Fear as a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala
Between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s, the people of Guatemala were subjected to a state-sponsored campaign of political violence and repression designed to not only defeat a left-wing, revolutionary insurgency but also destroy Mayan communities and culture. The Mayan Indians in the western highlands were labeled by the government as revolutionary sympathizers, and many Mayan women lost husbands, sons, and other family members who were brutally murdered or who simply "disappeared."\ Based...
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Based on years of field research conducted in the rural highlands, Fear as a Way of Life traces the intricate links between the recent political violence and repression and the long-term systemic violence connected with class inequalities and gender and ethnic oppression----the violence of everyday life. Gerald Sider Violence—from massive assault to microscopic humiliation—plays a crucial role in the constructions of race, gender, class, and nation. The power and success of Fear as a Way of Life begins with the ways it shows Mayan women building, and constantly rebuilding, lives within and against situations of totalizing and inescapable violence. Equally important, Linda Green maps new ways for anthropology to reach, and to reach out to, people in such circumstances. In situations where just sympathy scarcely matters, this book is a major contribution to the construction of an anthropology able to understand, to help, and to heal.
List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsAuthor's NoteSix Women from Xe'cajPt. 1A Legacy of Violence11In the Aftermath of War: An Introduction32The Altiplano: A History of Violence and Survival253Living in a State of Fear55Pt. 2A Legacy of Survival814From Wives to Widows: Subsistence and Social Relations835The Embodiment of Violence: Lived Lives and Social Suffering1116The Dialectics of Cloth1277Shifting Affiliations: Social Exigencies and Evangelicos1498Mutual Betrayal and Collective Dignity167Notes173Glossary189Bibliography193Index215
\ June NashNow, as forensic evidence from the mountains of the dead in the western highlands of Guatemala adds material evidence to the narrations of terror suffered by Mayas in the twenty years of civil war, Linda Green provides us with an analysis of how it is to live with fear. The new body counts in the low-intensity warfare waged against indigenous peoples must include the 80, 000 widows and 250, 000 orphans who survived. In her analysis of the reconstruction of their lives and communities, we find new insights into the relations of contradiction between structural and political violence, domination, and resistance of a people who have struggled against subordination of their culture and society for almost five hundred years.\ \ \ \ \ Gerald SiderViolence—from massive assault to microscopic humiliation—plays a crucial role in the constructions of race, gender, class, and nation. The power and success of Fear as a Way of Life begins with the ways it shows Mayan women building, and constantly rebuilding, lives within and against situations of totalizing and inescapable violence. Equally important, Linda Green maps new ways for anthropology to reach, and to reach out to, people in such circumstances. In situations where just sympathy scarcely matters, this book is a major contribution to the construction of an anthropology able to understand, to help, and to heal.\ \ \ BooknewsBased on her fieldwork in the highlands in the late 1980s, Green (anthropology and international and public affairs, Columbia U.) provides an ethnographic study of Mayan widows leading households alone because of the persistent war in Guatemala. She focuses on their survival tactics and the balance of fear and hunger with community and culture. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)\ \
