(alternative) justice spaces: testimony, mayan...
TRANSCRIPT
(Alternative) justice spaces: Testimony,
Mayan women in Guatemala, and
Emotional Communities
Morna Macleod
Radcliffe Institute
8/9/2016
PRESENTATION
1. Unpacking Testimony
2. Context: rape as a weapon of war in
Guatemala’s armed conflict
3. Four moments of Mayan women’s
testimonies of rape as a weapon of war
4. Emotional Communities
5. Final Reflections
TESTIMONY & CONFLICT: GENEALOGIES
• Holocaust (Levi, Wieviorka, Celan etc.)
• Performance Studies: Felman, Taylor, Wake, etc
• Literary genres: Life histories, memoires,
• Contested terrain (Stoll/Beverly)
• Videos & Documentaries, Bhaskar y Walker, etc.
• History, Anthropology, and Social Science: (oral
history, etc.)
• Transitional justice: a contested terrain
• Testify: (J’accuse Zola, Felman), Public
intellectuals, ethical and truth commissions
POLITICAL TESTIMONY IN
LATIN AMERICATherapeutic testimony (Elizabeth Lira)
Testimony of struggle
o (Auto) Biographies, Memoires & Confessions:
Rigoberta Menchú, Miguel Marmol (Roque
Dalton), Commandants, traitors, etc.
oNovels: e.g. Sandinista Revolution (Cabezas)
o The revolutionary struggles of women (Randall)
o Social movements: Chiapas and Oaxaca (Lynn
Stephen, etc.)
(Quasi) Legal: Truth & ethical Commissions, trials
Testify: (J’accuse) mainly indigenous peasants
REFLECTIONS ON TESTIMONY IN
LATIN AMERICA
• Political URGENCY (often lives at stake)
• “Speak truth to power” (from “below”)
• Both individual & collective (“public intimacy”)
• Eye witness (seeing)
• A variety of secondary witnesses (listening,
documenting, filming)
• Always mediated
• Resistance: legal, cultural, social, etc.
GUATEMALA: GENOCIDE
AND ARMED CONFLICT
• CEH documented:
• 626 massacres
• 42,275 victims (men, women and children)
• 23,671 arbitrary executions
• 6,159 victims of forced disappearance
• Identified victims: 83% = Mayans, 17% =
ladinos
• Massive displacement: internal & refugees
• CEH: Acts of Genocide in certain areas
RAPE AS A WEAPON OF WAR
• Vienna 1993 HR World Conference (UN)
• Resolution 1325 (2000) women, peace and
security
• Resolution 1960 (2010) UN Security Council
approved annual publication of groups
deliberately committing sexual violence
campaigns (“naming and shaming”)
• CEH: Consultation with civil society (1998)
Novel alliance between Maya and feminists:
genocide and rape as a weapon of war
RAPE AND TESTIMONY
• Crime against humanity. Denounce →
– Never again
– To bring perpetrators to trial
• Risks of publicly denouncing rape:
– Revictimising (possibility of being raped again
in revenge)
– Humiliation and stigma
• The right to denounce and to keep quiet
– Theidon, Ross,
• JELIN
4 CASES OVER TIME (1983-2014):
– During the armed conflict
– Commission of Historical Clarification (truth
commissions) 1998 & 1999
– Ethical Tribunal against sexual violence of
women during the armed conflict in
Guatemala
– Ríos Montt trial
1. Carmelita Santos
(massacres taking place)
“I want to speak in the name of all the men, women,
children and elders in my village, so that the world
hears of the injustice we´re suffering, and that we
have the recognised right that to live on the land and
as children of God”. (PPT 1983: 377) Collective
“They’ve treated us in Guatemalan as if we were
stupid Indians. That´s not the case. We have the
same capacities, but we don’t have the opportunity to
study. They tell us that we indigenous are worthless
and that we´re a nuisance for Guatemala.” (1983)
Carmelita Santos
• “I think these massacres are worse for us women,
because first the women are raped… and after
raping her, they pull out her tongue, they put out
her eyes, they tear away her breasts, and
afterwards, they just leaver her dying there. Many
times we have said –witnessing such terrible
suffering- that we’d prefer it if they simply shot us,
but not be killed in this way”. (1983 FEDEFAM
conference, Mexico City)
• “¿Por qué nos matan como chuchos?”
