The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

294 genocide’s wake
They had sold out to subversion” (Nairn 1982). Echoing these views, Colonel Byron
Disrael Lima, who graduated at the top of his military academy class of 1962,
told the Wall Street Journal (Krauss 1985:1) that his heroes in history are Napoleon
and Hitler because “I respect conquerors.” He evidenced little respect for civilians
or democracy. “The civilians don’t work until we tell them to work. They need our
protection, control and direction.” As the front page Wall Street Journal article points
out, the Reagan administration in 1980 resumed $300 million in military aid. Col.
Lima confidently showed disdain for elected civilian leaders: “There’s a civilian
wave in Latin America now,” he observed in 1985 as Guatemala was in the midst
of a presidential campaign, “but that doesn’t mean military men will lose their ultimate
power.” Concluding, he smugly boasted, “Latins take commands from men
in uniform” (Krauss 1991:45).
In a place hammered into silence and accustomed to impunity, the CEH report—particularly
the charge of genocide—stunned the country by its straightforward
language and the thoroughness of its documentation. It was as if the whole
country had burst into tears, tears repressed for decades and tears of vindication.
The public understandably had been skeptical about what the CEH would document
and conclude. Thus when the report was released on February 25, 1999, “the
public was shocked at its strength,” Ross observes (1999b:42). “In addition to more
than 3,500 pages of information on atrocities, including more than 600 massacres,
the commission found the state responsible for more than 93 percent of the violations”
(ibid.; see also Ross 1999a). “And they called it genocide,” Ross reminds us,
a charge that inspired long, wrenching discussions within the CEH itself. The purpose
of the terror in this and countless other villages, the commission forcefully
charged, “was to intimidate and silence society as a whole, in order to destroy the
will for transformation, both in the short and long term” (CEH 1999b:27). Without
question, the army’s horrific actions ripped deep psychological wounds into the
consciousness of the inhabitants of Santa Maria Tzejá—a village involved in a
much larger trauma. The army’s brutal and targeted repression, especially in the
province of El Quiché, where Santa Maria Tzejá is located, went far beyond the
threat posed by the armed insurgency. In El Quiché, 344 massacres took place, representing
more than half of the total deaths and over 45 percent of the human
rights violations in the country. The commission documented that 200,000 people
were killed or disappeared throughout Guatemala over more than three decades
of war (ibid.:18, 20; see also Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de
Guatemala 1998a, 1998b, 1998c). During the most intense period of the military
onslaught, from 1981 to 1983, as many as 1.5 million people were internally displaced
or had to flee the country, including about 150,000 who sought refuge in
Mexico (CEH 1999b:30; Manz 1988a, 1988b).
The roots of the genocide against Mayan communities are anchored in the tortured
history of Guatemala, according to the CEH report. “The proclamation of
independence in 1821, an event prompted by the country’s elite, saw the creation
of an authoritarian State which excluded the majority of the population, was racist