Chapter 3: Memory and the Testimonio: “Como Mujeres Indígenas Mayas Tenemos un Valor Grande y es por eso que Queremos que Escuchen Nuestra Voz”^[1] 

Although the military’s tactics of social control did keep people silent and terrified, the military could not entirely eradicate individual memories that contested official “truth” or amnesia. The military cannot instill amnesia or “prevent the private sphere and private memories leaking into public consciousness.[4] Collecting testimonies from survivors of la violencia, therefore, has been one of the means that those Guatemalans who seek to expose the military’s atrocities have used to help reveal what the military hides and to offer other eyewitness versions of the truth.

The task of sorting out history and story and truth and memory is, in part, the task of the researcher. However, how the women understand and think of this past is as important as balanced objective historical accuracy. Although it is beyond the bounds of this thesis to elaborate further on the challenges of establishing historical truth, it remains important to consider questions such as whether or not it is possible or honest to portray a story or History as objective or balanced.

With regard to personal and collective memory and their relationship to history, here I argue that how the women remember la violencia is directly connected to how they feel about themselves, their lives, their future, and their communities. As Zur discusses in Violent Memories: Mayan War Widows in Guatemala and as Jelin discusses in the Introduction to Women and Social Change in Latin America, one’s sense of personal identity is closely tied to the version of one’s history that one knows. It is important therefore, in the process of “establishing identities,” to construct histories based on the “retrieval of popular recollections of the actors themselves.”[5] The act of re-membering, or putting together pieces of memory is part of how history is constructed. For example, if a collective memory emphasizes a tradition of resistance, as has been done in Maya oral history, a legacy of resistance is passed on which engenders the continued propagation of self and collective identities that assert resistance and cultural integrity. Memory, therefore, is in part an active and self-conscious process and as a result of la violencia, communities had to actively (literally and figuratively) unbury their (censored, hidden, silenced, and buried) history in order to know it and pass it on. Due to the intimate relationship between memory and identity, therefore, there is a direct link between how the women have reconstructed this brutal period in their own minds and their ability to heal from the violence and feel empowered enough to rebuild their lives, unbury the corpses of la violencia, participate in the construction of collective history of the violence, and become participants in a broad-based struggle for social change in Guatemala.

Although I do not extensively explore the complex relationship between memory and History in this thesis, suffice it to say that reports like CEH and REMHI are important precisely because they use many kinds of sources in order to construct a comprehensive and thorough account of the armed conflict. Personal and collective memory, although partly influenced by historical accounts that attempt to stand at a critical distance, “hold” the past in myriad forms. They may be non-linear, free-form, more imaginative, and influenced by dreams. Additionally, memories that are influenced by oral accounts of the past differ from those that are influenced by written ones. Although this is also not further elaborated in this thesis, it is important to recognize that these women are grounded in an oral tradition and the history they know they have not themselves read. 

Memories come and go. They change. They are reconfigured and revisited by events in the present. Memories of specific events are not static. Memory is personal and also collective. It is built and changed communally, as well as held and altered individually. Understandably, these women’s memories of la violencia are painful and traumatic, but it is significant that the women have a great deal of control over how they reconstruct the past in their own minds, through the projects in the women’s organizations, and in their testimonies. This control is empowering, especially in light of the repression they experienced at the hands of the military and the civil patrols as well as the marginalization they have always known. Unfortunately, the opportunity to tell their own stories came about as a result of horrible circumstances. Fortunately, the ways in which the women have chosen to reconstruct the past in their own minds and through their testimonies has played a critical role in their healing process.

The ways in which the women dealt with their memories during and immediately following la violencia were different from the roles their memories played some years later when they began to organize. Initially, when the women inquired about the fate of their husbands and sons to the local military commissioners, other local officials, or at the nearest military encampment, they were told to go home or that they did not know.^[6] In many cases, fellow villagers corroborated the attitudes of the local officials and also refused to acknowledge or help the women. Even if the villagers had witnessed what had happened, they were generally terrified of the military’s local control and therefore afraid to acknowledge the women’s lived realities.

Sometimes the women did not know if their husbands had actually been killed, even if they suspected as much. The climate of fear produced by the military’s counterinsurgency campaign forced the women to remain silent during and immediately after la violencia passed through their communities. In addition to the fact that the women could not openly talk about what had happened, many were too terrified to inquire about the whereabouts of their husbands for fear of being considered a guerrilla. As Gudelia recalls, when she tried to find out where her husband had been taken and why, the authorities told her: “Ud. se va...le corre peligro.” “Me metí un miedo y regresé,” she states.[7] Instilled with fear she went home to wait. Generally, when the women inquired about their husbands, they were lied to or given no answer. In fact, all of the women I interviewed who did inquire were given these responses.^[8]  

Without the opportunity openly to share their suffering and have it acknowledged and validated, the women were forced not only to experience their grief alone, but also to endure a sense of suspended reality in which everyone thought of but no one discussed the horrors that occurred in their own small communities. As Green notes, “silences…do not erase individual memories of terror; they create instead more fear and uncertainty by driving the wedge of paranoia between people.”[9] This lack of affirmation caused isolation and confusion.

The events of la violencia were not discussed publicly until some time after it had passed.^[10] Except in guarded moments as they fulfilled their domestic tasks, the women held their memories privately. There was, however, a collective aspect to this silence in the sense that they all knew what had happened to each other. Some women spoke of this collaborative silence as a kind of support. They knew they were all victims of the same violence. As Zur argues, the women’s collective silence was a “hidden form of communication that is both a form of resistance and a gesture of solidarity and friendship between themselves.”^[11] 

This collaborative silence can be identified in some of the survival strategies the women employed during and immediately after la violencia when the fear still ran deep and danger still seemed present. Women and children would gather to sleep in one place, for example. This is a form of communication in which they acknowledge that they have all lost their husbands. By sleeping together they affirm their communally held fear and need for one another. 

Another response to the terror of la violencia was the will to forget. In addition to the often unconscious blacking-out the horror as a way to cope, forgetting was a personal as well as collective act of memory. Zur suggests that “silence and forgetting are present absences or negative spaces shaping what is remembered.”^[12] Silence and forgetting become part of the memory, both individually and collectively. Communal or personal, silence and forgetting were two of the most important survival strategies for the women during and immediately after la violencia. 

The Testimonio

As Charles R. Hale argues with regard to Guatemala’s counterinsurgency period and the social functions of memory, what is remembered is not only about recovering history, but also about creating “hopeful images...to transcend what history has wrought.”^[15] In other words, how memory is held has to do with the construction of collective and personal identity in the aftermath of la violencia. “[W]hat a collective memory retains is the part of history that can be integrated into a current value system,”^[16] as Jelin notes. The women’s organizational work and storytelling demonstrate that individuals and communities have the potential to play a part in the authorship of their history and, therefore, their identities. With regard to the women’s groups, Zur comments that “[c]onstructing narratives collectively is a means of coming to terms with the events of the past and integrating them into their lives in a way which makes sense in the present.”[17]

The military and the government have tried to control people’s memories by silencing them through the use of violence and to a certain extent by distorting the truth. The military and government have not taken on the responsibility of telling the truth about their roles in Guatemala’s violence. It has been imperative, therefore, for civilians to find the means to remember and recount the events that shattered their communities. The “war on memory”^[18] that Zur identifies in Guatemala and the need to contest the truth put forth by the state, demonstrates how this unburial is integral to the ways in which communities reformulate their identities and histories in order to heal from la violencia.^[19] This, however, is only possible if there is the “support of a social process that acknowledges and names the voids and ‘holes’.”^[20] Such a process began to be built with the formation of human rights groups, such as the women’s organizations in the mid-1980s.

As Hale notes, the “conditions surrounding the peace negotiations have fostered collective efforts to remember,” and from that point on communities began to articulate the events of la violencia. The fact that “communities have taken the initiative to publicly remember,” states Hale, “helps heal wounds.”^[21] One of the first challenges to articulation, however, was how to find words to describe what had happened. As Ana Julia Cienfuegos and Cristina Monelli suggest, “the more intense the horror suffered, the greater the difficulty in expressing it with words.”^[22] 

Zur’s and my own fieldwork demonstrate that it was hard for the women to articulate their “ideas and sentiments...when there are no words to describe them adequately.”^[23] Once the women began to explore their possibilities of expression about la violencia, however, verbal articulation became a means of “release from painful and humiliating memories.”^[24] As Zur notes, the widows “retell and rework their memories in an attempt to resolve them.”^[25] Bishop Juan Conadera Gerardi, as he presented the REMHI report, confirmed the testimonio’s benefits as both a public and a personal form of healing:

[A]sumimos…esta tarea de romper el silencio que durante años han mantenido miles de víctimas de la guerra y abrió la posibilidad de que hablaran y dijeran su palabra, contaran su historia de dolor y sufrimiento a fin de sentirse liberadas del peso que durante años las ha abrumado.^[26] 

The testimonio’s role therefore, as a tool for both collective and personal healing processes, is a means, as Zur notes, of “coming to terms with the events of the past and integrating them into their lives in a way which makes sense in the present. This is a creative and healing process.”^[27]

The testimonial genre, an orally-based collective narrative, is, in many ways, an apt tool used by these women to tell their stories. The women’s testimonios play an important role in the contestation of traditional historical memory, not only as witnesses accounts, but in the fact that they are spoken by generally non-literate indigenous women. The testimonio is a tool the women can use to tell their story to people all over the world. These personal accounts are also narratives that serve a collective purpose. The stories speak for a common experience of marginalization and speak in solidarity with those who were killed and those who survived. 

