil-extraction process is genocidal insofar as it damages the

21 Donald A. Grinde and Bruce E. Johansen, Ecocide of Native America: Environmental Destruction of Indian Lands and Peoples (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 1995), 250. 22 Short, Redefining Genocide, 6. 23 Ibid., 9. 24 Ibid., 169-171. 25 Ibid., 174.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1720 Ecocide Is Genocide 109 physical health and wellbeing of the Indigenous peoples who live near this site while inhibiting their ability to carry on their traditional cultural practices by inducing fear and taking over more and more of the land on which they lived. Indigenous scholars like Michelle Jacob of the Yakama Nation agree, noting:

from an Indigenous perspective, the Tar Sands extraction project represents an assault on the earth; the fracking, drilling, extraction, and massive construction of pipelines across Turtle Island, from Alberta to the Gulf Coast, is creating a wasteland. Tribal treaty rights and tribal people’s ability to protect their homeland become casualties of war in the settler colonial quest to extract resources for profit in the energy wars.26

Environmental devastation of this sort functions like a slow genocide, eroding the health of the people, their sovereignty as a nation, and the land, all of which are integral to their group identity. Because this form of genocide might occur over such a long period of time, it may not always be immediately recognizable as genocide, especially when compared to other genocides like the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, or the Bosnian genocide. In this case study, Short treats ascertainable ecocide as a method of genocide but not equivalent to genocide. In other words, like murder, ecocide may be used as a tool to commit genocide or it might not depend on whether it is aimed at (directly or indirectly) destroying a human group. For Short, environmental devastation is one way of destroying human groups that could potentially fall under two criteria for the UN definition of genocide: causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction. Through case studies, Short convincingly demonstrates that ecocide carried out by dominant colonial cultures disproportionately affected and continues to affect Indigenous peoples in a genocidal way. His analysis, one of the few in genocide scholarship that makes an explicit connection between the effects of ecocide and its role in genocide, provides new avenues for thinking about the causes of genocide and how they might be prevented. However, I argue that ecocide is more than just a method. It is genocide. Furthermore, I claim that ascertainable ecocide is always genocide, even if there are no human groups directly or indirectly targeted for destruction. As I will show, Short’s analysis, like the UN definition of genocide, is anthropocentric, relying on human-animal and human-nature binaries. This assumption is especially problematic when thinking about the effects of ecocide on Indigenous peoples and the nonhuman members of their communities. Though Short takes an important step toward applying a new decolonizing lens to the study of genocide, I argue that we need to go further by recognizing that metaphysical assumptions that exist for Westerners like human exceptionalism do not necessarily hold for Indigenous peoples. Ecocide is not just a method, which suggests that destroying the natural world is a tool for destroying a group of human people; rather, ecocide is an act of genocide because it literally eliminates, disfigures, and maims the other-than- human members of Indigenous communities. Furthermore, by treating ecocide as a method rather than genocide itself, the anthropocentric bias within genocide studies is reinforced and repeated. For both of these reasons, I draw on Native American philosophies of nonhuman personhood to argue in the next sections that ecocide and genocide should be thought of as the same thing and creating a space for ecocide within the legal definition of genocide is one way to render the legal definition of genocide more just.

Nonhuman Personhood and the Genocide-Ecocide Nexus Though Short connects ecocide to the practice of genocide, there are two aspects of his analysis that need further development. First, Short deems ecocide problematic because of its devastating effect on human life but not necessarily because of the harm it wreaks on nonhuman beings and the planet. In this respect, Short relies on and maintains a human-nature dualism that understands ecocide to be more morally problematic because of its effects on humans than its effects on other

26 Michelle M. Jacob, Indian Pilgrims: Indigenous Journeys of Activism and Healing with Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2016), 64.

beings.27 For example, in his discussion of fracking, Short states,

indeed, in numerous studies from both countries [the US and Australia], local communities most affected by developments often cite considerable negative impacts on the environment and human health, including groundwater contamination, air pollution, radioactive and toxic waste, water usage, earthquakes, methane migration, and the industrialization of rural landscapes, the cumulative effect of which has led to calls for the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) to condemn fracking as a threat to basic human rights, particularly the rights to water and health. Fracking development is fast becoming a human rights issue.28

Here Short frames ecocide as a human rights problem—ecocide is bad because it infringes upon human freedom. He does not examine the implications of fracking and other types of resource exploitation practices on the lives of nonhuman beings, even though all of these acts are done at their expense. Implicit in this reading of ecocide and genocide is the notion that nature is passive, waiting to be exploited or preserved at the whims of whatever various groups of humans seem to value it at the time. In this outlook, the land, water, air, plants, and nonhuman animals exist for the sake of human use, and their depletion, overuse, and extinction might be tragic on its own but is only immoral insofar as it puts human life in jeopardy. This approach to ecocide leads to the second problem, which pertains to how Short presents the impact of ecocide on Indigenous peoples. Short’s analysis of the impact of ecocide on Indigenous peoples follows from the logic that nature is a passive recipient of human action. For example, in his assessment of the impact of the tar sands extraction, he writes, “[t]he effects on downstream indigenous groups are truly staggering. Their ability to hunt, trap and fish has been severely curtailed and, where it is possible, people are often too fearful of toxins to drink water and eat fish from waterways polluted by the ‘externalities’ of tar sand production.”29 Elsewhere he writes,

Indigenous peoples living close to and in the midst of tar and sand deposits have been expressing concern over the lethal impacts that these industrial events have had on their communities for years, with elders citing caustic changes to water quality, meat quality, and to the availability of fish and game. Concern is growing recently as health professionals and community members witness more and more friends and family fall ill with a variety of serious illnesses, and local fish populations are inflicted with ever more severe deformities.30

In both quotations, Short notes that tar sands extraction has a detrimental effect on nonhuman creatures, but the language he uses indicates that he is thinking about this harm in terms of its consequences for humans. The extraction process is not mentioned in terms of its harm to deer, elk, and other wildlife but only insofar as it affects the freedom of humans to hunt game and acquire meat. His mention of fish is connected to the human fear of eating them. The changes to water quality, the explosion of illnesses, and the increasing precariousness of life are understood only in terms of human suffering. To be clear, these issues pose serious problems to the health and wellbeing of the individual members of Indigenous communities and the continuation of their cultures. The continuation of their cultures relies on their ability to live according to traditional practices that are rooted in their connection with particular areas of land and the beings that live there. Short demonstrates that

27 I regard binary and dualism as two different things. A binary or dichotomy designates a difference between two kinds often in such a way that suggests that those two kinds are the only options. Dualism is a binary relationship that is framed by differential power relations. For example, the male-female dualism indicates not only sexual difference between two kinds but also the superiority of one kind over the other—in this case, the male over the female. The human-animal dualism functions similarly in that it suggests that there are either humans or animals and that humans rank higher ontologically, morally, etc. than animals or plants within a given metaphysical framework. 28 Short, Redefining Genocide, 59. 29 Ibid., 11. 30 Ibid., 174.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1720 Ecocide Is Genocide 111 he recognizes the importance of this connection, but even though he describes this connection in anthropocentric terms. He states,

[a]s Native author and activist Andrea Smith noted (Smith 2005: 121), ‘when Native peoples fight for cultural/spiritual preservation, they are ultimately fighting for the landbase which grounds their spirituality and culture’. That is, the land or ‘specific geographical setting’ (Churchill 2005: 168) with which many indigenous nations/communities identify themselves fundamentally embodies their ‘historical narrative’ (Abed 2006: 362) and who they are as peoples; with both their ‘practices, rituals, and traditions’ (ibid.: 327), and their political and socio-economic cohesion as a group, inextricably bound to the surrounding landscape. Alienation from that landscape, therefore inevitably results in the dissolution of an indigenous people’s ‘network of practical social relations’ (Powell 2007: 538), for they will no longer be able to carry out, develop and preserve their ‘cultural heritage and traditions,’ or ‘pass these traditions on to subsequent generations - thereby rendering them ‘socially dead.’31

In this passage, Short continues to think in terms of a human-nature dualism. According to Short, Indigenous peoples have strong connections to the land on which they live; the land is a site at which “practical social relations” take place, but the land itself is not recognized as a participating member in these relations. In fact, for Short, it is not so much that Indigenous peoples become alienated from land, but from the “landscape,” which is defined as a particular place or territory in which (presumably human) activity happens.32 But this is not the predominant way in which many Native peoples—especially Native Americans, First Nations, and Maori, among others—identify with land. In fact, if we take into account the metaphysical principles that ground the worldview and practices of many of these cultures, we can see that ecocide is a far more direct and egregious crime for these communities than Short seems to acknowledge. To demonstrate this, I draw on two interrelated metaphysical principles that appear in many Indigenous philosophies.33 The first principle, which is expressed through the Lakota phrase mitakuye oyasin (all my relations) holds that everything is related.34 The second principle expresses that the universe is alive and must be approached in a personal manner.35 According to Muscogee scholar Daniel Wildcat, “[s]tated simply, indigenous means ‘to be of a place.’”36 However, this does not just refer to the fact that individuals are born in particular places. To be of a place is an active concept that denotes an ongoing relationship that shapes and reshapes the identity of the place and the individuals that inhabit it. Place is not an abstract concept that can simply be pointed to on a map. Place is connected to the land itself, and the land is the ground on which all relationships take place; it is the foundation for relationality, and it is also the foundation for identity. For example, according to the Choctaw and Chickasaw creation stories, the peoples of those nations were created from mud and emerged from the ground, the earth literally giving birth to them. Furthermore, Choctaw and Chickasaw oral traditions point to particular locations

31 Ibid., 160. It should be noted that this is one of just two brief explanations that Short gives about the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the land. Of the four people cited in this passage, only two have identified as Native American, and both of them have been involved in controversies about whether they lied about those identities. 32Ibid., 160; Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “Landscape,” accessed July 27, https://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/landscape. 33 There are hundreds of Indigenous nations in what is known today as the US and Canada, and they each have their own philosophies. However, there are certain consistent themes that arise across many of these cultures. The principles I identify here are derived from the work of many Native American and First Nations scholars of different tribal affiliations including Vine Deloria, Jr., Anne Waters, Brian Yazze Burkhardt, Luther Standing Bear, and Robin Wall Kimmerer, among others. 34 Brian Burkhart. Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land: A Trickster Methodology for Decolonizing Environmental Ethics and Indigenous Futures (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2019), 69. 35 Phrasing adopted from Vine Deloria, Jr. and Daniel R. Wildcat, Power and Place: Indian Education in America (Colorado: Fulcrum Publishing, 2001), 23. 36 Deloria and Wildcat, Power and Place, 31.

where this happened, including the mounds in Mississippi and Alabama.37 In these stories the land is neither passive nor generic. The land is particular, and it actively participates in the creation of the people, and the people share its substance, making them relatives. As the land itself is an active participant in relationships, it possesses its own power, energy, and purpose. As Lakota scholar Vine Deloria, Jr. elaborates, in an Indigenous worldview “power and place are dominant concepts—power being the living energy that inhabits and/or composes the universe, and place being the relationship of things to each other.”38 The relationships and identities that spring from the land are not abstract concepts, but are particular and lived. For example, Brian Burkhart, a member of the Cherokee Nation, explains that the phrase “we are all related” is not an abstract, universal platitude about interconnectedness.39 It refers to relationships with particular beings. Referencing the film Lakota Wisdom Keepers, Burkhart calls attention to the way that Lakota wisdom-keeper David Swallow, Jr. points to specific trees and the earth right at his feet to explain the concept.40 In contrast to Short’s description of the relationship between Native peoples and the land, the land is an active, lively participant in the making and sustaining of relationships. As Choctaw scholar Laurelyn Whitt explains, “[t]he land and living entities which make it up are not apart from, but a part of, the people. Nor is ‘the environment’ something outside of, or surrounding, a people. The relation of belonging is ontologically basic. With inherent possession, agency is sometimes held to be reciprocal—a people belongs to/owns the land, and the land belongs to/owns a people.”41 In other words, in this cosmology the land is a person, not a thing or a resource to be consumed.42 Haudenosaunee/Anishinaabe scholar Vanessa Watts reinforces this notion of the land as person when she states that the land not only is in relation to Indigenous peoples but also is literally family: “[o]ur truth, not only Anishnaabe and Haudenosaunee people but in a majority of Indigenous societies, conceives that we (humans) are made from the land; our flesh is literally an extension of the soil.”43 Though Short recognizes that land is not generic and that removing Indigenous peoples from their lands is harmful because they have specific ties to those particular lands, insofar as he is still working from a Western notion of personhood, he misses an important point: “power and place produce personality.”44 According to Deloria, this means that “the universe is alive, but it also contains within it the very important suggestion that the universe is personal and, therefore, must be approached in a personal manner.”45 For Indigenous peoples, the problem of dispossession is not just a matter of having land—it is a matter of staying connected to the particular land with which they have relationships and knowledge. As Tewa philosopher Gregory Cajete explains, the relationship between the people and land is so deep and intense that forced removal constitutes a kind of “soul death” for entire generations, resulting in profound homesickness and psychological trauma.46 If the land is a living being that possesses power, particularity, personality, and agency, then the land is more than just a landscape—it is a member of the community. And as such, actions

37 LaDonna Brown, “The Chickasaw Creation Story,” Chickasaw TV Video Network, November 7, 2020, video, 00: 00:17- 00:00:34, accessed July 26, 2020, https://www.chickasaw.tv/videos/the-chickasaw-creation-story; Ken Carleton, “Nanih Waiya: Mother Mound of the Choctaw,” The Delta Endangered 1, no.1 (Spring 1996), accessed July 16, 2020, https://www.nps.gov/archeology/cg/vol1_num1/mother.htm; Richard Green, “Moundville: Home of Prehistoric Chickasaws?” Chickasaw TV Video Network, video, October 9, 2017, 00:00:08-00:00:27, accessed July 26, 2020, https:// www.chickasaw.tv/videos/moundville-home-of-prehistoric-chickasaws. 38 Deloria and Wildcat, Power and Place, 23. 39 Brian Burkhart, Indigenizing Philosophy, 69. 40 Ibid. 41 Laurelyn Whitt, Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples: The Cultural Politics of Law and Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 43. 42 Thomas M. Norton-Smith, The Dance of Person and Place: One Interpretation of American Indian Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 90. 43 Vanessa Watts, “Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency Amongst Humans and Non-humans (First Woman and Sky Woman Go on a European World Tour!),” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 2, no. 1 (2013), 27. 44 Deloria and Wildcat, Power and Place, 23. 45 Ibid. 46 Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers, 2000), 188.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1720 Ecocide Is Genocide 113 like strip mining, tar sands extraction, fracking, deforestation, and other activities that disfigure the land are more than just ecocidal—they are genocidal. Destruction of the land is not just a means of destroying human group life; to destroy the land is to harm a living member of the community. A similar argument can be made in regard to other-than-human animals, plants, and other beings that share the land that Indigenous peoples inhabit. According to Shawnee philosopher Thomas Norton-Smith, Native Americans have an expansive notion of personhood, which reflect the insights that “(1) personhood does not constitute the essence of a human being; (2) an entity is a person by virtue of its membership and participation in a network of social and moral relationships and practices with other persons; and (3) moral agency is at the core of personhood.”47 This view of personhood contrasts sharply with many theories of personhood in the Western worldview, which almost exclusively attribute personhood to humans due to various characteristics that are supposedly unique to human life—primarily rationality, agency, moral reasoning, and free will.48 Because the Western notion of personhood relies on human uniqueness, it frequently assumes a hierarchy between humans, animals, and other beings. However, this hierarchy does not exist for many Native American communities. Chickasaw writer Linda Hogan, explains, “[f]or us, the animals are understood to be our equals. They are still our teachers. They are our helpers and healers. They have been our guardians and we have been theirs.”49 Being members of different species is not a barrier to these relationships because underlying this approach to nonhuman personhood is the ontological principle that everything is related. As Deloria explains, “[e]verything in the natural world has relationships with every other thing and the total set of relationships makes up the natural world as we experience it.”50 Put differently, no human or nonhuman being exists independently; all things are connected to one another in lively, complex relationships. In contrast to the view that nonhuman nature is dead, inert, or passive, from Native American worldviews, nonhuman animals like deer, bears, and salmon, along with bodies of water, features of the land like canyons or buttes, and sacred objects like drums and pipes can all possess a kind of power, force or spirit. Algonkin tribes call it manitou, but other tribes use the terms nilchi’i (Dine), usen (Apache), wakan (Lakota), and orenda (Wendat).51 This quality imbues beings with their own animacy, power, and purposiveness, which calls for recognition and respect. The recognition that other beings possess manitou cannot be reduced to religious belief; it is a fact of the world. According to Norton-Smith, spiritual forces like manitou are experientially akin to the Western concept of the mind. In other words, even though one does not have direct access to the thoughts and mental states of others, one can infer from experience that other humans have minds. Likewise, outward signs indicate that other-than-human beings possess manitou.52 Because all beings are capable of sharing these attributes and are in relation to one another, there is no passive or isolated being-in-the-world. Everything has the potential to be a person through its relationships and through the obligations it owes and receives. This notion of personhood has real effects in the world, guiding the form that relationships between humans and other animals take. According to Native American philosophies, humans and other animals are kin. Black Elk of the Oglala Lakota, for example, describes how his life story is “of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one spirit.”53 In other words, other-than-human animals and plants are siblings to humans. In many Western societies it is accepted that humans have moral obligations first and foremost to

47 Norton-Smith, Dance of Person and Place, 86. 48 In some Western nations, like the US, personhood has, strangely, also been attributed to corporations. 49 Linda Hogan, “First People,” in Intimate Nature: The Bond between Women and Animals, ed. Linda Hogan et al. (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1997), xi. 50 Vine Deloria Jr., “Relativity, Relatedness, and Reality,” in Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr., Reader, ed. Barbara Deloria et al. (Golden: Fulcrum Publishing, 1999), 34. 51 Viola F. Cordova, “What Is the World?” in How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V.F. Cordova, ed. Kathleen Dean Moore et al. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007), 103-4. Norton-Smith, Dance of Person and Place, 86. 52 Norton-Smith, Dance of Person, 87. 53 Quoted in Norton-Smith, Dance of Person, 90.

their immediate human kin and family. By understanding relationships with nonhuman persons as familial, Indigenous peoples more easily fold those beings into their realm of moral obligation. What binds people together is not species membership but a shared experience, knowledge, and participation in life that is rooted in a particular place.54 These relationships also take more political forms. For instance, First Nations and Native American scholars like Nuu-cha-nuulth philosopher Eugene Richard Atleo, Anishinaabe writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Cajete say that for many tribes nonhuman animals and humans are in treaty relationships: “[a]ccording to Nishnaabeg traditions, our relationship with the moose nation, the deer nation and the caribou nation is a treaty relationship like any other, and all the parties involved have both rights and responsibilities in terms of maintaining the agreement.”55 All three authors describe particular protocols56 that must be followed when dealing with nonhuman animal nations that demonstrate the proper amount of respect for those beings whose activities and lives sustain Native communities.57 For example, Simpson considers a story about the sudden disappearance of the caribou. After searching high and low for any trace of the missing caribou, one seeker sent out from the Nishnaabeg met a young doe who told the seeker that the caribou had left after being disrespected by the Nishnaabeg people. The caribou felt that the people did not appreciate their gifts as evinced by practices of overhunting, wasting meat, and not showing proper reverence. The tribe sent diplomats, spiritual leaders, and mediators to listen to and negotiate with the caribou, and eventually the two parties came to a mutually satisfactory agreement about how the Nishnaabeg should interact with the caribou, resulting in a political treaty.58 This story demonstrates that from an Indigenous perspective, other-than-human animal beings are seen as equal to humans. They have their own communities, interests, and politics, and they are recognized as constituting nations themselves. Accepting either claim about human-nonhuman relationships—that other-than-human animals are kin to humans or that other-than-human animals are political beings that have their own nations—leads to a radical rethinking of who and what is affected by ecocide and genocide. The UN definition of genocide states that genocide involves killing a group in whole or in part. If we accept that nonhuman beings like land, salmon, and maize can be kin to humans, then killing other-than-human persons is a direct attack on a given community or group, and their destruction constitutes destroying part of that “human” group. Likewise, if we accept that a political relationship exists between humans and other-than-human persons, this also amounts to genocide. One of the groups named in the UN definition of genocide is the national group. If groups of nonhuman animals consist of separate nations, their destruction is genocide.59 While that genocide may lead to the genocide of the humans who are in relation to nonhuman nations, it can also be recognized independently from the genocide experienced by humans. To illustrate this, consider the mass slaughter of buffalo that was carried out during westward expansion in the US. In her article “Buffalo Genocide in the Nineteenth Century”, Tasha Hubbard of the Cree, Nakota, Anishinaabe, and Metís makes this point exquisitely. She argues that the destruction of the buffalo was genocidal not simply because it led to the physical and social deaths of human persons,

54 Deloria and Wildcat, Power and Place, 32-34. 55 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2011), 111; See also Eugene Richard Atleo (Umeek), Tsawalk A Nuu- chah-nulth Worldview (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004); and Cajete, Native Science. 56 Simpson prefers to use the word “practice” rather than “protocol” because protocols are rules that substitute for engaged practices of producing relationships. I continue to use the word here, however, because other authors like Atleo use them to denote formal procedures, which is conveyed more clearly through the word “protocol.” See Atleo, Tsawalk A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview, 17, 62. 57 Atleo, for example, begins Tsawalk by recounting a whale hunt carried out by his grandfather where the protocols were performed incorrectly. The disruption almost caused the hunt to fail, but thanks to the intervention of Wren, who recognized that the proper ceremonies were disrupted accidentally, the hunt was set back on track. See Atleo, Tsawalk A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview, x. 58 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 58-61. 59 Furthermore, claiming that nonhuman animal groups have no nationhood would also be a rejection of the worldview of many Indigenous peoples, contributing to the genocidal erasure of their cultures and ways of life.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1720 Ecocide Is Genocide 115 but because “specific genocidal practices and their theoretical underpinnings can be applied to the buffalo slaughter.”60 Citing historical documents, she shows how settlers intentionally set about slaughtering buffalo with the goal of exterminating them, killing vast numbers of them and kidnapping calves, which resulted in the social death of the buffalo and the decline of their mental and emotional health.61 Though Hubbard’s argument is quite compelling, reviewing the case of the buffalo is worthwhile in order to demonstrate what is at stake.

Buffalo Genocide Before 1800, 30 million to 60 million buffalo lived on the plains from Northern Saskatchewan to New Mexico and as far east as the Appalachian Mountains.62 Their presence shaped the environment, making them a keystone species.63 For the plains tribes, the buffalo were a crucial component of their cultures and social fabric. Not only did the buffalo create a particular habitat suited toa diverse ecosystem in which Indigenous peoples could survive, their bodies provided a source of food, clothing, shelter, and tools. Additionally, the buffalo were central to the spiritual identity of the community. According to Black Elk, “[i]t was the White Buffalo Cow Woman who in the beginning brought to us our most sacred pipe, and from that time, we have been related with the Four-Leggeds and all that moves. Tatanka, the buffalo, is the closest four-legged relative that we have, and they live as a people, as we do.”64 By the mid-1800s, the buffalo populations were starting to decline.65 White settlers, who were bringing their cattle onto the land, displaced the buffalo. Tribes from the east, forced to vacate their traditional homelands, were removed onto plains land, leading to greater demand for the buffalo as a resource.66 This process was accompanied by sudden growth in the buffalo hide robe market. In 1835, the American Fur Co. alone had an order for 36,000 buffalo robes, and by 1857, the number of hides delivered to retailers was up to 70,400 hides per year.67 Between 1872 and 1873, over 825,000 hides were transported by rail from the plains to the east.68 But the real devastation took place during the 1870s and 80s as hunters, the military, and growing numbers of cattle ranchers moved deeper into the plains, eliminating buffalo for their own varied purposes. The expansion of the railroad and cattle ranching into the west occurred simultaneously as part of the industrialization of American agriculture and was bolstered by the Homestead Act of 1862, which granted settlers 160 acres of land each. The destruction of the buffalo herds made more room for ranchers and opened up a new market of beef buyers—the Native Americans who were starving as a result of the depletion of the buffalo herds.69 Historian Daniel Smits argues that the military played a significant role in the extermination of the bison.70 The army was integral to securing the frontier and pushing it westward, making room for the railroads and accompanying ranchers and settlements. General William T. Sherman, for example, held that getting rid of the buffalo was necessary for the development of the rail system,

60 Tasha Hubbard, “Buffalo Genocide in Nineteenth-Century North America: ‘Kill, Skin, and Sell,’” in Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America, ed. Andrew Woolford et al. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 295. 61 Ibid. 62 David Fitzgerald and Linda Hasselstrom,Bison: Monarch of the Plains (Portland: Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company, 1998), 7. 63 Hubbard, Buffalo Genocide, 292. 64 Quoted in Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Massachusetts: South End Press, 1999), 143. 65 Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 66 Pekka Hämäläinin, “The First Phase of Destruction: Killing the Southern Plains Buffalo, 1790-1840,” Great Plains Quarterly 21, no. 2 (April 1, 2001), 101-114. 67 John H. White, “Hunting Buffalo from the Train: Buffalo, Iron Horses, and theath P toward Extinction,” Railroad History, no. 201 (Fall-Winter 2009), 44. 68 Ibid., 49. 69 LaDuke, All Our Relations, 142. 70 David D. Smits, The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883,” Western Historical Quarterly 25, no. 3 (Autumn 1994), 314.

and frequently sponsored civilian hunting expeditions were one solution to the problem. Likewise, in his memoirs, Lieutenant John M. Schofield, commander of the Department of Missouri from 1869-1870, wrote, “[w]ith my cavalry and carbined artillery camped in front, I wanted no other occupation in life than to ward off the savage and kill off his food until there should no longer be an Indian frontier in our beautiful country.”71 Slaughtering the buffalo had a two-fold benefit. It cleared land for settlers and took care of the so-called “Indian problem.” An article inNavy Journal from June 26, 1869 reported that Sherman stated “that the quickest way to compel the Indians to settle down to civilized life was to send ten regiments of soldiers to the plains, with orders to shoot buffaloes until they became too scarce to support the redskins.”72 For the army, the buffalo and Native Americans were so inextricably linked that soldiers would occasionally pretend that when they were killing buffalo they were actually killing Indians.73 The killing of buffalo was a symbolic act that also had real life-threatening consequences for Indigenous peoples and their cultures. The army worked in tandem with hunters as a method of eradicating Native Americans, often sponsoring hunting expeditions and inviting hunters to accompany them.74 Killing the buffalo provided the hunters with sport and profit. With the development of the railroads, amateur hunters took excursions to the plains to shoot buffalo from the train windows as they passed herds.75 Their impact on the herds was relatively benign compared to the market hunters, some of whom claimed they could kill forty to fifty buffalo in a day.

[The hunters] often worked in pairs. They would hide in a foxhole and wait for a herd to pass. Killing the herd leader was the most effective way to start. If you could kill the boss, the herd would dissolve into grand confusion, because it would take some time for a new leader to emerge. The next best plan was to kill an animal and wait until others in the herd caught the scent of blood. With the aid of a needle gun and telescopic sight, it was easy to hit one animal. After it had fallen, all those near enough to smell the blood would circle around the fallen one, sniffing the air and pawing the ground. These stationary targets were easy to pick off, one by one.76

According to Hubbard, the hunters were not simply taking advantage of the fear and chaos incited within the buffalos but also preying on the complex social and inner lives of the buffalo. She states, “[b]uffalo feel grief for their dead, according to both my traditional teachers and the longtime buffalo warden at the Grasslands National Park, Wes Olson. He has observed [that]…rather than abandon the body, buffalo will stay with the deceased, attempt to revive their family member, and make audible sounds of grief.”77 Not only do buffalo feel grief for their dead, but the killing of adults and kidnapping of young buffalo broke down the buffalo’s own social relations and led to mental illness. Hubbard recounts the experiences of John Cook, a buffalo hunter:

[T]he hunters’ [had a] practice of surrounding available waterways, forcing the buffalo to approach anyway, and gunning them down. Those buffalo who managed to find a water source that was free from hunters ‘would rush and crowd in pell-mell, crowding, jamming, and trampling down both the weak and the strong, to quench a burning thirst. Many of them were rendered insane from their intolerable, unbearable thirst’ (Cook 1938: 198). Instead of living cooperatively in their herd society, the buffalo were tortured prior to their death at the hands of the hide hunters.78

71 Quoted in Smits, The Frontier Army, 316. 72 Ibid., 317. 73 Ibid., 318. 74 David A. Dary, The Buffalo Book: The Full Saga of the American Animal (Sage Books, 1989). 75 White, Hunting Buffalo, 46. 76 Ibid., 49. 77 Hubbard, Buffalo Genocide, 300. 78 Ibid.; John R. Cook, The Border and the Buffalo: An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1938), 198.