TRUTH COMMISSIONS(REMHI 1994-1998 & CEH 1997-1999)
• Sexual violence: not from the start (CEH),
included later (Yolanda Aguilar)
• Rape= the most unreported HR violation
(CEH 2000 Tomo II: 23),
• Peru = First truth commission to include
gender from the beginning, but less cases
documented than in Guatemala
• Peru: 538, Guatemala: 1,465
• Why? (Q for Kimberley Theidon)
Indigenous women
victim of sexual violence:
• 1,465 reported cases of rape (CEH)
• 99% against elderly, adults, young
women and girls
• Rape of indigenous girls:
– 27% girls
– 8% 0-5 year olds
– 22% 6-12 year olds
– 70% 13-17 year olds
• 88.7% cases of sexual violence doc. by
CEH = Indigenous women
• Fragments (not complete testimonies)
• Written word, less direct
• Very few testimonies in 1st person
• Others speak for and of the rape of
women
• But it did break a taboo, groundwork
for ethical tribunal
TRUTH COMMISSION TESTIMONY
REMHI & CEH
3. ETHICAL TRIBUNAL
• 4-5 March 2010, organised by UNAMG,
ECAP, MTM + CONAVIGUA & La Cuerda
• Jury: ♀♀ → Japan, Uganda, Peru,
Guatemala – including Mayan ♂♀
• Testimonies, expert witness, “judges”
• “Juridification”: what justice should look like
• Caso Sepur Zarco = spin-off
• Video: 5.30-8.00
EMOTIONAL COMMUNITIES• Term coined by Myriam Jimeno:
• Culminating experience:
– Esp. work with displaced (indigenous)
communities in Colombia
– Bringing together the political & the emotional
(theoretically & lived experience)
• Characteristics:
– Kitek Kiwe’s activities (identity, denouncing,
performing, negotiating)
– Collaboration & accompaniment by Jimeno &
team (different moments and issues)
– Empathy (and academic rigour), moments of
closeness and distance
EMOTIONAL COMMUNITIES
• Academic implications, in situations of
extreme violence:
• What´s left out of academic work by not
including emotions?
• How can we researchers remain “neutral” or
“unaffected”?
• Bringing emotions of victims/survivors and
researchers into academic work
• Breaking with traditional theorising: bringing
together the emotional and political, circulation
between people, body, things, place,
EMOTIONAL COMMUNITIES IN
GUATEMALA
• A good example, work by Brinton Lykes &
Alison Crosby:
– YEARS of accompaniment of Mayan women
– Ixil ♀♀ photographers,
– UNAMG, ECAP, MTM accompaniment and
research Mayan women raped during armed
conflict
– Creative “sanación” workshops (art, body)
– In Ethical Tribunal on rape/armed conflict
– Theoretically: widening debate, → dilemmas,
questioning assumptions, new ideas/concepts
FINAL REFLECTIONS:
• Polysemy of Testimony
• Why so little theorisation of testimony
during (armed) conflicts?
• Most theorisation= post, linked to memory
and transitional justice
• The powerful impact of testimony in
person and in video (all senses involved)
• “For the record” subalternative voices,
“history from below”
• “J’accuse” needs more theoretical analysis
FINAL REFLECTIONS:
o Emotional communities reflect the bonds (and
tensions) between collective social actors and
collaborators (academics, volunteers, etc.)
o Strands of emotional communities in public
events (1983 Carmelita Santos testimony at
FEDEFAM conference in DF, REMHI and CEH
public presentation of findings , 2015 Ríos Montt
trial anniversary UNAM), contribute to long-term
trajectories of emotional communities
CURRENT WORK ON
EMOTIONAL COMMUNITIES
• Working paper (Rachel & Jenny Pearce’s idea),
article and basis for book for Palgrave
• LASA: Otros Saberes: a proposal for a double
panel (↑↑ interest): Colombia, Mexico,
Guatemala, Salvador, Chile, and Chiapas/CA
• Paper in V Coloquio sobre Emociones (ITESO)
with example of Sicilia’s book presentation on
MPJyD (with Carmen Aristegui) at the Fosas de
Tetelcingo, Cuautla, Mexico
• MM: So far Chile and Mexico, not Guatemala
(would like to write about the collective strands)