Due to the fact that in many communities, the military killed primarily the men, the women are the survivors who can remember and can recount what happened. Because of this, they pose a threat. As Zur notes, “(c)ivil patrol chiefs and military commissioners are aware that the widows’ memories have the potential to infiltrate history by providing access to hidden domains of a past long since obliterated by the official version of history.”^[28] It is all the more imperative, therefore, that these women’s versions of historical events be a part of the creation of this collective memory. In the past, women have not been part of, or been the narrators of, official accounts of history even if they were witnesses of and participants in that history.

The testimonio serves an important purpose as a public historical document by someone whose voice would probably otherwise not be heard. The women who have given their testimonies one time or many times tend to find that it is very helpful to their healing process as well as for their sense of empowerment. It “acts by...integrating fragmented experiences...[so that] the possibilities for growth are reopened.”^[29] Such growth operates on a personal and collective level so that the testimony “contributes to social recovery.”^[30]  By remembering these events, the women are able to ”turn private tragedy into narratives”^[31] and to gain some control of the events that took over their lives. Retelling their memories is part of the process of constructing new identities. The women can continue a process of redefining themselves as they construct and reconstruct their narratives. 

Across Latin America, women’s testimonies resist the silencing that has been imposed on them through political, social, and economic repression. By giving their testimonies, women have challenged that silence. This has had both political and personal effects.^[32] It bridges the public and private realms because it contributes to the women’s personal healing and at the same time participates in the struggle to create a historical memory of this period.

The legacy of the testimonio as a voice of resistance can be traced back to the conquest when Kaqchiquel and Ki’ché chroniclers wrote accounts of the conquest. The contemporary testimonio in Guatemala began to emerge as a political tool of resistance in response to Ubico’s dictatorship in the 1930s and again in the 1950s with the CIA-backed coup.[33] 

In 1970, Cuba’s Casa de las Americas established testimonio as a category for literary prizes, giving it legitimacy as a genre. John Beverley argues that this development within the Cuban Revolution contributed to testimony’s use as a speaking space for those marginalized by race, class, ethnicity, and gender throughout Latin America in the context of the cultural and political movements that emerged.^[34] Among the testimonios that have come out of Guatemala since the 1960s, are Mario Payeras’ account of guerrilla organizing in the 1970s and Rigoberta Menchú’s ...Asi me nació la conciencia in 1985. Although the women’s testimonios in this thesis are not as explicitly political, the women tell their stories based in the awareness that it is an important contribution to recovering this history. In contrast to the 1970s (and before), by the mid-1990s, the testimonial genre is a space of “inscription” predominately used by women. 

In testimony, survivors of military repression speak for themselves, constructing their own narratives. Testimonios often deal with the collective experience of oppression from the point of view of individual experiences, political and social ideals, struggles, and visions. By speaking testimonially, the subject, speaking from within her group, engages in an act of resistance against marginalization. The testimony gives the speakers “historical authority”^[35] in the sense that they are not being represented (written) by an other. The documentation of their versions of history on paper helps give the speakers a “permanent” place in history.

The narrative voice in testimony speaks collectively.^[36] As Rigoberta Menchú said in her published testimony, Me Llamo Rigoberta Menchú, y Así Me Nació la Conciencia: “(Q)uiero hacer un enfoque que no soy la única, pues ha vivido mucha gente y es la vida de todos. La vida de todos los guatemaltecos pobres y trataré de dar un poco mi historia. Mi situación personal engloba toda la realidad de un pueblo.”^[37] 

Menchú’s testimony "cannot affirm a self-identity that is separate from a group or class situation marked by marginalization, oppression, and struggle.”^[38] She voices the struggle against the collective marginalization of the Maya through her personal testimonial narrative. 

The voicing of this collective struggle is a means to create collective memory. While testimony seeks to conserve collective memory, speaking testimonially is also a political act, based in a social and political struggle. Testimony has been the means for many repressed groups to make public versions of the historical event(s), struggle, and oppression that are not released in the "official" versions. They denounce the social and political structures that are in place, and by offering alternative perspectives, point to tactics and approaches for transforming current societal structures. 

Testimony also engages the listener or reader in the narrative on a personal level, as it is the survivor's (narrator's) direct sharing of experiences. The reader or listener is implicitly invited to join in solidarity with the group's struggle, allowing herself to move into a retelling of the historical events. Because testimony is often orally produced, even though it may be transcribed later, it maintains a certain immediacy and spontaneity that contribute to the effect it has of making the reader or listener feel present in the events recounted as well as in the thoughts and feelings the speaker is sharing. The listener is addressed personally and directly by the 'I' that is also a "we" that seeks to share her story in an effort to create and conserve a collective memory and to avoid national historical oblivion.

Due to the testimonio’s legacy as a collective speaking voice, therefore, its use in histories that document Guatemala’s recent past as well as reveal the work of groups like CONAVIGUA, is appropriate. As is the case with Menchú’s oral narrative, the testimonio serves to “stand for the experience of [the] community as a whole.”^[39] 

The testimonio provides a way for women who are non-literate to express themselves and, in a collective voice, tell the experiences of their communities. The testimonial giver, therefore, participates in a narrative tradition that prioritizes the expression of communally held values and “celebrates a broad movement of Indian and peasant resistance and an international solidarity network.”^[40] The testimonio participates in the unburial of the past and challenges the dominant form of historical discourse by incorporating alternate means of historical expression that affirms the legitimacy of “orality in the context of...cultural modernization that privilege[s] literacy...as a norm of expression.”^[41] In other words, the testimonio challenges the “authority” of the written word and opens up the parameters of historical discourse. 

Oral narratives, therefore, serve as a strategy of resistance against the censorship of memory, an opportunity to tell one’s own story as opposed to not having one’s story told at all or having it told by someone else. The act of telling and retelling one’s story can be a source of empowerment, assisting in the process of rebuilding one’s self and one’s community. Eighty percent of the REMHI report’s nearly 7,000 oral testimonies, for example, are from indigenous people. As Menchú states, the REMHI report “marks the first time in [their] history that indigenous people were active participants in the ‘writing’ of their own history.”[42]

Children play an important role in the creation of testimonios by women. Sternbach notes that in “women’s testimonial discourse...having lost her children, or imagining for them a social change and political transformation”^[43] can be motivations for the production of narratives that tell history. Such “an unburial of the past, an unearthing of the truth...translates into an invasion of the space occupied by official history, necessary for future generations of children who need to know this buried, silenced” past.^[44]

In addition to passing on this history, telling one’s story passes on a legacy of resistance to the state. Especially in light of the kinds of repression women have experienced at the hands of the military and the government, including rape and unequal wages, telling one’s story acts as one more way in which to challenge the state and fight for change. As Sternbach notes,

[w]omen’s participation in revolutionary struggles witnessing murders of loved ones, suffering disappearances, rapes, tortures, and perhaps most poignantly, women’s specific resistance to military rule, all attest to their own estado limite, a condition which propels them to insure that their story is heard.^[45]

As an act of solidarity, the testimonio also serves as a “tribute to the memory”^[46] of those were disappeared or killed. In the case of Menchú and María Teresa Tula, for example, a

gendered perspective...is revealed through a collective voice that speaks for a plural subject...their stories also emphasize women’s roles in political organizing, home life, and forms of repression and torture; a motivation for political activism through female experiences as daughters, wives, and mothers.^[47] 

The same potential narrative power exists for the collection of oral narratives from members of groups such as CONAVIGUA. As Sternbach has argued, it is critical to “present narratives that ‘deny’ the state narratives,”^[48] and in so doing to challenge the representation of women. This acts as another form of claiming language and contesting the state’s attempts to monopolize definitions. These women trespass and usurp “patriarchal space, undermining the personal and the political,” establishing themselves as “women and as political subjects.”^[49]

Women’s testimonial discourse in Guatemala has emerged as a form of resistance in numerous ways, including its role as “an ingenious and creative grassroots activism that has... spark[ed] a political consciousness of women’s condition of marginality.”^[50] Their discourse eventually took on a more and more explicitly gendered component. As Zur discusses, those widows who were not willing to remarry after la violencia, “implicitly contest and challenge male constructions of the female role.”[51] This contestation parallels the “gendered consciousness” that CONAVIGUA and the other women’s organizations have developed. [52] 