Hubbard contends that ignoring the personhood of the buffalo reinforces the anthropocentric bias in genocide scholarship, which leads to a failure to account for the types of relationships between humans and other-than-human beings that exist in many Indigenous cultures.79 The death of the buffalo had a debilitating effect on the Indigenous communities who regarded them as kin, allies, and protectors. According to environmental activist Winona LaDuke of the Anishinaabe, “[m]any Native people view the historic buffalo slaughter as the time when the buffalo relatives, the older brothers, stood up and took the killing intended for their younger brothers, the Native peoples.”80

Conclusion If we accept the veracity of the principles that everything is related81 and that the universe is alive and must be approached in a personal manner, then ecocide is not simply a method of genocide. It is genocide. For the Native American scholars discussed above, relationships between humans and other beings are frequently equal and nonhierarchical. Other beings have both personality and power and, as such, must be treated with the same respect accorded to human persons. According to Short, ecocide is genocide when it harms human groups. Destruction of nonhuman nature is problematic because it destroys a resource upon which humans rely for their biological and cultural survival. From a Native American perspective, however, nonhuman nature is not merely a resource—its value does not lie solely in whether it can serve human purposes. Rather, no ethical distinction exists between human groups and the other-than-human beings that are part of those communities. Everything is related; everything is connected. This means that ecocide is personal. For example, during the 2016-17 Standing Rock movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Native American protestors held signs that stated, “Water is sacred” and “Water is life.” These posters did more than signify the fear that a resource would be affected. These words signified a concern about the wellbeing, health, and livelihood of the water and land for its own sake as an integral member of the community. As Joyce Rain Anderson explains, thinking of the Native Americans who came to Standing Rock to resist the pipeline project as protesters is inaccurate: “[i]n most Native nations, the people see themselves as caretakers of Mother Earth, enacting that inseparable link between land and body. In other words, we are relatives, and that relationship calls for responsibility.”82 Ojibwa scholar Dennis H. McPherson and philosopher Douglas J. Rabb echo this sentiment in their book Indian from the Inside: “[t]here is, we suggest, a moral obligation to protect the habitat of the moose, the beaver, the muskrat, and the lynx; the habitat of geese, ducks, grouse and hare, not just because members of the Band wish to continue hunting and trapping, but because these other-than-human persons are also extended members of the Ojibwa society.”83 To adequately address the harms suffered by Native Americans and other Indigenous groups as a result of ecocide, the definition of genocide needs to change so that it does not exhibit an anthropocentric bias that limits potential victims of genocide to human groups. Further grounds for such a change could also be established by reversing the claim that ecocide is genocide to genocide is ecocide. Although digging deeply into this line of argumentation is beyond the scope of this article, there is already research that demonstrates how humans are participants in ecosystems that become disturbed when humans are removed from them or when the human groups occupying those localities change.84 To briefly elaborate on this point, consider William Cronon’s research

79 Ibid., 295. 80 LaDuke, All Our Relations, 154. 81 Raymond Pierotti,Indigenous Knowledge, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2011). 82 Joyce Rain Anderson, “Walking with Relatives: Indigenous Bodies of Protest,” in Unruly Rhetorics: Protest, Persuasion, and Publics, ed. Jonathan Alexander et al. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburg Press, 2018), 48. 83 Dennis H. McPhereson and Douglas J. Rabb, Indian from the Inside: Native American Philosophy and Cultural Renewal, 2nd ed. (Jefferson: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2011), 91. 84 Russel. L. Barsh, “Forests, Indigenous Peoples, and Biodiversity,” Global Biodiversity 7, no. 2 (1997), 20-24; Henry T. Lewis, “A Parable of Fire: Hunter Gatherers in Canada and Australia,” in Traditional Ecological Knowledge: A Collection of Essays, ed. Robert E. Johannes, (Cambridge. IUCN, 1989); Roderick Neuman, Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998); Raymond Pierotti and

in his book Changes in the Land.85 He documents how the ecology of New England changed upon the arrival of European colonists and the displacement of Native Americans from their lands. For example, various tribes in the northeastern US practiced forest management techniques including controlled burning. Such practices allowed certain trees, including birch, pitch pine, and white pine, that grow well in direct sunlight to flourish while keeping underbrush at bay.86 Doing so provided open pathways through the woods that allowed larger game animals like deer and low- lying plants like strawberries to proliferate. As Native peoples were displaced from their lands and encouraged to adopt European lifestyles, these practices came to an end, which ultimately changed which species were able to thrive and survive. Regardless of whether some species were seen as desirable for extraction and consumption by the settlers, the simple change in how humans were or were no longer interacting with the land would have led some species to experience dramatic changes to their survivability and to suffer great losses of life, making the removal of Indigenous people from the land a form of ecocide. In contemporary times, Indigenous peoples have come into conflict with global conservation movements, which care deeply about the health of ecosystems and animal populations but frequently hold the view that such ecosystems flourish best when humans leave them alone. As Mark Dowie illustrates in Conservation Refugees, some Native peoples have not only been forced to discontinue traditional subsistence hunting practices but have even been displaced from their lands so that the land and its other-than-human inhabitants can be protected.87 Certain attitudes about conservation, made explicit in documents like the U.S. Wilderness Act of 1964, which states that wilderness is “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain,”88 demonstrate a strong human-nature binary that appears to reject the notion that humans can have a non-destructive function within an ecosystem. Views like this are used to justify forced relocations of Indigenous peoples, which in turn interfere with the cultural traditions of those human groups; such interference ultimately may be genocidal based on Lemkin’s definition. When these views lead to the displacement of Indigenous groups, they also disrupt and destroy the relationships between humans, the land, and the land’s other inhabitants such that those other creatures might face destruction or great losses to their communities and changes to their habitats. For the most part, Western cultures have largely accepted that humans are ontologically and morally superior to other beings—that humans deserve moral treatment because of their inherent dignity and rights. This view has been at the expense of other-than-human beings and does not reflect the ontology of non-Western worldviews, such as the Indigenous philosophies described above. Ideally, the definition of genocide should be rewritten to incorporate nonhuman groups as groups that can be targeted through genocide. Until the definition of genocide is altered, the definition will continue to reflect a colonial worldview that has been used to excuse the destruction of nonhuman nature and oppress Native peoples. However, since ratification of such a change is highly unlikely given the current state of the world and the entrenched views about human-animal relations, at minimum, ecocide needs to be recognized as an act of genocide. This addition would not only help capture some cultural components lost in the transition from Lemkin’s definition to the UN’s but also mitigate some of the anthropocentric and Western biases of the UN definition and provide Indigenous peoples and other groups with more leverage for contesting climate change and other devastating acts against nonhuman nature.

Daniel Wildcat, “Traditional Ecological Knowledge: The Third Alternative (Commentary),” Ecological Applications 10, no. 5 (October 2000), 1333-1340. 85 William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003). 86 Cronon, Changes in the Land, 30. 87 Mark Dowie, Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009). 88 The Wilderness Act, 16 U.S.C. 1131-1136 (1946), accessed July 30, 2020 https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1981/upload/W- Act_508.pdf

Acknowledgements As a non-Indigenous person of European descent who wrote this article while living on the traditional lands of the Kalapuya and Chesapeke peoples, I would like to express my gratitude to the Indigenous scholars and communities who have shared their philosophies and stories, which has made this critique possible. I hope this research contributes to creating a more equitable pathway for Indigenous peoples to achieve justice for the violence they have experienced and are experiencing. I would also like to thank the editors for their support and the reviewers for their thoughtful feedback on this article.

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Si mi pluma tuviese don de lágrimas, escribiría una obra titulada El indio, y haría llorar al universo.

(If my pen had the gift of tears, I would write a work called The Indian, and make the universe cry). Juan Montalvo, 18871

In a letter dated September 16, 1501, Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragón instructed the governor of the Indies (at that time the Caribbean region), Nicolás de Ovando (1502- 1509. Appointed to his post as early as Sep. 3, 1501), to treat the natives in a humane and decent manner, enable them to move about freely, feel secure, and see to it that “no one is allowed to use force against them, rob them, cause them another harm or damage.”2 The letter also commands Ovando to be gentle and caring, while avoiding all use of coercion when converting the natives to “our holy Catholic faith.”3 This royal demand of good will and fair treatment toward the Indians contained no statements that could be construed as even hinting at a deliberate intention to harm the native population, certainly as long as they “behaved,” that is, accepted the burden of Spanish rule and followed its requirements, which were made clear in the Requirement Document.4 Nevertheless, Raphaël Lemkin, like several Latin American historians and genocide scholars after him, was not impressed by this. As far as he was concerned, the “demographic catastrophe” of sixteenth-century Spanish America was a fact, though it was not mainly the result of epidemics, as was widely alleged by most Latin American researchers, but rather deliberate killings, torture and massacres, mass bondage, sexual abuse, deprivation of livelihoods, and extensive exploitation of the indigenous population, carried out in blatant violation of directives, edicts, or official laws, which were hardly ever enforced.5 While the local populace seemed to be showered with written professions of empathy and sensitivity, they were made to carry heavy burdens and meet demands they could not possibly cope with. As Lemkin pointed out, an atmosphere of abuse and terror dominated the colony.6 He defined this as genocide, and he was the first to do so. The present article is an attempt to investigate Lemkin’s claim within a framework which I call the colonial paradox, that is, the intertwining of two contradictory policies, conservation and exploitation. The essence of this paradox is that Spain actually intended to protect the Indians from

1 Antonio Sacoto, El indio en el Ensayo de la América Española (Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, 1994), 52. 2 Translation for the quote is as follow: “ninguno les haga fuerza, ni los roben, ni hagan otro mal ni daño.” (originally: “ninguno les faga fuerza, nin los rroben, nin fagan otro mal nin dapño”). Quoted here is 16th century Spanish adapted slightly to modern Spanish. See King Ferdinand II of Aragón and Queen Isabella I of Castile, “Instrucciones al Comendador Frey Nicolas de Ovando. Gobernador de las Islas y Tierra Firme del Mar Oceano” [Instructions to Commander Fray Nicolás de Ovando, Governor of the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea] (Granada, 16 de septiembre de 1501/Granada, September 16, 1501), in Colección de Documentos para la Historia de la Formación Social de Hispanoamérica, 1493-1810. Volume I (1493-1592), ed. Richard Konetzke (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953), doc. 6, 5. 3 Ibid. 4 Refer to page 5 and page 7 of this article. 5 The provisions of the Spanish Crown to their agents in their American colonies are referred to by various names such as Leyes, Cédulas, Cartas, Provisiones, Instrucciones, Cartas reales, Declaraciones, Ordenanças, Pragmáticas or various combinations such as Leyes y Ordenanças or Carta y Provision real and so on. Despite the different terminology, which express various legal formulations, 16th century jurists regarded them all as laws. See Alfonso Garcia Gallo, “La Ley Como Fuente del Derecho en Indias en el Siglo XVI,” Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español 21-22 (1951-1952), 618-620. 6 Raphaël Lemkin, Spain Colonial Genocide. Raphaël Lemkin Collection, P-154, Box 8, Folder 12 (American Jewish Historical Society, Center for Jewish History: Boston, and New York). Eitan Ginzberg. “Genocide and the Hispanic-American Dilemma.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, 2 (2020): 122-152. ©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1666 Genocide and the Hispanic-American Dilemma 123 any harm they might suffer due to its presence in their territories, yet knowingly failed to do so, albeit with a certain amount of anguish. The reason for this failure was, I believe, Spain’s knotty national and colonial situation. America dropped into Spain’s lap like manna from heaven. It had no “irresistible necessity” for such a vast continent–at least not from a demographic perspective.7 Nevertheless, the discovery of America opened up a military and commercial Pandora’s box–an entirely predictable outcome for a society that had been involved in a centuries-long war–and brought Spain face to face with the prospects of wealth, viewed essentially in terms of “gold and booty;”8 land, i.e., “lordship;”9 and alien peoples, perceived as “vassals, slaves, and converts.”10 Since America could easily supply such unexpected assets, as Cortés’s letters to King Charles related so convincingly,11 it was only natural to bind them to the Spanish Crown through conquest, a sine qua non of all European countries’ “highly developed territorial consciousness” and competitiveness.12 Yet, by conquering America and occupying it para su mayor perpetuidad y firmeza (“in perpetuity”), as stipulated in the special royal law of September 1519,13 Spain actually became trapped in it. At a certain historical moment–let us say, in the middle of sixteenth century–when it was already clear that the natives were being harmed and dying in masses as result of the demanding work and harsh conditions imposed upon them, Spain was no longer in a position to abandon America without severely damaging its status as a significant European power. Leaving America would have meant handing it over to England and France, its main rivals in Europe. It would also have entailed exposing the Indians, many of whom had already converted to Christianity, to further abuse at the hands of greedy settlers, who would definitely remain in America, on the one hand, and enraged pagan groups, who never recognized Spanish rule, on the other. Thus, having no substitute for the native manpower needed to sustain its national and international status, and to uphold its financial obligations to the pioneers and conquerors who had come to America at their own expense,14 it appeared that Spain was unable to leave America.15 The only option left, after

7 John H. Elliott, “The Seizure of Overseas Territories by the European Powers,” in Theories of Empire, 1450-1800, ed. David Armitage (Aldershot, Hampshire and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1998), 139-140. 8 Ibid., 142. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Anthony Pagden, trans and ed., Hernán Cortés: Letters from Mexico (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 40-46; ((first letter, April 1520); 92-96, 99-113 (second letter, April 1522)). 12 Elliott,The Seizure, 145-157. 13 King Charles I, “Que las Indias Occidentales estén Siempre Unidas á la Corona de Castilla, y no se pueden enagenar,” [That the West Indies are always united to the Crown of Castile, and cannot be alienated], in Council of the Indies (Real y Supremo Consejo de Indias), Recopilación de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, ed. Consejo de la Hispanidad. (Madrid: Consejo de la Hispanidad, [1681] 1943), Tomo I, Libro III, Título I, Ley primera (Barcelona, Sept 14, 1519), 523. 14 This principle, already applied to Columbus during his (first) voyage to the Ocean’s Seas (Mares Oçéanas), became a law in September 1573. See, King Philip II, “Que ningun Descubrimiento, ni Poblacion se haga á Costa del Rey” [That no discovery, nor settlement is made at the expense of the King] (Segovia, 13 de julio de 1573/Segovia July 13, 1573), Council of the Indies (Real y Supremo Consejo de Indias), in Recopilación de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, ed. Consejo de la Hispanidad. (Madrid: Consejo de la Hispanidad, [1681] 1943), Tomo II, Libro IV, Título I, Ley XVII, 4. 15 The idea of relinquishing at least some parts of America was actually considered by Philip II in late 1556, a few months after he ascended the throne. Sensitive to the criticism of the Crown’s conduct in America, he decided to weight the matter at least with respect to the Viceroyalty of Peru. The Peruvian encomenderos (beneficiaries) represented by Antonio de Rivera, a well-known encomendero (beneficiary) from Quito, offered to purchase theirencomiendas (grants) in perpetuity, along with all the associated jurisdiction rights, for 7.6 million ducats, and thus become the exclusive rulers of the Viceroyalty (in reality, all of South America), while maintaining a certain affinity to the Crown. The impoverished Philip was delighted with this proposal and formed a special committee made up of members of the Colonial Council to examine its implications. The committee unequivocally rejected the offer, pointing out that it would allow 300 or 400 encomenderos (beneficiaries) to take over all of South America, enslave the indigenous people and wipe out every last one of them. See, Consejo de las Indias, “Parecer del Consejo de Las Indias de 21 de octubre de 1556 en Repuesta de Ciertos Capítulos que Su Magestad les Enbio a Consultar Desde Gante Tocante a la Perpetuidad de Las Indias,” in Juan de la Peña, Luciano Pereña, Escuela Española de la Paz, De Bello Contra Insulanos: Intervención de España en América, II, Escuela Española de la Paz, segunda generación, 1560-1585, Posición de la Corona, ed. Luciano Pereña et al, vol. 10 of Corpus Hispanorum de Pace (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas,

rejecting the idea of turning Spain into a commercial or protectionist power in America, based upon a contractual relationship with the Indians,16 was to continue its harmful, exploitative policy toward the indigenous population. This situation, which in effect eliminated the Crown’s freedom of action in American affairs while creating an inherent contradiction between intentions and the ability to realize them, is what I have called the colonial paradox. This paradox gave birth to a politics of duplicity, which exhibited a firm, but basically hollow, protective approach to the Indians. Although its policies achieved some minor improvements here and there, they were overshadowed by vigorous demands to increase the wealth produced by the colonies, and strict instructions to make no use of the Crown’s treasury to fund the colony’s maintenance and discoveries (i.e., further conquests). While the Crown appeared to take notice of, and even invite criticism and debate, it also stifled them. Although Church leaders or the King’s emissaries would always extol the natives’ humanity and natural freedom, in reality, they were treated in a patronizing and superior manner, as if they were minors. They were prohibited from wearing European clothing, riding on horses, possessing weapons, serving in public or religious institutions, training for or holding certain qualified professions, studying in Spanish schools and universities, or residing as individuals beyond the rural Indian “republics” or specified urban neighborhoods. This approach was reinforced with appropriate theological, legal, and moral justifications. The present article will explore this paradox and point to the contradictions of Spain’s colonization of America. These contradictions were exacerbated by Spain’s fragile economic situation, as well as theological and ideological pressures, which prevented the implementation of the Crown’s humanistic approach. From the standpoint of this perspective, I will attempt to clarify the extent to which the concept of genocide–in the sense that Lemkin used in relation to Spanish America–is the appropriate one to define the human disaster that took place in the lands under Spain’s control. To the best of my knowledge, this is a new and more comprehensive approach for examining the Spanish American impact on the native population. My attempt goes beyond the conventional, linear interpretive method of analyzing action and reaction–which was never able to resolve the historiographic dispute surrounding Spanish American “black” or “white” legends–and suggests a certain inclusive and more encompassing attitude toward the interpretive dilemma of Spanish American colonialism.17

Good Intentions In March 1503, Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II dispatched another communiqué, similar to the previously cited letter of September 1501, instructing Governor Ovando to make sure that

1982), 94-97; Consejo de las Indias, “Recomendaciones del Consejo de Indias Sobre la Perpetuidad en el Peru,” in Juan de la Peña, De Bello Contra Insulanos. Intervención de España en América, II, Escuela Española de la Paz, segunda generación, 1560-1585, Posición de la Corona, ed. Luciano Pereña et al., vol. 10 of Corpus Hispanorum de Pace (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1982), 98-101. The Salamancan scholars and las Casas reacted similarly in a lengthy document, De imperatoria seu [sive] regia potestate (The imperial or royal power). If the king accepts the encomenderos’ (beneficiaries) offer, they contended, the Indians must be released from all their obligations to the Spanish Crown and be given full rights of self-determination, immune from any possible plans of the Spanish settlers to enslave or exploit them. In the end, after further consideration, the king gave up on the idea. See, Luciano Pereña, “Estudio preliminar,” in Bartolomé de las Casas, De regia Postestate o Derecho de Autodeterminación, ed. Luciano Pereña et al., vol. 8 of Corpus Hispanorum de Pace (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1969), xlvi-cxxxviii; Bartolomé Hernández S.J., “Carta de Batolomé Hernández de la Compañía de Jesús y Confesor del Virrey, a Don Juan de Ovando, Presidente del Consejo de Indias” [Letter of Batolomé Hernández], (Lima, 19 de abril de 1572/Lima, April 19, 1572), in José de Acosta, “De procuranda Indorum Salute, o Pacificaión y Colonización,” ed. Luciano Pereña et al, vol. 23 of Corpus Hispanorum de Pace (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1984), 642–653; Bartolomé de las Casas, “De Imperatoria seu regia potestate,” in Bartolomé de las Casas, De regia Postestate o Derecho de Autodeterminación, ed. Luciano Pereña et al., vol. 8 of Corpus Hispanorum de Pace (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1984), 1-115. 16 Please refer to the below discussion on page 16-17. 17 On the history of the “black legend,” see Miguel Molina Martínez, “La Lyenda Negra Revisitada: la Polémica Continua,” Revista Hispanoamericana 2 (2012), 1-15.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1666 Genocide and the Hispanic-American Dilemma 125 all Indians have a house where they can live with their families, work the land, and raise cattle.18 King Ferdinand II issued a cédula (royal command) in May 1509, which stipulated that the local population should only be asked to take on light tasks, and that they should reside solely in their own communities, and be governed by their own leaders.19 The Laws of Burgos (1512),20 which provided a legal basis for justifying both the Spanish conquest of America and the exploitation of its indigenous population, endorsed the encomienda (grant) as a benevolent civilizing institution,21 while attesting to the natives’ status as the legal owners of the land, and asserting that their transfer to the encomiendas (grants) should be done by means of persuasion alone.22 The arrangements for their work in the encomienda (grant) fields and mines contained rigid guidelines that gave serious consideration to the appropriate type of employment and nutrition for women, as well as young adults.23 The preamble of the Requerimiento (Requirement Document) an important supplementary outcome of the Burgos Conference expressed the following, on the whole quite principled ideas:

And we [the conquerors] in their name [the king of Spain and the Pope] shall receive you in all love and charity, and shall leave you, your wives and your children, and your lands, free without servitude, that you may do with them and with your own selves freely that which you like and think best, and they shall not compel you to become Christians, unless you yourselves, when informed of the truth, should wish to be converted to our Holy Catholic Faith.24

In December 1526, an unequivocal royal decree demanded that native populations no longer be sent to the gold mines in the Caribbean islands, since so many of them fell victim to the harsh

18 King Ferdinand II of Aragón and Queen Isabella I of Castille, “Introducción al Comendador Nicolás de Ovando, Gobernador de la Islas y Tierra Firme, Sobre el Modo y Manera de Concentrar a la Población Indígena Dispersa en Pueblos” [Introduction to Commander Nicolás de Ovando, Governor of the Islands and Mainland, on the manner of concentrating the dispersed indigenous population in towns] (Alcalá de Henares, 20 de marzo y Zaragoza, 29 de marzo, 1503/Alcalá de Henares, March 20, 1503 and Zaragoza, March 29, 1503), in Cedulario de Tierras: Compilación de Legislación Agraria Colonial (1497-1820), ed. Francisco de Solano (México D. F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984), doc. 4, 110. 19 Ronald D. Hussey, “Text of the Laws of Burgos (1512-1513) Concerning the Treatment of the Indians,” Hispanic American Historical Review 12, no. 3 (1932), 302. 20 The Laws of Burgos were an outcome of the Burgos Conference, a gathering of jurists, theologians, and representatives of the Dominican Order, convened in the summer of 1512 (presumably in August) in Burgos, at the request of King Ferdinand II and the Royal Council, in response the Dominican delegation’s outcry against the brutal exploitation of the Indians which they had witnessed in Española in 1510-1511. The conference discussed a number of issues concerning the status of the Spanish Crown in America, the civil status of the natives, their proper treatment, and the process of their Christianization. The final document issued by the conference consisted of seven introductory statements plus thirty-five laws. The Ordenanzas Para el Buen Tratamiento de los Indios (ordinances regarding the good treatment of the Indians) were approved on December 27, 1512. 21 The encomienda (grant) was an allocation of land and a group of indigenous inhabitants to a Spanish settler for his use and benefit. Typically, they were assigned to officers and soldiers who took part in expeditions of conquest and pacification. Encomienda (grant) holders were not considered to be the owners of the lands assigned to them, rather they held temporary rights of possession, which remained officially valid for three to four generations, but unofficially as long as the family in question wished to retain it. Encomienda (grant) recipients were also required to Christianize the indigenous inhabitants and provide for their spiritual well-being. Since early seventeenth century, the hacienda (estate) gradually replaced the encomienda (grant). 22 Jorge Augusto Gamboa M., “La Encomienda y las Sociedades Indígenas del Nuevo Reino de Granada: el Caso de la Provincia de Pampelona (1549-1650),” Revista de Indias 64, no. 232 (2004), 752. 23 Hussey, Text of the Laws of Burgos, 306-323; Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, vol. 3 (Caracas: Imprenta Ayacucho, 1986), 53-71; King Philip II, “Real Cédula. A la Audiencia de Guatemala, Ordenando se haga Justicia en Ciertas Usurpaciones de Tierras Baldíos y Edjidos en Términos de Santiago de Guatemala” [Royal Decree. To the Audience of Guatemala, ordering justice to be done in certain usurpations of vacant [tierras baldíos] and public community lands [ejidos] in the realm of Guatemala] (El Escorial, 10 de marzo, 1566/ El Escorial, March 10, 1566), in Cedulario de Tierras: Compilación de Legislación Agraria Colonial (1497-1820), doc 79, ed. Francisco de Solano (México D. F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984), 204-205. 24 Lewis Hanke, “The ‘Requerimiento’ and Its Interpreters,” Revista de Historia de América 1, no. 1 (1938), 26-28.

working conditions. “Almost no natives remain on these islands today,” declared the king.25 This was a logical continuation of a decree issued one month before, which outlawed slavery in Spanish America, and ordered the full and complete liberation of all enslaved Indians, including those who vehemently rejected Spain’s domination and rebelled against it.26 On June 9, 1537, Pope Paul III issued a papal bull, Sublimis Deus (the sublime God), which affirmed the native population’s status as full-fledged, free individuals.27 In order to remove any doubt regarding his steadfast stance on the rights of the indigenous peoples, the Pope issued another papal bull entitled Veritas ipsa (the truth itself) in same month, which sharply criticized their enslavement and openly supported the king’s aggressive campaign against it.28 In January 1539, Francisco de Vitoria, head of the cathedra of theology at the University of Salamanca and an influential advisor to King Charles delivered a lecture entitled De indis recenter inventis (On the Indians lately discovered), in which he resolutely refuted all the condemnations against the Indians, who were generally believed to be amentes vel insensati (insane or foolhardy). He declared that they were totally rational and normal people, and could, therefore, be full-fledged owners of their properties (i.e., absolutely sovereign), which they were fully capable of managing.29 According to Charles’s New Laws of 1542, all the encomiendas (grants), which the monarch had accused of harming the Indians, were to be dismantled and their lands and properties returned to the state, immediately upon the death of their original owner.30 The Ovandino Codex of King Philip II, a partial collection of laws relating to the colony and adopted before 1573, focused on different aspects of the religious, administrative, and judicial life in America.31 The Requirement Document was abrogated; the word “conquest” in official papers was changed to “discovery;” and the indigenous population’s absolute freedom of movement, self-government, and freedom from bondage was declared and reconfirmed.32 From 1503, a major relocation (officially described as reducción or congregación) of the local population was considered. The idea was to create autonomous Indian communities, officially known as repúblicas de indios (Indian republics), where it would be easier to control, convert, and organize them economically, while protecting them from Spanish abuse. The entire shift to new communities, which was intensively implemented over the following 150 years, was based upon persuasion and goodwill, generous allocations of land, with protection from any type of subjugation or land expropriation, as well as development grants, preferential treatment for caciques (leaders),

