EXISTIENDO y RESISTIENDO: Understanding Guatemala's Departed as Agents in the Fight for Just Futures

Between 1954 and 1996, the Guatemalan civil war and Mayan genocide led to the murder or forced disappearance of 200,000 people, 150,000 Guatemalan refugees internationally, and the displacement of 1.5 million people within the country. I argue that in Guatemala today, the dead and disappeared remain engaged participants within struggles for political change and just governance due to their unsettling of linear time, layering of affective attachment, and challenging of liberal authority. This is especially possible within Guatemala because of the continued prevalence of Mayan ancestral tradition, which not only assumes but also invites the continued intervention of the dead within the world of the living. In troubling the distinctions between categories of agency and liveliness, I seek to understand how contemporary modes of engaging with the dead and disappeared are aligned with traditional practices of calling to the ancestors. I analyze examples from the State judicial realm, public art, and political protest to underscore how the living work together with the departed to negotiate justice and sovereignty, demonstrating the importance of the past in the creation of more just futures.

Author

• Fenzel, Anna Therese

Language

• English

Keyword

• sovereignty
• futures
• activism
• genocide
• disappeared
• memory

Date created

• 2024

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Anthropology

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Wagner, Sarah

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/wm117p87k