Violence, Emotion, and Ethnography on Violence

What kinds of violence did K’iche Mayans experience?

• Genocide: killings targeted at a particular ethnic group (Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia)

• War: civilians always predominate among the casualties

• Counterinsurgency: often characterized by widespread use of torture and round-ups of men (Franco & the Spanish Civil War, Shining Path in Peru, Khmer Rouge in Cambodia)

• Structural violence

Structural Violence• Johan Galtung (1969): Violence occurs where human beings’ health and

psychological wellbeing are affected, are below their potential• Thus, child malnutrition or mental retardation due to lead ingestion

should be considered a form of violence (Erica Riberas’s question)• Not recognized as violence because it is not personal (violence needs an

actor who intends it).• Galtung proposed the term “structural violence”: how are resources

distributed? Where does power lie? • Paul Farmer (anthropologist & doctor who works in Haiti): “Structural

violence is one way of describing social arrangements that put individuals and populations in harm’s way… The arrangements are structural because they are embedded in the political and economic organization of our social world; they are violent because they cause injury to people.”

• A very significant concept for public health.

In the case of the Maya….

• Several hundred years of political, social, and economic domination– What is the language of schools?– Who owns the land?– Who has to provide labor (forced labor)?– Who holds political power?

• Questions about American Indians by Charles Lavin and Mark Christensen

What kinds of violence did K’iche Mayans experience?

Thirty years of:• Genocide• War• Counterinsurgency tactics

Coming on top of four hundred years of:• structural violence

• Should we add migration as a kind of violence also?Questions by Anthony See, Michelle Palmer, Dana Dilapo

What are the effects of violence on the community and individuals?

Antonio and his brother who was “disappeared,” p. 229

• What do you notice about the way he’s speaking?• Why is he talking this way?

Dionisio’s Story (p. 237ff)

• Involved in Catholic Action• Became PAC chief (jefe) because did “well” (or badly?)• Dropped Catholicism, but did not convert to Evangelical

Protestantism• Migration to the US in 1989; seven years in textile factory;

accident • Three days in the hospital• The visits, pp. 240-241, pp. 244-245• The meanings,

– p. 242, p. 243, pp. 246-247

Healing from trauma/genocide

• “Talk”: silence is bad, talking is good

• Punishment of perpetrators of massacres (war crime tribunals): – Nuremberg Trials after WWII

– International Criminal Court in The Hague, 2002-

• Finding out and documenting what happened:– Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Chile’s Rettig report, 1991;

South Africa, 1995; Guatemala’s Truth Commission, 1996-1999, p. 205)

– Grave exhumations and forensic analysis in Guatemala

The majority of Mayans did not participate in official reconciliation and memory projects, p. 209: Why?

Doing Fieldwork after Violence: How is Foxen perceived by K’iche Maya?

Doing Fieldwork after Violence:Did she get good information?

Doing Fieldwork after Violence:What are the ethical issues?

Should she have done this research?