25 King Charles I, “Real Cédula. Para que los Indios no se echen en las Minas” [Royal Decree: That the Indians are not compelled to work in mines] (Granada, 8 de diciembre de 1525/Granada, December 8, 1525), in Colección de Documentos para la Historia de la Formación Social de Hispanoamérica, I, ed. Richard Konetzke (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953-1958), doc. 48, 97-98. 26 King Charles I, “Que los Indios sean Libres, y no Sujetos á Servidumbre” [That the Indians be free, and not subject to servitude] (Granada, 9 de noviembre de 1526/Granada, November 9, 1526), in Recopilación de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, ed. Council of the Indies (Real y Supremo Consejo de Indias), (Madrid: Consejo de la Hispanidad, 1943 [1681]), Tomo II, Libro VI, Título II, Ley I, 201. This law was restated in 1530, 1532, 1540, 1542, and 1548. 27 Lewis Hanke, “Pope Paul III and the American Indians,” The Harvard Theological Review 30, no. 2 (1937), 73-74, 83-85; Jesús María Añoveros, “Carlos V y la Abolición de la esclavitud de los Indios,” Revista de Indias 60, no. 218 (2000), 80- 81. 28 Hanke, Pope Paul III, 74; Añoveros, Carlos V y la Abolición, 81-83. 29 Francisco de Victoria, De Indis et de Iure Belli Relectiones, ed. Ernest Nys (Buffalo, NY: William S. Heim and Co., 1995), 120-128 [fols. 315-336]. 30 Añoveros, Carlos V y la Abolición, 70-81. 31 King Phillip II and the Colonial Council initiated the classification of the astv number of laws, orders, guidelines, and directives (or, in more general terms, “royal dispositions”) pertaining to the colony into neat files, a task that was only completed in 1681. 32 El Ministerio de la Vivienda/Spanish Ministry of Housing, Transcripción de las Ordenanzas de Descubrimiento, Nnueva Población y Pacificación de las Indias dadas por Felipe II, el 13 de julio de 1573, en el Bosque de Segovia, según el original que se conserva en el Archivo General de Indias de Sevilla [Transcription of the Ordinances of discovery, erecting new (Indian) towns and pacification of the Indies given, by King Philip II on July 13, 1573 in the Forest of Segovia, according to the original that is preserved in the General Archive of the Indies of Seville] (Madrid: El Ministerio de la Vivienda, 1973), articles 29, 30; Silvio Zavala, New Viewpoints on the Spanish Colonization of America (New York: Russel and Russel, 1968), 42; Angel Martín González, Gobernación Espiritual de Indias: Código Ovandino, Book I (Guatemala: Instituto Teológico Salesiano, 1977), 18.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1666 Genocide and the Hispanic-American Dilemma 127 long-term exemptions from taxes and levies, and organized agreements for the registration of private land ownership.33

The Reality It turned out, however, that the reality was much more complex than what these examples portray. First, it is important to note that by 1681 a vast number of orders and directives–more than 400,000– as well as 6,447 laws had been drawn up with the aim of organizing life in the colony,34 thousands of them in reaction to injurious behavior toward the native population perpetrated by the Crown’s agents.35 Yet, these directives, which contained instructions about the proper treatment of the natives, often contained internal contradictions. The same document might put forth certain demands or assertions, and in the next breath, conflicting demands, making it impossible to implement a strategy of defending the Indians, while exacerbating an already difficult status quo. Furthermore, almost all the laws or directives that addressed crucial issues such as slavery, personal services (provided to encomenderos (beneficiaries) in lieu of tribute (poll tax) levies, but tantamount to slavery), hazardous work, the disruption of daily life, etc., contained “loopholes for abuse,”36 as the famous Spanish oidor (judge), Alonso de Zorita, called them in late 16th century, or “permitted loopholes,” as Matthew Restall has call them today.37 Such loopholes undermined the implementation of these laws, creating a distorted legal status, which the Swedish hispanista (specialist in Spanish history and culture), Magnus Mörner, termed “non-compliance of the law as a legal institution.”38 Indeed, as early as 1647, the famous jurist Juan de Solórzano y Pereyra noted that this situation allowed considerable room for the “adaptation” of royal decrees and laws “segun lo piden los casos” (“with respect to the demands of the moment”). Such adaptations related not to the urgent needs of the Indians, but to those of the Spanish kings, settlers, and others.39 The following examples illustrate this paradox in a number of areas. The abovementioned letters dispatched to Governor Nicolás de Ovando were not sent without cause. Just as Queen Isabella 1 and King Ferdinand II demanded he treat the indigenous population with respect and consideration, so, too, was he required to supply native workers for the mines, fields, and construction sites in the cities. Recruiting these workers made it possible for Ovando to supply the king and queen with the means to maintain the colony, i.e., by allocating a respectable quinta (fifth) of its revenues to the royal treasury. In order to achieve this goal, they allowed Ovando to uproot the Indian population from the islas inútiles (“useless islands”), where no gold was found, with most of them being sent first to Española40 (or the isla de oro (isle of gold)), and after 1511, to Cuba as well, following its conquest. Yet, because some groups of Indians refused to work, or to work for Spain, and at times vehemently resisted or fled this forced transfer, the “relocation” crusade turned into a ruthless manhunt in which the captured natives were defined as Prisoners of War (POWs)–since this was seen as a “just war”–and enslaved. Utter chaos ensued along with a rapid decrease in the indigenous population, which Ovando could not control.41 Ferdinand’s way of dealing with the situation was to send the abovementioned royal warrant to Don Diego

33 King Charles I, “Real Provisión. Por la que se ordena la Creación de Pueblos con la Población Indígena Dispersa y con la que se encuentra Encomendada, Dotándoles de Tierras y Bienes” [Royal Provision. By which it is ordered the creation of (Indian) towns, based upon dispersed indigenous population and in which it (the Indians) would be entrusted, providing them with lands and (agricultural) resources] (Cigales, 21 de marzo, 1550/Cigales, March 21, 1550), in Cedulario de Tierras: Compilación de Legislación Agraria Colonial (1497-1820), ed. Francisco de Solano. (México D. F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984), doc. 57, 181-183; Kings Charles I, Philip II, Philip III and Philip IV, “De las Reducciones y Pueblos de Indios [1551-1648]” [On the reductions and towns of Indians], in Recopilación de leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, ed. Consejo de la Hispanidad (Madrid: Consejo de la Hispanidad, [1681] 1943), Tomo II, Libro VI, Título III, Leyes I-XXIII, 207-212. 40 Española (or Hispañola) is the island located east of Cuba. Its capital, Santo Domingo, was the center of Spanish rule in circum Caribbean until the establishment of the two colonial centers of control in Mexico and Peru after their discovery and conquest (1519-1533 respectively). 41 Ángel Rosenblat, La Población Indígena y el Mestizaje en América: Tomo I: La Población Indígena, 1492-1950 (Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova, 1954), 111; Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), 37-45.

Colón, Governor of the Indies (1509-1518), in May 1509.42 Yet, in November, as if ignoring his earlier, benevolent cédula (royal command), he demanded that his treasurer in Española, Miguel de Pasamonte, do everything in his power to increase productivity.43 The withholding of half of the Castilian income following the death of Queen Isabella I in 1504,44 while his responsibilities as the ruling monarch of Spain remained the same, left him no choice. The Crown initiated the abovementioned Burgos Conference in response to the storm that swept Española in the wake of two sermons delivered by Antonio de Montesinos, the Dominican representative, in November and December 1511, and the harsh criticism of the treatment endured by the indigenous population which they contained.45 The Burgos Laws, the outcome of the conference convened in the Castilian capital, demanded more humane treatment of the native population–men, women, and children–but they lacked authority and failed to impress the colonists, who were struggling with a dwindling native workforce and a demanding quinta (fifth). Furthermore, the second part of the Requerimiento (Requirement Document) drawn up at the conference empowered the officials in America to wage war against the Indians who refused to acquiesce to their demands:

[We] shall forcibly enter your country and make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highness[es], we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose [of] them as their Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do all the harm and damage that we can.46 Charles I, who ascended the throne in March 1516, was no less concerned than his predecessor (and grandfather) about the decline of the Crown’s income due to the rapid waning of the native Caribbean population, which continued to decline due to the smallpox epidemic that spread through the region in 1518. Unable to find a creative alternative for the desperately needed manpower of his Circum-Caribbean colony, which was intended to produce a sizeable surplus for his imperial treasury, Charles extended Ferdinand’s manhunt policy in the Lesser Antilles to the 1,000 km coastline of the Tierra Firme del Mar Océano, the northern region of present day Venezuela, an area his grandfather, apparently under the influence of the Burgos Conference, had tried to preserve for the missionary activity of the Dominicans and Franciscans from Santo Domingo.47 In order to justify his decision to make the Caribes (the name given to the region’s Indian population in 1493) fair game for capture and enslavement, Charles, relying on evidence provided by none other than the slave hunters, branded the Caribes as rebellious cannibals.48 As time went on and the demographic catastrophe in the Caribbean became evident, the king was forced to ban any type of indigenous labor in that area, outlaw slavery there and in all of Spanish America, and cancel any previously granted slave hunting permit. Obviously, King Charles’s response of 1526 came too late. Worse still, it didn’t spare the Caribes (and by extension any belligerent Indians). Charles’s acceptance of their negative image made the slave hunters feel that

42 King Ferdinand II, “Real Instrucción. A Don Diego Colón, Almirante y Gobernador de las Indias” [Real Instruction. To Don Diego Colón, Admiral and Governor of the Indies] (Valladolid, 3 de mayo de 1509/Valladolid, May 3, 1509), in Colección de Documentos para la Historia de la Formación Social de Hispanoamérica, I, ed. Richard Konetzke (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953-1958), doc 13, 19-20; Diego Colón was appointed governor in August 1518 and arrived at Santo Domingo in the August of the following year. 43 Hussey, Text of the Laws of Burgos, 302. 44 Richard Konetzke, América Latina, Tomo II: La época colonial (México: Siglo XXI, [1965] 1991), 100. 45 Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, vol. 3, 12-24; Antonio García y García, “El Sentido de las Primeras Denuncias,” in Francisco de Vitoria y la Escuela de Salamanca: La Ética en la Conquista de América, ed. Demetrio Ramos Pérez et al., vol 25 of Corpus Hispanorum de Pace (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1984), 67-72. 46 Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, [1949] 2002), 33. 47 Erin Stone, “Slave Raiders Vs. Friars: Tierra Firme, 1513-1522,” The Americas 74, no. 2 (April 2017), 149-155, 161-163; Reséndez, The Other Slavery, 134. 48 Stone, Slave Raiders Vs. Friars, 162 and note 87; Esteban Mira Caballos, El Indio Antillano: Repartimiento, Encomienda y Esclavitud (1492-1542) (Sevilla and Bogotá: Muñoz Moya Editores, 1997), 291-294.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1666 Genocide and the Hispanic-American Dilemma 129 they could ignore the king’s orders, certainly with respect to the Caribes.49 This situation apparently empowered King Philip’s decision in January 1569 to exclude the Caribes from the sweeping, overall ban on bondage in America. It is puzzling, however, that knowingly or unknowingly, King Philip extended this exemption for all time. Indeed, it was integrated into the compilation of Recopilación de leyes de los Reynos de las Indias (Spanish colonial laws) of 1681, as though time had frozen somewhere in November 1526 or January 1569.50 This loophole decision unleashed an enterprise that hunted down and enslaved 235,000 to 410,000 human beings in Circum Caribbean alone, up to year 1800, most of them Caribes, and an additional 1,770,000-3,600,000 Indians in other Spanish-American enclaves.51 According to the mortality rate in the Circum Caribbean during the early sixteenth century, it is apparently safe to assume that few of these people survived. Needless to say, King Charles’s actions in 1520 against the Caribes critically damaged the work of the missionaries operating in northern Colombia and Venezuela. But, as we have, and will continue to see, when the Crown’s revenues conflicted with the Church’s interests, the latter were ignored.52 Another example is Pope Paul III’s abovementioned bull, which was written in response to the distress of the Church leaders in Mexico, who were appalled by the impact of Domingo de Betanzos’s condemnation against the Indians, i.e., that they lacked interest in Christianity and were too primitive to grasp the complexity of the Christian faith.53 Yet precisely one year after sending his seal, the Pope was forced to annul the penalty clause, including the section pertaining to the punishment that would befall anyone who dared inflict harm on the indigenous population.54 The king regarded the papal document as a violation of his authority, and demanded the termination of the Holy See’s display of independence.55 As Lewis Hanke asserted, “Paul III took away with one hand what he gave with the other.” 56 In a similar vein, it is important to note the sharp about-face taken by Francisco de Vitoria in his lecture De Indis (On the Indians) of January 1539. Even though the first part of his lecture praised the local populations for their political, judiciary, and cultural initiative during the period preceding the arrival of the Spanish, the third and last part argues that it would be impossible to place control in the hands of the Indians following the Spanish conquest because they are still “people of defective intelligence; and indeed they are no whit or little better than such, as far as self-government is concerned, or than wild beasts, for their food is not more pleasant and hardly any better than that of beasts.”57 Vitoria understood this as being indicative of a flawed body and soul, which meant that “some are by nature slaves, for all the barbarians in question are of that type and so they may in part be governed as slaves are.”58 The new, decidedly protective laws drawn up in November 1542,59 would never have been promulgated had it not been for the harsh criticism of Bartolomé de las Casas, who described the

49 Restall, When Montezuma Met Cortés, 300; Mira Caballos, El Indio Antillano, 294-302. 50 Consejo de la Hispanidad, “Que los Caribes, que fueren á hacer Guerra á las Islas, se hagan Esclavos, como se ordena” [That the Caribs, who will make war (against the Spanish invaders) on the (Circum-Caribbean) Islands, will be enlasved as ordered], in Recopilación de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, edited by Consejo de la Hispanidad (Madrid: Consejo de la Hispanidad, [1681] 1943), Tomo II, Libro VI, Título II, Ley XVIII, 204-205. 51 Reséndez, The Other Slavery, Appendix I, 324. 52 Stone, Slave Raiders Vs. Friars, 150-155, 160-170. 53 Patricia Seed, “‘Are These Not Also Men?’ The Indians’ Humanity and Capacity for Spanish Civilisation,” Journal of Spanish American Studies 25, no. 3 (1993), 643; David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 218; Hanke, Pope Paul III, 82-84; Lewis Hanke, Aristotle and the American Indians: A Study in Race Prejudice in the Modern World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), 23-24. 54 Hanke, Pope Paul III, 86-90 Ferdinand II resorted to a similar stratagem in 1505. See, Hanke, Pope Paul III, 76. 55 J. Lloyd Mecham, “The Church in Colonial Spanish America,” in Colonial Hispanic America, ed. A. Curtis Wilgus (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), 200-214. 56 Hanke, Pope Paul III, 91. 57 de Victoria, De Indis, 160-161 [fols. 406-407]. 58 de Victoria, De Indis, 161 [fol. 408]. 59 King Charles I, “Nuevas Leyes y Ordenanzas para la Gobernación de las Indias y Buen Tratamiento y Consevación de los Indios,” in Juan de la Peña, De bello Contra Insulanos. Intervencíon de España en América II, Escuela Española de la

catastrophic situation in America to the king, after his return to Spain at the beginning of 1540.60 Las Casas prepared two position papers, which he submitted to the Royal Councils–now known as the Council of Castile and the Council of the Indies–one regarding the reasons for the numerical decline of the indigenous populations, and the other entitled “Twenty Arguments against the Encomiendas (beneficiaries).” Both papers called for the disbanding of the encomienda (grant) system, which las Casas held responsible for most of the problems, and its replacement with a plan of colonization that was humanistic in nature.61 To Las Casas’s mortification, the laws were never implemented. An open rebellion of the colonists instigated and led by Gonzalo Pizarro, Francisco Pizarro’s half- brother, in Peru, was nipped in the bud, and ended with the murder of Viceroy Blasco Núñez Vela, who had insisted on implementing the new laws. In New Spain, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza prevented their publication, fearing that a similar rebellion would break out there, too. The fierce reactions to the new laws forced the king to moderate them, so that their main purpose, the annulment of the encomienda (grant) system, was avoided.62 In the famous debate held in Valladolid, the king, ever wavering on colonial issues, summoned las Casas, protector of the Indians, and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, a historian and priest known for his Aristotelian and rigid approach to the indigenous peoples, to address the matter of their status and treatment. No decision was reached, however. In fact, the king did not allow the fourteen venerable judges, who had heard the various testimonies during the two rounds of hearings–the first in August-September 1550 and the second in April-May 1551–to hand down their rulings.63 The 1575 laws promulgated by Philip II also stemmed from the continuing demographic decline in the colonies. In 1568, the king received a memorandum entitled Memorial sobre la despoblación y destrucción de Indias (Memorial on the depopulation and destruction of the Indies). Written by Father Louis Sánchez and sent to the king by his chief inquisitor, Bishop Diego Espinoza, it contained disturbing news about the oppressive treatment of the native population by the Spaniards. Father Sánchez claimed that they were behaving like “greedy people who always wanted more, whose only goal was to become rich at the expense of Indian sweat and blood.”64 Angered by this report, the king blamed the situation on the Council of the Indies and demanded an immediate investigation into the situation in the colonies. In addition, he ordered the convening of a Junta Magna (special assembly) of the Council in 1568, which was charged with providing a precise definition of the rights of the Indians. The investigation, conducted by the prominent priest and jurist, Juan Ovando y Godoy–who was also a member of the Royal Council at that time–lasted more than a year and did, in fact, prove that the Council was virtually blind to the grim realities in the colony.65 The result of this process, the Codex Ovandino, ensured the Indians’ freedom, but it did not abolish the mandatory Christianizing, poll tax, and forced labor, which continued to grow, by order of King Philip himself.66 The king also authorized the use of force against Indians who objected to Christianization or to the building of Spanish colonies in the areas where they resided.67

Paz, segunda generación, 1560-1585, Posición de la Corona, ed. Luciano Pereña et al, vol. 10 of Corpus Hispanorum de Pace (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1982), 102-119. 60 Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 128. Las Casas left for Spain at the end of 1539 as a delegate of the bishop of Guatemala, Francisco Marroquín. The aim was to present his findings to the Colonial Council and find ways to repair the tremendous damage that had been done in Honduras, Guatemala, Tierra Firme, and Peru. See, Antonio de Remesal, Historia General de las Indias Occidentales y Particular de la Gobernación de Chiapa y Guatemala I, no. 4 (Madrid: Atlas, 1964), 291. 61 On December 8, 1542, de las Casas finished writing a book entitled A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. The main principles of his position were clarified in this manuscript, which he submitted to the king. See, de las Casas,A Short Account, 127. 62 Juan Bautista Vilar, “El Murciano Juan López, Procurador General de Tunja y Líder de la Revuelta Neogranadina Contra las Leyes Nuevos,” Revista de Indias 54, no. 202 (1994), 563-571. 63 Hanke, Aristotle, 74-75. 64 González, Gobernación Espiritual de Indias, 16. 65 Ibid., xlii 66 Ibid., 18; Carlos Sempat Assadourian, “La Despoblación Indígena en Perù y Nueva España durante el siglo XVI y la Formación de la Economía Colonial” (relativo a México y a Perú), Historia Mexicana 38 (1989), 426-427 and note 3, 427. 67 El Ministerio de la Vivienda, Transcripción de las Ordenanzas, articles 3, 11, 20, 86-87, 146. See also, El Ministerio de la Vivienda, Transcripción de las Ordenanzas, 10-22, 64-65, 110-111.

The Third Provisional Convention of the Mexican Church (including Guatemala, Honduras, and the Philippines), which took place in Mexico in 1585, exposed the very harsh reality of the indigenous communities.68 Although originally convened to deal with apostolic matters, the convention–following the demands of the religious orders’ representatives, and some of the lawyers and theologians who had been summoned as advisors–addressed two burning issues affecting daily life in New Spain: repartimiento (forced labor) and the cruel war against the indigenous population of north and north-west Mexico, referred to by the generic Nahuatl name chichimecas (Chichimecans).69 The Franciscan delegation to the convention faithfully described the critical overall situation, which included the mass deaths of forced mine laborers, the assigning of forced laborers to forbidden work (forestry, portage, and construction), the many over- or under- age laborers, the overworking of laborers, serious abuse by unchallengeable Spanish settlers and caste members of defenseless Indian women left at home while their husbands were on labor assignments, underfeeding and starvation in workplaces, physical and emotional abuse, slave wages, and, finally, the near-total depletion of the Indian population due to mass deathsand desertions. The Franciscans compared the Indians to sheep, who had died because their shepherds had entrusted them to wolves,70 and concluded that continued compulsory work would bring about the total demise of the colony, and the everlasting disgrace of Spain’s future generations.71 A similar view was presented in relation to the Chichimecan War. Delegates of the four religious orders maintained that the Spanish themselves expected to benefit financially by capturing the Chichimecans and either putting them to work in the mines of Zacatecas, or selling theminto slavery (in slave markets located as far away as Guatemala).72 Their actions had frightened the local population into responding violently to Spanish infiltration into their natural habitat. The Spaniards, in turn, reacted by declaring all-out war (justified, in their eyes) against the Indians, resulting in the ultimate death of a staggering number of them.73 The reality of the Indian relocation (or rather, displacement) process also reveals the disparity between declared intent and reality, and the inherent discrepancies of the edicts. On the one hand, persuasiveness and goodwill were endorsed, while on the other, the use of force was permitted if the Indians refused to relocate. Furthermore, it was decided that following relocation, the abandoned settlements would be burnt so the Indians could not return to them or use them as

68 Formal decisions made by the convention were only confirmed for publication in 1622. See Stafford Poole, “The Church and the Repartimientos in the Light of the Third Mexican Council, 1585,” The Americas XX (1963), 6-7, note 10; C. M. Stafford Poole,Pedro Moya de Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain, 1571-1591 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 201. No other documents–including the opinions submitted to the convention governance– were destined for publication. Their first complete publication appeared in 2006. See Stafford Poole, “Historia de los Manuscritos Conciliares,” in Manuscritos del Concilio Tercero Provincial Mexicano (1585), ed. Alberto Carrillo Cázares (Zamora y México: El Colegio de Michoacán y La Universidad Pontíficia de México, 2006), vol. I, cv. 69 The Chichimecan War was actually a series of campaigns of revenge, ethnic cleansing, and slave hunts waged against the Chichimecans, the semi-nomadic groups living north of the Lerma River in New Spain (Nueva España), who refused to surrender to the Spanish invasion of their territories. Conducted in waves from 1529 to 1585, this was a particularly brutal war, named by the Spaniards themselves as “Guerra a fuego y a sangre” (a war of fire and blood). In the 1590s, a change in government policy introduced a conciliatory trend, which lasted for about thirty years. Yet, the needs of the growing mining industry supported the continued encroachment of slave hunters for the next century. These raids, along with the waves of epidemics that attacked this vast area in 1564, 1576, and 1593, brought about the destruction of much of the population. See, Philip Wayne Powell, Soldiers, Indians and Silver: The Northward Advance of New Spain, 1550-1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), chapters 4-12; Alberto Carrilo Cázares, ed., El Debate Sobre la Guerra Chichimeca, 1531–1585: Derecho y Política en la Nueva España, 2 vols. (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2000); Salvador Álverez, “La Guerra Chichimeca,” in Historia del Reino de la Nueva Galicia, eds. Thomas Calvo and Aristarco Regalado (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, 2016), 221-239; Reséndez, The Other Slavery, 81-123. 70 Alberto Carrilo Cázares, ed., Manuscritos del Concilio Tercero Provincial Mexicano (1585), 4 vols (Zamora y México: El Colegio de Michoacán y La Universidad Pontíficia de México, 2006), vol. II, no.1, fol. 127, 343; Poole, The Church and the Repartimientos, 15. 71 Cázares, ed., Manuscritos del Concilio Tercero, vol. II, no. 1, fols. 127-128, 345. 72 Silvio Zavala, “Nuño de Guzmán y la Esclavitud de los Indios,” Historia Mexicana 1, no. 3 (1952), 411-428; Salvador Álverez, “Conquista y Encomienda en la Nueva Galicia durante la Primera Mitad del Siglo XVI: ‘Bárbaros’ y ‘Civilizados’ en las Fronteras Americanas,” Relaciones 29, no. 116 (2008), 153-156. 73 Cázares, ed., Manuscritos del Concilio Tercero Provincial Mexicano, vol. II, no. 1, fol. 89, 262-263.

shrines.74 Additionally, it was a common practice to relocate Indians far away from their traditional lands, where there were no plots for their personal use, as required by the transfer laws.75 Later on, in stark contrast to the strict protective separation of the Indian republics from any nearby Spanish settlement, there were endless reports of livestock entering fields belonging to Indians and consuming their crops,76 illegal trespassing by Spanish and caste members through native territory, the molestation and even the kidnapping of native women and children,77 coercion and enticement to sell privately owned or even community owned possessions (the sale of which was prohibited) to the Spanish for the price of a shirt and a bottle of wine, ruthless demands for unpaid work for the confradías (religious brotherhood), and hospitals run by the priesthood inside the Indian republics. Overall, the Indians were exposed to a form of oppression that brought about premature death, despair, and the forsaking of farming, to the point where entire settlements were deserted, a situation which Meléndez Váldes’s 1791 report called Sensible Decadencia (Notable Decline).78 Decadencia (decline) was the result of systematically applied methods of pressure, abuse, and harassment imposed on the indigenous population for generations.79 At the same time, a ceaseless stream of royal cédulas (royal commands) and laws emphatically demanded an end to these horrendously lethal practices. For the most part, however, official instructions and laws were ignored or adjusted, as Solórzano and Mörner pointed out.80

74 Francisco de Solano, ed., Cedulario de Tierras, Compilación de Legislación Agraria Colonial (1497-1820) (México D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984). 83. 75 King Philip II, “Que á los Indios Reducidos no se quiten las Tierras que ántes hubieren Tenido” [That the lands previously owed by the Indians will not be taken from them while being resettled], [Toledo, 19 de Febrero de 1560/ Toledo, February 19, 1560]), in Recopilación de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, Tomo II, LibroVI, Título III, Ley IX, ed. Consejo de la Hispanidad (Madrid: Consejo de la Hispanidad, [1681] 1943), 209. 76 King Philip II, “Real Cédula. Por la que se ordena que entre Haciendas y Pueblos de Indios Exista por lo Menos una Distancia de Media Legua” [Royal Decree. By which it is ordered that between (Spanish) haciendas and Indian towns there should be a distance of at least half a league] (Tomar, 1 de mayo de 1581/Tomar, May 1, 1581), in Cedulario de tierras Compilación de Legislación Agraria Colonial (1497-1820), ed. Francisco de Solano (México D. F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984), doc. 117, 258; King Philip II, “Real Cédula. Al virrey y audiencia de México ampliando a 600 varas a la redonda los términos del pueblo de indios y a 1,100 varas los límites de fujación de las estancias...” [Royal Decree. To the Viceroy and Audience of Mexico, extending to 500 meters around the limits of the Indian towns and to 920 meters around the limits of the cattle ranches ... ] (Madrid, Junio 4 de 1687/Madrid, June 4, 1687), in Cedulario de tierras Compilación de Legislación Agraria Colonial (1497-1820), ed. Francisco de Solano (México D. F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984), doc. 181, 365-366. 77 King Charles I, “Real Cédula. Para que las Estancias de Ganados se sitúen Lejos de los Pueblos y Sementeras de los Indios” [Royal Decree. That the cattle ranches are located away from the Indian towns and their cultivated plots] (Valladolid, 24 de marzo, 1550/Valladolid, March 24, 1550), in Cedulario de Tierras Compilación de Legislación Agraria Colonial (1497-1820), ed. Francisco de Solano (México D. F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984), doc. 51, 173; King Philip II, “Real Cédula. Por la que se ordena que Entre Haciendas y Pueblos de Indios Exista por lo Menos una Distancia de Media Legua” [Royal Decree. By which it is ordered that between (Spanish) haciendas and Indian towns there should be a distance of at least half a league] (Tomar, 1 de mayo de 1581/Tomar May 1, 1581), in Cedulario de Tierras Compilación de Legislación Agraria Colonial (1497-1820), ed. Francisco de Solano (México D. F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984), doc. 117, 258. 78 King Charles I, “Real Cédula. Para que las Estancias de Ganados se sitúen Lejos de los Pueblos y Sementeras de los Indios” [Royal Decree. That the cattle ranches are located away from the Indian towns and their cultivated plots] (Valladolid, 24 de marzo, 1550/Valladolid, March 24, 1550), in Cedulario de Tierras Compilación de Legislación Agraria Colonial (1497-1820), ed. Francisco de Solano (México D. F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984), doc. 51, 173; King Philip II, “Real Cédula. Por la que se ordena que Entre Haciendas y Pueblos de Indios Exista por lo Menos una Distancia de Media Legua” [Royal Decree. By which it is ordered that between (Spanish) haciendas and Indian towns there should be a distance of at least half a league] (Tomar, 1 de mayo de 1581/Tomar, May 1, 1581), in Cedulario de Tierras Compilación de Legislación Agraria Colonial (1497-1820), ed. Francisco de Solano. (México D. F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984), doc. 117, 258. 79 King Philip V, “Real Cédula. Ordenando que se cumplan las Disposiciones Dictadas sobre los Bienes y Disponibilidades de los Pueblos de Indios” [Royal Decree. Ordering that the provisions issued on the Indian assets and availability of lands compiled with the Indian peoples] (Madrid. 15 de octubre, 1713/Madrid, October 15, 1713), in Cedulario de Tierras Compilación de Legislación Agraria Colonial (1497-1820), ed. Francisco de Solano (México D. F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1984), doc. 196, 405-406. 80 See Mörner, La Corona Española; de Solórzano y Pereyra, Política Indiana.

