Description
"Buried Secrets" focuses on political transformation through ethnographically detailed case studies of the exhumation of clandestine cemeteries, the excavation of collective memory and the expansion of the judicial system. It traces political changes from the micro of political mobilization in relatively unknown rural villages to the macro level of national political events. From the monolingual Maya widow who survived a massacre to the widows organization she founded, from the exhumation of a clandestine cemetery to the survivor's interactions with the new legal system, from the signing of the peace accords in Guatemala City to the closing of the army base and reintegration of guerrilla combatants into rural villages. It demonstrates that these transformations are not only relational, but mutually constituted at the local and national levels through the discourse and practice of truth, memory and human rights. Moreover, through comparative data collected in villages, it moves from the micro to the macro to demonstrate the mobilization around past events of state violence and human rights abuses is critical to ending impunity and constructing rule of law--both of which are cornerstones to meaningful democracy. This analysis problematizes the phenomenology of violence and genocide, collective trauma and healing, and the reconstruction of truth and memory in communities which have suffered extreme violence at the hands of the state. The research points to the importance of political events in remote regions of Latin America and their significance to political processes that have hitherto been conceptualized as urban and elite. "Buried Secrets" contributes to interdisciplinary debates about democratization, human rights and reconstruction of a viable judiciary, putting popular voice at the center rather than the periphery. Spring 2002, Summer 2002 to Summer 2004
