I’m back from a week in the field with pages of notes and lots of ideas and theories and questions bouncing around, and I’m looking forward to sharing them here. However, from my initial research proposal I argued that understanding the context of an area’s history was important to see how social capital has and potentially could act as a force in that village. Perhaps the single most important lesson I’ve learned from this relatively short period of fieldwork in rural Guatemala is that to understand both social capital and market interactions, it is absolutely essential to be able to contextualize a group within the local, national, and global historical trajectories. Thus, before I recount my own experiences at the local level, I want to start with a bit of historical context. Guatemala has Central America’s highest concentration of indigenous residents and includes a long history of physical and economic colonialism and a war where the army was deemed to have committed “acts of genocide” by the official Guatemalan “Commission for Historical Clarification.”
Guatemala is a center of the advanced Mayan civilization, and the ruins scattered through the country and Mexico serve as testaments. Spanish conquest took place in the 1500s, and for the next several hundred years, the Europeans worked to create a highly stratified society. From this point the terms “indigena,” referring generally to “pure” Mayans, and “Ladino,” referring to a mix of European and indigenous, were commonly used. The terms were not purely biological—Ladino was often a political designation indicating a more advanced position or social standing. In fact, one president decreed a whole town of Mayans to be Ladinos in recognition of their development efforts. Of course, European colonialists and landowners were vastly superior in all social standings and could compel both indigenas and Ladinos to serve their needs. Proclamations of independence happened a few times—first as Guatemala joined Mexico for about a year and then for awhile as Central America worked for independence as a collective of states, but the country emerged as an independent republic in 1847.
With the exception of the charismatic and illiterate general Rafael Carerra who secured the country’s independence and fought on behalf of the Mayans but left the nation completely impoverished, all other early presidents were representing the interest of the European elite and cared little for indigenous welfare. Liberal and conservative have a bit of different meanings than our US definitions—liberals wanted an independent state and sought for social reform, but also strove for a highly liberalized economy. Under liberal rulers, Guatemala’s export economy was built, working in close cohorts with the United Fruit Company, the CIA, and European coffee plantation owners—and at the expense of the extremely repressed Mayan peoples. With a few notable exceptions including Carerra, liberal rule lasted from the early 1800s to 1944, stripped Mayans of all their lands, and created a feudal system mandating indigenous labor both on state projects and on coffee or banana plantations, usually owned by wealthy foreigners. In the feudal setup, indigenous laborers usually lived on the plantation (coffee plantations are known as fincas), getting free housing (if grossly substandard—often noted as worse than the animal pens) in exchange for their labor at ridiculously trivial wage rates. This did, however, develop defined communities of laborers who shared their miserable conditions. I think the structure of this colonialist labor structures, as repressive and absolutely terrible as it was, has actually laid the foundations for some of the cooperative successes today; as exploitative as the structure was, workers were largely “in it together.” Working cooperatively was assumed, and in some areas, common finca clothing or soccer teams helped to further unify each community.
Revolts and protests culminated in the 1944 Revolution and a succeeding election sweep by Juan Jose Arevalo, who proclaimed an era of “spiritual socialism.” The reform was dramatic—vast increases in social spending, the transformation of some foreign-owned farms into cooperatives, protections for tenant farmers, the ending of state labor projects. He was followed by Jácobo Arbenz, who was determined to create a modern, capitalist nation independent of foreign dependence. This, of course, did not particularly appeal to foreigners. The 1952 Law of Agrarian Reform was perhaps the downfall of the government—it stated that all lands that were idle or state-owned would be distributed among the landless. This was not intended as a haphazard land grab in any way—the process of determining idle lands was to be carefully managed. The communities that had formed on each finca often acted together, working to form unions. To gain land, the peasants had to actively petition, so the government fostered a great deal of collective action among the disempowered.
Obviously landowners were furious. For peasants, though, the process seemed too slow, and they didn’t really help their case by seeking to take-over lands they felt should be expropriated. The United Fruit Company, an entirely US-controlled company that had a near-monopoly on banana exports lost about half their property (all of it idle), but the US promptly declared the government Communist and a global threat. Arbenz’s government carries the unfortunate distinction of the first Latin American government overthrown by the US CIA. His replacements were hand-picked by the US and flown in on a US Air Force plane.
All land reforms were immediately reversed and the caste-labor structure was reinstated. The highly repressive Guatemalan state, now heavily aided by US military assistance, returned. Not everyone took the repression silently—shortly after the government overthrow, guerilla forces began to form, gradually and in several factions at first. It is difficult to determine when the actual fighting began; the government military was engaging in whatever repressive violence it deemed necessary, but this was initially quite scattered. For thirty-six years, though, from 1960-1996, the country was seized by incredibly bloody, repressive war. For a period in the 1970s and early 1980s, the widespread popular support and unified aims of revolutionary fighters throughout the country led to some optimism—many thought the guerillas could actually succeed in toppling the US-backed state and US-trained military. Ultimately, though, the military’s ruthlessness was unmatchable. More than 200,000 people were tortured and killed, massacred en masse, or “disappeared,” with the Commission for Historical Clarification finding that the military was responsible for 97% of the deaths. I’ve read a number of accounts of the war—the military was incredibly adept at creating a general state of fear and paralysis, completely terrorizing the population with the strategy that defeating the guerrillas required defeating their support base, which was the vast majority of the people. A question I’ve continued to ponder is who constituted this military that would have absolutely no regard for the people it was ostensibly to protect. As a whole, the group was generally seen as a tool for the elite landowners—accounts of the war cite landowners specifically requesting massacres when the locals were threatening. The officers themselves generally were or became rich landowners themselves, and their complete impunity allowed them to take control of enough land to profit enormously. I still do not totally understand how the rank-and-file soldiers, many of whom were conscripted, could have been so inhuman in their tortures, rapes, and murders, but the same questions are asked in every genocidal event.