The following chapter describes the women’s organizations and illustrates how the groups’ specific forms of feminism have been “sculpted” by the kinds of experiences and by the context that have helped shape the women’s lives.[53]

Chapter 4: Maya Women’s Organizations: “Es Tiempo de Decir lo que Pasó”[54]

Given the terror that these women survived and the triple marginalization they experience, what inspired them to engage in collective struggles to rebuild their lives and communities? Perhaps it has to do with Falla’s observation: “[T]he horror may bend or even break its victims physically, but it does not necessarily dominate their spirits.”^[57] Certainly Luisa’s eyes glow with the light of an unconquered spirit. Such vibrancy has been part of what has led some Maya widows to rebuild their lives in “ways that accommodate, subvert, and contest a lived reality not of their own making.”^[58] As Pedrina states, “como una organización nosotros podemos reclamar nuestros derechos. Para levantar y decir lo que hemos sufrido, lo que hemos vivido.”[59] 

The women’s children were also an inspiration to organize. According to Pedrina, if they do not push to get the mass graves exhumed, to get the history told, to press charges, and so on, their children will not know what happened during la violencia. After telling me this, she told me about an 82-year old woman whose three children were killed during la violencia and who still comes to the war-widows’ meetings in Rabinal. Pedrina recalls that the woman says: “yo tengo que luchar porque yo voy a vivir por lo menos unos cinco años más y yo voy a luchar para mis nietos, no para mí ya.”[60] Their new ostracized status as war-widows ironically allowed some of them greater freedom to organize due to the absence of a male head of household and, in the case of Rabinal, the support of the NGO, ECAP. 

Although the women began to discuss their experiences and feelings with one another long before they gave their testimonies publicly, it is unclear when they started talking about la violencia, how often they spoke of it, and how they talked about it. The women I spoke with made references to their conversations with other women. They most likely made cautious references to it while it was still going on, however only those that joined CONAVIGUA and GAM, for example, in the mid-1980s probably began to talk about it more. According to Pedrina, women in the Rabinal area were scared to talk openly about the violence before 1994. 

Antes del ’94 las autoridades tienen todavía ese poder en la mano de callar la voz de la mujer, pero ya a través de la motivación de diciendole que lo que pasó no es justo es allí donde ellas empezaron a reunir, empezaron a decir…uno por uno, dando los pasos y hasta hoy día están llegando más gente.[61] 

It is a gradual collective process in which women encourage each other to speak up.  When Pedrina began to go out to the villages and talk with women about the organization, she would ask the women: 

que trabajo ellos están haciendo, como se sienten, como está la familia, como se han ido con la vida durante la violencia y que dejó la violencia con ellos? Y me empiezan a contar la historia de lo que ellos vivieron, lo que ellos están viviendo todavía. Es allí donde yo les digo que lo que pasó es una cosa muy raro, que nunca hemos visto durante toda la vida y es tiempo de decir de lo que pasó, que diciendo la verdad no puede suceder nunca más lo que pasó. Que si nosotros no lo contamos, nos pueden matar otra vez sin decirle nada. Ellos se acercaron, pues, y decían que si es verdad de lo que pasó.[62] 

As women began to break the silence, they gathered to talk about what they were going to do about the loss of their husbands and the forced recruitment of their sons into the army and the patrols.[63] As Alecio notes, the

first step for survivors has been to overcome their fear, a process in which outside popular organizations and the Church have been helpful. The second step has been for victims as well as victimizers to recognize the truth of what has occurred. The third step is to restore community, both in the physical sense of rebuilding homes and replanting fields, and in the social sense of rebuilding security, confidence, and communication.[64]

The time that lapsed between the immediate responses to la violencia and the women’s mobilization can be understood as a personal and a political process. It is an emotional recovery process that must occur over time; for those who have been able to talk about it, tell their stories, form solidarity with other war-widows, and become more politically engaged, the process of self-recreation and healing has been more successful.[65]

Hay algunos maridos que no están de acuerdo con lo que la mujer hace. Pero ellas saben lo que están haciendo y que es su derecho y diciendo al marido que si ella lo que quiera hacer es ver el bien a sus hijos. Claro, a veces los esposos son celosos y no nos dejan que nosotros participamos. También tratamos la manera de ir a la pareja y reunir y diciendole de lo que la mujer está haciendo es una realidad y más ahora que la mujer tiene un papel muy importante. Ellos se convencen--la participación de la mujer--pero a través de la asociación porque si sólo la mujer diciendo al hombre no les hacen caso.[66]

In San Marcos there appears to be greater reliance on explanations for the violence that invoke God. Although many of the women refer to God as a source of strength and guidance, Gudelia, Gomercinda, and Carmen talk about God as the closest source of resolution they have found. As they discussed the susto they had, the fears they have now, the hardship they endure, and the pain they have suffered, they state, for example: “Dios sabe,” “con la voluntad de Dios,””sólo Dios,” “déjalo a las manos de Dios,” and “confío en Dios que él es que hace todas las cosas.”[67] 

In addition, these women gave God credit for their survivorship whereas the organized women I spoke with credited themselves with their strength, their empowerment, and their increased self-esteem and self-reliance. For example, Gomercinda states that she gives thanks to God “porque Él me ha cuidado, Él me ha dado el esfuerzo para cuidar mi familia.”[68] By this, I do not mean to conclude that the lack of organization is the primary reason for the heightened reference to God’s role in the women’s recovery. I do, however, think that the lack of collective support for some women has played a role in how much they rely on their faith in God to help give them strength to continue. In addition, the types of consciousness that the collective action tended to develop, led the organized women to see the impact they could make through their increased social and political participation on a local and national level. As Zur notes, this “comforting” invocation of God, served to alleviate a sense of responsibility. One of the differences between the mobilized women and these women’s approaches to survival and recovery may be that the women who have left it in God’s hands have done so out of a sense of powerlessness. They have not experienced the “sense of empowerment”[69] that collective action has given the organized women.

The Organizations 

bajo de los arboles y en las casas en Chimaltenango y en Quiché. Sabemos que la lucha desde que cuando se inició todavía no está a luz pública porque la gente lo desconoce la lucha de las mujeres viudas. [Cuando] empezó no fue tan fácil a las compañeras que empezaron--las amenazaba--y por eso--hicieron así en escondida sus reuniones.[70]

Now based in Guatemala City, CONAVIGUA claims as members 10,000 of the 60,000-80,000 women who were widowed.[71] The organization has played a major role in making public the atrocities of the armed conflict. By its example, and by the awareness it has raised through its recruitment of women in rural areas, CONAVIGUA has inspired women to form organizations in other rural communities that were hard hit by the violence. 

The Maya Ixil Women’s Association of the New Dawn in Chajul (Asociación de la mujer Maya Ixil AK’SAQB’EB’AL) and the Asociación de Viudos, Viudas y Huérfanos Ajmab (Ajmab Women and Men Widows’ and Orphans’ Association) in Rabinal are examples of this smaller-scale mobilization. These organizations claim 75 and 1,800 members, respectively. The leadership of the Maya Ixil women’s organization in Chajul and the Rabinal widow’s association came from women who had been active in other community organizations or educational outreach efforts in their areas. These women had begun to form a political and social consciousness prior to the violence. The loss of loved ones and the destruction of their communities, however, effectively served to propel them into action with regard to human rights. These women have found ways to take collective action and struggle for their rights as Maya women. 

The Asociación de Viudos, Viudas y Huérfanos Ajmab in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz was officially formed in 1994. They formed due to the extensive human rights violations that were committed in the area by the Army in the early 1980s. This organization does not exclude men, although its membership and leadership is overwhelmingly female. Women come from surrounding hamlets to participate in biweekly meetings. 

The organization has received financial and motivational support from two non-governmental organizations based in Guatemala City. ECAP (Community Team for Psychosocial Action) has an office in Rabinal as part of its commitment to the peace process. 

As has been the case for CONAVIGUA members, among other organized widows , Pedrina of the Rabinal association was threatened by fellow community members when she began to organize. "Decía la gente que una mujer no tenía porque organizar las demás mujeres."[72]  In spite of the threats to widow’s lives, the organization has continued to grow. Although the material benefits have been minimal, the solidarity, educational opportunities and the efforts to expose the truth of the massacres contribute to the women’s desire and motivation to participate. 

 Among the organization’s numerous projects is a high school scholarship fund for young women who were orphaned by la violencia. A handful of young women have received money to buy notebooks, pencils, and uniforms. Since the organization’s inception, it has submitted requests to the government for the exhumation of the clandestine mass graves (of which there are still 60 in the Rabinal area). They have already had three mass graves exhumed and reburied. Given that in the entire country fewer than ten have been exhumed, this is a considerable success. 