The Epidemiological Question One key question remains open in regard to the colonial paradox: were epidemics responsible for the liquidation of the majority of the population as claimed first by Jehan Vellard, in an article published in 1956 and Woodrow Borah in 1962, and later by other scholars such as Alfred Crosby, William H. McNeill, Suzanne Austin Alchon, Nicolás Sánchez Albornoz, and Noble David Cook?81 A parallel revisionist interpretation, started as early as the 1960s by Juan Friede, Stafford Poole, and John Hemming, and spearheaded since then by Benjamin Keen, Tzvetan Todorov, Carlos Sempat Assadourian, Massimo Livi Bacci, David Stannard, Tzvi Medin, Andrés Reséndez, Matthew Restall, and others rejects this claim. In their view, the extremely harsh living conditions, ethnic dehumanization, cultural annihilation, the state of living under constant threats, endless moves from one ecological region to another, and hunger and despair were the main causes for the demise of the native population.82 There is probably no way to resolve this controversy, since we do not have any reliable Spanish or Indian analyses about the cause of death among the native population during the period in question.83 Some evidence do exist, I believe, which indicates that the exceptionally high death toll has more to do with Spanish policies and behavior than epidemiological or biological reasons. The first is the challenge posed by the Caribbean case, where smallpox broke out in 1518, after most of the Indian inhabitants of this extensive region were already dead.84 Another challenge is posed by the epidemiologists themselves, who have been forced to acknowledge the Spaniards’ brutality and the harmful impact of their interference in the ecological balance and the natives’ way of life. For example, Suzanne Austin Alchon pointed out, in reference to the demographic disaster of sixteenth-century Ecuador, that in Spanish America, “illness was not only physiological, it was also political.”85 In other words, “the introduction of Old-World infections does not fully explain the dramatic decline of native populations. Rather, the combination of epidemic diseases and the simultaneous loss of control over social and economic resources led to the death of millions.”86

81 Jehan Vellard, “Causas Biológicas de la Desaparición de los Indios Americanos,” Boletín del Instituto Riva Agüero 2 (1956), 77-93; Woodrow Borah, “América como Modelo?: El Impacto Demográfico de la Expansión Europea Sobre el Mundo no Europeo,” Cuadernos Americanos 21, no. 6 (1962), 176-185; Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbia Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequence of 1492 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1973), 31; Alfred W. Crosby, “Conquistador y Pestilencia: The First New World Pandemic and the Fall of the Great Indian Empires,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 47, no. 3 (1967), 321-337; William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New York: Anchor Press, 1976), 102-105, 206, 227- 228; Suzanne Austin Alchon, Native Society and Disease in Colonial Ecuador (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Nicolás Sánchez Albornoz, “The Population of Colonial Spanish America,” in The Cambridge History of Spanish America, II: Colonial Spanish America, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 8-11; Noble David Cook, Born To Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) Elsa Malvidi, “La Epidemiología, una Propuesta para Explicar la Despoblación Americana,” Revista de Indias 63, no. 227 (2003), 21-65. 82 John Hemming, The Conquest of the Inca (London: Abacus, 1972), 349-365; Benjamin Keen, “The White Legend Revisited: A Reply to Professor Hanke’s ‘Modest Proposal’,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 51, no. 2 (1971), 336-355; Stannard, American Holocaust; Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 5, 145; Juan Friede, “Demographic Changes in the Mining Community of Muzo after the Plague of 1629,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 47, no. 3 (1967), 338-343; Assadourian, La Despoblación Indígena, 419-453; Massimo Livi Bacci, Conquest: The Destruction of the American Indios, trans. Carl Ipse (Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press, [2005] 2008); Tzvi Medin, Mito, Pragmatismo e Imperialismo. La Conciencia Social en la Conquista del Imperio Azteca (Madrid: Iberoamerica-Vernuert, 2009), 21-67; Reséndez, The Other Slavery, 17; Restall, When Montezuma Met Cortés, 328-330. 83 At the 2008 conference of historians at Juárez University (Chihuahua) in Mexico, which focused on the historical impact of smallpox on the population of New Spain from the beginning of the colonial period until the twentieth century, conference participants admitted that it was impossible to conduct an “archeology of mortality” that could be applied to the sixteenth century. See, David Robichaux, “El Papel de la Viruela en la Historia Demográfica de México: Reflexiones a partir de Cuatro Siglos de ‘Viruelas’ en dos Parroquias de Tlaxcala,” in El Impacto Demográfico de la Viruela en México de la época Colonial al siglo XX: Estudios de Larga Duración, vol. 3, eds. Chantal Cramaussel et al. (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2010), 23, 32, 37-39. 84 The attempt by Noble David Cook, a great advocate of the epidemic approach, to show that deadly epidemics broke out in the Caribbean even before 1518, seems to me far-fetched, since it does not include any convincing quantitative or comparative analysis. See, Cook, Born to Die, 37-59. 85 Alchon, Native Society and Disease, 133. 86 Ibid.

This was clear enough not only to the more prominent sixteenth-century critics such as las Casas, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, or Alonso de Zorita,87 but also to less well-known observers such as the delegates to the Third Provincial Council of the Mexican Church, who warned the king about the imminent danger of Indian extinction, which would lay waste to the colonial territories and put an end to the Crown’s hopes for great wealth and prestige. What seems even more convincing, however, is the fact that none of the 6,447 laws included in the 1681 compilation–more than sixty percent of which were enacted in the sixteenth century– made any mention of pestilencias, pestes (epidemics), or contained any guidelines about dealing with outbreaks of such contagious diseases. If the laws contained no references to epidemics, it is not unreasonable to expect that at least some of the thousands of the most prominent cédulas reales (royal decrees) would deal with diseases, but my analysis of more than 1,000 such commands from the years 1500-1650 reveals that almost none of them did so. The word enfermedades (diseases) rarely appears, and when it does it is not in the sense of epidemics, but as part of a general demand addressed to the colonial authorities or the Spanish encomenderos (beneficiaries) to “treat the natives well, bring them into the bosom of Christianity, and provide them with food, clothing, and a cure for their diseases.”88 The kings and their councils were aware of the spread of epidemics, since this information was regularly reported by colonial officials, visitors, and clergy.89 Yet, contrary to their active involvement in coping with the plagues that erupted in Spain during the same period,90 they showed no similar apprehension about this matter in America.91 What worried the monarchs more than the diseases was the vicious behavior of the Spanish settlers, castes, and officials towards the Indians. The complaints lodged by Spain’s monarchs were not isolated comments, but rather a long-standing criticism of Spanish behavior, which cited enslavement, extortion, intimidation, human trafficking, invasion, displacement, the disruption of normal life, exhaustion, as well as rape, threats, violence, and death. The following cédula (royal command) of February 1577, addressed to the audiencia (high court) of Quito is but one example, “[b]ecause of the excessive work and abuse that they [the Spaniards] have done and still do [to the Indians], many [of them] have died.” The cédulas (royal command) stated time and again that they (the Indians) “were running out (se han acabando) as the result of the Spaniards.”92

87 Zorita, Life and Labor, 174-273. 88 King Philip II, “Real Respuesta al Gobernador de Venezuela Sobre los Servicios Personales de Los Indios” [Royal response to the governor of Venezuela regarding the personal services of the Indians] (San Lorenzo, 27 de Julio de 1594), in Colección de Documentos Para la Historia de la Formación Social de Hispanoamérica, II, Primer Tomo, ed. Richard Konetzke (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953-1958) doc. 10, 19. 89 See, for example, Fray Toribio Benavente de Motolinía, “Carta de Fray Toribio Benavente de Motolinía al Emperador Carlos V” [Letter from Fray Toribio Benavente de Motolinía to Emperor Charles V (I)] (2 de enero de 1555), inHistoria de los Indios de la Nueva España: Relación de los ritos antiguos, idolarias y sacrificios de los Indio de la Nueva España, y de la maravillosa conversión que Dios en ellos ha obrado, ed Fray Toribio Benavente de Motolinía (México: Porrúa, [1565] 1973), 216; and Bacci, Conquest, 136-143, 175-176, 187-188. 90 Julián Montemayor, “Una Ciudad Frente a la Peste: Toledo a Fines del siglo XV,” En la España Medieval 7 (1985), 1113- 1127; Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra, “Madrid Reflejo de los Problemas Sanitarios de la Península: la Peste de 1596 Vista por un Galeno de la Corte,” Anales del Instituto de Estudios Madrileños 20 (1983), 203-218; Alexandra Parma Cook and Noble David Cook, The Plague Files: Crisis Management in Sixteenth-Century Seville (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 2009), 70-71, 74-75, 89-91, 116-120, 263-268; Kristy Wilson Bowers, Plague and Public Health in Early Modern Seville (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2013), 89-99. 91 Fernando de Torres y Portugal, while serving as the royal governor of Seville (1578-1583), enlisted the help of the king and his council when an influenza epidemic broke out there in 1580, but apparently did not bother to do so when a series of harmful epidemics erupted in Peru during his term as its Viceroy (1584-1589). See, Cook and Cook, The Plague Files, 270. 92 King Philip II, “Real Cédula. A las Audiencias de Santa Fe de Quito para que castiguen con mucho rigor a los Españoles que vendieren o tuvieren a los Indios por Esclavos” [Royal Decree. Order the Audiences of Quito to punish with great rigor Spaniards who employ or sell Indians as slaves] (Madrid, 4 de febrero de 1577/Madrid, February 4, 1577), in Colección de Documentos Para la Historia de la Formación Social de Hispanoamérica, I, ed. Richard Konetzke. (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953-1958), doc. 366, 501. Audiencia was a court with broad judicial and administrative authority. Audiencias were directly subordinate to the viceroy and functioned as his executive branch within a defined territorial space that contained a number of districts (corregimientos), each of which oversaw a number of municipal councils (ayuntamientos) that, in turn, oversaw larger numbers of Indian and Spanish localities.

Over the centuries, the Crown repeatedly attributed the decimation of the native population to their agents’ disregard for royal demands of sensitive and protective behavior towards the Indians. As the royal letter of November 1583 to theAudiencia of Nueva Granada notes, (the natives) “are sent exhausted to work which causes their death” (se ofrecen humildes al trabajo que se sigue su muerte).93 In May 1582, King Philip sent a cédula (royal command) to the Bishop of Antekera (today’s Oaxaca City in Mexico) and noted that “the severe treatment of the encomenderos has resulted by now in a loss of one-third of them [the natives] in some regions.” The cédula (royal command) also mentioned that they are looked upon as slaves, often bought and sold, beaten, or starved, and that “there are mothers who kill their children at birth, saying that they want to liberate them from the horrible tasks they would be enforced to do [as they grew older].”94 As early as November 1533, the Colonial Council issued a document calling upon the colony’s leadership to follow the principles of proper, sensitive, and humane treatment due to the Indians para que multipliquen y no se vayan acabando como hasta aquí (“so that they multiply and don’t end up as occurred until now”). Nevertheless, the self-same document noted that these instructions should not necessarily be obeyed por el percepto (“as being strictly perceived”) or be executed (de ejecutar) a la letra (“to the letter”). Due to the long distance from Spain, the letter went on, the governors’ conscience and prudence, as well as God, would have to be their guide.95 This letter is tantamount to an official confession of royal powerlessness, an acknowledgement of the abovementioned “system of adaptation,” or as Magnus Mörner put it, “non-compliance of the law as a legal institution.” The culture of adaptation enabled the viceroys to endorse life-threatening actions prohibited by the kings, such as certain forms of tributo (tribute) payment, personal services (forced labor demanded by encomenderos (beneficiaries) in lieu of poll taxes, which were formally banned in 1549), child labor, etc.,96 the fatal consequences of which were attested to in the reports of district officials and local church leaders.97 Thus, the Spanish monarchs, apparently accepting the seemingly inevitable human toll of the plagues, such as those that swept through Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,98

Audiencias typically consisted of well-known senior legal experts and were headed by “presidents.” The first audiencias were established in Santo Domingo (1511), Mexico City (1528), Panama (1538), Lima (1542), Guatemala (1542), New Galicia (western Mexico) (1538), and Bogotá (1549). By 1650, the Spanish had established a total of ten audiencias, four in New Spain and six in Peru. Viceroys served as the presidents of audiencias in their cities of residence. The territorial boundaries of viceroyalties and audiencias largely determined the national character of Latin America after its liberation. 93 King Philip II, “Real Cédula. A la Audiencia del Nuevo Reino de Granada sobre el buen tratamiento de los indios” [Royal Decree. To the Audience of the New Kingdom of Granada on the good treatment of the Indians] (San Lorenzo, 1 de noviembre de 1583/San Lorenzo, November 1, 1583), in Colección de Documentos Para la Historia de la Formación Social de Hispanoamérica, I, ed. Richard Konetzke (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953-1958), doc. 417, 551-552. 94 King Philip II, “Real Cédula. De su Magestad en Fabor de los Indios” [Royal Decree. Of his majesty in favor of the Indians] (Lisboa, 29 de mayo de 1582/Lisboa, May 29, 1582), in Manuscritos del Concilio Tercero Provincial Mexicano (1585), ed. Alberto Carillo Càzares (Zamora y México: El Colegio de Michoacán y La Universidad Pontíficia de México, 2006), vol. II, no.1, fol. 123, 333-334. The cédula was exposed by Pedro de Pravia on May 18, 1585, during the discussion on the repartimiento issue at The Third Provisional Convention of the Mexican Church. 95 Consejo de las Indias, “Memoria Breve de los Artículos que parece al Consejo que se deben de Ordenar” [Brief memorial about the issues that seem to the Council (of the Indies) that should be ordered] (Madrid, 18 de noviembre de 1533/ Madrid, November 18, 1533), in Colección de Documentos Para la Historia de la Formación Social de Hispanoamérica, I, ed. Richard Konetzke (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953-1958), doc. 83, 150-153. 96 María Trinidad Pulido Solis, “El Trabajo Indígena en la Región de Zinapecuaro-Taximaroa-Maravatío,” in Michoacán en el siglo XVI (Colección Estudios Michoacanos VII), ed. Carlos Salvador Paredes Martínez et al. (Morelia: Fimax Publicistas, 1984), 311-373. 97 Armando Mauricio Escobar, “Las Encomiendas en la Cuenca Lacustre de Cuitzeo,” inMichoacán en el siglo XVI (Colección Estudios Mihcoacanos VII), ed. Carlos Salvador Paredes Martínez et al. (Morelia: Fimax Publicistas, 1984), 260-263, 270, 277, 295; Pulido Solis, El Trabajo Indígena, 355-356. 98 If we take Seville as an example, the epidemic of 1580-1581 was moderate, causing the deaths of about 12,000 people (about 10% of the city’s population). The epidemic of 1599-1600 was more severe and resulted in a larger number of victims, probably twice as many as in the previous outbreak. See Cook and Cook, The Plague Files, 62; Kristy Wilson Bowers, Plague, Politics and Municipal Relations in Sixteenth-Century Seville (Ph.D. Diss. Submitted to the Department of History, Indiana University, December 2001), 11.

focused their attention on the worsening human factor operating parallel to the epidemics. They had no real success, most likely as a result of the colonial paradox. Interestingly, certain areas such as Ecuador–where no mines operated–experienced a different fate. In these regions, the natives made a more rapid recovery from the disasters of the plagues and the tasks meted out by the Spanish.99 These unique conditions, enabling recovery, apparently missing in most other parts of Spanish America,100 emphasize my argument regarding the negative impact of the Crown’s policy in Spanish America.

What Led to the Colonial Paradox? Why was there such a disparity between the Crown’s intentions and the chaotic reality that prevailed in the colonies? What were the reasons behind the permanent appearance of contradictory positions in the ruling monarch’s protective laws and directives? I would like to suggest a number of explanations. Following the marriage of Isabella of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragón, Spain became embroiled in internal wars over unification, conquests, and vested interests in North Africa, Sicily, southern Italy, Venice, and Milan. Moreover, it was not only deeply entangled in a struggle against the Protestants and the Turks, and repeated rebellions in the Low Countries, but it also had to contend with threats from Muslims residing in Spanish territory (primarily Valencia and Granada). In addition, Spain was also involved in major commercial and military campaigns against pirates, and the English and Dutch fleets in the Atlantic Ocean.101 In most cases, the conquests in America and elsewhere were not funded by the monarchy, but by officers and soldiers, who had received bank loans and funding from prosperous merchants, entrepreneurs, and even clergymen in the colonies and Spain, in exchange for high interest rates. Payment was made by means of war assets and via the encomiendas (grants), to which the Indians were forced to relocate.102 Furthermore, exploratory and invasive expeditions, though funded mainly by the Crown, were also sponsored by commercial and banking interests, primarily from Genoa. The annual interest rate for these loans was ten percent, with heavy penalties for undue delays in their repayment.103 The considerable challenges the Spanish monarchy was facing at home (unifying Spain and consolidating Ferdinand II’s personal rule over all of Spain after the queen’s death in 1504, and the rule of Charles I following Ferdinand II’s death in 1516) created a chronic deficit in the Spanish treasury and an ongoing crisis over the repayment of accumulated debts. In 1574, Spain’s overall debt was 80 million ducats, whereas annual revenues totaled only 5.6 to 6 million ducats (two- thirds of it coming from America), and annual expenditures amounted to more than 9 million ducats. Spain was on the brink of a serious debt repayment crisis.104 Additionally, for internal political reasons, Spanish colonization was based not on the emigration of self-employed peasants and mine workers, but on relatively few immigrants (about 118,000 by

99 Alchon, Native Society and Disease, 131. 100 Reséndez, The Other Slavery, 45. 101 Paul Stewart, “The Soldier, the Bureaucrat, and the Fiscal Records in the Army of Ferdinand and Isabella,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 49, no. 2 (1969), 281-290; Murdo J. Macleod, “Spain and America: The Atlantic Trade 1492- 1720,” in The Cambridge History of Spanish America, vol. 1: Colonial Spanish America, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 374-379. 102 Konetzke, América Latina, 34-35, 104-105, 145-147, 169; John H. Elliott,Imperial Spain 1469-1716 (London: Penguin Books, [1963] 1990), 63-65. 103 Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, vol. 3: The Perspective of the World, trans. Sian Reynolds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 164-166. 104 Albert W. Lovett, “Juan de Ovando and the Council of Finance (1573-1575),” The Historical Journal 15, no. 1 (1972), 1-5, 15; Albert W. Lovett, “The Castilian Bankruptcy of 1575,”The Historical Journal 23, no. 4 (1980), 900-907; Macleod, Spain and America, 366; Earl J. Hamilton, American Treasure and the Price Revolution in Spain, 1501-1650 (New York: Octagon Books, 1965), 79-80, 195-196. Elliott,Imperial Spain, 285-293, suggests some other figures concerning the Spanish budget towards the end of the sixteenth century: Expenditures of 12 million ducats and a total income of 9.8 million ducats, of which 2 million ducats came from colonial silver.

1572),105 who came mainly from society’s middle and upper classes, and functioned as planters, cattle breeders, traders, managers, mining and sweatshop entrepreneurs, and so forth. The basis for obtaining wealth–labor–was therefore imposed on the Indians. Indeed, one of the important proposals about forced labor was put forward by Pedro de Pravia, a Dominican theologian and council advisor, during the Third Provisional Convention of the Mexican Church. He suggested that henceforth only Spanish settlers committed to working the vast lands of America with their own hands–helped solely by hired workers–would be dispatched from Spain, instead of cynical manipulators, who were only interested in filling their own pockets at the expense of the natives.106 Pravia also proposed that settlers who already resided in America and sought agricultural lands for cultivation would receive estates only if they did not subject Indians to forced labor. If the settlements did not develop this way, he warned, the growing number of newcomers from Spain and Creoles born in New Spain would lead to the final and total destruction of the indigenous population, which was already in considerable decline.107 Needless to say, the proposal remained only nominally in conference protocols. Another reason for the colonial paradox was the mother country’s decision not to consider any alternative to the extremely arrogant, exploitative, and monopolistic order it had adopted,108 which was based not only on a theoretical recognition of the indigenous peoples, but also on the fundamental liberty and sovereignty of the natives throughout America. From 1539, three propositions were presented to the Crown by well-esteemed public figures, who had witnessed the disaster in the colonies and feared that if the perception of power in America did not change, Spain would be condemned for generations. These proposals spoke about a type of Spanish-Indian partnership, either economic (Vitoria’s proposal in his De Indis lecture of 1539),109 or political (las Casas’s outline presented in his essay De imperatoria seu [sive] regia potestate (The Imperial or Royal Power) of 1555 or 1556). A third suggestion, made by the Third Provisional Convention of the Mexican Church, spoke about retaining domination, but based only on free Spanish and Indian labor. Las Casas’s idea of a Spanish protectorate for America was further developed by a group of theologians and friars from the Salamanca School that had formed around Vitoria during his lifetime. One member of this group was the highly respected theologian Juan de la Peña, who wrote two essays–in 1560 and 1563 respectively–on this issue.110 Another was the valiant Franciscan, Alonso de Maldonado de Buendia, who worked among the Indians of Peru and Mexico in 1551-1561. Shocked by the terrible conditions they endured, he sent a series of memorandums on the idea of a colonial protectorate to King Philip and the Council of the Indies between 1561 and 1567.111 A third figure was the well- known theologian Juan Roa Dávila, who wrote a thoughtful essay on this theme, De regnorum iustitia (The Kingdom of Justice), which was published in 1591.112 The most straightforward proposal, which could have been seen as a first step to a more radical political resettlement of Spanish rule in America, was the one deliberated by theThird Provisional Convention of the Mexican Church. It was based on the well-planned integration of all caste members (mastizos (mixed-race inhabitants, the progeny of Spaniards and Indians), mulattos

105 Elliott,Imperial Spain, 185, calls the effort to determine the number of settlers in America “a matter of guesswork.” 106 Cázares, ed., Manuscritos del Concilio Tercero, Tomo II, no. 1, fol. 120v, 328. 107 Ibid., 120v-121r, 328-329. 108 Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America,” Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 3 (2000), 533-542. 109 de Victoria, De Indis, 161-162. 110 Juan de la Peña, “La Guerra Contra Los Indios,” in Juan de la Peña, De de Bello Contra Insulanos, Intervención de España en América, I, Escuela Española de la Paz, segunda generación, 1560-1585, ed. Luciano Pereña et al, vol. 9 of Corpus Hispanorum de Pace (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1982), 136-276; Juan de la Peña, “La Libertad de Los Indios Contra Sepúlveda,” in Juan de la Peña, De de Bello Contra Insulanos, Intervención de España en América, I, Escuela Española de la Paz, segunda generación, 1560-1585, ed. Luciano Pereña et al, vol. 9 of Corpus Hispanorum de Pace (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1982), 277-393; Luciano Pereña, “La Escuela de Salamanca y la Duda Indiana,” in Francisco de Vitoria y la Escuela de Salamanca: La Ética en la Conquiesta de América, ed. Demetrio Ramos Pérez et al., vol. 25 of Corpus Hispanorum de Pace (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1984), 306-312, 338-344. 111 Alonso Maldonado, “Memorial de Agravios y Remedios a SM del Rey Don Felipe II (1565),” in Juan de la Peña, De Bello Contra Insulanos. Intervención de España en América, II, ed. Luciano Pereña et al, vol. 10 of Corpus Hispanorum de Pace (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1982), 10, 83-93. 112 Juan Roa Dávila, De regnorum iustitia: O el control democrático, in Corpus Hispanorum de Pace, ed. Luciano Pereña et al, vol. 7 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1970), 2-41.

(mixed-race inhabitants, the progeny of Spaniards and Blacks), and free blacks) and the Spanish vagabonds (called españoles ociosos) into the colonial labor system, in addition to free Indian labor, and aimed at replacing the compulsory labor system and making it superfluous. The Crown, which had studied these ideas closely, adopted none of them. According to Anthony Pagden, this was not surprising “since, as Vitoria himself observed, kings were, of necessity, pragmatic beings compelled to ‘think from hand to mouth.’”113 As Pagden pointed out, from 1520, the kings of Spain no longer felt it necessary to prove their legitimacy, and even went so far as to assume the “self-appointed role of the guardian of universal Christendom.”114 In 1542, the monarchy considered dismantling the encomienda (grant) system, which frustrated royal authority in America, but it soon backed down as previously noted. With regard to the pressures to end the repartimiento/mita system115 (allocation of forced Indian labor), and adopt an alternative, free labor system, the Crown was pessimistic, as its labor laws indicate. These regulations assert that the Indians are “naturally inclined to idleness,”116 despised work, even when it benefited them, and did not take on a task unless forced to do so;117 however, the labor laws implicitly promised that if one day the Indians would adopt the modern labor mentality, forced labor–hardly an ideal means of attracting people to work in any event–would be rescinded.118 In fact, the real reason for the open-ended existence of the coercive system was that if colonial employers had to give the Indians full pay for their labor, no surplus would be left for the royal quinta (fifth).119 Thus, although the Crown considered recruiting caste members and Spanish ociosas (vagabonds) for a kind of a “compulsory hired work system,” it was never implemented because it was not economically feasible and would have been resisted. Thus Spain continued to maintain its compulsory working regime, based on Indian recruits only, until the end of the colonial era (with special emphasis on Peru).120 As Nicolas Robins correctly noted, this system was “rigorously reinforced by recourse to the lash, pillory, prison, and taking family members as hostages for debts, among other means.”121 Furthermore, as long as the enforced labor continued to exist, so did the incentives for human trafficking, especially in “zones of conflict or Spanish expansion,” as Restall correctly pointed out, chiefly in the mining centers, which always craved cheap manpower.122 Thus the colonial paradox was fueled by ongoing demands to increase the colonial surplus, the prevention of “homesteader” immigration to America, the indefinite extension of the encomienda (grant) system, and more, while ignoring the severe molestation of the natives in the Spanish mines, sweatshops,123 fields, private homes, and communities.