The war obviously deeply impacted social networks: at times villages were tightly unified in their covert quests to support the guerillas, creating strong bonds of trust and support. However, the military’s primary goal was to undermine these networks, and in many areas they were successful, creating lasting fractures and turning neighbor against neighbor. It would be impossible to make any blanket statements about how networks emerged after the war. Large groups spent years together in hiding in the mountains or as refugees in Mexico, while at times villages were split between those who sought to remain and those who left. In Paradise in Ashes, Beatriz Manz (2004) traces the social ties in one village from the 1970s as impoverished highland residents came together to migrate to Guatemala’s north to colonize seemingly impenetrable jungle in their struggle for land, to today as the northern village works to recover from the war. Colonization forged indelible bonds, but the years since the war divided the village have been a real test; ultimately the village has proved resilient and able to work collectively with a highly successful cooperative, but such cohesion is certainly not the rule in Guatemala. That said, the two cooperative coffee fincas I visited definitely were characterized by workers with a common history and objective shaped by colonialism and the war.
By the early 1990s, the violence had mostly quieted, and in 1996, the government and Guatemala National Revolutionary Union brokered a peace accord that was notably a real two-sided effort. Both sides made tangible commitments to peace and democratic change. Has it happened? The jury is still out. Widespread violence has been generally curbed, though violent crime has skyrocketed and the police seem unable to stem (or are themselves involved in) gang violence, drug trafficking, and corruption.
The most serious problem really is still absolute rural poverty, which has gone statistically unchanged since the war’s conclusion. Land, or a lack of land, remains one of the greatest structural obstacles for most Guatemalans. The feudal labor system was oppressive and exploitative, but in many ways what has replaced the system is worse: finca owners have dismissed almost all of their residential laborers and rehired them as seasonal employees who do not receive any of the benefits of full-time workers and who now have to find their own housing, health care, and transportation, but still receive extremely low wages. While the divide between Ladino and indigenous has certainly blurred (statistics now reflect a much smaller indigenous population, primarily due to intermarriages), there is still a great deal of racism, which often manifests itself in a rural/urban divide. Government social services are grossly inadequate in rural areas—schools don’t have teachers and rural hospitals don’t exist. The current president, Oscar Berger, has developed a reputation for forcefully evicting peasants squatting on land, and repression has not completely disappeared—attempts to organize unions or demand rights are still shrouded in fear.
These are complex problems and there certainly has not been the political or economic will to really eliminate the structural barriers that deepen divides. My homestay father, among many others, talked about the seeming unsolvable nature of the divides, and in hearing any rural peasant talk of their difficulties, one can not help but be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the struggle. As the prominent NGO umbrella organization in Xela wrote, this is really a critical moment in the country’s history: with relative peace and stability present, increasing tourism, and promising signs of economic growth, there is a real opportunity to channel these gains for more widespread benefits and see a real difference. The next presidential elections are this November, and campaigning is in full swing. There are about twenty parties with candidates running (the number seems to fluctuate significantly), and every telephone poll, rock, bridge, and street light has been plastered with someone’s campaign logo. The rural penetration was amazing—more than an hour on a tiny cobbled road out of the nearest pueblo, or small town, I saw crews of campaign workers busily painting away.
There are really only a few realistic candidates, but Rigoberta Menchú deserves special mention as an interesting candidate. A Mayan woman known for her brave publication of I, Rigoberta Menchú, detailing the story of her mother, father, and brothers’ deaths at the hands of the military during the war. Menchú has won the Nobel Peace Prize and currently serves as a human rights ambassador for the government. She is quite popular among women and the left, but for obvious reasons hated by the military and the wealthy elite. However, as a presidential candidate, she seems to mostly offer symbolism. My feminist Spanish teacher told me how she loved Menchú but thought it would be terrible for women if a largely uneducated woman with no knowledge of politics was elected and proved unable to tackle the complex political and economic controversies in the country. At this point, Menchú doesn’t have the widespread support to be elected—a more moderate rather bland-seeming man named Colom of the UNE party holds a strong lead over all other contestants—but the race will be interesting to watch and crucial to determine Guatemala’s future trajectory as it enters its second post-war decade.
This history came from a variety of sources: In addition to conversations with a number of knowledgeable Guatemalans and expats, I have drawn from several of the great books I’ve read: Daniel Wilkinson’s Silence on the Mountain, Victoria Sanford’s Buried Secrets, Greg Grandin’s The Blood of Guatemala, and Beatriz Manz’s Paradise in Ashes, as well as my Rough Guide and it’s concise historical summary.
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