With the pro bono help of CALDH (Center for Human Rights Legal Action, Centro de Acción Legal de los Derechos Humanos), a Guatemala City-based NGO, the organization has pressed charges against those who were responsible for the deaths of the women’s family members. CALDH has also helped the women submit requests to have their deceased husbands status changed in the civil records since it was not officially documented that they had died; they were disappeared. Their bodies have not been recovered and they have not had a proper burial. With this legal counsel, the women in some cases can have the their husband’s land turned over to them so that they can also pass it on their children. Proving the death of their family members is no easy task, as the burden of proof that the deceased was a victim of la violencia, rests on the survivor who submits the request to change the record.

The Maya Ixil Women’s Association of the New Dawn in Chajul has a different agenda. With a commitment to women’s leadership, their focus is less focused on the exposure of human rights abuses and more concerned with a different aspect of community development and recovery. In concert with the experience of the Rabinal women’s organization, however, the Chajul women’s organization has had the financial support of NGOs. This has undoubtedly facilitated the group’s ability to move ahead with a number of projects.  

The Chajul women’s organization has a small school that teaches children ages 7 to 14 in their first language, Ixil. The school, at which a number of the women on the board of directors, teach, also educates the children about Ixil cultural traditions.  As Ana L.C. states, “tal vez yo no tuve la oportunidad de estudiar mucho pero yo deseo por mis hijos que estudien más para poder servir a otras personas aquí en Chajul como las mujeres.”[73] The organization has a bank that gives small loans to the widows to help them obtain some degree of autonomy and economic stability, such as the purchase of a plot of land. The organization also owns a molino (motorized corn grinder) that is intended to bring the organization some additional funds. The corn grinder, however, is one of six in the village and does a poor business. They also have a store that sells a limited variety of dry goods. This store, also one of many in the village, brings in virtually no cash. This is in part due to organizational and managerial weaknesses. The women have also begun to develop a library, at which Rosa works, that is intended to be a public resource. 

These projects demonstrate the organization’s varied efforts to have an impact on the community and in the women’s lives. The seven-member directorate has strong and committed leadership. Two of the founders, who are on the directorate, were formerly members of Chajul’s community association. They left it after they became exasperated with the lack of voice they had as women in the organization. As one of the founders of the women’s organization in Chajul affirmed, "es importante tener esta asociación porque muchas veces las mujeres no tome en cuenta...de participar...y...es muy importante que las mujeres se superen."[74]  

With the help of a teacher in Guatemala’s second largest city, Quetzaltenango, the founders obtained the support of a European NGO, Redd Barna, to open a school based in the "free school" philosophy. In almost every way, the teaching philosophy contrasts with traditional Guatemalan schools. Taught in Ixil, the children have an active say in what they study each day, they do not wear uniforms, and creativity is highly emphasized. 

Ideologically paired with the school is the Fotovoz project begun with psychology professor M. Brinton Lykes of Boston College and Ph.D. candidate Joan Williams of the University of Texas. This project, based in participatory community mental health philosophies, seeks to help the women recover from the traumas of la violencia through support groups and the use of cameras to document and articulate their experiences and memories of the repression. The goal is to create a book of text and images designed and written by the women that documents the period of violence from their perspectives. Such a process is a personal and collective healing strategy that also contributes to the documentation of this history for their benefit and for the benefit of future generations in their community, and beyond. 

Both organizations (Rabinal and Chajul) initially organized around the needs of the widows and orphans. In the case of Rabinal, the focus on practical needs began to expand into a consciousness around women’s rights. The organization, however, has male and female leadership. In the case of Chajul, the organization is exclusively female; however, it is not exclusively focused on the needs of widows and orphans, although this is a component of the work. 

CONAVIGUA advocates for the rights of Maya women in conjunction with the specific ways in which they were affected by la violencia. Incidentally, one of the founders, Rosalina Tuyuc, is now one of two Maya Congresswomen. As board member Carmen Cumez states, "estamos pidiendo que se termine toda esa discriminación de la mujer y queremos que nos escuche la voz de la mujer indígena...somos discriminadas...por ser mujer...pobre...y indígena."[75]  

CONAVIGUA’s efforts began with the acquisition of land titles in the women’s names, demands to know the whereabouts of their family members who were disappeared, including the location and exhumation of mass graves, and the fight to end their sons’ recruitment into any kind of forced labor, including the army and the civil patrols.  

CONAVIGUA’s goals quickly grew to include broader-based efforts to improve the lives of women and increase their abilities to address their needs and rights in society. They have provided literacy classes, access to knowledge and understanding of their citizen rights, the development of a number of small agriculture and weaving cooperatives, medical services, and access to resources to rebuild their communities. In addition to their struggle for women’s protection from domestic and state abuse, they are also pressing for the inclusion of women’s voices in the "search for solutions to current national problems."[76] 

As the activities and goals of these organizations demonstrate, mobilization of other sectors of Guatemalan society has not occurred and outside financial support appears to be critical to the existence of the organizations. The groups have, however, had important limited successes, and it remains to be seen what impact the organizations will have on women’s mobilization, human rights, women’s rights, and the documentation of historical memory.

What have the Organizations Achieved?

Even the women in San Marcos, although not organized around issues related to la violencia, have given their oral testimonies to the two reports. Rabinal has managed to get three exhumations and reburials accomplished and CONAVIGUA has been an inspiration to them in this process. The Chajul’s women’s group sees one of their primary roles as being a support, both practically and psychologically, to the war-widows.

CONAVIGUA has played a prominent role in local and national reconstruction since la violencia. It, as well as GAM and other grassroots groups, is a member of the Asamblea de la Sociedad Civil (Civil Society Assembly, ASC) which, since 1994, has been active in the peace process with the military and the government and the ongoing efforts to hold the Government accountable for the implementation of the peace accords as laws.[78] Rosalina Tuyuc (who was one of the four founders of CONAVIGUA) is now a Congresswoman. She has been a source of inspiration to other Maya women. Her political activism, that began in small gatherings with other war-widows, has helped “despertar a las mujeres.”[79] CONAVIGUA has secured significant international funding which has allowed it to expand its programs and reach women in more areas of the country. 

All three women’s organizations have made a difference in the lives of individual women, the women’s communities, and in the case of CONAVIGUA at a national and international level.

The group’s efforts, including petitioning for the exhumation of mass graves and a proper reburial, the acquisition of land deeds, the end to young men’s required inscription in the army at age 18, the opportunity to make a connection with other women who share a common experience as war-widows, the activation of memory, giving testimony, and speaking out about women’s and human rights, have all enhanced the personal, local, and national post-violencia reconstruction process. 

Exhumations

Reburials

The burial ritual, denied for years, was finally accomplished. Family members could, for the first time, visit the graves. They can honor them with candles and visit them freely. 

In the case of Rabinal where three exhumations and reburials have occurred, an 8-10 foot tall and 5 foot wide grave marker stands in front of the grave sites of all of those killed in the massacre. The three sites are in the cemetery, but set apart from the rest of the yard. The massacre grave markers name each person who was killed, state when and where the massacre was carried out, and identify the groups responsible for the killing: the army and the civil patrols. The massacres have a public presence, an historical record, much like a monument, prominently placed in the community cemetery. One of the markers has a CUC slogan on it, that states: “Cortaron nuestras ramas pero no pudieron arrancar nuestras raíces.”[83] Another has a profile drawing of martyred Bishop Gerardi. 

The words and drawings on the grave markers that tell the story of the massacres were chosen by the survivors of the massacres. They are a testament to the kind of courage and resilience that can be found in people like Luisa and Pedrina of the Maya Achí Widow’s organization. 

Pressing Charges and Facing the Killer

In addition to the many obstacles of having a case taken to court, however, the applicant must also prove how the crime is tied to la violencia. Even so, pressing charges does pressure the state, challenge the state’s silence, and demonstrate continued struggles for justice and accountability. It is also an important opportunity for the women: confronting the authorities about the injustice and learning how to use political channels are not only valuable tools for the women, but they are actions that further develop the women’s political consciousness and recovery process.

The exhumations and the reburials have helped to give some people the courage to press charges and give testimony. As Alecio notes, as of 1993, people in Rabinal began to openly tell their stories to the national and international press, human rights groups, and representatives of popular organizations at the reburials.^[85] 

In addition to pressing charges, some women have confronted the men who killed their husbands. This is invaluable in the healing process although most women have not had the opportunity to do so. In Rabinal, Pedrina recalled the following: “le dije a él que porque mató a mi esposo y me dijó que solo fue obligatoriamente…Ud. mató a mi esposo--me quedé con los niños.”[86] 

Degrees of Organizing in Different Communities

Looking back, it seems that the military repression was perhaps more effective in the communities where selective violence was the primary tactic, rather than massacres. Based on my experiences in San Marcos, it appears that the communities where selective violence was the strategy, rather than mass killings, have been less likely to organize and stand up for their rights. They have been held back by fear and have not experienced the same level of rage that has driven people in Chajul and Rabinal to mobilize. 

Of the areas I visited, San Marcos is the most remote region. There has been no formal organizing related to recovery from the violence in that area. There is, however, a women’s group in San Miguel Ixtahuacán that gathers regularly to teach horticulture, crafts, and to provide a space for women from neighboring villages to be together.[87] Interestingly, they have not become involved in any efforts that deal explicitly with the past. The group provides an important space for women to gather, talk, learn from each other, and find support. For these reasons, the group does play a significant role in the lives of the war-widows I interviewed who are members. 

