The Politics of Naming, Indigenous Insurrection, and Genocidal Violence During Guatemala's Civil War
Subsequent Statement of Responsibility
Morris, Rosalind C.
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Columbia University
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
2020
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
352
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree
Ph.D.
Body granting the degree
Columbia University
Text preceding or following the note
2020
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
During the Guatemalan civil war (1962-1996), different forms of anonymity enabled members of the organizations of the social movement, revolutionary militants, and guerrilla combatants to address the popular classes and rural majorities, against the backdrop of generalized militarization and state repression. Pseudonyms and anonymous collective action, likewise, acquired political centrality for revolutionary politics against a state that sustained and was symbolically co-constituted by forms of proper naming that signify class and racial position, patriarchy, and ethnic difference. Between 1979 and 1981, at the highest peak of mass mobilizations and insurgent military actions, the symbolic constitution of the Guatemalan state was radically challenged and contested. From the perspective of the state's elites and military high command, that situation was perceived as one of crisis; and between 1981 and 1983, it led to a relatively brief period of massacres against indigenous communities of the central and western highlands, where the guerrillas had been operating since 1973. Despite its long duration, by 1983 the fate of the civil war was sealed with massive violence.