113 Anthony Pagden, “Dispossessing the Barbarian: The Language of Spanish Thomism and the Debate over the Property Rights of the American Indians,” in Theories of Empire, ed. Anthony Pagden (Aldershot, Hampshire and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate, 1998), 159. 114 Ibid., 159-160. 115 Mita was the traditional name in Peru for forced labor, which the Incan kings demanded of their subjects. 116 King Philip II y la Princesa Gobernadora de Valladolid, “Que en quanto al estancarse en las minas, se guarden con los Indios lo que con los Españoles” [That while working in the mines, Indians are kept safely just as the Spaniards] (Valladolid, 23 de mayo de 1559/Valladolid, May 23, 1559), in Recopilación de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias Indias, ed. Council of the Indies (Real y Supremo Consejo de Indias) (Madrid: Consejo de la Hispanidad, [1681] 1943), Tomo II, Libro IV, Título XIX, Ley XV, 71-72. 117 King Philip III, “Que se puedan repartir Indios de Mita para Labor de los Campos, Cría de Ganado, y Trabjo de las Minas” [That enforced Indian workers can be distributed for agricultuarl work, livestock farming, and mining] (Aranjuez, 26 de mayo de 1609/Aranjuez, May 26, 1609), in Recopilación de Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias, ed. Council of the Indies (Real y Supremo Consejo de Indias) (Madrid: Consejo de la Hispanidad, [1681] 1943), Tomo II, Libro VI, Título XII, Ley XIX, 290. 118 Ibid., 290-291. 119 Enrique Tandeter, “Forced and Free Labour in Late Colonial Potosi,” Past & Present 93 (November 1981), 99-104, 110- 117. 120 Richard L. Garner, “Long-Term Silver Mining Trends in Spanish America: A Comparative Analysis of Peru and Mexico,” in Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas, ed. Peter Bakewell (Aldershot, Hampshire and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 1997), 923. 121 Nicolas A. Robins, “Colonial Latin America,” in The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, eds. Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 309. 122 Restall, When Montezuma Met Cortés, 300; Reséndez, The Other Slavery, 133. 123 See, for example, the typical case of the textile obrajes (sweatshops) in the Vilcashuamán region of Peru, in Miriam Salas de Coloma, De los Obrajes de Canaria y Chincheros a las Comunidades Indígenas de Vilcashuamán. Siglo XVI (Lima: Sesator,

Was the Outcome of Spain’s Colonial Paradox a Case of Genocide? As far as Raphaël Lemkin was concerned, Spanish colonialism was clearly genocidal. He came to this conclusion in his twenty-one-page document, which examined Spanish conduct with respect to all three categories of his 1944 definition of genocide–physical, cultural, and biological.124 Lemkin’s analysis helped him crystallize his views regarding the motives of those involved in the voyages of discovery and conquest–explorers, officers, soldiers, settlers, and clergymen. He assessed a wide range of factors: the human factor, including the occupying armies and their level of morality; the Spanish protectors of the Indian population, mainly church leaders, fathers or monks, such as Montesinos and las Casas (at the beginning of his career), who faced considerable difficulties when attempting to convey their critical messages to the Council of the Indies and the Crown, and convince them of the severity of the situation; the methods of genocide, especially the encomiendas (grants)–ironically established by Isabella as an alternative to slavery and a way to protect the Indians, slavery, personal servitude, mining and pearl diving, which resulted in so many deaths; the settlers’ nearly sovereign status vis-à-vis the mother country; and other dominant institutions in the colony, such as family, church, and community. The seminal theoretical basis guiding Lemkin’s observations included, primarily, the institutional infrastructure, motivations, objectives, procedures, and weaknesses that defined the colonial structure, its enterprises, and practices. Though they did not all reflect high levels of genocide per se, he maintained that they uniformly targeted people defined solely as “natives” (not as a people with a specific culture); implicitly perceived them as evil and subhuman, while condemning them for their iniquities, including cannibalism; and viewed them as unworthy of treatment as true human beings. In short, Lemkin asserted, Spanish rhetoric portrayed the indigenous population as being earmarked only for servitude, to satisfy the needs, desires, and pretenses for wealth and prestige of those invested in the colonial endeavor. Lemkin found the colonists guilty on all counts. They succeeded in deceiving the basically decent and upstanding Spanish kings. With the help of courtiers, nobles, and even priests, they prevented the monarchs from learning what was really happening in Spanish America, kept them from reading reports sent by las Casas, and even prevented him and others like him from getting fair hearings in Spain. Since many of the colonists, certainly the senior royal officials among them, were slaveholders, “they could not be induced to enforce the royal orders against slavery and other abuses.” Moreover, being desperately thirsty for gold, they endorsed and ordered brutal actions against the Indians, “and sometimes even perpetrated massacres, as we have seen.”125 Yet, Lemkin’s analysis is inaccurate. The kings were fully aware of what was going on in the colony and knew that their orders could not be fully implemented. las Casas had unrestricted access to the kings; his complaints were stated fully and freely, and even formed the basis of protective legislation and preventive measures. Moreover, the violation of the instructions concerning the natives was not the fault of the settlers alone. They had to be rewarded for their part in the conquest and allowed to extract as much wealth as they could in order to send the largest “fifth” possible to the Crown. It was also important to keep them placated and satisfied, lest they find convincing reasons to separate from Spain. In other words, the kings had to allow the settlers to employ the indigenous people indefinitely. Lemkin also failed to point out the main cause of death among the natives. Neither the conquest, nor the related massacres or brutal oppression of subsequent rebellions brought about the decimation of the indigenous population, but rather the unremitting forced labor. Although he stressed the importance of this factor, he did not give it sufficient weight. Nonetheless, despite the limitations of his historical knowledge and the inaccuracies of his condemning account, Lemkin had the insight to ferret out the structural factors of Spanish colonialism and point out how their

1979), 58-65. 124 Lemkin’s research relied on a small number of sources, especially that of las Casas, as presented by historian, author, and literary critic Marcel Brion in his book Bartolomé de las Casas Father of the Indians (New York: Edward P. Dutton, 1929). In a more focused Spanish American study, Lemkin used a variety of history books, and exploratory and archaeological logs. See Michael A. McDonnell and Dirk Moses, “Raphaël Lemkin as Historian of Genocide in the Americas,” Journal of Genocide Research 7, no. 4 (2005), 517. 125 Lemkin, Spain Colonial Genocide, “The Genocidists.”

cumulative effect corresponded to the dimensions of genocide. It seems to me that this approach can help provide a more accurate picture about the reasons for the Indian disaster in Spanish America: the massive exploitation of the natives, the ideology that justified it, the suppression of the criticism that decried it, the systematic disregard of the Crown’s orders that were aimed at regulating it–as well as the doublespeak and significant loopholes they contained, and the free hand given to the colonial authorities to adjust them at their discretion to meet the “manifested demands of the moment.” Few guarantees remained after such adjustments were made, because, as Lemkin argued, the officials making them had economic interests of their own, and “could not be induced to enforce royal orders against slavery and other abuses.”126 This is the crux of the colonial paradox, a situation that gave rise to an immanently irreconcilable contradiction between economic and political needs, on the one hand, and people’s lives, on the other. Can the absence of intention allow us to conclude that the mass destruction of the indigenous people of Spanish America is not genocide, but at most, as Guenter Lewy argues, a “crime against humanity” in keeping with Article 7 of The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, or a “genocide in the second degree,” according to the classification developed by Ward Churchill?127 It seems to me that, as long as we look at the dynamics and historic background that generated the colonial paradox from the standpoint of intention, we would have to come to this conclusion. The intention of harming the natives, whether general, special, specific, contextual, or otherwise,128 did not exist in sixteenth-century Spanish America, certainly not in the prima facie authoritativeness needed, according to Lewy,129 for a positive ruling on the crime of genocide in the International Criminal Court (ICC), or, even a special tribunal set up for former Spanish America. Yet, if we look at the colonial paradox’s effects on indigenous society through a lens other than “intent”–a politically biased concept with a multitude of interpretative problems, as David Stannard asserts,130–we may reach a different conclusion. First, I would like to introduce the concept of “political authorization,” a prerequisite for any systemic action, certainly one such as genocide, which is aimed at bringing about profound physical, cultural, or psychological damage to a large group of people and is never a random, limited, or isolated act, but rather a large-scale operation, generally the outcome of “a series of state strategies,” as Marc Levene explains.131 Thus, only explicit political authorization–expressed either openly or covertly–can give rise to operational plans, mechanisms, and justifications that could enable the implementation of genocide. Such authorization did not exist in Spanish America. Instead, I suspect, there was a different kind of authorization that operated in Spanish America and enabled the settlers to harm the Indians, otherwise it would never have happened. I would like to define it as “implicit authorization,” which was much more encrypted, obtrusive, and elusive, though equally effective and destructive. The Crown apparently took the road of implicit authorization because it became trapped in America, and decided to follow an autocratic direction, rather than any of the proposed alternatives. Although the mandate for Spanish America included protective directives, all the Spanish officials and settlers there understood that they were “transparent laws, guidelines created for declarative

126 Ibid. 127 Guenter Lewy, “Can There Be Genocide without the Intent to Commit Genocide?” Journal of Genocide Research 9, no. 4 (December 2007), 661-674; Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997), 434-435. 128 Berel Lang developed the concept of the “Contextual Model of Intention,” or intention that becomes evident only within the genocidal act (as opposed to an “external” or a-priori model of intention). See, Berel Lang, “Intentions, Concepts of Intention, and the ‘Final Solution,’” Journal of Social Philosophy 23, no. 3 (December 1992), 105-117. 129 The concept of intention is included in the definition of the UN Genocide Convention. See, Lewy, Can There Be Genocide, 661. 130 Tony Barta, Norbert Finzsch and David Stannard, “Three Responses to “Can There Be Genocide without the Intent to Commit Genocide?” Journal of Genocide Research 10, no. 1 (March 2008), 130-132 accessed August 17, 2020, doi: https:// doi.org/10.1080/14623520701850955. 131 Mark Levene, “The Chittagong Hill Tracts: A Case Study in the Political Economy of ‘Creeping’ Genocide,”Third World Review 20, no. 2 (1999), 346.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1666 Genocide and the Hispanic-American Dilemma 141 purposes,”132 and that no one intended to “stop violators and reward those who strictly adhered to them,” as Alonso de Maldonado wrote to King Felipe in 1565. The result was, Maldonado asserted, an acknowledged compromise, which enabled a kind of indefinite indigenous slavery, a situation that was (ha sido) causa de infinitas muertes (“a direct cause of endless deaths”) of the natives.133 It appears to me that these anomalies, along with the license the Crown gave its agents to interpret royal ordinances and laws, and the ban on publishing unauthorized criticism of colonial policy, support the conclusion that Spanish America became a hothouse of implicit authorization to harm the Indians. This chaotic state of affairs parallels the terms “omission” or “reckless disregard” used in the discourse on genocide (albeit terms the UN repeatedly refused to add its basic definition of genocide).134 To be sure, every institution, mission, business, settler, and inspector in Spanish America knew about, witnessed, or took part in its fatal results.135 The existence of implicit authorization was discussed in the early 1970s–though not in exactly the same terms–in the well-known dispute between Benjamin Keen and Lewis Hanke regarding the Crown’s protective measures. Hanke tended to be favorably impressed by the institutional measures taken to lessen the brutality in America.136 Keen, on the other hand, was unconvinced by the declared intentions of both Crown and Church. In his opinion, the situation was not the outcome of a discrepancy between legislation and reality. Rather, it stemmed from the contradiction between the laws that served the Spanish, which were strictly applied, and the laws that presumably protected the natives and limited Spanish freedom of action, which were not enforced.137 The paradox underlying the implicit authorization to harm native Americans was shaped not only by the politics of authoritative colonial rule, but also by Spain’s conceptualization of America as an asset that could be managed by bona fide officials living far away from the Crown’s supervision, officials who would ensure that the asset remained eternally productive, intact, and human. This outlook stemmed from the monarchy’s desperate need for revenues, clearly perceived as a weakness by local groups in America, which gave them, as John Lynch pointed out, “the leverage they wanted to make deals with bureaucrats instead of merely obeying them.”138 As a result, Lynch asserted, “the colonial state remained intact, but only by diluting one of the essential qualities of a state–the power to exact obedience.”139 “Spanish America came to be administered by a system of bureaucratic compromise,” and decisions were made according to the “unwritten constitution” of “informal consultation between the royal bureaucracy and the king’s colonial subjects.”140 Under these circumstances, the Crown was unable to demand strict implementation of its protective instructions, or consider other modes of operation in America, not without conducting serious negotiations with royal officials and settlers, for fear of losing the entire enterprise to them. This delicate existential equilibrium had already become clear in 1542,141 and perhaps as early

132 Maldonado, Memorial de Agravios, 10 133 Ibid., 90. 134 Lewy, Can There be Genocide, 662. 135 Jones argues that the regime of compulsory labor in Spanish America was a first-class genocide according to Churchill’s paradigm, because it held “a high degree of specific intent.” SeeAdam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 2nd ed. (New York Routledge, 2011), 125-126. 136 Hanke’s explanation was that “no European nation, however, with the possible exception of Portugal, took her Christian duty toward native peoples as seriously as Spain.” See Hanke, The Spanish Struggle, 175. 137 Keen, The White Legend Revisited, 336-355; Peter Gerhard, The North Frontier of New Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 328, 344-348. 138 John Lynch, “The Institutional Framework of Colonial Spanish America,” in Government and Governance of European Empires, 1450-1800, ed. Anthony John R. Russell-Wood (Aldershot, Hampshire and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2000), 217. 139 Ibid. 140 Ibid. 141 King Charles I, fearing other rebellions, such as Gonzalo Pizarro’s, froze the implementation of the New Laws of 1542. The king’s retreat prolonged the existence of the encomiendas (grants) from one “lifetime” (vida), as stipulated in clause 30 of the New Laws, to three vidas, and in 1607 to four vidas. The encomiendas (grants) continued to exist as long as it suited those who held them. See Charles Gibson, Spain in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 60-62. There was also the fear that if King Charles I insisted on implementing the new laws, the encomenderos (beneficiaries) might

as 1518, when Cortés sailed to Mexico on his big adventure without any royal authorization–a traitorous but skillfully executed move. Cortés could easily have declared himself king of a prosperous and self-contained domain of his own and become a model for future adventurers (among them his own son, Martín Cortés).142 In view of this tenuous situation, the question of the monarchy’s ability to fight for the Indian cause became almost irrelevant. This was especially true as more and more Creole settlers were attaining public office. According to John Lynch, “while the Americanization of the bureaucracy may have been a victory for the Creole elites, it was a further setback for the ethnic communities and those who had to supply tribute, taxes, and labor, groups who found themselves without allies under the new alignment.”143 Taken together, the heavy toll exacted from the natives in body, mind, spirit, and way of life for the purpose of maintaining the vast Spanish enterprise of capital, power, and prestige, and the unrelenting force used to preserve this equation–starting with seduction, and ending with violence and brutality when resisted–verges, I believe, on the realm of genocide. The end result of this process was the substantial decimation of the native population. Although the kings tried their best to stop it, they were foiled by the colonial paradox in which they were caught. It was this weakness that provided the fertile soil on which the implicit authorization to harm the Indians could flourish. The Indians held no hope of physical salvation from the Church either. My research indicates that the Church had, in all earnestness, intended to save the souls of the native population, but at a very early stage of the colonial enterprise, it had been forced to relinquish the acculturation process to the encomenderos (beneficiaries), who had very little interest in Christianity, while their main focus was on cashing in their war debts, and increasing their wealth and status.144 Moreover, the Popes immediately after bestowing the right to head the patronato (colonial Church patronage) on the kings of Spain, actually lost their freedom of action. This helplessness extended to the American Church as well, as clearly demonstrated in the letter dispatched to King Philip II by all the bishops of New Spain.145 Written on October 16, 1585, at the end of the Third Provisional Convention of the Mexican Church, it severely attacked the “principal ruina y disminución de los indios” (the outright ruin and decline of the Indians), using the same phrase employed by the archbishop of Mexico, Pedro Moya de Contreras when he harshly condemned the repartimiento (forced labor) system in his January 1585 letter to King Philip.146 De Contreras’s correspondence explains why he and his bishops were so determined to put an end to this painful and ruinous policy, even though they were, regrettably, unable to do so.

We ought to have commanded it by public decree and charged the consciences of the governors and audiencias [high courts]. We have not done so except by a general decree in which we represented to them how important it is for them to look to the ill treatment and harassment of these Indians, because the judgment of God awaits them. Their oppression cries before the presence of God and demands vengeance of Him. But the jurisdiction of the Church and the authority of the prelates is so oppressed and downtrodden in this realm, on the pretext that it hinders profit and that little money will be made and that the proper fidelity and vassalage of Your Majesty has been lacking, [that] it would do nothing but provoke them to hatred and rage and incur the indignation of those who, stuffed with the blood of these poor creatures, are carried forward only by their greed and their ambition to

leave America and return to Spain, bringing an end to its colonial enterprise. See Antonio Osuna Fernandez-Largo, “Etica y Política en las Leyes de Indias del siglo XVI,” Anuario de Filosofia del Derecho 8, (1991), 96. 142 In 1565, in an effort to turn the encomiendas into a perpetual entity, Martín Cortés was involved in an abortive plot to kill the viceroy of New Spain and the judges of the audiencia of Mexico, and establish an independent Mexican monarchy headed by himself. See Benjamin Keen’s introduction to Alonso de Zorita’s book, Life and Labor, 40-41. 143 Lynch, The Institutional Framework, 218-219. 144 In May 1517, the deputy of the Dominican Order in Santo Domingo, Pedro de Córdoba, wrote to King Charles that the encomenderos (beneficiaries) were in urgent need of learning Christian beliefs, because “none of them know it” and as a result they are “bad examples of extravagance, violence, blasphemy, and various types of cruelty.” See Medin, Mito, Pragmatism e Imperlialism, 48. 145 Poole, The Church and the Repartimientos, 7. 146 Ibid.

be rich in violation of our faith and in harm to their neighbor. It would have achieved no other effect than more harm and evil because of their hardened contumacy.147 Thus “one of the most violently agitated questions of the Third Mexican Council,”148 like many other crucial matters regarding Spanish rule in America, was disregarded.

Conclusion Raphaël Lemkin did not convince the academic community that genocide was inevitably linked to colonialism. Studies have shown that not every case of colonialism has led to acts of genocide, especially not the exploitive type of settler colonialism of Spanish America.149 Researchers could not even find a correlation between the method of pseudo colonialism or annexation instituted by the Nazis in certain regions of Poland, and the Jewish and Polish genocide that occurred independently, that is, without any connection to the annexation of Polish lands.150 Nonetheless, due to the offensive character of all settler colonialism, and the difficulty of analyzing these cases without becoming entangled in the overuse of the term genocide, alternative designations such as “indigenocide,”151 “ethnocide,”152 “genocidal moments,”153 or “relations of genocide”154 have emerged. In view of this conceptual overburdening, if not a kind of “definitional dilution,” Lemkin’s approach has become even more isolated. What’s more, Lemkin was apparently unable to convince academia regarding other issues, e.g., that genocide encompasses more than the perpetration of physical harm to a specific group of people targeted for annihilation, thus rendering the UN definition unsatisfactory. In his view, genocide can emerge circumstantially, and not necessarily with the parent state’s authorization, that is, as an outcome of unplanned and unpredictable developments in the conduct of the colonial regime, while the parent state is pressured into approving what transpires, whether reluctantly or wholeheartedly. Moreover, it is not necessarily episodic, but can occur over time, even an extended period of time; it is not limited to the twentieth century, but has been committed throughout human history, even when the concept as such was unknown; and, finally, colonial situations could (and did) give rise to genocidal circumstances, although this did not happen everywhere. As regards Spanish American history, Lemkin never doubted that what had occurred there was in fact genocide. Thus, he did not even bother mentioning the epidemics, in contrast to what researchers, many of whom did not share his views, designated as the pivotal cause for the region’s demographic demise. In this sense, Lemkin, who no doubt knew enough about the epidemics in Spanish America, seemingly concluded that they contributed less than the political actions he investigated to the great loss of human lives; therefore, he preferred to discount them in his analysis. las Casas took the same polemical stance in his Short Account.155 Ironically, but

147 Ibid. 148 Ibid. 149 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006), 396-397; A. Dirk Moses, “An Antipodean Genocide? The Origins of the Genocidal Moment in the Colonization of Australia,” Journal of Genocide Research 2, no. 1 (2000), 92-103, and note 7, 104; McDonnell and Moses, Raphaël Lemkin, 522; Tony Barta, “Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia,” in Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death, ed. Isidor Wallimann, Michael Dobkowski, and Richard L. Rubenstein (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 239-240, 248-249. 150 Thomas Kühne, “Colonialism and the Holocaust: Continuities, Causations, and Complexities: Historiographical Review,” Journal of Genocide Research 15, no. 3 (2013), 345-355. 151 Raymond Evans and Bill Thorpe, “Indigenocide and the Massacre of Aboriginal History,” Overland 163 (2001), 33-39; Raymond Evans, “Crime Without a Name: Colonialism and the Case for ‘Indigenocide’,” in Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History, ed. Dirk Moses (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), 140-144. 152 Elazar Barkan, “Genocide of Indigenous Peoples: Rhetoric of Human Rights,” in The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, eds. Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 137-139. 153 Moses, An Antipodean Genocide?, 92-104. 154 Barta, Relations of Genocide, 239-240, 248-249. 155 de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (London: Penguin Books, 1992). See note 57.

certainly in line with the colonial paradox, the Spanish kings agreed with this analysis, since the various laws and decrees they promulgated made no mention of diseases. The testimonies on which Lemkin relied led him to conclude that the “radical accumulation”156 of the causes of oppression, and the physical, psychological, and spiritual impairment of the Indians–war, so-called “pacification,”157 robbery, enslavement, exploitation, invasions, feelings of worthlessness, political delegitimization, systematic religious conversion, cultural annihilation, uprooting and displacement–overwhelmed the Indians’ entire array of self-protective norms and measures, and ultimately broke their spirits. Lemkin did not succumb to simplification or syllogism. He did not avoid presenting the chaotic, tyrannical qualities of the Indian cultures, including the horrors of human sacrifice and cannibalistic feasts, or the adaptation and rehabilitation processes that they endured following their destruction.158 He was able to acknowledge these aspects of the indigenous culture in spite of the destruction of the Indian population and most of its cultural infrastructures, and to separate these two aspects, because, even in cases of genocide, collaboration, adaptation, and recovery are quite common. Lemkin grasped the enormous proportions of the human calamity that occurred in Spanish America; however, his study was empirically and methodologically too brief to support the term genocide, which he attributed to it. The present study expands Lemkin’s observations, and fills in some of the gaps needed to support his claim, especially in regard to the overall human debacle in America, and the colonial paradox, the method through which it was rationalized and entrenched. Countless criticisms, testimonies, and reports from diverse corners of the colony, and the Crown’s enraged response to the troubling information they contained provide powerful evidence for this analysis. Hasty “legitimization ceremonies,”159 such as the Meeting at Burgos in 1512, the Valladolid debate of 1550-1551, and in some respects even the New Laws of 1542, offer further confirmation of this argument. This is not to mention the monarchy’s hasty cancellation of the “protocol for conquest,”160 as Patricia Seed termed the Requerimiento (Requirement Document) war cry,161 an appalling document that made the Indians potential enemies of Spain (and the Church), and prisoners of a just war, unless they surrendered unconditionally to the whims of subjugation, exploitation, Christianization, transfer, and so on. This partial list of chiefly emotional steps–taken out of anger, panic, pain, or the desire to mask reality–demonstrates different aspects of the exploitation-conservation paradox in Spanish America, where these two contrasting tendencies could not be balanced. In the end, the first overtook the second. Should the catastrophic results of this paradigmatic collapse be called genocide? It seems to me that this is the best term available at the moment, because it has the capacity to encompass the entire weight of the conquest, subjugation, humiliation, and exploitation that befell the Indians, which led to their almost total extinction. It may be possible to define it as genocide “by effect,”162 as Restall did; yet, as Adam Jones correctly points out, several destructive steps taken by the Crown were nonetheless intentional.163 One case concerned the Caribes, and by extension, other peripheral, troublesome groups that were difficult to pacify. The kings allowed the enslavement of these people for an indefinite period of time. Yet, according to my findings, the most destructive example was the preservation of the repartimiento/mita system until the end

156 Here, I borrow a useful concept employed frequently in a range of scientific fields such as chemistry, biology, and bacteriology. 157 On the concept of “Pacification” and its uses in Spanish America see Eitan Ginzberg, The Destruction of the Indigenous Peoples of Spanish America: A Genocidal Encounter (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2018), 88-90. 158 Francis Augustus MacNutt,Fernando Cortés and the Conquest of Mexico, 1485-1547 (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909), 377-381. 159 Anthony Pagden, Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination: Studies in European and Spanish-American Social and Political Theory, 1513-1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 5. 160 Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 88. 161 Ibid. 162 Restall, When Montezuma Met Cortés, 328. 163 Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 125-128.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1666 Genocide and the Hispanic-American Dilemma 145 of Spanish rule in America. On top of these and other implicit or explicit policies discussed in this essay, which deliberately or in effect authorized actions that endangered or shortened Indian lives, we have the plagues. Perhaps not the plagues as such, but, following Suzanne Alchon’s and Andrés Reséndez’s observation, the luck of having enough breathing space to recover from them. In any event, the story of Spanish colonization in America ended sadly. American cultures were fundamentally rendered extinct. Daily life, literature, writing, ceremonies and rituals, musical compositions, the sacred pantheon of the gods, the cosmology, the family structure, the generic community, patterns of economic production and political organization were nearly all wiped out without a genuine prospect of restoration. What remained, or could be restored, is only a tiny vestige of what had been. This, I suspect, was the reason for Juan Montalvo’s desperate grief.

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Seed, Patricia. “‘Are These Not Also Men?’ The Indians’ Humanity and Capacity for Spanish Civilisation.” Journal of Spanish American Studies 25, no. 3 (1993), 629-652. Doi: 10.1017/ S0022216X00006696 ------. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Sempat Assadourian, Carlos. “La Despoblación Indígena en Perù y Nueva España durante el siglo XVI y la Formación de la Economía Colonial.” Historia Mexicana 38 (1989), 419-454. Sotelo, Rafael Diego Fernández. “Mito y Realidad en las Leyes de Población de Indias.” In Recopilación de Leyes de los reynos de las Indias. Estudio histórico-juridicos. Edited by Francisco de Icaza Dufour, 161-255. México: Porrúa, 1987. Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Stewart, Paul. “The Soldier, the Bureaucrat, and the Fiscal Records in the Army of Ferdinand and Isabella.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 49, no. 2 (1969), 281-290. Doi: 10.2307/2510822 Stone, Erin. “Slave Raiders Vs. Friars: Tierra Firme, 1513–1522.” The Americas 74, no. 2 (April 2017), 139-170. Doi: 10.1017/tam.2017.10 Tandeter, Enrique. “Forced and Free Labour in Late Colonial Potosi.” Past & Present 93 (November 1981), 98-136. Doi: 10.1093/past/93.1.98 Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. New York: Harper and Row, 1982. Vellard, Jehan. “Causas Biológicas de la Desaparición de los Indios Americanos.” Boletín del Instituto Riva Agüero 2 (1956), 77-93. Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.”Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006), 387-409. Doi: 10.1080/14623520601056240 Zavala, Silvio. New Viewpoints on the Spanish Colonization of America. New York: Russel and Russel, 1968. ------. “Nuño de Guzmán y la Esclavitud de los Indios.” Historia Mexicana 1, no. 3 (1952), 411-428.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1666 Rwanda’s Inyangamugayo: Perspectives from Practitioners in the Gacaca Transitional Justice Mechanism Jean-Damascène Gasanabo National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG) Kigali, Rwanda

Donatien Nikuze National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG) Kigali, Rwanda

Hollie Nyseth Brehm Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio, USA

Hannah Parks Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts, USA

In the aftermath of mass violence, governments and organizations often create transitional justice mechanisms to punish those who committed crimes and mend societal relations.1 Although international mechanisms like the International Criminal Court have received much attention, transitional justice efforts have also been utilized as a tool for justice within communities that directly experienced violence. These more localized transitional justice mechanisms have been crucial and are increasingly common,2 though comparatively few studies have examined the actors who implement such efforts. This article focuses on the practitioners of transitional justice in Rwanda’s post-genocide Gacaca courts. In the aftermath of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, the government of Rwanda created a historically-informed court system—known as the Gacaca courts—to adjudicate suspected génocidaires: perpetrators of the genocide. Due to the structure of the courts and the lack of available judges to staff them, lay members of each community were elected to preside over the trials as judges (Inyangamugayo). This article draws upon testimonies from 135 of these former lay judges to address two questions: (1) How did the Inyangamugayo perceive their duties? And (2) What challenges did the Inyangamugayo face as they sought to implement these duties? In addressing each question, we pay particular attention to the gendered nature of responses in line with research on gendered approaches to and experiences of roles. As relatively few studies have focused on the experiences of the Inyangamugayo beyond the legal role they played in the Gacaca court system,3 this study contributes to an emerging body of scholarship on the practitioners of local transitional justice.4 Understanding how the Inyangamugayo viewed their duties, as well as the challenges they met, has the potential to advance knowledge about the Gacaca court processes. Such analysis is also

1 Phil Clark, The Gacaca Courts, Post Genocide-Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Justice Without Lawyers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 30; Paul Rutayisire, Gacaca Courts in Rwanda (Kigali: Minister of Justice, 2012), 19. 2 Hollie Nyseth Brehm and Shannon Golden, “Centering Survivors in Local Transitional Justice,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 13, (2017), 103, accessed July 22, 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110316-113444. 3 Anuradha Chakravarty, Investing in Authoritarian Rule: Punishment and Patronage in Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts for Genocide Crimes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Kristin Conner Doughty, Remediation in Rwanda: Grassroots Legal Forum (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Simon Gasibirege, “The Election of Inyangamugayo Judges: Break Up or Continuity?,” Notes of the Conflict Management Centre 6, (2002), 93-127; Catherine Honeyman et al., “Establishing Collective Norms: Potentials for Participatory Justice in Rwanda,” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 10, no. 1 (2004), 1-24; Bert Ingelaere, Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts: Seeking Justice After Genocide (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2016). 4 Erin K. Baines, “The Haunting of Alice: Local Approaches to Justice and Reconciliation in Northern Uganda,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 1, no. 1 (2007), 91-114; Patricia Lundy, “Paradoxes and Challenges of Transitional Justice at the ‘Local’ Level: Historical Enquiries in Northern Ireland,” Contemporary Social Science 6, no. 1 (2011), 89-105. Jean-Damascène Gasanabo, Donatien Nikuze, Hollie Nyseth Brehm and Hannah Parks. “Rwanda’s Inyangamugayo: Perspectives from Practitioners in the Gacaca Transitional Justice Mechanism.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, 2 (2020): 153-172. ©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1642 154 Gasanabo et al. important in its own right, as over 250,000 Inyangamugayo presided over the 1.9 million trials that touched the lives of arguably every Rwandan in the wake of the genocide.5 In what follows, we begin with an overview of the Gacaca court system and the Inyangamugayo, followed by a brief discussion of the existing research on judges’ perceptions of their roles in other contexts, such as in the national justice system. Next, we describe the 135 randomly selected Inyangamugayo with whom we spoke and the methods that guided our interviews. We begin our results section by discussing the Inyangamugayo’s initial perceptions of their duties, highlighting that they perceived accountability and reconciliation as their two main goals. We then address the judges’ perceptions of punishment and accountability as well as of reconciliation. We then illustrate some of the perceived challenges these judges faced and suggest how such information can be fruitful for future transitional justice endeavors. We pay particular attention to the differing perspectives of male and femaleInyangamugayo . An examination of gendered perspectives sheds light on the intricacies and complexities of the Gacaca system, including how those staffing the courts viewed it different. Accordingly, throughout the entire article, we illustrate how gender impacted the way in which judges perceived their duties and associated challenges, which we further address in our conclusion.