 The women I interviewed in the most remote part of San Marcos--Bullaj, Monte Cristo, and 30 de septiembre--are the most cut off from the outside world and the most unresolved about the past of all the women I spoke with in Guatemala. The communities still live in a great deal of fear--the women I interviewed told me this. The only outside organizations that have gone to the area were the teams from REMHI and CEH who went in and collected survivors’ oral testimonies. They stayed only briefly. One other group, an NGO, attempted to establish itself there and was unsuccessful. As numerous villagers told me: “La gente no quiere que nadie se mete con ellos. No quieren saber nada de lo que pasó ni ningún tipo de organización de afuera.”[88] In other areas, for better or for worse, NGOs have played a role in helping people deal with their grief, understand what happened, realize that they are not guilty, and assist in the process of petitioning for the exhumation of mass graves and the other projects that require extensive paperwork. In San Marcos they have had no outside encouragement and assistance of this kind.[89]

These communities’ isolation from the rest of the country is also part of why people continue to be so fearful. They cannot easily talk to people from other areas to learn about what happened in other communities.[90] As Carmen of CONAVIGUA notes, “hay muchos problemas en los campos, en las aldeas lejanas porque las mujeres que viven lejos no pueden bajar para escuchar los problemas que está pasando en el país.”[91] Such access to information and communication plays an important role in people deciding to organize, in part because it helps people realize that they are not alone. If the women had contact with other communities where women had organized, these women might become inspired and encouraged to do the same. The type of violence that this area experienced also contributed to the lack of organization. 

The violence that came to their area was selective. The military kidnapped and disappeared certain individuals who were considered community leaders. It was an invisible kind of violence. The army and the guerrillas came through at unpredictable times, people escaped further into the mountains, and while they were away from their homes, their homes were looted. The disappeared villagers were kidnapped when they were on the trail, not when they were in town. The wives of the disappeared, therefore, never knew what happened and they waited anxiously for their husband’s return. This kind of suspended reality in which there are no tangible truths contributed to the lack of resolve and the ongoing fear. Just as only certain individuals were killed, so too were their widows left individually. Even though the fear was felt by the whole community, only select individuals lost loved ones. Unlike a massacre, in which sometimes more than one hundred villagers at a time were killed, there is not the same burning rage felt by so many that inspires action. Communities which experienced generalized violence perhaps felt they had nothing to lose by organizing as they had already lost so much. They had suffered beyond belief. Nothing could be worse, so why not risk all in hopes of getting some relief and retribution?

Of the areas I visited, this region--the Sibinal district of San Marcos--is also the poorest. The steep terrain on which they grow coffee is worn out and badly eroded. People eat less well here and they rely heavily on the cash from selling the coffee beans they grow which are purchase for a very small sum by middlemen. People’s income therefore, is minimal and they lack the land or decent soil to grow anything other than coffee. Local resources are scarce, in part due to the distance one must walk to purchased goods and in part due to the reliance on cash that they do not have. In addition to the difficult access to foodstuffs, transportation, and communication due to the region’s isolation, other basic resources such as schools and health care are much more limited. People’s survival is more desperate and the concern is to get by the best they can with what they have. They are not suffering quite enough to take major action, like a revolt, and risk losing all. Nor are they well enough off to have the energy and resources to attempt to improve their situation. 

Unlike Rabinal and Chajul, the women in the San Marcos region do not wear traje much. In Rabinal and Chajul women wear full traje almost all the time. That is, the corte (skirt), the huipil (blouse), the faja (belt) and the cinta (head piece). The minimal use of traje in the San Marcos communities may have to do with multiple factors. Traje is more expensive than ropa americana. It was also suggested to me that people stopped wearing traje during the violence, so as not to identify where they were from and to “shed” some of their Indian-ness. [92] As Irma Otzoy notes, “material constraints and geopolitical factors have…acted to change Maya dress.”[93]

In the San Marcos communities, some women continue to wear corte and occasionally women wear their huipil, but in comparison to Rabinal and Chajul there is much less use of traje. As Carol Hendrickson notes, local dress is an important marker of ethnic group identity. “To wear traje is to say ‘we are Maya.’” A “municipality is recognized locally as a key unit for Maya identity, with municipal styles of traje important visual signs of local ethnic unity.”[94] The fading of these visible ethnic markers begs the question of the strength of the ethnic identity and whether or not the loss of dress correlates with a loss of Maya identity or not.[95] The level of cultural resistance that persists through these “markers” however, is impressive, given that these symbolic emblems mark their stigmatized status as Mayas and as women.[96] As Pedrina and Carmen Cumez both discussed in their testimonies, to wear traje is to make a powerful political and social statement. Even when Pedrina was desperate for work in Guatemala City after her husband had been killed, she refused job offers in which she was told she would have to stop wearing traje. As she recalls,

en Guatemala nos maltrataban porque me decía que soy una india, que no podía hacer nada…que soy una mujer con mi traje me hacen de menos. Porque ellos querían por obligación tenía que ponerme falda pero yo…le decía a la gente que yo soy así y si uds. me acepten sería bueno pero si no…busco otro trabajo.[97]

Her sense of pride was unshakable even when she and her children had to beg for bread. This strength has no doubt contributed to her ability to start the women’s organization in Rabinal, to confront the man who killed her husband, and travel to countless villages encouraging women to join the organization. 

In Sacuchum Dolores, San Marcos, the war-widows I spoke with wore only their cortes. Gudelia and Gomercinda, who attempted to start a women’s group in the village and traveled to the Capital twice to attend GAM meetings, put on their huipiles and brushed and rebraided their hair before I took their photo. [98] Although all the factors discussed play a part in the varying degrees of community organization, it appears that the use of traje is one of the possible indicators of the women’s conviction to organize. A more self-conscious articulation of the identity of Maya women may contribute to women’s sense of empowerment to advocate for wider citizenship. However, whether or not the degree of the use of traje is an indication of this is difficult to ascertain. Dress and language are expressions of cultural and ethnic identity. In some cases, the degree to which they are being employed by Maya women today may speak to a more politicized identity.  

Although community leaders were targeted and many were killed in each of these communities, it does not appear that the level of prior organizing has had much of an impact on the level of organizing since the violence. What seems to have made more of an impact on subsequent women’s organizing have been other factors, such as the type of violence experienced, the region’s communication with other areas, and the presence of outside organizations, such as NGOs. Chajul and Rabinal experienced widespread destruction and killings, and it is these communities that have been much more active in the process of recovering their dead and engaging in a healing process than the San Marcos communities. There has also been, however, strong NGO support of the recovery efforts in Chajul and Rabinal, and not in San Marcos. It is worth considering Carol Smith’s observation:

Places targeted for aid seem to be more traditional Indian villages where women wear traditional clothing. NGOs have paid much less attention to Indian areas where clothing has changed (and people appear non-Indian to outsiders), as in northern San Marcos.[99] 

Although it is difficult to ascertain the reasons why there has been much less opportunity for recovery in some communities, it was very upsetting to get a sense of the level of fear and repression that persists in Carmen and Máxima’s villages. As Lynn Stephen observes, the “blending of personal identity with political activism underscores how different and conflicting pieces of individual identity interact with structural conditions to influence the evolution of political commitment and strategy.”[100] The contrast is all the more stark in light of the strength and integrity that the women who have organized have regained and in light of the achievements of these women’s collective efforts.

Strategies of Politicization

A new form of Women’s Organizing after Violent Repression: War-Widow Mothers as Political Leaders

As political mothers, the women have transgressed their socially assigned gender role by speaking out against the state. They carry the added stigma of tainted women because they have become politicized.[107] 

To some extent, the ethical dimension society associates them with (mothers as morally superior) and which, as noted above, the mothers have used to strengthen their mobilization, seems to have protected them somewhat from military attacks and given them some leverage. However, many women have been threatened, some have been killed. As discussed in Chapter 2, the women’s oral narratives demonstrate how the military’s violent tactics targeted women in gender-specific ways.  And Jean Franco suggests that to a great extent mothers seem not to be as immune from state aggression as the perception suggests.[108] Mothers’ political mobilization can be perceived as a threat because, as Stephen asserts, they make “visible” the fact that “mothering has always been both public and private.”[109]

Immediate Needs are Human (Women’s) Rights

Feminist scholars of Latin American women’s movements came to see that such a dichotomy established a hierarchy of political consciousness that defined economically poor women’s organizing as “unconscious” of their marginalized status. As Stephen states, and as the Maya women’s organizations demonstrate, the “totality of women’s experience as political organizers will very likely include “strategic” and “practical” interests, for the fact of their organizing is inevitably tied to challenging gender subordination at some level.”[111]

The women’s organizations I profile emerged in response to human rights violations against their family members that resulted in heightened practical needs. A delineation between practical and strategic interests is not so easy to make. Where does a practical interest end and a strategic one begin? Is it a practical or strategic agenda simultaneously to denounce human rights abuses and search for ways to feed one’s family? As Pedrina states, “con la violencia…como que más valor nos dieron…para organizar, a motivar a las mujeres y exigir sus derechos y al mismo tiempo exigir todo lo que pasó.”[112] She illustrates how practical and strategic interests were intertwined in the women’s mobilization after la violencia.

