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Rethinking Political Culture : Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and Political Identity in Guatemala

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Rethinking Political Culture : Counterinsurgency, Democracy, and Political Identity in Guatemala University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1993 Rethinking political culture : counterinsurgency, democracy, and political identity in Guatemala. Joseph Marc Belanger University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Belanger, Joseph Marc, "Rethinking political culture : counterinsurgency, democracy, and political identity in Guatemala." (1993). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1886. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1886 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RETHINKING POLITICAL CULTURE: COUNTERINSURGENCY, DEMOCRACY, AND POLITICAL IDENTITY IN GUATEMALA A Dissertation Presented by JOSEPH MARC BELANGER Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 1993 Department of Political Science © Copyright by Joseph Marc Belanger 1993 All Rights Reserved RETHINKING POLITICAL CULTURE: COUNTERINSURGENCY ' DEMOCRACY, AND POLITICAL IDENTITY IN GUATEMALA A Dissertation Presented by JOSEPH MARC BELANGER Approved as to style and content by: Howard Wiarda, Chair Nicholas Xenos, Member Paul Dosal, Member George Sulzner, Department Head Department of Political Science ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Max Weber once told an audience of students that in order to pursue any form of study one must first clarify his or her ultimate values and "obey the demon who holds the fiber of his very life." This work reflects the truth of Weber's insight on several levels. I first learned about Guatemala while working with Oxfam America and Amnesty International in the early 1980s. In that context I was continually confronted by many horrendous and wondrous human acts, unimaginable cruelty and courage, savagery and compassion. But no country more consistently astonished me than Guatemala, both in terms of the human capacity for cruelty as well as courage and heroism. I struggled to resist the tendency to view those who resisted oppression with such strength as somehow special and different. What was indeed most moving and inspiring was the realization that the courage to bear torture and pervasive terror was something of which many were capable. And yet the opposite realization was frightening: that the perpetrators of such barbarism in Guatemala, and elsewhere, were also not special. A work such as this could not pretend to offer conclusive answers to the mysteries of the human soul which its subject matter presents. Social scientists often imagine that human behavior can be effectively measured, but they are wrong. Instead, we can ask, How do individuals and communities construct their sense of meaning and identity? The effort to think about that iv question in Guatemala and more generally led me to reconsider the issue of political culture. The answers I have offered are meant to be provocative and provisional, a stimulus to further study, some suggestions about how to proceed, a case study to provide examples. But Weber's insights into the connection between identity and forms of inquiry are illustrated by this work in a still more personal fashion. Completing this work and drawing back from it a little, it is clear to me now, in a way it was not at all when I began, that the ways I understand culture, meaning, and identity are not detached observations. If I am interested in cultures as both historically grounded and yet endlessly reshaped by contingency, it's partly because that is how I understand my own life. My parents taught me to think for myself, and then spent years having their conservative convictions taken to task. Learning to understand the tensions and the bonds within that community has gradually in turn persuaded me how much I have been shaped by my parents and their values. While I am neither Catholic or conservative, their influence remains central to who I am and how I think. This experience has thus strengthened an assumption that underlies much of this work: that identity is always the product of conflict and change, and yet that we seldom wholly reinvent ourselves. Today many in the United States fear our "multiculturalism," as if the issue forced us to choose "once and for all" who "we" are in some definitive sense. My own experience, fortified by the powerful example of others such as the Maya in Guatemala, v has convinced me that confronting the present means truly remembering where we came from. This work is thus meant to express a faith in the inventiveness of human cultures to both redeem the past and transform the present. My deepest debts go then to my mother and my father; though they would not agree with much of what I have written, I am thankful for the faith, skepticism, and persistence that they taught me. As I sought to ask these kinds of questions in graduate school, the field of comparative politics often seemed ill at ease with such question. Beliefs and attitudes which couldn't be quantified, words that had more than one meaning, world views in flux, beset by contingency and contradiction. I have been fortunate to study in a program which encouraged innovation and theoretical openness. The opportunity to give extensive consideration to thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michel Foucault and Walter Benjamin in the context of graduate political theory seminars has greatly enriched my perspective. The idea that I would ever finish this project long seemed impossible to imagine. That I kept with it is due in no small way to the support and encouragement of my dissertation committee. Howard Wiarda was critical when he needed to be, but helped curb my tendency to get bogged down trying to answer too many questions. I am especially appreciative of the openness and encouragement he offered to my efforts to question mainstream in comparative politics. Nick Xenos' seminars provided some of the context vi which ideas culture my on first emerged; his respect for, openness to, and encouragement of my attempts to bring more theoretical reflection to comparative politics was also crucial in developing more confidence about where I was going. Paul Dosal served his capacity as the "outside reader" in a way which thoroughly affirmed my choice to ask him to sit on my committee. He provided invaluable constructive criticism in helping untangle what seemed a hopelessly muddled first draft of what turned out to be Chapters 3 and 4. Amrita Basu helped pinpoint some fundamental problems in my prospectus; her comments were important in helping clarify in my own mind what I thought I was doing. Jeneen Hobby offered her generous and illuminating criticism of an early draft of Chapter 2. Renee Heberle provided the same for Chapter 7. I also wish to express deep appreciation to several individuals and organizations who were helpful in the gathering of research materials for this dissertation. They are: Johanna Mendelson of the School of International Service, American University, Washington, DC; Chris Lutz and other staff of the Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamerica/Plumsock Mesoamerican Center, in Woodstock, Vermont and Antigua, Guatemala; Ieda Wiarda and Edmundo Flores of the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress; the library staff of the Inter-American Defense College, Washington, DC; Ravi Khanna of the Peace Development Fund, Amherst, MA; the staff of Inforpress in Guatemala City. vii It remains a sad but all too real fact that many who have helped me understand Guatemala the best cannot be thanked publicly. But without the thoughts and ideas of countless Guatemalans this work would never have been written. I pray that someday that this kind of anonymous thanks will no longer be a pervasive necessity for those undertaking research in this extraordinary country. Katy Arnold and Betsy Cohn were wonderful friends and hosts during several visits to Washington to do research. Joanne Belanger, Midge Eisele, Renee Heberle, Nancy Herndon, Elisabeth Hinshaw, Zan Jacobus, and Marsha Marotta in one way or another helped me remain aware that I was more than just a graduate student. They kept acting as if of course I would finish one day. I didn't believe them, but knowing they did believe mattered more than they know. And without Elizabeth Rankin's presence in my life, the difficulties of the past several years would have been unimaginably greater. viii ABSTRACT RETHINKING POLITICAL CULTURE: COUNTERINSURGENCY ' DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL IDENTITY IN GUATEMALA FEBRUARY 1993 JOSEPH MARC BELANGER B.A., UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS Directed by: Professor Howard Wiarda This dissertation has two principle aims: to examine the political cultural context for counterinsurgency in Guatemala, and in the process try to revitalize the concept of political culture. I argue that counterinsurgency in Guatemala must be understood as a political project with a distinct cultural agenda, and not simply a military strategy to defeat a guerrilla movements. The goal of that project is the construction of a modern nation state which can more fully integrate the country's indigenous communities, establish the legitimacy of national political institutions, and weaken the influence of independent social and political movements. In other words, this is a project to win "hearts and minds." I analyze the historical context, the political and cultural goals of the military, and the other political cultural forces which it must confront. I examine the cultural significance of ethnicity, religion, popular political movements, and political violence, and conclude that the military has thus far fallen far short of realizing its political, as opposed to strictly military, goals. ix This case study provides a concrete context within which to examine in some depth the theoretical issues involved in the study of political culture.
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