Background on the Gacaca Courts and the Inyangamugayo The 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi claimed over one million lives in a little over three months.6 After the violence ended, the newly established Rwandan government attempted to arrest and try suspected genocide perpetrators. The result was the initial incarceration of “more than 125,000 individuals,” a number roughly equal to ten percent of the adult male Hutu population at the time.7 Rwanda’s prison system had been built to accommodate only 15,000 individuals. The large influx of incarcerated persons consequently led to abysmal prison conditions stemming from severe overcrowding.8 To facilitate these individuals’ trials, the government passed The Organic Law N° 08/96 of August 30, 1996 on the Organization of Prosecutions for Offenses Constituting the Crime of Genocide or Crimes against Humanity Committed Since October 1, 1990.9 This law divided suspected genocide perpetrators into four categories based on the severity of their crimes. Category 1 was reserved for the “planners, organizers, instigators, supervisors and leaders” of the Genocide against the Tutsi, as well as for “notorious murderers” and those who committed acts of sexual violence, such as rape or sexual torture. Category 2 included those who committed or plotted intentional homicide or carried out assaults that led to their victims’ deaths. Those charged with serious, but nonfatal, assaults were placed in Category 3, and Category 4 was reserved for crimes against property, such as arson and looting, though notably the laws were later restructured into three categories, with Category 3 focused on property crime.10 This law was passed as a retroactive statute that acted as a basis for the prosecution of genocide perpetrators. Upon passing this law, the government began trying suspected génocidaires within Rwanda’s existing justice system. The first genocide trials took place in December 1996. Between 1996 and 2001, the national court system tried 5,000 suspects. Yet, for every individual tried, another 24 were awaiting trial in an overcrowded prison, and many other suspected perpetrators had yet to

5 See Rutayisire, Gacaca Courts in Rwanda, 116. 6 Ministry of Local Government, Dénombrement des Victimes du Génocide, Final Report. (Kigali: Rwandan Ministry of Local Government, 2004), 21. 7 Mark A. Drumbl, “Punishment, Postgenocide: From Guilt to Shame to ‘Civis’ in Rwanda,” N.Y.U. Law Review 75, (2000), 1287. 8 Clark, The Gacaca Courts, 99-100. 9 Law on the Organization of Prosecutions for Offences constituting the Crimes of Genocide or Crimes against Humanity committed since October 1, 1990 of 1996 (Organic Law No. 8/96), August 30, 1996, (Rep. of Rwanda), accessed July 30, 2020, https:// reparations.qub.ac.uk/assets/uploads/ORGANIC-LAW-No.pdf. 10 Ibid. Eventually, these categories were collapsed into three categories (with Categories 2 and 3 combined into Category 2 and Category 4—pertaining to crimes of property—becoming Category 3). See also Clark, The Gacaca Courts, 72-73.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1642 Rwanda’s Inyangamugayo 155 be found.11 This proved challenging, as Rwanda’s legal apparatus had been decimated during the genocide. When the violence subsided, a mere 12 prosecutors had remained in the country, along with only 244 judges—less than one third of the number that had been in the country during the previous year.12 Additionally, only 22 percent of judicial support staff, who assisted judges and state prosecutors, remained alive or in the country.13 Working under these constraints, the government thus decided to turn toward a traditional justice mechanism known as the Gacaca courts. “Gacaca” is a Kinyarwanda word that loosely translates to “justice on the grass.” Prior to colonialism, Gacaca courts were a tool of communal mediation and conflict resolution for civil disputes throughout rural Rwanda. In these courts, village elders would listen to the disputes of all parties and would then agree upon a solution, including appropriate reparations. Though Gacaca courts were structurally replaced by a European- style court system when Rwanda fell under colonial rule, they continued to informally operate throughout the colonial period.14 Given the cultural relevance of Gacaca courts and the large caseload post-genocide, the government decided to modify this traditional court system to try individuals suspected of participating in the genocide. The new Gacaca court system had strong ties to the state but, like the previous system, would operate on a local level. Specifically, the government established 12,103 Gacaca courts (known as Inkiko Gacaca but shortened here to Gacaca) across the country.15

The Inyangamugayo As the government created Gacaca, it was faced with the important decision of ascertaining who would staff the courts. Eventually, the government decided lay members of the community, known as Inyangamugayo, would serve as judges. Just like the concept of Gacaca, the concept of Inyangamugayo is tied to Rwandan culture. Although the term is typically translated to “person of integrity” or “the uncorrupted,” it is semantically complex, and the word “integrity” in English does not express its full meaning. For instance, according to the National Itorero Commission (the main institution that conveys knowledge about Rwandan culture), the term Inyangamugayo refers to a person endowed with qualities or behaviors of ubumuntu (humanity), ubupfura n’imico myiza (honesty and good manners), kwiyoroshya (modesty), ubudahemuka (loyalty), gushishoza (discernment), ubutabera (justice), ukuri (truthfulness), kubaha umuryango (respect for the family), kubaha uburenganzira bwa muntu (respect for human rights), kwihangana (patience), kunyurwa (satisfaction), kuzuza inshingano (responsibility), kwitanga (dedication), ishyaka (enthusiasm or determination), and kujya inama (confidentiality), among other positive virtues.16 In pre-colonial Gacaca trials, the Inyangamugayo were typically respected village elders.17 In line with this practice, the post-genocide government modified the Gacaca courts and asked

11 Aneta Wierzynska, “Consolidating Democracy through Transitional Justice: Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts,” N.Y.U. Law Review 79, no. 5 (2004), 1955. 12 Hollie Nyseth Brehm, Christopher Uggen, and Jean-Damascène Gasanabo, “Genocide, Justice, and Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 30, no. 3 (2014), 335. 13 Charles Villa-Vicencio et al., Building Nations: Transitional Justice in the African Great Lakes Region (Cape Town: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, 2005), 86. 14 Clark, The Gacaca Courts, 53. 15 For more on the genocide, see Alison Des Forges, Leave None To Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999) 6-591, accessed July 31, 2020, https://www1.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/story_id/Leave%20None%20 to%20tell%20the%20story-%20Genocide%20in%20Rwanda.pdf; Helen M Hintjens, “Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 37, no. 2 (1999), 241-286; Filip Reyntjens, “Rwanda: Genocide and Beyond,” Journal of Refugee Studies 9, no. 3 (1996), 240-251; Philip Verwimp, “An Economic Profile of Peasant Perpetrators of Genocide: Micro level Evidence from Rwanda,” Journal of Development Economics 77, no 2 (2005), 297- 323. For more on Gacaca, in addition to the works cited elsewhere, see Jennie E. Burnet, “The Injustice of Local Justice: Truth, Reconciliation, and Revenge in Rwanda,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 3, no. 2 (2008), 173-193; Lars Waldorf, “Mass Justice for Mass Atrocity: Rethinking Local Justice as Transitional Justice,” Temple Law Review 79, (2006), 1-88. 16 National Itorero Commission, Imfashanyigisho yo gutoza Indangagaciro y’Ubunyangamugayo (Kigali: Ubutore Development Centre, National Itorero Commission, 2014), 1-28. 17 Notably, in traditional Gacaca, the Inyangamugayo were men. In the significantly altered post-genocide version, both men and women could serve in this position. See, Paul Christoph Bornkamm, Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts: Between Retribution and Reparation (London: Oxford University Press, 2012), 32.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1642 156 Gasanabo et al. communities to elect Inyangamugayo from their respective sectors and cells (small geographic units within Rwanda). Community members were eligible to serve as Inyangamugayo if they fulfilled the following qualifications, as stipulated in Article 7 of Presidential Order Number 12/01 of June 26, 2001: a) To be of Rwandan nationality; b) To have his or her residence in the cell where he or she needs to present his or her candidature; c) To be at least 21 years of age; d) To be a person of good morals and conduct; e) To be truthful and characterized by a spirit of sharing; f) Not to have been sentenced to a penalty of at least six (6) months of imprisonment; g) Not to have participated in genocide or other crimes against humanity; h) To be free from sectarianism; and i) To have no history of indiscipline.18

Though legal training was required in the national courts, legal training was not a prerequisite for service in Gacaca. In fact, the judges did not need to be literate, as one’s character was regarded as more important than educational background. According to Ngarambe,19 qualifying as Inyangamugayo meant that one should possess a number of characteristics, including but not limited to “maturity, honesty, equity, trustworthiness, dependability, truthfulness, and other moral principles.” Similarly, Porter20 explains the Inyangamugayo were expected to exhibit courage, honor, justice, and truth. In 2001, 169,442 individuals were elected to serve as Inyangamugayo.21 Following their election, the Rwandan government provided a brief period of formal training.22 The training covered the objectives and functions of the Gacaca courts as well as legal ethics.23 As the Inyangamugayo were tasked with gathering evidence, identifying suspects, summoning suspects to court, holding court hearings, presiding over trials, and ascertaining sentences, the training also included practical instructions regarding how to undertake the duties associated with their new positions. After the training sessions, the Inyangamugayo undertook pilot trials in which they worked on gathering evidence and testing the Gacaca model. Then, in 2005, the Inyangamugayo began holding trials on a weekly basis in communities across Rwanda, ultimately adjudicating 1,958,634 cases between 2002 and 2012.24 Notably, the benches of judges originally held nineteen people, though this number dwindled over time to seven and, for some courts, five. Note also that judges were continually elected as it became clear that some judges had to step down due to accusations of genocide or inappropriate behavior.

Research on Inyangamugayo and on Judges’ Gendered Perceptions of Roles Early research on the Inyangamugayo focused on elections25 and perceptions.26 For instance,

18 Establishing Modalities for Organizing Elections of Members of “Gacaca Jurisdictions” Organs of 2001 (Presidential Order No. 12/10), July 26, 2001, (Rep. of Rwanda). 19 Telesphore Ngarambe, Practical Challenges in Customary Law Translation: The Case of Rwanda’s Gacaca Law (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa, 2015), 83. 20 Elisabeth Porter, Peacebuilding: Women in International Perspective (Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics), 1st ed. (New York: Routledge, 2007), 175. 21 Bert Ingelaere, “The Gacaca Courts in Rwanda,” in Traditional Justice and Reconciliation after Violent Conflict: Learning from African Experiences, ed. Luc Huyse and Mark Salter. (Stockholm, Sweden: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2008), 41. 22 Initial training lasted six days, though subsequent trainings were implemented to respond to the needs of the Inyangamugayo and better equip them to undertake their duties. See Bornkamm, Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, 38. 23 National Service of Gacaca Courts, Amasomo y’Inyangamugayo z’Inkiko Gacaca (Training of Inyangamugayo of Gacaca Courts) (Kigali: National Service of Gacaca Courts, November-December, 2005), 7-93. 24 National Service of Gacaca Courts, Summary of the Report Presented at the Closing of Gacaca Courts Activities (Kigali: National Service of Gacaca Courts, 2012), 5; See also Bornkamm, Rwanda’s Gacaca, 46. 25 Gasibirege, The Election, 1. 26 Honeyman et al., Establishing Collective Norms, 5.

Honeyman and colleagues27 conducted interviews with thirty-nine Inyangamugayo to assess their perceptions of their training, as well as their initial perceptions of the courts. This “preliminary investigation”28 documented initial worries of the Inyangamugayo, such as a lack of formal education, limited training, and their own security. The study likewise found that although many judges were initially skeptical of the process, they expressed hope that Gacaca could bring justice, noting that it would “resolve the problem of not punishing people” and “help reconcile Rwandans.”29 Since then, most studies of the Inyangamugayo have been conducted within broader analyses of the Gacaca court system. Doughty documented, for instance, how the Inyangamugayo exhibited improvised and ambiguous authority in their role.30 The Inyangamugayo did not have any formal legal training. However, they did receive many months of legal education from the Rwandan government prior to their eligibility to judge in a courtroom setting. Their authority to improvise in ambiguous situations was crucial to the process of obtaining truth and accountability, which Palmer31 notes were core to how the judges saw their role. Chakravarty addressed some of the benefits of serving as a judge, suggesting that some Inyangamugayo would subsequently serve in local positions of leadership following service on a Gacaca court bench due to their elevated position within their community. She likewise illustrated how some judges used their role to help family members in terms of legal advice and counsel. Furthermore, she enumerates how the judges struck the precarious balance between giving some “procedural leeway to the defendant” and protecting “the procedural rights of the accusers.”32 Moreover, Ingalaere33 highlighted the complex interplay between state forces and local factors that shaped courts across Rwanda, and added important insights into understanding the context in which the Inyangamugayo worked.34 Here, we depart from the important studies cited above to focus specifically on how the Inyangamugayo viewed their duties and on the impediments to enacting those duties as voiced by Inyangamugayo. To be clear, while research has addressed the Inyangamugayo, very few studies to our knowledge have specifically focused on how these individuals themselves viewed their roles, especially after they had enacted them. Palmer35 provides an important exception. After interviewing fifty Inyangamugayo and state Gacaca officials, Palmer suggested that the judges viewed finding the truth and obtaining accountability as the main justifications for gacaca, which in turn impacted how they viewed their roles. Given the size of the sample and the fact that the interviews occurred while Gacaca was ongoing, additional studies are warranted. Indeed, within literature on judging more broadly, how judges view their roles is an important line of inquiry, as it provides a window both into how individuals view themselves and into the actions they take within the role (such as case outcomes). Much of this general literature on judging relies upon role theory. Role theory proposes that human behavior is guided by expectations of individuals and society.36 Individuals within any society occupy collectively recognized roles, or “structured behavioral model(s) relating to a certain position of an individual in an interactional setting.”37 In essence, roles provide expectations about how an individual should behave and how they should interact with others.

27 Ibid., 6. 28 Ibid., 2. 29 Ibid., 15. 30 Doughty, Remediation in Rwanda, 191-225. 31 Nicola Palmer, Courts in Conflict: Interpreting the Layers of Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 32 Chakravarty, Investing in Authoritarian Rule, 299. 33 Ingelaere, Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, 12. 34 Ibid., 98-116. 35 Palmer, Courts in Conflict,149. 36 Bruce J. Biddle, “Recent Developments in Role Theory,” Annual Review of Sociology 12, no. 1 (1986), 67. 37 Milton Yinger, Toward a Field Theory of Behavior: Personality and Social Structure (New York: McGraw Hill, 1965), 49.

Judicial roles constitute the normative expectations shared by judges regarding how a given judicial office should be performed.38 Judges’ attitudes and role orientations have long been tied to their decision-making.39 Though it is not possible to empirically test how judges’ role orientations in Rwanda were associated with their decisions given the lack of data on judicial decision-making across courts, we suggest there is value in understanding how the judges of Rwanda’s Gacaca courts approached their roles more broadly. Indeed, Gomes and co-authors40 argue that examining how judges perceive their role is important to understanding how they address their work and the broader institutions in which they work. Notably, roles in any social context are gendered, and a vast body of research has documented that gender impacts perceptions and lived experiences.41 In terms of gender and judging, research has likewise established that men and women judges may view their roles differently. While some studies have shown that there is not a significant distinction in terms of sentences imposed by men or women judges and jurors, research has found that they do weigh factors differently when determining a punishment. According to Steffensmeier, for instance, women look at cases more holistically, considering factors such as the perpetrator’s likelihood to offend again or their criminal background when deciding a verdict. Men, on the other hand, tend to focus more on the facts and evidence of the particular case before them.42 In fact, a judiciary comprised solely of men will yield different results as opposed to one made up of equal numbers of men and women, leading Martin to suggest that women need to be better incorporated into justice systems.43 Schultz and Shaw take this line of thinking a step further by examining case studies from fifteen different countries around the world and find that the gendered differences in role perception, particularly in the judicial realm, is a global phenomenon.44 In line with this scholarship, we expect that men and women Inyangamugayo in Rwanda viewed their roles differently. While many people have addressed the roles of women in post-genocide Rwanda,45 scholarship has yet to address how gendered norms associated with men and women shaped judges’ perceptions of and experiences with Gacaca. Though we are unable to consider gendered differences in sentencing in this paper, we take the important first step in analyzing gendered differences in views of their roles—including the punitive or restorative nature of Gacaca. Accordingly, we turn toward interviews with the Inyangamugayo of Rwanda’s Gacaca courts to ascertain how they viewed the roles they held for upwards of a decade. We focus specifically on how they saw their duties and on the challenges they faced in implementing these duties.

38 J. Woodford Howard Jr., “Role Perceptions and Behavior in Three US Courts of Appeals,” The Journal of Politics 39, no. 4 (1977), 916. 39 James L. Gibson, “Judges’ Role Orientations, Attitudes, and Decisions: An Interactive Model,”American Political Science Review 72, no. 3 (1978), 911. 40 Adalmir Oliveira Gomes et al., “Judicial Work and Judges’ Motivation: The Perceptions of Brazilian State Judges,” Law & Policy 38, no. 2 (2016), 163. 41 Christine R. Barker et al., Gender Perceptions and the Law (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 1998); Darrell Steffensmeier and Chris Hebert, “Women and Men Policymakers: Does the Judge’s Gender Affect the Sentencing of Criminal Defendants?” Social Forces 77, no. 3 (1999), 1163-1196, accessed July 31, 2020, doi: 10.2307/3005975; Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict (London: Oxford University Press, 2017); Gender Monitoring Office, The State of Gender Equality in Rwanda: From Transition to Transformation (Kigali: Gender Monitoring Office, March 2019), 7-50, accessed July 31, 2020,http://gmo.gov.rw/fileadmin/user_upload/Researches%20and%20Assessments/ State%20of%20Gender%20Equality%20in%20Rwanda.pdf; Liberata Gahongayire, “Combatting Gender Based Violence in Rwanda,” International Journal of Development and Sustainability 1 no. 2 (2012), 417-436; Patricia Yancey Martin, et al., “Gender Bias and Feminist Consciousness Among Judges and Attorneys: A Standpoint Theory Analysis,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, no. 3 (2002), 665-701, accessed July 3, 2020, https://doi. org/10.1086/337941; Ulrike Schultz and Gisela Shaw, Gender and Judging (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2017). 42 Steffensmeier, Women and Men Policymakers, 1183-1184. 43 Martin et. al., Gender Bias and Feminist Consciousness, 668. 44 Schultz and Shaw, Gender and Judging, 11. 45 Marie E. Berry, “When ‘Bright Futures’ Fade: Paradoxes of Women’s Empowerment in Rwanda,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 41, no. 1 (2015), 1-27; Jennie E. Burnet, “Gender Balance and The Meanings of Women in Governance in Post-genocide Rwanda,” African Affairs 107, no. 428 (2008), 361-386; Catharine Newbury, and Hannah Baldwin, “Confronting the Aftermath of Conflict: Women’s Organizations in Postgenocide Rwanda,” in Women and Civil War: Impact, Organizations, and Action, ed. Krishna Kumar (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2001), 97-128.

Throughout, we evaluate how the judges saw their roles and how they believed they should have interacted with others. We also pay particular attention to gendered differences in views of roles and challenges.

Research Methods To analyze how the Inyangamugayo perceived their duties and to understand the challenges they faced, we conducted semi-structured interviews with a selection of 135 former Gacaca judges. Participants were selected using stratified random sampling, utilizing Gacaca court records to randomly select judges from four sectors—Gikondo, Gahanga, Masaka,46 and Mwurire.47 We chose these sectors due to their proximity to Kigali and their variation in urbanicity. Gikondo is urban, Mwurire is rural, and Gahanga and Masaka are both semi-urban, with roughly half of their residents residing in urban areas and half residing in rural areas. Though we originally sought to assess variation in responses across urban and rural locations, the location did not impact any of the findings we present here. This may be due to the fact that most of the locations are still relatively near Kigali, something that future research could address in more detail. Using a list of all Gacaca court trials in each sector, we randomly selected twenty trials from each of the four sectors using a random number generator. Then, working from the Gacaca court archives in Kigali, we identified all Inyangamugayo involved in the randomly selected trials. After the identification of the Inyangamugayo, we worked with local contacts to obtain their addresses. We then contacted each individual and asked if they would be willing to participate in the study. Voluntary participation and anonymity were emphasized. Three individuals declined participation in the study, while five were not able to participate because they were not home. Those who participated were assigned pseudonyms, and identifying details were redacted from transcriptions to preserve their anonymity. Overall, 135 Inyangamugayo participated in this study. Their ages ranged from thirty-three to eighty-six years old with an average age of fifty. Eighty of the Inyangamugayo were men, and fifty-five were women. Although it can be sensitive to discuss ethnicity in Rwanda today,48 the participants’ experiences during the genocide enabled us to identify their ethnic and national identities. For instance, many respondents addressed whether they were part of the targeted group during the genocide, while others volunteered that they were Hutu or Tutsi. We thus ascertained that sixty-seven of the judges we interviewed were Tutsi while sixty-four of them were Hutu. Four were born in other countries (Burundi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and did not discuss a clear ethnic identity. Twenty-nine of these individuals served in Gikondo, thirty-two served in Gahanga, thirty- four served in Masaka, and forty served in Mwurire. Our sample represented judges in both cell and sector courts, as well as in the court of appeals.49 Forty-one participants were judges at the cell courts; sixty-three participants were judges at sector courts (among them seventeen started at cell level and then moved to sector level); and thirty-one participants were judges at the courts of appeals (most of whom also served at sector level). Interviews were conducted between June and December of 2015 and in June 2016 by a small team of American and Rwandan researchers. Interviews took place in or around each participant’s

46The Rwandan administration entities include four provinces (Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western Provinces) and the City of Kigali. Each province is divided into districts, and the latter is divided into sectors. Each sector is also divided into cells, and the cells are divided into villages. Gikondo, Gahanga, and Masaka are sectors in Kicukiro District, which is based in the City of Kigali. 47 Mwurire is a sector in Rwamagana District based in the Eastern Province. 48 National laws passed in Rwanda deem ethnic categories as tied to genocide ideology, and the census does not include ethnicity. See Law on the Crime of Genocide Ideology and Related Crimes of 2018 (Law No. 59/2018), August 22, 2018 (Rep. of Rwanda), 66-77, accessed July 30, 2020, https://rwandalii.africanlii.org/sites/default/files/gazette/OG%2Bno%2BS pecial%2Bof%2B25%2B09%2B2018.pdf; Timothy Longman, Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 168-170. 49 The Gacaca courts were established at the cell and sector levels (levels of geographic administration akin to villages and counties) to enable localized trials. It was the responsibility of the cell courts to try less grievous crimes against property belonging to Category 3 (originally Category 4), while sector courts tried Category 1 and Category 2 crimes (although many Category 1 offenses were also tried by the ordinary courts). See Palmer, Courts in Conflict, 100.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1642 160 Gasanabo et al. home and followed a semi-structured interview guide that included questions about their duties as judges, their opinions of court procedures and outcomes, and their perceived impact of the courts. The interviews typically lasted between one and two hours and were conducted in Kinyarwanda or English via a translator. Respondents were given the option to conduct interviews in French as well, though no respondents chose to do so. Despite the different linguistic backgrounds of researchers conducting the interviews, we did not encounter any major differences in respondents’ accounts across interviewers. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Then, we repeatedly read each interview and the corresponding field notes to identify key themes as well as ascertain consistent patterns throughout the testimonies. This analysis ultimately yielded the data presented in this article, and the outcomes we include represent the most prominent findings with relation to perceptions of roles as well as perceptions of challenges. As noted above, we limited the locations of research to areas within driving distance of Kigali to facilitate ease of data collection. The results of this study are consequently not generalizable to all Inyangamugayo across Rwanda but rather to Inyangamugayo who served in the four sectors included in this study.

Results: Inyangamugayo in the Gacaca Courts We begin by briefly exploring respondents’ recollections of their initial assumptions and ideas regarding their roles in Gacaca. Though other scholars cited above have studied initial perceptions, it is nonetheless important to include initial perceptions to contextualize judges’ notions of roles at the end of the Gacaca court process. Next, we examine the respondents’ notions of punishment and accountability—core aspects of the job according to our interviewees. This is followed by an analysis of their perceptions of reconciliation at individual and societal levels, as these aspects of the role were particularly prominent for interviewees as well. Finally, we reflect on challenges that participants raised associated with the implementation of judges’ roles. Throughout, we highlight gendered differences in respondent perceptions.

Initial Notions of the Judicial Role In many interviews, participants reflected on their initial thoughts upon hearing the government’s plans to implement the Gacaca courts. Some Inyangamugayo were optimistic about the court system’s potential to bring punitive justice, and numerous respondents explained that they had initially believed the Gacaca courts would be able to punish those who committed crimes of genocide. For instance, one Inyangamugayo shared that he and some of his fellow judges originally thought that, “Gacaca had the potential to respond to the crimes—to bring justice to victims and punish the perpetrators.”50 Similarly, a judge interviewed in 2016 told us that when she first heard of Gacaca, she considered “…some people waiting [in] prison that had never participated in genocide. So, [I] thought they were going to be given justice and come back home.”51 Although some respondents recalled hope and optimism regarding Gacaca’s potential to hold people accountable for crimes of genocide, many respondents described their initial skepticism regarding Gacaca’s ability to aid reconciliation, much in line with findings in other studies.52 For instance, a judge interviewed shared, “[w]hen Gacaca was beginning, I thought that it was impossible to live with someone who harmed you…[i]t was so hard to imagine that Gacaca would be able to help the survivors and the genocide perpetrators restore their relationships.”53 One Inyangamugayo described the courts’ potential to contribute to the reconciliation process as so unimaginable that it was akin to “a dream,”54 as he could not see how Gacaca could help “solve the problem.”55 Another

50 KAM, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 15, 2015. 51 DPF, interview with respondent, Masaka Sector, June 06, 2016. 52 Honeyman et al., Establishing Collective Norms, 15; Doughty, Remediation in Rwanda, 191-225. 53 HEM, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 15, 2015. 54 GPM, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 13, 2016. 55 Ibid.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1642 Rwanda’s Inyangamugayo 161 participant explained, “I thought Gacaca was unable to respond…I said that it is impossible to stand in front of the one whose relatives were killed by you or to face those who killed your relatives.”56 Despite these initial notions regarding the potential of the court system, many of the judges recalled positive emotions tied to their election. Generally, men expressed pride in being asked to serve in the role, often viewing the service as a patriotic duty to their country. Notions of serving one’s country are often gendered; indeed, in Rwanda, the majority of the military and police forces are men.57 In line with this, over half of all men interviewed noted that they were excited to be elected as judges specifically because they wanted to serve their country and because they believed it was their duty to help rebuild it. One respondent shared that he “felt so proud [to be] saving the country by stepping into Gacaca courts activities,”58 for instance, while another explained that he “wish[ed] to participate in Gacaca court because Gacaca would be my opportunity to serve my country.”59 By becoming judges, respondents believed they were taking on the responsibility of righting the wrongs that had been committed. As one judge described, “It was not easy for [us], but because we had a duty to serve our country, but because it was us [Rwandans] who had caused the problem, we [Rwandans] had to find a solution to those problems we had caused.”60 Women were likewise often pleased to be elected, but their happiness more commonly stemmed from pride that their neighbors trusted and respected them to serve in the role. In other words, women’s positive feelings were generally tied to what they believed their election signified about their social capital rather than service to the government. While women were more likely to express initial hesitation when it came to their election as a judge, twenty-five of the fifty-five women interviewed noted in their responses that they felt honored to be chosen, as it indicated that their community thought highly of them. For instance, as one Inyangamugayo explained,

I was very happy because they were calling us Inyangamugayo; people of integrity...I think we were elected because we are people of integrity. It depended on the way we interacted with neighbors. They could see that we were people of integrity; Inyangamugayo. I never studied laws, I had never been a lawyer, but they trusted me and elected me. It is because I was living in harmony with neighbors, and I was a person of integrity according to them. I think that is why I was elected.61

Another female judge acknowledged the potential boost to social capital that coincided with participating in the courts, noting that she “was happy with [being elected] because when you are in those positions, even at that experience, you get exposure and then experience.”62 For many women, being elected to be a judge was an opportunity to gain respect amongst their neighbors, though some women did also invoke notions of serving their country. As one woman described, “If the whole country [is] trusting you that you are Inyangamugayo, that you are a person of integrity, that is something big to me.”63 Likely due to gendered norms about who was fit to judge, women were also more likely than men to express reluctance about the role. One female judge reflected on her election:

I tried to refuse serving as a judge…I said that I cannot, because I see it as something that can have a negative impact on my life and I was saying that I could not marry both my work and adequately fulfill the Gacaca duties at the same time. I tried to resist and refuse serving as a judge, but finally, I accepted and became convinced.64

56 BGM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 57 BVF, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 58 GCM, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 15, 2015. 59 HSM, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 15, 2015. 60 HCM, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 15, 2015. 61 GIF, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 62 BJF, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 13, 2016. 63 CMF, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 13, 2016. 64 KEF, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 13, 2016.