What is intriguing and inspirational about these groups is the ways in which their struggles are simultaneously practical and strategic. As Lynn Stephen notes with regard to the CO-MADRES in El Salvador,

(s)uch a feminism integrates a commitment to basic survival for women and their children—access to housing, food, land, and medical care—with a challenge to women’s subordination to men—battering, rape, reproductive control and sexuality, and political participation.[113] 

While the groups I studied do not call themselves “feminist,” nor are they involved in all of the same struggles, they are seeking the combination of rights that Stephen identifies. In the case of CONAVIGUA and the war-widows in Rabinal, a gender-conscious struggle evolved as they began to try to improve the conditions of their existence. It was in the process of seeking titles to the land of their disappeared husbands, denouncing the killings of their family members, and gaining literacy for themselves, that these women explored their position as Maya women vis-à-vis the state and their communities. In the case of these women’s organizations, strategic and practical interests are in constant dialogue with each other, for, as Stephen notes, the very “fact of their organizing is inevitably tied to challenging gender subordination at some level.”[114]

Within the organizations some women are more politicized around their identity as Maya women than others. It is clear, however, that women’s participation in the organizations has increased their “gendered consciousness”[115] so that what began as struggles to get practical needs met grew into a struggle for women’s rights. Through their participation in the organizations, the women’s perception of themselves as political actors has increased and expanded.[116] They have constructed a politicized identity of Maya war-widows with specific goals to widen their citizenship in Guatemala. Their demands on the state have exposed the role of the state in their personal and family lives. 

The widows’ mobilization has showed how the separation between the public and private realms is often not a reality for women. As Stephen notes in her discussion of the CO-MADRES, the women’s politicization made more “visible the integration of public and private spheres that already existed in women’s lives and which pointed to the contradictions of women’s treatment within those spheres.”[117] The women defied the separation by moving beyond the private sphere to participate in political struggles and by mobilizing politically from within their homes. By exposing human rights abuses, they showed how the state came into the center of the private sphere by sending soldiers into their kitchens to drink their coffee and then go into the bedroom and take their husbands away forever. 

The women’s groups have articulated that human rights include women’s rights, that the definition of human rights must be expanded to address women’s rights. They have demonstrated how they are affected by state violence and domestic violence, and that their voices as mothers have a place in official history. They have illustrated the public realm’s role in their private lives and vise versa, and that by crossing the borders between the two they are widening their citizenship in society as Maya women. As Jaquette notes, “women’s organizations operate at the crucial border between civil society and the state and create new hope that citizenship can be expanded and that a political consciousness for greater social justice can be negotiated.”[118]

There is an inherent tension between the use of the private sphere for mobilization and the fact that the private sphere is not necessarily a safe place for women due to the invasion of state violence and the threat of domestic violence. There are no formal protections for women against these forms of violence. As Jean Franco argues, women are not safe from violence in either the public or private realms.[119] When the Rabinal women founded the widows’ and orphans’ organization in 1994, Pedrina recalled: “todas las amenazas que recibí porque decía la gente que una mujer no tenía porque organizar las demás mujeres…me querían secuestrar…pero yo me enfrenté con ellos…y…seguí organizando.”[120] In addition, during a one-week period in 1990, kidnap attempts were made against 15 CONAVIGUA members.[121] As Zur notes, 

war-widows are extremely vulnerable to male violence both within their communities and beyond, and they know it.  They are a living testament to state and state-inspired atrocities and their very survival is a constant reproach to the military who still influence Guatemalan politics.[122] 

Nonetheless, women have continued to mobilize using informal local and national networks, their homes, the market, the plazas, the National Congress, and the streets of Guatemala City.[123] As Basu notes with regard to Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, women’s “exclusion from established institutions may make them particularly qualified to mobilize resistance through informal networks.”[124] In fact, as Jaquette notes, “women have come to see the public sphere as a positive arena in which their experiences as women take on larger meaning.”[125] 

Not only does the women’s continued exposure of the interrelationship between their lived experiences in the public and private realms contribute to the power of their voices in the public sphere, but as war-widows, they are aware of their unique hold on a history that contests the versions (and the denial) of la violencia put forth by the state.[126] CONAVIGUA and the Rabinal and Chajul women’s organizations have challenged the state’s discourses on history, identity, and citizenship in various ways. For example, most State schools teach only in Spanish. The Chajul women run a school that teaches children in their native Ixil. These women have also contributed their oral testimonies to CEH and REMHI which contest the official version of la violencia. CONAVIGUA and the Rabinal war-widows have petitioned tirelessly for the exhumation of mass graves and have had limited success. Rabinal’s cemetery is now home to three large grave markers and all the remains from three local massacres carried out by the army and the civil patrols.

As Zur notes, the “unburial and reburial of the dead takes on political meanings…(t)he more politicized widows are aware that the suppression of exhumations arises from the fact that the dead and kidnapped can be used in acts of political mobilization.”[127] Painted on the Rabinal grave markers (which are at least six feet tall and four feet wide) are the names of those massacred and verbal and visual descriptions of what occurred, including, in the case of the massacre of 70 women and 107 children, the statement that the army and the civil patrols from a neighboring village (Xococ) were responsible.

CONAVIGUA and other human rights groups marched and demonstrated in Guatemala City’s central district (home to the National Palace and the Cathedral) on National Army Day, June 30, in 1998. As the army processed through the streets, so too did these groups carrying signs and banners that stated: ”No mas martizadores! Nunca mas martizados!”[128] As Carmen Cumez recalls, “no se va a ser más…el día del ejército…lo vamos a rechazar…ahora vamos a hacer día de los mártires.”[129] After the march, they held a Mass in the Cathedral. 

Leímos unas mantas que ya no queremos más muertos, y que se termina todo…pues el 30 de junio es día de los mártires…ahora es como primera lucha—exigir ahora al gobierno que se queda en nombre de los mártires—que ya no del ejército sino que más—ellos van a hacer pero nosotros también vamos a hacer.[130]

Due to the ways and means these women have used to mobilize, namely their politicization of the private sphere as Jelin notes, these groups demonstrate that a “reformulation of the meaning of politics itself” is necessary.[131] 

These women’s organizations have articulated that human rights are also women’s rights and that there are specific ways in which women’s rights must be recognized. Organized struggles that began by denouncing military violence, have begun to address violence against Maya women on a broader scale. CONAVIGUA is pushing for government measures that grant women protection from state and domestic violence.[132] The Chajul women would like to see a women’s shelter in their village. Noting the multiple forms of violence experienced by women, she states: 

Quizás ya todas las armas ya han recogido—también quizás ya no escuchamos que ya más muertos pero nos están matando de la pobreza…(h)emos sufrido…violaciones de muchas formas—física y por ser mujer o por ser Maya y por ser pobre…sufrimos en la calle, en las camionetas, en los hospitales y en la misma familia también con nuestros esposos.[133]

Carmen’s assertion illustrates how women’s rights must be considered human rights. She also articulates the direct relationship between strategic and practical interests (ie. that the women’s mobilization emerged focusing especially on the human rights abuses during la violencia and the economic needs the war-widows were left with and quickly began to address discrimination against Maya women more generally). Carmen’s statement also describes the interconnectedness of the public and private spheres; women are violated and exploited in the streets and at home. At the same time, however, Carmen, as do Luisa, Pedrina, Gomercinda, Rosa, and Gudelia, for example, draws incredible strength from her experience as a poor Maya woman. Carmen emphatically states:

(s)omos orgullosos también aunque somos discriminadas tres veces. Traímos una sabiduria de todos modos. Nosotras mismas tenemos que valorizar nuestra cultura, nuestro trabajo. Como mujeres Indígenas Mayas tenemos un valor grande y es por eso que queremos que escuchan nuestra voz.[134]

Such pride and sense of self-worth also contribute to the women’s conviction to pass on a legacy of resistance to their children and ensure that future generations hear about la violencia and hear about it from the point of view of the victimized survivors. 

All three of these women’s organizations are involved in documenting and distributing accounts of la violencia documented in the REMHI and CEH reports, for example. The organizations seek to ensure that their children and future generations know their history, the repression experienced by their ancestors, and the ways in which their mothers and grandmothers contested the state’s attempts to control them. As Carmen notes, “(q)ueremos que esos testimonios sean un libro para que quede para nuestros hijos. Que no engañen a nuestros hijos. Que se quede esa historia. El porque murió el papá.”[135] Carmen’s conviction, which is echoed in the words of Luisa, Pedrina and others, illustrates Jelin’s point: “One of the most important aspects of the human rights movement’s causes is its struggle ‘against forgetfulness’ and for the construction of memory.”[136] There are many ways in which these women’s organizations are attempting to pass on this legacy. The exhumations of mass graves and the subsequent reburials that document the specifics of the massacres are one example. The women’s contributions to the CEH and REMHI reports are another. The women’s example to their daughters and granddaughters that women have a right to act in the public sphere as political actors and moreover that they pose a formidable force as political actors in society as well are invaluable models to leave future generations. 

The women have also played a significant role in bringing international attention to human rights abuses in Guatemala. Rigoberta Menchú most notably, and subsequently Rosalina Tuyuc, are two Maya women who have given voice and visibility to human rights abuses against the Maya in Guatemala. Two other women, Nineth Montenegro de García, GAM founder, and Jennifer Harbury, widow of ORPA member, Everardo Bamaca, have also brought international attention to the atrocities in Guatemala. In an account by Schirmer, Montenegro de García attributes her survival through the years of protest to the international support she and GAM have received.[137] Pedrina’s statement corroborates this perception. 

(L)as exhumaciones que se está haciendo dan a conocer internacionalmente. Lo que ellos decían que mataban muchos guerrilleros pero al contrario mataban much gente inocente…(e)speremos en Dios que nos apoye internacionalmente para poder exigir a las autoridades porque sino lo hacemos ellos pueden hacerlo otra vez con nuestro país.[138] 

As the above strategies exemplify, these women’s organizations model ambitious and admirable approaches to mobilization and responses to repression. Given the kinds of violence the women experienced and witnessed during la violencia and the connections they have since made between the counterinsurgency violence and the violence they endure in their everyday lives, it is clear that their mobilization is not an end in itself but rather a step in the struggle to achieve the “dignity and unity of women:” citizenship and empowerment. The work of these women’s organizations illustrate an ironic truth that “in violating human rights, repressive states may sow the seeds of new forms of resistance.”[139] These war-widows succeeded in exactly what the military worked so hard to destroy—organized resistance. And that is not all the women have achieved. The concluding chapter demonstrates that the women’s organizing significantly aided the war-widows’ recovery and helped to widen the boundaries of Maya women’s pariticpation in the public sphere.

Chapter 5: The Benefits of Organizing and Concluding Thoughts: “Por el Amor de Dios he Podido Hacer Esto”[140]

Antes cuando no estoy participando en la asociación yo no siento si es una mujer puede valer su derecho sino nada más sentí que soy una mujer pero tan perdida sentí…Pero más ahora si cuando entré en la asociación poco a poco entendí lo que es una asociación allí me sentí feliz…Pero…yo he sufrido bastante y por eso sólo ese sufrimiento vino a molestar varias veces en mi mente y por esos no platico con amigas. Pero más ahora cuando me asocié en la asociación allí miré que somos iguales. Allí comencé platicar y hablar cosas, discutir cosas y el problema que vive unas y allí nos comenzamos de decir las vidas de nosotros. Ahora yo siento mucho mejor porque yo veo que somos iguales…Mucha gente todavía está cerrado…Pero tal vez poco a poco vamos a llegar en el cambio para abrir ese sufrimiento que hemos pasado…Yo quería compartir con las mujeres—protagonizar—y explicar bien porque pasó ese sufrimiento y mi inquietud—quería pues moverle un grupo de mujeres para abrir nuestras memorias…No sólo los hombres que llegan a protagonizar sino es necesario las mujeres también protagonizan…Yo quiero que avancen las mujeres en el futuro. Y tal vez no sólo las mujeres ahorita sino que a los niños que están en crecimiento…(p)orque los hijos son el futuro del pueblo. (Y)o quiero ayudarle a otros mujeres a trabajar y a avanzar en sus derechos…(C)omo mujer tengo derecho de participar y de hablar y de darle una opinión.[141]

As Rosa’s story illustrates, the power of solidarity with other women, self-esteem and processes of personal recovery and self-reinvention cannot be underestimated. 

    The women’s organizing is a source of, and catalyst for, great strength. As Jaquette notes, “women in movements often speak of how their participation has changed their lives, expanded their awareness of the unjust structures of society, and given them new self-esteem.”[142] In addition to Rosa, Pedrina, Carmen, Luisa, Ana, and Jacinta talked about the personal value of participating in the women’s organizations. According to Carmen, being a member of CONAVIGUA, gave her

más valor, más ánimo…(n)o importa si yo no puedo leer, no importa que soy mujer, no importa que soy pobre…yo quiero participar en otras actividades…entonces a través de mi sufrimiento…me dío más ánimo en mi trabajo He aprendido muchas cosas… y podía hablar y ya no me dío susto…y participé en los trabajos de la comunidad. Mi espíritu fue más animada después de dar mi testimonio en Costa Rica…Dios mío yo ni siquiera pensaba que iba a ir en avión a través de la muerte de mi esposo…poco a poco me está quitando ese susto y ese miedo y a través de ser delegada y hablar más y más.[143]

In addition to the opportunity to gather with other women, numerous other aspects of organizational participation have been valuable to the women. Among the activities that provide personal and collective benefits, are: speaking up in meetings, encouraging other women to participate in the organization, and going to the offices of public officials to denounce the crimes against their deceased husbands and sons. Such endeavors help the women see their strengths as political actors in the public sphere and the potential impact of a wider citizenship for them in Guatemalan society. 

As these women’s collective efforts demonstrate, “repression can be transformed into possibilities for change and hope...counter[ing] the cults of ‘everyday death’ with celebrations of daily life.”^[144] While this may sound overly optimistic, it nonetheless highlights the courage and vision demonstrated by these women in their continued struggle for memory, life, justice, and liberty.

As the above narratives describe, one of the rewarding aspects of organizing for the women has been the opportunity to come together on a regular basis and share their hopes, fears, memories, and needs. The three organizations I studied have this characteristic in common and the women speak of this aspect of collective action as one of the most valuable and fulfilling to them individually and collectively. As Lykes, who has worked extensively with the Chajul women’s organization, notes,

(t)he group serves as an opportunity for sharing stories of survival in a context characterized by the re-weaving of threads of trust and support that were often ruptured during the war. Within these experiences, these women re-envision future possibilities for themselves, their families, and their communities.[145]

The process of self-(re)definition, family rebuilding, and community reconstruction that these women have been engaged in since the disintegration caused by la violencia, has in part been articulated and initiated in the organizational group discussions. The organizations played a critical role in helping the women understand that due to the military’s counterinsurgency strategies during la violencia there was nothing the women could have done to keep the horror from coming into their homes and destroying their communities. Through workshops and discussion groups, the organizations, in addition to helping women understand that they are in no way responsible for the violence that hit them, have also raised women’s consciousness about human rights, women’s rights, Mayan rights and rights as the economically marginalized. 

In part due to these efforts, the groups have also provided collective support, encouragement, and affirmation that have contributed extensively to increased self-esteem among the women. The combination of their heightened sense of self-worth not only as women and mothers, but also as social and political actors, has made an enormous difference in the women’s desire to advocate for their rights as Maya women both in their rural communities and at the national level. As has been the case in many parts of Latin America where women have organized in response to the human rights abuses of military dictatorships, Miller notes that, “from personal grief and fear the mothers evolved a communal strength.”[146]

Among the ramifications of these women’s processes of self- and collective rearticulation is that women are pushing the parameters of their social roles by participating in political life and publicly countering official discourse. The ways in which the public and the private intersect in the women’s lives is nowhere clearer then when one looks at how the women’s becoming powerful political actors unfolds. Green notes that the groups provide a

space where women can address some of their social problems. It is here that they can pool their labor resources as well as share their pain and suffering…local groups serve to connect women to each other through their hardships that provide a mechanism for social commentary and political consciousness…it is here in these spaces of community rebuilding that a significant challenge to power lies.[147] 

Such collaboration has a significant impact on personal, local, and national levels. The women have been able to recover and move forward both individually and collectively. It seems that it is in part due to the lack of these kinds of collaboration that the women in the San Marcos communities still live in so much fear. They have not had the opportunity to work through their grief and their pain in a setting that gives collective acknowledgement of their personal loss. For example, as Zur notes, the organized women have had the opportunity to “retell and rework their memories in an attempt to resolve them.” “’(R)ewriting’ the story,” Zur continues, gives a boundary to [the women’s] suffering.”

(T)hey try to understand what happened to their kin and why. In doing this, the women rework and relive traumatic events which dramatically changed their lives. Constructing narratives collectively is a means of coming to terms with the events of the past and integrating them into their lives in a way which makes sense in the present. This is a creative and healing process, which makes the unknown known and less frightening.[148] 

Being able to talk about and gain some contextual understanding of what happened during la violencia is a critical part of the healing process. The ways in which the women have reconstructed the past in their minds and in their communities is directly connected to how they feel about themselves, their lives, their future, and their communities. This is turn is likely to have an impact on the degree to which women participate in public life. In Rabinal, for example, the war-widows’ organization’s success with three exhumations and reburials has allowed them to gain some control over their memories and bring closure to the massacres of the early 1980s. The war-widows’ organization and other community members designed, illustrated, and wrote the inscriptions on the memorials. It is their voices that commemorate the collective history of la violencia in Rabinal.