Other women expressed that they were initially nervous about the possibility of retaliation from the people they tried in court. For instance, many women judges explained that the people they were trying could harm them or even kill them, which we address in more detail below. Men were comparatively far less reluctant to serve, or at least less likely to recall reluctance or nervousness upon being elected. This difference may indicate gendered notions of bravery, and it is difficult to know whether these sentiments were genuine or whether they reflect pressure to discuss a lack of apprehension. As one judge explained, “No. We were not nervous. We had decided to do that, and we knew we were doing what we were supposed to be doing: truth telling, trying cases. We had no problem doing that.”65 Others emphasized that they were not worried upon their election because they felt prepared for the role. As one judge described, “I was never worried at all because we could take fair decisions and even before taking decisions I could investigate. I was never worried at all.”66 This confidence was explicitly expressed by approximately one third of all men who were interviewed.67 For some men, the threat of retaliation was also of little consequence to them because they believed that if anything did happen to them as judges, the perpetrators would be brought to justice.68 In fact, sixty-three of the eighty men interviewed—over seventy-five percent of the male sample—noted that they did not experience any fear when it came to taking on the role of Inyangamugayo and that the concept of facing any form of retaliation from perpetrators or their families was of no concern to them. Some even boasted that they welcomed it, as they knew there were systems in place to protect them or to see justice served.69 As one judge described, “yes we were worried that they might even kill you, but again we had security.”70 Another man described this sentiment by noting, “even the government was there to protect us, to help us too, to be safe;”71 while another judge similarly explained, “I think some people hat[ed] me. I did not care. I know I was protected. We had a fair government that protected us, so I was not worried about one hating me.”72 Generally, this suggests that men may have placed comparatively more trust in state institutions. Men with whom we spoke to generally trusted the police, the government, and the systems in place to protect them more so than the female Inyangamugayo.73 Even if they were aware of potential dangers tied to the role, many male respondents were by and large confident that they would be protected.

Duties Throughout: Punishment and Accountability Turning toward how the judges saw their roles, punishment surfaced prominently during the interviews as a central duty. Indeed, many of the judges discussed the importance of their duty to punish those who were responsible for the genocide. This involved discussions of fair punishments and confessions as well as more limited discussions of acquitting those who were not guilty. Numerous respondents (Gikondo Sector, 2015) perceived the courts—and thus their associated duties—as punitive in nature, commenting that the objective of the Gacaca courts was “to punish people for the crimes they committed”74 and noting that they “thought it was a good strategy to punish those who participated in the genocide.”75 Many of the Inyangamugayo we interviewed likewise mentioned the importance of Gacaca in ending the “culture of impunity”76 in Rwanda. One participant exemplified this perspective by explaining,

65 BLM, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 15, 2016. 66 RWM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 11, 2015. 67 CONF, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 68 RE&PU, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 69 PROT, consolidated interview results, June 2016. 70 KEM, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 14, 2016. 71 HAM, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 16, 2016. 72 KJVM, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 15, 2016. 73 TRUS, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 74 DJM, interview with respondents, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 75 SJBM, interview with respondents, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 76 KIM, interview with respondents, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015

In Rwandan history, killings of the Tutsi population happened in 1959, in 1963, in 1973, and during the 1994 genocide…Killers were never arrested or brought to justice for sporadic massacres of Tutsi that took place in the years before the 1994 genocide. There was total impunity. After the genocide, things have changed.77 Even though both men and women discussed punishment and accountability, men were more likely to view their major role as bringing individuals to justice. One judge stated, “I did not want to see people walking in the street after killing others. I wanted them to be punished. I wanted the victims to get justice.”78 Another saw his duty as offering some form of retribution for individuals who were witnesses or victims and wanted to see “justice be given to those who were victims of the genocide.”79 Reflecting a similar belief that victims would receive relief from punishment and accountability, one judge stated,

I had to make sure I [gave] people justice especially to those who were victims of the crimes that were committed. No one was there to do that apart from [us]... I had to play that role because during those difficult situations we were supposed to participate in solving the problems that were in place. That motivated me.80 Men’s emphasis on accountability and punishment was generally not intertwined with a focus on rehabilitation, however. The emphasis was instead placed on the process of giving punishments and the speed with which they did it.81 For instance, a judge from Mwurire sector in 2016 explained that he primarily enjoyed the role “because I contributed to justice. I saw many perpetrators being tried and taken to prisons.”82 This justice-based view of the role of the judge was shared by nearly sixty of the eighty men interviewed. As another explained, it was “a matter of bringing justice so that [perpetrators] would face some punishments.”83 In this sense, the way in which they perceived their duty emphasized ensuring that justice was adequately served. Women also discussed punishment, though their general focus was placed less on administering retributive justice and instead emphasized giving fair, impartial sentencing that they believed would eventually result in reconciliation and more restorative forms of justice. Approximately forty of the fifty-five women interviewed expressed that their main responsibility asInyangamugayo was to ensure that perpetrators were restoratively punished and eventually could be integrated back into society and help the community to rebuild.84 Many explained that they had a duty to society to facilitate the reconciliation process to the best of their ability. One woman compared Gacaca sentencing to “giving [the perpetrators] medicine…I was happy with that because you cannot kill everybody that participated…”85 Another woman judge explained, “[i]f he deserves the punishment, then Gacaca [will] punish him or her.”86 Yet, the female judges also tended to view their role as judges more holistically, seeing the importance not only in ensuring that perpetrators were punished, but also in community rebuilding and reconciliation, as we further explain below in more detail. These results align with Steffensmeier’s finding that, in the judicial system, women are more likely to view cases more holistically.87 As respondents discussed impunity, numerous judges also highlighted the importance of fair punishments. Some judges thought that punishments were too harsh, while others lamented that

77 KIM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 78 HDM, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 16, 2016. 79 BVF, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 11, 2015. 80 KEM, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 02, 2016. 81 Speed was one of the government-stated goals of Gacaca. Likely due to this explicit prioritization, the vast majority of respondents discussed the importance of swift justice. 82 KJMVM, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 14, 2016. 83 MAM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 84 PUNI, consolidated interview results, June 2015-May 2016. 85 ADF, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 02, 2016. 86 NMF, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 87 Steffensmeier, Women and Men Policymakers, 1176.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1642 164 Gasanabo et al. they were too light. Yet, most believed the punishments were fair. Furthermore, men and women alike were generally satisfied with the punishments they meted out.88 When prompted to comment on the fairness of their punitive measures, one judge responded, “[a]ll punishments fit the crime. At the beginning, sentences ranged from 18 to 30 yearsof imprisonment. After the policy of granting leniency to those who confessed was implemented, sentences were reduced, usually to less than 18 years… depending on the crime.”89 Many others held similar views and praised the sentences, suggesting they were fair and lenient. For instance, one participant expressed, “[t]he strength of Gacaca [is] in the quality of justice it gave to people. For those who confessed and plead guilty, their sentence was reduced. For example, a defendant who was faced with 12 years of imprisonment may have only been sentenced for 6 years due to confession.”90 At the same time, several Inyangamugayo highlighted their duty of acquitting innocent people. Many judges shared that it was not uncommon for those who did not actually participate in genocide to be accused.91 Mention of this phenomenon was not necessarily gendered, but it was brought up in the interviews of approximately ten percent of both the women and men who responded.92 Specifically, there was concern that innocent people had been convicted of serious crimes, and the Inyangamugayo who mentioned this concern felt they were among the only people who had the potential to rectify this. For instance, one interviewee described a case in which two men had been involved in a conflict involving money. One of the men was so resentful that he accused the other of participating in the genocide. The judge explained,

… there was someone who wanted his neighbor to be convicted because they had a conflict. Throughout the trial, many witnesses came and testified in favor of the accused, arguing that he never participated in the genocide. The brother of the one who was accusing his neighbor revealed that the accused never participated in the genocide and revealed the existing conflict between the defendant and the plaintiff. We based on this testimony and we acquitted the accused person.93 Thus, acquitting those who were innocent was seen as an important duty, though it was much less commonly cited than punishing those who were guilty of crimes of genocide.

Duties Throughout: Reconciliation Reconciliation also surfaced prominently as a major part of the judges’ roles. In the years after the genocide, but prior to the establishment of Gacaca, social relationships were dangerously strained from genocidal violence and other acts of betrayal. As one interviewee explained, “[a]fter the genocide, relationships [between Hutu and Tutsi] were not good. I remember Hutu were hiding … relations were tense.”94 Judges likewise recalled that survivors hid as well, fearing further violence. Considering these tensions, many judges believed that one of their main duties was to contribute to reconciliation. One judge demonstrated this understanding by commenting that his responsibility was “to reconcile people first.”95 Another Inyangamugayo explained, “...during the genocide, people were separated…After the Gacaca hearings, people managed to reconcile to the extent that, today, they can interact peacefully.”96 As noted above, women were especially likely to discuss reconciliation, with seventy percent of all women who responded highlighting this as a priority of their role in their responses. Many of the women judges with whom we spoke believed that Gacaca gave victims and perpetrators a

88 SATI, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 89 KEM, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 02, 2016. 90 TDM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 11, 2015. 91 ACQU, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 92 AMWP, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 93 VM, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 15, 2016. 94 TJPM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 95 BLM, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 15, 2016. 96 GCM, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 15, 2015.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1642 Rwanda’s Inyangamugayo 165 platform to face each other and try to find a way to move forward together. Gacaca served to “bring them together and try to discuss their problems, their issues.”97 As judges, they believed their responsibility was to facilitate this process. One woman highlighted this difference in priorities by stating, “[a]s duties, I have to reconcile first. I have to reconcile people first and, second, to listen to those who have problems and try to mediate survivors with perpetrators.”98 Many women likewise felt that they “were helping people to heal.”99 One female judge from Gahanga Sector in 2016 explained,

Gacaca played a big role in integrating people who thought that they were cast out of the society, so Gacaca tried to integrate those people who were possibly shamed. Because when the survivor and the perpetrator were before the Gacaca court, they could even greet each other and try to discuss the issues concerning what happened for both.100 Although women were more likely to invoke reconciliation, both men and women Inyangamugayo expressed several ways through which they believed their work as judges, as well as Gacaca in general, influenced the reconciliation process.101 Though women were more likely to discuss the role of dialogue, men also discussed how Gacaca facilitated dialogue and, in turn, reconciliation. Beyond dialogue, the fact that Inyangamugayo were both Hutu and Tutsi was cited as a significant unifying aspect of Gacaca. One participant stated, “[a]nother thing which I liked about Gacaca was that judges were both Hutu and Tutsi. Judges were not from one side…”102 Still, others explained that punishment was necessary to facilitate societal reconciliation, highlighting the overlap in punitive and restorative justice. For instance, one respondent shared

I thought Gacaca was very important because people deserved to be punished, and it [Gacaca] was a good idea because it came with an objective of reconciling victims and perpetrators. It was true justice that allowed enemies to live together…and I think it even helped to restore security.103 Taken together, although women were more likely to discuss reconciliation, many judges believed that aiding reconciliation was a major aspect of their role. Challenges Implementing Judicial Roles Finally, while discussing their perceptions of their duties as Inyangamugayo in the Gacaca courts, respondents often reflected on their perceived challenges. Although numerous challenges surfaced, three challenges were particularly relevant to judges’ discussions of their roles. These included the issues associated with encouraging truth telling, with punishing their neighbors, and with volunteering a large amount of their time to their positions.104 Turning first to challenges linked to specific aspects of their duties, numerous judges discussed issues they faced when asking fellow community members to tell the truth during trials—a sentiment that was shared equally among men and women judges. Truth telling was vital because the judges were restricted to relying solely on eyewitness testimony. For example, when explaining how the judges reached their decisions, an Inyangamugayo shared, “[w]e based our judgments on the testimonies from the community and also heard the defendants themselves. Then, after the public hearings, we discussed in private, referred to all the information collected from the community, and—based on the relevant provisions of the law—we made our decision.”105

97 KJF, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 13, 2015. 98 KJF, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 13, 2015. 99 HEAL, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 100 ALF, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 01, 2016 101 RECO, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 102 RIM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 103 MSF, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, May 31, 2016 104 CHAL, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 105 MAM, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 17, 2016

However, many Inyangamugayo commented on the fact that “…people were not willing to give testimony.”106 One participant shared, “I also got annoyed in some cases because there are those who could attend trials but who did not want to give information.”107 Another participant explained,

[m]aking files and gathering information was a very difficult task. Hutu were not willing to share information [about what happened]. Some Tutsi also hesitated and thought they might get flashbacks, making it very difficult to get information. We sensitized people to tell us what they saw. By that time, people did not trust each other.108 Numerous judges offered reasons behind this difficulty. One Inyangamugayo asserted, “[o]f course it was very difficult to testify against your neighbors. It depended on what you were going to say and anticipating the reaction of the public. For example, if you are going to testify against someone who killed a human being and someone who killed a goat, of course the two carried different weight.”109 Another Inyangamugayo explained, “…many people could not reveal information because they never wanted to…create that grudge between neighbors.”110 Given the need to use eyewitness testimony, the judges had to take it upon themselves to encourage truth telling. When witnesses were unwilling to speak or give testimony, the Inyangamugayo often explained why it was a vital component of the Gacaca court process.111 For example, a judge stated, “[b]efore the trial, I always tried to explain to the community the importance of truth telling. Afterward, there were some who could speak, who could open up and tell everything that happened.”112 Again, this narrative was shared among both men and women who were serving as judges. They broadly believed that individuals telling the truth greatly improved the effectiveness of the Gacaca process and thus their jobs. Additionally, numerous judges commented on the difficulties they faced when trying to punish individuals within their communities. Some had been conscious of the burden of trying their neighbors since the inception of Gacaca.113 For instance, one participant explained, “[w]hen I was first elected, I was fearful, thinking that I would face problems if suspects, based on the outcomes of their trials, held grudges against me or tried to harm me.”114 Generally, this sentiment was more widely held among women—in fact, thirty-two of the fifty-five women respondents expressed direct fear that their involvement in Gacaca would result in direct harm to them or their families, which again may reflect gendered differences in expressing fear.115 Some men expressed similar sentiments, and although some suggested that their fears were unfounded, other judges expressed concerns that linger today. One Inyangamugayo noted, “I have to be cautious because of someone I tried and punished during the Gacaca courts. He and his relatives were always against me, saying that I did wrong things against them. Because of that, I have to be cautious.”116 Another judge similarly noted, “Some keep grudges against us and our families…we remain apprehensive of possibly being hurt, being victimized by the families who were accusing us of doing wrong things against their [accused] members.”117 Another former judge summarized these issues by explaining,

106 TEST, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016 107 TAM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 108 NEM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 109 MFF, interview with respondent, Masaka Sector, June 06, 2016. 110 There were likely other reasons as well. For instance, many people may have wanted to avoid retraumatization. UHF, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 11, 2015. 111 SJDM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 11, 2015 112 SJDM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 11, 2015 113 TAM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 114 KIM, interview with respondents, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015 115 SJBM, interview with respondents, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015 116 DJM, interview with respondents, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015 117 BVF, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 11, 2015.

[i]t was very difficult to work as an Inyangamugayo judge for the Gacaca courts. Can you imagine having to judge and punish neighbors, friends and family members? In addition, remember that judges prosecuted genocide perpetrators who had family members in our villages.118 Furthermore, we heard stories of judges who explained they were verbally intimidated and harassed. For instance, a judge shared, “I received messages announcing that the families of the defendant would kill me. The family members of the perpetrators sent me some messages telling me that one day we will kill you because of what you are doing.”119 There is some evidence that at least some people who threatened the judges were punished via the ordinary (i.e., national) court system. For example, during the first half of 2006, 761 people were arrested for criminal acts they had committed against genocide survivors, witnesses, and Inyangamugayo.120 Other respondents suggested that there were still ongoing problems within their communities at the time of the interviews, illustrating challenges that lingered long after the courts closed.121 In line with women’s increased likelihood to discuss a fear tied to their elections, women were also more likely to discuss a fear of repercussions due to grudges from the trials they presided over. One woman reflected on someone she sent to prison, worriedly explaining, “[m]aybe he will one day get out and kill me, I do not know; maybe he will.”122 Another woman described the challenges they faced as judges and the often-overwhelming feelings of fear and doubt that they would be saddled with:

[y]eah, it was a difficult task. It was a difficult task because there was a time when judges were persecuted. I could ask, will the government protect us? Are we going to be protected by the state, because our life is in danger? It happened here but again we had to continue. We had to continue serv[ing].123 For some women, this fear became too great and they had no choice but to relocate for the safety of their family, as one judge shared, “I even wanted to relocate from this place and go to another place, I could hear people talking about how I participated in making sure that they would be taken to prison. I remember I wanted to relocate and go to another place.”124 Again, it is difficult to differentiate between whether women were more likely to hold such fears or whether gendered norms about expressing fears allowed them to do so more easily. Such differences may also stem from women’s likelihood to be the primary caregivers and thus express greater concern about their family. It also may have been less effective to threaten the male judges because, as mentioned previously, they generally wielded greater confidence in the systems in place and felt sure that they would either be protected or avenged should they be killed as a result of their role. Finally, the majority of the judges—men and women alike—shared an overarching, general challenge associated with the fact that serving as a judge with the Gacaca courts often required the judges to sacrifice their personal time.125 As one interviewee explained,

[d]uring the trial phase, the hearing itself represented an entire day’s work. Inyangamugayo spent the whole day without even a break for food or drink. In addition, another two days were spent preparing reports on completed cases, studying the dossiers for upcoming cases, writing summons to witnesses, and formalizing the agenda for trials. Despite all of this, Inyangamugayo returned empty handed at the end of the day.126

118 TAM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 119 MLF, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 03, 2016. 120 Rutayisire, Gacaca Courts in Rwanda, 144. 121 MAM, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 03, 2016. 122 BVF, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 11, 2015. 123 MJF, interview with respondent, Mwurire Sector, June 15, 2016. 124 KIM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 125 SACR, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 126 JPM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015.

Inyangamugayo worked without pay while the Gacaca courts were in session. As such, they continuously made personal sacrifices. As one Inyangamugayo revealed, “[w]e [Inyangamugayo] were interested in finding out the truth and punishing genocide perpetrators because ofthe atrocities they had committed against their neighbors, and we are sure our goal was reached. Yet, there are many things we missed because of acting as Inyangamugayo in the Gacaca courts.”127 Most notably, judges who relied upon subsistence farming lamented the time they were not able to spend working because of the time they were dedicating to Gacaca,128 Several of the judges even went so far as to suggest that they were more susceptible to bribery due to the immense financial strain placed on them by their judicial duties.129 As one Inyangamugayo stated, “I wish there was a small remuneration granted to judges who participated in the Gacaca process because even those who were caught up in corruption did it because they were not given even a single penny.”130 Indeed, participants shared that many defendants tried to bribe Inyangamugayo to influence their verdicts and sentencing.131 Those who did take bribes were supposed to be removed from the bench,132 and judicial corruption tarnished the reputations of some Inyangamugayo, possibly even threatening the legitimacy of their entire bench.133 While none of the judges interviewed admitted to accepting bribes in any form, one did comment that he believed the men were more likely to be bribed, noting that “men may be easy to be corrupted but women will be there to help the people… be fair, fighting [against] corruption and bribery in a court.”134 This suggests that women may have been viewed as having more integrity and were less likely to be offered a bribe, though again additional research would be needed to confirm such a claim. To be clear, many respondents believed that not being paid was not enough of a reason to take bribes. As one participant countered, “[t]aking bribes was not caused by working voluntarily. It was caused by a lack of integrity. It was a matter of honesty.”135 Nevertheless, numerous interviewees made a link between taking bribes and a lack of payment. More broadly, when asked about suggestions for how the Gacaca courts could have been improved, the most common response across respondents was to offer a small amount of compensation for the judges who volunteered their time every week for 10 years.136 Though gendered notions of men as providers may suggest that men would have been more likely to make this claim, it surfaced equally across men and women. Some participants explained that they did receive medical insurance, a bicycle, and/or radio receivers.137 Others noted they had been told they would also be grouped into cooperatives with the intention of generating financial revenue to economically support the judges and their families.138 However, after the closing of the Gacaca courts, most of the judges we interviewed claimed they did not receive any benefits from these cooperatives.139 Some shared that most of the money has since been withdrawn, while others explained that they were still waiting to be grouped into a cooperative.140

127 MAM, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 03, 2016. 128 FARM, consolidated interview results, June 2016. 129 BRIB, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 130 BGM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015 131 VERD, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 132 To ensure impartial judgments from the Gacaca courts, the National Service of Gacaca Courts (NSGC) dismissed any judges who were found to be taking bribes and informed the relevant authorities of their prosecution. According to a 2012 report by the National Service of Gacaca Courts (NSGC), out of the 169,442 judges, 443 were dismissed for corruption, See Rutayisire, Gacaca Courts in Rwanda, 194. 133 MAM, interview with respondent, Gahanga Sector, June 03, 2016. 134 TAM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 10, 2015. 135 RWM, interview with respondent, Gikondo Sector, June 11, 2015. 136 COMP, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 137 REMU, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 138 COOP, consolidated interview results, June 2016. 139 BENE, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 140 MONE, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016.

Discussion and Conclusion This article aimed to examine how the Gacaca court judges perceived their roles, as well as the challenges they believe they faced when implementing their positions. As such, it examined the Gacaca courts through the eyes of the people who presided over trials and consequently made the courts possible. In doing so, it likewise centered gendered differences in men and women judges’ perceptions. When it comes to their initial perceptions, women were more likely to be reluctant to serve as judges and to express fear about doing so. Men, on the other hand, more commonly discussed their roles in terms of a patriotic duty and to exude pride for serving their country. These differences likely stem from gendered notions about patriotism and duty, as well as gendered ideas of who can express fear. As we suggest, men were also more likely to have confidence in the institution of the state, which is a common finding in many parts of the world.141 Turning to the views of their roles, many of the Inyangamugayo with whom we spoke believed that their roles were most intimately tied to punishment and reconciliation. Indeed, numerous judges emphasized the importance of punishment and, specifically, the duty to help eradicate impunity. However, men were more likely to view their role as tied to punishment, while women were more likely to discuss the importance of reconciliation. Many explained that bringing people together was paramount to peaceful coexistence, and some judges likewise noted the importance of having both Tutsi and Hutu on the bench. These gendered distinctions likely reflected gendered ideas within Rwandan society, and additional research would be needed to assess how they impacted the judges’ decisions. Notably, these findings diverge from Palmer’s findings,142 which documented that Inyangamugayo were most likely to discuss truth-telling and accountability (though general accountability not typically tied to punishment) as their major aims of Gacaca. Judges in this study did indeed discuss truth-telling, but it was typically discussed in connection with punishment, which Palmer did not find to be the case. The difference in the size of the sample,143 the timing of the study, or other factors may drive such distinctions across studies, and additional research should seek to identify the factors associated with judges’ views of their roles. Finally, regardless of how they viewed their roles, we highlight how the judges’ efforts to enact these roles were not without problems. Many Inyangamugayo expressed the challenge of encouraging truth-telling, which was key to their duties and something that both men and women expressed. Many Inyangamugayo also recalled experiencing verbal harassment in their communities. This challenge is associated with the lack of anonymity of the judges in the Gacaca courts and was more commonly expressed by women. In particular, the Inyangamugayo were elected specifically for having been known and respected within the community. While trials taking place within communities have the potential to make witnesses and judges vulnerable to recrimination from suspects and their families, on the other hand, it encourages transparency through “greater public oversight than in classic courts.”144 Thus, the intimate nature of these community courts can be thought of as a double-edged sword—an important finding for other community courts worldwide. It should be noted that despite common experiences and themes that arose throughout the interviews, how Inyangamugayo viewed their roles and their challenges is certainly influenced by factors such as age, gender, class, and residence.145 Though we consider gendered differences in this article, future research on the Inyangamugayo and the Gacaca system could focus on other under- researched areas. This scholarship could also analyze how community members viewed the judges for a more holistic picture of the role, and it could likewise expand beyond urban areas. Though we do not see any reason for our findings to be biased by our largely urban sample, researchers should

141 ASSU, consolidated interview results, June 2015-2016. 142 Palmer, Courts in Conflict, 149. 143 See Ibid, 13-14. We cannot identify precisely how many Inyangamugayo were interviewed, though they were part of a larger sample of 50 that included other populations. 144 Timothy Longman, “An Assessment of Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts,” Peace Review 21, no. 3 (2009), 307. 145 Hollie Nyseth Brehm et al., “Age, Gender, and the Crime of Crimes: Toward a Life-course Theory of Genocide Participation,” Criminology 54, no. 4 (2016), 722.

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1642 170 Gasanabo et al. indeed focus on how perceptions varied in more rural areas, which may have had lower levels of education among judges. Taken together, these findings extend role theory, and gendered role theory, to a transitional justice setting. As hundreds of thousands of Rwandans filled the judges’ benches, understanding how Inyangamugayo viewed their roles is important in its own right. However, this case can also speak to other cases of transitional justice and community courts worldwide.