The war-widows therefore are the authors of the public memory of the massacres. The memorials, however, are also a testament to the agency of those community members who advocated for the exhumations and reburials of clandestine mass graves in their region. The oral history people pass down, and the memorials themselves, tell a version of history that acknowledges a legacy of resistance and self-authorship in the community. The act of passing on a collective memory that speaks to the community’s self-defense helps instill a sense of self-worth and self-confidence for future generations.

As the REMHI report notes, the transformation brought about in women through organizing has caused some women to have greater self-esteem and to see uses for their strength that they had not previously realized or risked articulating. “Las mujeres encabezaron este movimiento y construyeron espacios nuevos de lucha contra la impunidad.” REMHI continues: “desde la firmeza de sus convicciones, afrontaron con valentía la violencia y dieron a luz nuevos espacios de participación social.”[149] A new community of women has formed as a result of the fragmentation and isolation caused by the violence. As Zur notes, there is a new “extension of solidarity and sisterhood through organizations such as CONAVIGUA to women beyond the family, village or municipio.[150]

On a national scale, the unburial and construction of a collective memory of la violencia, is due in part to the work of these women’s organizations. Widow’s organizations such as CONAVIGUA and GAM, have played a central role in pushing for the inclusion of diverse sectors of Guatemalan society in politics. These organizations and the women’s groups in Rabinal and Chajul have actively been bringing out the history of la violencia through exhumations, reburials, submitting legislative recommendations to the Government, doing public demonstrations in Guatemala City, and contributing their testimonies to the REMHI and CEH.

The fact that the REMHI and the CEH reports have been released, that exhumations and reburials have occurred and continue to occur, that the columns in front of Guatemala City’s Cathedral are engraved with the names of those killed during the violence, and that the women’s organizations exist at all, is no small achievement—especially in a country where popular participation has been historically repressed by the state. In terms of legislation for women’s rights, however, and retribution for the losses experienced by the war-widows, the organizations have had almost no concrete success. They are actively struggling for women’s rights and human rights. The women’s organizations have had positive effects on women’s perception of themselves and they have raised consciousness among the women and the population at large about Maya women’s collective strength and common experiences of oppression. The ramifications of the power of these realizations may prove to be significant. 

As the testimonies illustrate, the majority of women who are still active in the widows’ organizations are there for reasons that surpass any material benefits they may hope to gain, such as some compensation for the loss of their land, their homes, and the income generated by their husbands. The kinds of experiences the women gain through being involved in mobilization is, as Jaquette discusses, empowering to the women.[151] The personal value and power of organizing for the women, in addition to the potential impact on Guatemalan society, is stated clearly by Carmen: “si uno conoce sus derechos uno puede hacer algo.”[152] 

However, the majority of women in Guatemala are not organized. Although there are at least 60,000-80,000 war-widows as a result of la violencia, fewer than 5,000 are actively participating in collective efforts to change their status and Guatemala’s future.[153] Some women participated briefly in the organizations, but as Zur notes and as some of the testimonies confirm, “some women lost faith in the benefits of membership when their unrealistic expectations of material help were not realized.”[154] In addition to many other reasons, the immense strain on the war-widows to even get their children adequately fed and clothed, makes it no surprise that the majority of war-widows (or women generally) do not participate in collective action. What is extraordinary is that the women’s organizations exist at all, given what it requires of the women. They are triply marginalized and they work three jobs (la triple jornada): domestic work, wage work, and activism. And yet, the organizations have made such a difference in the lives of the women, in the rebuilding of local communities, and in the unburial and formation of collective memory of the violence. Thus, the great irony remains that the rage that resulted when the repression became that much more intolerable during la violencia, has had impressive mobilizing power. The women rose out of a veritable graveyard and strove for change like never before. “(C)on la violencia que pasó como que más valor nos dieron…para organizar, a motivar las mujeres y exigir sus derechos y al mismo tiempo exigir todo lo que pasó.”[155]

In spite of their strength and resilience, however, the organizations face grave challenges to long term existence and success with the implementation of greater citizenship for Maya women in the Guatemalan state. All of the organizations rely heavily on the financial support of national and international funders. As Blacklock notes of women’s organizations in Guatemala, not only does the dependency on international support influence the agendas of the organizations, but it also calls into question the potential for longevity of the groups.[156]

In addition to funding issues, the organizations will need to develop strategies for expanding women’s participation in the organizations at the local and national level. As I discussed, women’s limited participation is in part due to the economic strains on their lives. It is also due to women’s relationship with their male partners. Although many of the mobilized war-widows have remarried (including leaders such as Nineth de García and Rosalina Tuyuc), it appears that the majority of those who are active in the organizations did not remarry.[157] Male resistance to women’s political participation and women’s economic poverty are enormous barriers to increasing women’s participation in the organizations. As the IADB notes, both the fact that women are less informed about their rights and the fact that reproduction and other domestic labor are considered a “private cost” which women generally bear, is one of the greatest barriers to women’s increased participation.[158] The women’s organization’s abilities to deal with these two hurdles are extremely limited. Given the historical trend that women tend to organize less over the long-term in institutionalized organizations, the prognosis for the future of these women’s organizations may not be so good.[159] The difficulty of managing the triple jornada and the increased barriers to women’s access in formal institutions contribute to women’s limited participation over the long-term and at the level of formal politics.[160] 

Another major issue is whether the women’s organizations and their demands will be addressed within the existing state structures. As Jaquette warns, “(e)xisting connections between women’s groups and the state may be more conducive to corporatist outcomes than to representation and accountability.”[161] Would the institutionalization of a war-widows organization, for example, actually result in greater exclusion from participation, rather than inclusion? As history also shows, however, existing state structures are not immutable. Attempts to change what seems impossible to change are not redundant. But improved conditions for women may not be possible without increased organizing by women and men for women’s rights. As Miller notes, broad-based participation is critical for greater mobilization[162] and as Congresswoman Rosalina Tuyuc emphasizes, “[t]here will be development in Guatemala the day women participate and have access to education.”^[163]

In Conclusion

Within extremely limited and limiting life circumstances, the women organized. As Pedrina notes, 

La paz no solo se firmó sino que también hay que exigir que se cumpla porque eso no fue un regalo del gobierno--sino que fue un fruto de la sangre que fue caído en los años 80 de miles y miles de personas inocentemente y niños. Es por ese que la paz fue como un recuerdo de todas las masacres que hubo… [s]eguimos trabajando y luchando.[164]
 

Pedrina’s words illustrate the successes of the women’s organizations. Personally, locally, and nationally, organizing has made a difference. This assertion becomes more stark by considering the women I met with who were not organized. They have not had the opportunity to mourn their dead properly, recover the ghosts and skeletons of the past so as to begin to put the past to rest, or realize the potential of their collective strength in their individual predicaments as war-widows. As Zur notes, 

(i)ndividuals unable to escape suffering are isolated within their own physical and emotional conditions, deprived of any vehicle through which their experience can be made meaningful and, therefore, sufferable. The grief experienced by people who cannot explain an ordeal is more intense than that of others who can explain and thus integrate their past.[165]

The women in the most remote and isolated region of San Marcos, although they did, remarkably enough, speak to me, they did so with great reserve and for a very short time. Carmen’s remark is representative of what the other war-widows in the Sibinal villages told me as well. “(S)iempre con miedo. No estamos tranquilos. Todavía no. La gente está con pena.”[166] Also illustrative of my experience in this region is my conversation with Máxima. She gave me a brief synopsis of what happened to her during the violence, emphasizing that neither the military nor the guerrillas were responsible, but rather the local military commissioner. Minutes later she ended abruptly and said: “Eso es todo y ya no tengo más que decir.”[167] As my fieldwork shows and as Zur’s illustration confirms,

(m)any are still in mourning, not only for the dead and disappeared but also for the destruction of life-ways, the loss of previously occupied categories of person, of trust in themselves and in others…Other losses include deteriorating standards of living generally and of health and education in particular. People are still paying for the psychological, social, and economic costs of the disaster which befell them and are likely to do so for generations to come.[168]

In spite of these consequences, and indeed because of these effects, women have managed to mobilize. Their collective action has been an important step in raising consciousness, developing skills and tools as political and social actors, and widening their citizenship as Maya women. Through the retrieval and reconstruction of history, a collective memory and identities have begun to be forged—individually, in the family, in the community and as a nation. The women’s organizations have created new solidarities for women and war-widows in local communities, among regions, and in Guatemala City.[169] 

Because of these women’s vision and perseverance, Maya women have begun to push open the boundaries of their participation. They have begun to come to terms with la violencia they survived.  

This thesis was typed by the author.