Acknowledgements This article was made possible thanks to the generosity of Aegis Trust programme in Research, Policy and Higher Education as well as DfID and SIDA as project funders. Rwanda’s Inyangamugayo: Perspectives from Practitioners in the Gacaca Transitional Justice Mechanism* Jean-Damascène GASANABO, 1 Donatien NIKUZE, 2 Hollie NYSETH BREHM, 3 Hannah PARKS, 4 1&2 Research and Documentation Center on Genocide, National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG), 3 Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University 4 Northeastern University *Direct correspondence to Jean-Damascène Gasanabo, Research and Documentation Center on Genocide, National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG), P.O. Box 7035 KIGALI, RWANDA, (email: [email protected])

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Gibson, L. James. “Judges; Role Orientations, Attitudes, and Decisions: An Interactive Model.” American Political Science Review, 72, no. 3 (1978), 911-924. Doi: 10.2307/1955111 Hintjens, M. Helen. “Explaining the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 37, no. 2 (1999), 241-286. Doi: 10.1017/S0022278X99003018 Honeyman, Catherine, Shakirah Hudani, Alfa Tiruneh, Justina Hierta, Leila Chirayath, Andrew Iliff, and Jens Meierhenrich. “Establishing Collective Norms: Potentials for Participatory Justice in Rwanda.” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 10, no.1 (2004), 1-24. Doi: 10.1207/s15327949pac1001_1 Howard, J. Woodford, Jr. “Role Perceptions and Behavior in Three US Courts of Appeals.” The Journal of Politics 39, no. 4 (1977), 916-938. Doi: 10.2307/2129935 Ingelaere, Bert. Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts: Seeking Justice after Genocide. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2016. ------. “The Gacaca Courts in Rwanda.” In Traditional Justice and Reconciliation after Violent Conflict: Learning from African Experiences, edited by Huyse Luc and Mark Salter, 103-134. Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2008. Law on the Crime of Genocide Ideology and Related Crimes of 2018 (Law No. 59/2018, August 22, 2018), 66-77. (Rep. of Rwanda). Accessed July 30, 2020. https://rwandalii.africanlii.org/ sites/default/files/gazette/OG%2Bno%2BSpecial%2Bof%2B25%2B09%2B2018.pdf. Law on the Organization of Prosecutions for Offences constituting the Crimes of Genocide or Crimes against Humanity committed since October 1, 1990 of 1996 (Organic Law No. 8/96, August 30, 1996). (Rep. of Rwanda). Accessed July 30, 2020. https://reparations.qub.ac.uk/ assets/uploads/ORGANIC-LAW-No.pdf. Longman, Timothy. “An Assessment of Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts.” Peace Review 21, no. 3 (2009), 304-312. Doi: 10.2307/2129935 ------. Memory and Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Lundy, Patricia. “Paradoxes and Challenges of Transitional Justice at the ‘Local’ Level: Historical Enquiries in Northern Ireland.” Contemporary Social Science 6, no. 1 (2011), 89-105. Doi: 10.1080/17450144.2010.534495 Martin, Patricia Yancey, John R. Reynolds, and Shelley Keith. “Gender Bias and Feminist Consciousness Among Judges and Attorneys: A Standpoint Theory Analysis.” Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, no. 3 (2002), 665-701. Accessed July 3, 2020. Doi: 10.1086/337941 Ministry of Local Government, Dénombrement des Victimes du Génocide. Final Report, Kigali: Rwandan Ministry of Local Government, 2004, 1-38. National Itorero Commission, Imfashanyigisho yo gutoza Indangagaciro y’Ubunyangamugayo (Kigali: Ubutore Development Centre, National Itorero Commission, 2014), 1-28. National Service of Gacaca Courts. Amasomo y’Inyangamugayo z’Inkiko Gacaca (Training of Inyangamugayo of Gacaca Courts). Kigali: National Service of Gacaca Courts, November- December, 2005, 1-93. ------. Summary of the Report Presented at the Closing of Gacaca Courts Activities. Kigali: National Service of Gacaca Courts, 2012, 1-22. Ngarambe, Telesphore. Practical Challenges in Customary Law Translation: The Case of Rwanda’s Gacaca Law. Addis Ababa: Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa, 2015. Newbury, Catharine, Baldwin, Hannah. “Confronting the Aftermath of Conflict: Women’s Organizations in Postgenocide Rwanda.” In Women and Civil War: Impact, Organizations, and Action, edited by Krishna Kumar, 97-128. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001. Ní Aoláin, Fionnuala. The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict. London: Oxford University Press, 2017. Doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199300983.001.0001 Nyseth Brehm, Hollie, Christopher Uggen, and Jean-Damascène Gasanabo. “Genocide, Justice, and Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts.” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 30, no. 3 (2014), 333- 352. Doi: 10.1177/1043986214536660 ------. “Age, Gender, and The Crime of Crimes: Toward a Life-course Theory of Genocide Participation.” Criminology 54, no. 4 (2016), 713-743. Doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12122

Nyseth Brehm, Hollie and Shannon Golden. “Centering Survivors in Local Transitional Justice.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 13, (2017), 101-121. Accessed July 22, 2020. Doi: 10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110316-113444 Oliveira Gomes, Adalmir, Tomas Aquino Guimaraes, and Eda Castro Lucas de Souza. “Judicial Work and Judges’ Motivation: The Perceptions of Brazilian State Judges.” Law & Policy 38, no. 2 (2016), 162-176. Doi: 10.1111/lapo.12050 Palmer, Nicola. Courts in Conflict: Interpreting the Layers of Justice in Post-Genocide . Rwanda New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199398195.001.0001 Porter, Elisabeth. Peacebuilding: Women in International Perspective (Routledge Advances in International Relations and Global Politics), 1st ed. New York: Routledge, 2007. Doi: 10.4324/9780203939994 Presidential Order Establishing Modalities for Organizing Elections of Members of “Gacaca Jurisdictions” Organs of 2001 (Presidential Order, No. 12/01 of June 26, 2001). (Rep of Rwanda). Rwandan Official Gazette No. 14, July 15, 2001. Reyntjens, Filip. “Rwanda: Genocide and Beyond.” Journal of Refugee Studies 9, no. 3 (1996), 240-251. Doi: 10.1093/jrs/9.3.240 Rutayisire, Paul. Gacaca Courts in Rwanda. Kigali: Ministry of Justice, 2012. Schultz, Ulrike and Gisela Shaw. Gender and Judging. Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2017. Steffensmeier, Darrell and Chris Hebert. “Women and Men Policymakers: Does the Judge’s Gender Affect the Sentencing of Criminal Defendants?” Social Forces 77, no. 3 (1999), 1163-1196. Accessed July 31, 2020, Doi: 10.2307/3005975. Verwimp, Philip. “An Economic Profile of Peasant Perpetrators of Genocide: Micro level Evidence from Rwanda.” Journal of Development Economics 77, no 2 (2005), 297-323. Doi: 10.1016/j. jdeveco.2004.04.005 Villa-Vicencio, Charles, Paul Nantulya, and Tyrone Savage. Building Nations: Transitional Justice in the African Great Lakes Region. Cape Town: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, 2005. Waldorf, Lars. “Mass Justice for Mass Atrocity: Rethinking Local Justice as Transitional Justice.” Temple Law Review 79, (2006), 1-88. Wierzynska, Aneta. “Consolidating Democracy through Transitional Justice: Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts.” N.Y.U. Law Review 79, no. 5 (2004), 1934-1970. Yinger, Milton. Toward a Field Theory of Behavior: Personality and Social Structure. New York: McGraw Hill, 1965.

Book Review: Sources of Holocaust Insight James J. Snow Loyola University Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Sources of Holocaust Insight John K. Roth Eugene, Cascade Books, 2020 304 Pages; Price: $35.00 Paperback

Reviewed by James Snow Loyola University Maryland

Scholars, students, and practitioners who have engaged with the works of John K. Roth over the years will, at first blush, findSources of Holocaust Insight to seemingly take a different direction. It is a deeply personal reflection on over fifty years of Holocaust Studies focusing on the scholars, witnesses, survivors, friends, and others who have been such rich resources of Holocaust insight. Although distinctly different in some ways from his earlier books, this latest book continues to explore the big questions that endure from the recognition that, as he writes in the Epilogue, “The Holocaust signifies immense failure—ethical, religious, political.”1 This work, then, is equally as important as any of his previous works. In the Prologue, “Acts of Recognition,” Roth writes that he “revisits [his] sources of Holocaust insight . . . not only to pay tribute to them but also to refocus the insight.”2 The latter purpose is especially important and serves to make the book far richer than just an intellectual memoir of someone for whom the Holocaust has served as a compass for over fifty years. Also clear in the Prologue is his understanding of what he means by “insight.” Expanding on the early 20th century philosopher Josiah Royce’s understanding of insight, Roth makes two important claims: insight does not occur in solitude. “They [insights] require interpersonal exchanges that challenge and correct, augment and amplify. . . . [Moreover], “[s]eeking and finding insight are ongoing actions. . .[t]o have insight is to recognize that learning is never finished, [and] that my grasp of things is fallible and incomplete. . . .” 3 In the space of a review it is not possible or even desirable to discuss all the people Roth engages in the text. He devotes chapters to Richard Rubenstein, Elie Wiesel, Franklin Littell, Raul Hilberg, Sarah Kofman and Charlotte Delbo, Philip Hallie and Albert Camus, Primo Levi, and Jean Amery. He also discusses lesser known friends and colleagues who have been equally important sources of insight. I will confine my remarks to a few of the writers, artists, and survivors he engages, followed by some more general remarks about the book as a whole. Although Roth self-identifies as a Christian, he takes to heart Richard Rubenstein’s claim that Christianity is to be indicted in the Holocaust. Roth writes: “Significantly, the Holocaust did not occur until the mid-twentieth century, but conditions necessary, but not sufficient, to produce it were formed centuries before. Decisive in that process was Christian anti-Judaism and its demonization of the Jew.” 4 And it was Rubinstein’s insight that the New Testament defamed the Jews in unprecedented ways. Franklin Littell’s work also served to unsettle Roth by emphasizing the close connections between Christianity and the Holocaust. While Roth and Rubenstein certainly have areas of disagreement, for example, Roth is more sanguine than Rubenstein about how deeply rooted jihad is in Islamic history and tradition, one important insight that Roth finds in Rubenstein’s writings is the important role religion played in the Holocaust and the role it has played in other genocides.

1 John K. Roth, Sources of Holocaust Insight (Eugene, Oregon, 2020), 258. 2 Ibid., 3. 3 Ibid., 4. 4 Ibid., 16.

James J. Snow. “Book Review: Sources of Holocaust Insight.“ Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, 2(2020): 173-175. ©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1777 174 Snow

Readers will not be surprised to learn that one of the greatest sources of Holocaust insight for Roth are the writings of Elie Wiesel. He says of his first encounter with Wiesel’sNight : “I became a philosopher tripped up by Holocaust history. . . . Not until I read Wiesel, however, did my life take the Holocaust turn that changed me personally and professionally forever.”5 Speaking at Wiesel’s funeral, his son, Elisha, said of his father that he did not question God’s existence, but rather God’s decisions. Inspired by Wiesel’s ongoing dialogue (sometimes one-sided) with God, Roth found license for his “ongoing quarrel with God, Jesus, and Christianity.”6 Those familiar with the scholarship of Raul Hilberg, especially The Destruction of European Jews, will find Roth’s chapter devoted to Hilberg one of, if not the most, illuminative. Hilberg was trained as a political scientist and taught in the Department of Political Science at the University of Vermont for many years. The first edition of The Destruction of European Jews, published in 1961 in three volumes, was long-regarded as the definitive history of the Holocaust. What Roth is able to glean from Hilberg’s writings are what he calls “Hilberg’s moral insights.” Key for Roth’s reading of Hilberg is his focus on perpetrators and the realization that perpetrators and bystanders over and over were ordinary people and this points to the failure of ethics, a theme explicitly addressed in an earlier work of Roth’s.7 A key insight gleaned from Hilberg is that being driven by melancholy and moral anger, Hilberg was determined to tell it to the world, and this is what Roth recognizes as Hilberg’s “most crucial imperative.”8 I would be remiss not to review the discussion Roth devotes to witnesses, poets, and artists who have been significant sources of Holocaust insight. These sources are often not giventhe credit they so richly deserve by philosophers, historians, political scientists, and other academic scholars who devote themselves to the study of the Holocaust and other genocides. Seemingly by accident, Roth discovered the poetry of Gertrud Kolmar, a German Jew who lived in Berlin and likely died at Auschwitz. In Kolmar’s collection of poems, entitled Dark Soliloquy, she ends the poem, “The Woman Poet,” with this line: “You hear me speak. But do you hear me feel?”9 I do not know of a philosopher and Holocaust scholar who better hears the words and feelings of the artist. Whether it be the paintings of Samuel Bak or the writings of Charlotte Delbo, Roth does not shy from sources which resist closure. Of Delbo he writes: “she taught me that no matter how long and well I studied the Holocaust, I could never close the knowledge gaps that reflected differences between before and after, then and now, there and here.”10 One of the most chilling Holocaust insights is owed to the Italian chemist, Primo Levi. Especially unsettling is Levi’s discussion of the “grey zone,” Levi’s term for the moral space occupied by many of his fellow prisoners at Auschwitz. The most extreme case of the grey zone in the camps, especially Auschwitz, were members of the Sonderkommando, Jewish prisoners who were given certain privileges in the camps in return for carrying out some of the more gruesome tasks such as removing things of value such as gold teeth from gassed corpses and then transporting them to the crematoria. The Sonderkammandos were faced with “choiceless choices” similar to the choiceless choices faced by the Judenrat in the ghettoes. The moral “ambiguities and compromises” that define the grey zone meant that “Levi saw the grey-zone behavior could not be neatly analyzed in terms of right and wrong as least not as most traditions of philosophical ethics might try to do.”11 For Roth, the Holocaust signals the tremendous failures of ethics and religion, especially Christianity and calls on us to not just acknowledge but confront those failures as well. But, and as he writes in the Epilogue, we must “refuse to let that fact be the last judgment.”12

5 Ibid., 29-30. 6 Ibid., 44. 7 John K. Roth, The Failures of Ethics: Confronting the Holocaust, Genocide, and Other Mass Atrocities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 8 Roth, Sources of Holocaust Insight, 102. 9 Gertrud Kolmar, Dark Soliloquy: The Selected Poems of Gertrud Kolmar, trans. Henry A. Smith (New York: The Seabury Press, 1975). 10 Roth, Sources of Holocaust Insight, 156. 11 Ibid., 214. 12 Ibid., 258.

Many students and scholars of the Holocaust would be quick to cite the scholarship of John Roth as an important source of Holocaust insight, and this latest book might well provide additional insights, especially his warning that we dare not take anything good for granted.

Book Review: The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of its Christian Minorities 1894-1924 Steven A. Usitalo Northern State University Aberdeen, South Dakota, USA

The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of its Christian Minorities 1894-1924 Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2019 672 Pages; Price: $35.00 Hardcover

Reviewed by Steven A. Usitalo Northern State University

This is an intensely exasperating work. It is also an impressive achievement. Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi, the authors of The Thirty-Year Genocide, are new to the now well-established field of Late Ottoman genocide studies. This substantial contribution tends to provoke on nearly every page (no mean feat for a tome as massive as this one). This is hardly surprising from the contentious historian of Israel and Palestine, Benny Morris. Ze’evi is a respected scholar of Ottoman history with a rather more temperate record than Morris’s. At a superficial level, the authors are rigidly deterministic in imposing an unsustainable thirty-year timeframe for genocide in the late Ottoman Empire, lasting until the foundation of modern Turkey, and suggestively, well beyond (if in less “genocidal” modes of violence). Their views of the “Turkish” perpetrators, who attempted to de-Christianize the Ottoman Empire, and nearly succeeded in doing so by the time that Atatürk established his rule in the Republic of Turkey, reads as distressingly essentialist. The authors only perfunctorily distinguish the Ottoman regime from Turks as an operative ethnic/national group. The perpetrators “sought power, wealth, and sexual gratification,”1 often ill-defined motives that mixed with Turkish fears of foreign domination and rapidly developing Turkish nationalism. Exclusionary Turkish nationalism, along with politicized Islam, were the ideological drivers that led the, as argued here nearly undifferentiated Muslim population, to attempt to rid the Ottoman Empire of its Christian minorities. The authors give only minimal attention to the organizers of the Armenian Genocide, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) and its leadership, with the exception of Talaat Pasha, cast by the authors, correctly, as the primary future genocidaire, in search of a “definitive solution of the Armenian question.”2 The authors afford little attention to the evolution of CUP ideology and policies from its late nineteenth century origins to its surprising—surprising to this reviewer and likely to most scholars of the Armenian Genocide—emergence as the organizer of mass atrocities against Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. Indeed the secular views so often ascribed to many in the CUP are dismissed in Morris and Ze’evi’s analysis, all is reduced to Islam, for “while not all Muslims were trustworthy in the eyes of the CUP, just about anyone who was trustworthy was Muslim.”3 All is abstracted to inadequately conceptualized politicized Islam: “among top CUP officials, Islam defined the boundaries of the nation. In this respect, they were Islamists like [Sultan] Abdülhamid, not the secularists assumed in conventional history.”4 Islam as crafted in the work under review is purely an instrumental ends to excluding Christians from Ottoman lands. Except, of course, when they are not murdering, raping, and pillaging them. As the authors assert, the perpetrators at every level of Ottoman Society, and later the leaders of the Turkish Republic, were “acting in defense of Islam and in defense of the sacred Islamic

1 Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi, The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of its Christian Minorities 1894-1924 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2019), 5. 2 Ibid., 172. 3 Ibid., 147. 4 Ibid., 147.

Steven A. Usitalo. “Book Review: The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of its Christian Minorities 1894-1924.“ Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, 2(2020): 176-178. ©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1782 Book Review: The Thirty-Year Genocide 177 domain. For most, the slaughter of the Christians, innocent as well as combatants, was imperative in a state of declared jihad.”5 The innumerable conversions forced on Armenians, Greeks, and to a lesser extent Assyrians, and which to a degree saved many from death, is “proof of the religious impulse underlying Turkish Muslims actions.” On nearly every page of the work under review the authors graphically describe the mass rape and abduction of (primarily, but not exclusively) Armenian women and children, the murders and forced marches endured by the victimized Christian communities, attacks on priests and various notables, in short the massacre of between 1.5 and 2.5 million Christians between 1894-1924.6 Grounding their work on a significant base of primary sources (largely from what remains of Ottoman sources along with the accounts of foreign diplomats and missionaries), along with (nearly) all relevant secondary literature, this an intensely vivid account of the occasionally systematic, often chaotic, victimization of Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks. With the exception of an extended chapter on the “population engineering” experienced by Greeks, and indeed other Christians and Muslims, much of the book is devoted to the destruction of the Armenians. Due to the paucity of available materials, the genocide suffered by the Assyrians is persuasively, if briefly, delineated in this volume. The Christian population of the Ottoman Empire was twenty percent of the total in 1894; it declined to two percent by 1924. In subsequent decades, the population of Christians in the Turkish Republic would continue to decrease. This story, the authors aver, is both “deeper and wider”7 than the Armenian Genocide. The authors locate three waves of violence during the three decades of history under discussion: the 1894-96 “Hamidian” massacres; the 1915-1916 genocide of the Armenians and Assyrians; and the “destruction” of the remaining Armenian community, along with the violent removal of the Greeks and Assyrians from 1918-1924. Profuse accounts by both perpetrators and victims, reprinted here, often without searching analysis by the authors, leaves the reader numb. It is clear from any judicious reading of this volume that the authors consider neither the Hamidian massacres of the 1890s, nor the 1918-24 expulsions, as constituting a genocide. Rather, referring to Richard Hovanissian’s assessment, they see the period as defined by “a ‘continuum of genocidal intent’ and a ‘continuum of ethnic cleansing’.”8 Certainly, to Hovanissian, and to the authors here, the Sultan did not think “in terms of complete extermination.” Although Hovanissian focuses on the “de-Armenization” of the Empire, Morris and Ze’evi more compellingly contend, “de-Christianization was what the Ottoman and Nationalist Turks were after.” As for the Young Turk organized assault on the Armenians and Assyrians in 1915-16, no serious-minded scholar denies that the attacks evolved from arrests, harassment, deportations, to centrally directed mass murder. Morris and Ze’evi’s work contributes a vast amount of detail, little of which is not already known to both scholars and students of the subject, on the horrors visited on principally Armenians and Assyrians in 1915-16. So if the authors themselves fail to give credence to anything more than a culture of violence that both led up to the Genocide of 1915-16, and that later scarred Turkish society, then the notion of a thirty-year genocide is absent any epistemic value. It is deployed here merely as a rhetorical device. Unable to uncover any evidence indicating a clear timeline for the 1915-1916 genocide, Morris and Ze’evi even so maintain that very preliminary planning, and even preparations for the genocide, began perhaps as early as late 1914. At the very latest, “CUP activists began the planning” for a systematic offensive against Armenians after the defeat of Ottoman forces, to their existential enemies, the Russians, at the Battle of Sarikamish in January 1915.9 By the time of the arrest of Armenian notables in Constantinople on April 24, 1915, preparations for the Armenian Genocide were already in place. Assessing and dismissing Donald Bloxham’s “cumulative-radicalization”10 approach in which Bloxham scaffolds an evolutionary methodology onto the Armenian Genocide.

5 Ibid., 494. 6 Ibid., 488. 7 Ibid., 3. 8 Ibid., 491. 9 Ibid., 249. 10 Ibid., 246.

This does not encompass Young Turk planning for the physical destruction of the Armenians before May-June 1915. Bloxham’s conclusions, which reflect a consensus among recent scholars of the genocide blends intentionalist and functionalist frameworks familiar in Holocaust historiography. In fact, Morris and Ze’evi conclude their monograph with a sustained, and quite thought-provoking comparison between the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide. The authors are most persuasive when arguing that the Armenian community in the Ottoman Empire was destroyed in 1915-16 not mainly for nationalist reasons, but because they were Christians who were alleged to be in league with the Russians. Assyrians suffered a similar fate to the Armenians, except that they were not allied, even in the fevered imaginations of their killers, to any outside power. Many Greeks were massacred before and especially after the First World War, but their fate was more deportation than community-wide slaughter. They had a clear place where they might be re-settled. If only the authors had been more nuanced in their approach to the perpetrators and not, erroneously, conflated the killers with quite nearly the entire Ottoman population and indeed ascribed their motivations to a rather monolithic image of Islam. Often elegantly written, with emphatic arguments advanced throughout, The Thirty-Year Genocide demands no previous knowledge of the topic on the part of the reader, and should have wide appeal to a general reader interested in the Armenian Genocide, or genocide studies.

Book Review: The Greek Genocide in American Naval War Diaries: Naval Commanders Report and Protest Death Marches and Massacres in Turkey’s Pontus Region, 1921–1922 Thomas Blake Earle Texas A&M University Galveston, Texas, USA

The Greek Genocide in American Naval War Diaries: Naval Commanders Report and Protest Death Marches and Massacres in Turkey’s Pontus Region, 1921–1922 Robert Shenk and Sam Koktzoglou, editors New Orleans, University of New Orleans Press, 2020 404 Pages; Price: $24.95 Paperback

Reviewed by Thomas Blake Earle Texas A&M University at Galveston

Coming on the heels of the more well-known Armenian Genocide, the ethnic cleansing of Ottoman Greeks in the Pontus region of Asia Minor in 1921 and 1922 has received comparatively less attention. Editors Robert Shenk and Sam Koktzoglou look to open the documentary record of this chapter in the larger story of ethnic violence of the early twentieth century. Shenk—who previously published a history of the U.S. Navy in the Black Sea in the aftermath of World War I— and Koktzoglou—a descendent of Pontic Greeks—tell this story from the perspective of U.S. Naval officers stationed along the Black Sea coast of Turkey.1 An important question that weaves its way through accounts of naval officers reporting on the forced labor, death marches, and massacres of ethnic Greeks at the hands of Turkish nationalists, is what is the duty or ability of the United States military to intervene in such human rights violations. At the heart of this book are diary entries kept by U.S. Navy officers, the bulk of which cover events in the city of Samsun from May to November 1921. The editors omitted information deemed “irrelevant” to the violence committed against ethnic Greeks—subjects pertaining to naval affairs and commercial interests, as well as relief efforts—in favor of any “reference to every Turkish or Greek military-related event of any size…[and] all references to either Greek or Turkish offenses or atrocities.”2 The editors’ goals in presenting these sources are to provide “for the first time a unique window from an impartial source on events in Samsun and the Pontus region in general.”3 Before presenting relevant diary entries Shenk and Koktzoglou take readers through an extensive introduction detailing the historical context. As the editors explain, the Greek genocide sprang directly from the Greco-Turkish War. In the aftermath of World War I, Greece, with the support of the Allies, had territorial ambitions as the Ottoman Empire disintegrated. Hellenic forces invaded western Anatolia. Concurrently Turkish nationalists occupied the Pontus region before ramping up the persecution of Ottoman Greeks who called the area home. Some Turkish leaders justified the persecution as a response to the perceived threat posed by the invading Greeks who might have found support among their coethnics. As Shenk and Koktzoglou state, “By the late summer of 1921, numerous killings, some massacres, the burning of innumerable Greek villages, and many forced deportations into the interior, which soon became death marches, had become commonplace throughout Pontus.” They continue, “the suffering affected the Ottoman Greek minority even more profoundly than it did the ethnic Armenians who had been most severely ravaged before.”4

1 Robert Shenk, America’s Black Sea Fleet: The U.S. Navy Amidst War and Revolution, 1919–1923 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2012). 2 Robert Shenk and Sam Koktzoglou, eds., The Greek Genocide in American Naval War Diaries: Naval Commanders Report and Protest Death Marches and Massacres in Turkey’s Pontus Region, 1921–1922 (New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2020), 62. 3 Ibid., 19. 4 Ibid., 27.

Thomas Blake Earle. “Book Review: The Greek Genocide in American Naval War Diaries: Naval Commanders Report and Protest Death Marches and Massacres in Turkey’s Pontus Region, 1921–1922.“ Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, 2(2020): 179-181. ©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention. https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1778 180 Earle

U.S. Naval officers served as witnesses to this series of events. Having never declared war on the Ottoman Empire, the United States was left on the outside looking in as the Allies—Britain, France, and Italy—made policy decisions that affected the region, including initially supporting the Greek invasion. The reason why American warships were in the region in the first place was to transport and protect investigators, relief workers, and missionaries responding to postwar crises and reports of atrocities, like those against the Armenians. Relief work in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea was a new mission for a navy that only recently joined the ranks of the great powers. The introduction does well in explaining these naval operations. The extensive introduction will serve the needs of multiple audiences. Historians of and those interested in the U.S. Navy will find the editors’ discussion of the region’s history, its geopolitics, Turkish nationalism, and a blow-by-blow account of the Turkish atrocities against the Greeks a necessary prerequisite to making sense of the naval records reproduced in the volume. Conversely, those interested in other perspective on the Greek genocide and the region’s history in the aftermath of World War I will benefit from the editor’s discussion of the navy’s organization and operations. Researchers in these areas—genocide studies, the eastern Mediterranean, and American naval history—will no doubt benefit from this well-edited collection of heretofore underutilized sources. As the atrocities unfolded, the question of what did, or even what could, these naval officers do came to the fore. The editors conclude with qualified approval of the limited actions taken by Admiral Mark Bristol, the naval commander in charge in Constantinople. Bristol’s authority was not limited to naval affairs. As the most senior American representative in the region, Bristol carried on the tradition of naval officers operating in diplomatic and consular capacities in places where the American state had little presence. Concern for American business interests inthe Pontus region may have slowed Bristol’s response to the atrocities. As the editors observe, the admiral “became increasingly more sympathetic to the Turks than to Turkey’s various Christian people despite the terrible suffering of the latter groups...under the Nationalists.”5 Were it not for an officer under Bristol’s command, the admiral may have done nothing to oppose the treatment of the Pontic Greeks. The editors recognize that plenty of officers mirrored Admiral Bristol’s pro-Turkish bias. After all, these officers would have risked their careers by opposing Bristol’s policies. One commander did just that. Commander Arthur LeRoy Bristol (no relation to the admiral) pressed for the navy to take action to mitigate the violence. Writing to his superior in Constantinople, Commander Bristol informed his superior of a new round of forced deportations of more than ten thousand Pontic Greeks from Samsun. Bristol urged the admiral to consider the consequences: “If this goes through it will at later date...be classed with the Armenian affair, and we will occupy in the public mind very much the position of the Germans. Time will impute to us not only doing little to prevent it but actually the attitude of complacent if not concurrence. There is a feeling among all (Turks included) that…strong action by America can stop it.”6 In the estimation of the editors, this missive finally motivated the previously reluctant Admiral Bristol to formally protest Turkish treatment of the Greeks. Shenk and Koktzoglou conclude that this protest and the continued presences of American warships in the region saved the lives of thousands of Ottoman Greeks. Action, limited as it was, came after months of persecution and only because of the exhorting of subordinate officers. This volume constitutes a case study of what individuals in institutions like the U.S. Navy can do in the face of atrocities like those in Anatolia at the beginning of the twentieth century. Lessons learned are not limited to this single example. Admiral James Stavridis considers the larger implications in the book’s foreword.7 Stavridis, a retired naval officer and former supreme commander of NATO, observes that “Naval servicemembers at all levels might profitably study the extraordinary circumstances that these officers faced, as well as their varied responses to the

5 Ibid., 33. 6 Ibid., 183. 7 Stavridis has elsewhere written about the Navy and geopolitics, offering policy recommendations and his perspective as a sailors, see James Stavridis, Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans (New York: Penguin Press, 2017).

©2020 Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 2 https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.2.1778 Book Review: The Greek Genocide in American Naval War Diaries 181 narrow options open to them.”8 Amidst the constraints of institutions and protocols Stavridis recognizes that “the larger responsibility of an officer both to his fellow human beings and to his country, whatever the effect upon his own career,” should factor in when considering “the hard choices we face going forward in this turbulent twenty-first century.”9 For policymakers, service members, and researchers alike, this collection is a valuable resource.

8 Shenk and Koktzoglou, The Greek Genocide, 14. 9 Ibid., 15.