Paradise In Ashes is a narrative that is deeply engaged and accounts for the violence and repression that shaped the 1980s civil war in Guatemala. Beatriz Manz, who is an anthropologist, spent more than 20 years analyzing Guatemala’s remote Rain forests and the Mayan highlands narrates the story of Santa Maria Tzeja, a village adjacent to the Mexican border. Eloquently, Manz tells how the history of Guatemala was tortured and the birth, destruction, and then the rebirth of this village, Santa Maria Tzeja, and further the conflicts and forces in the country nowadays.
Manz creates a well-detailed political account of the village from interviews carried on the peasants, guerrillas, society leaders, and the paramilitary forces; it’s in this village where the peasants of Mayan highland origin are looking for land settled around the 1970s.
The village is described as a lush and isolated but misleading paradise that became the center of the war that shake the whole country, and it was entirely wiped out in 1982; the survivors fled to the adjacent rain forest and then to Mexico and further to the US while other was captured by the militia. With great passion and insight, Beatriz Manz followed the plight and the return of the village.
The increase the power bestowed to the armed forces was one cause of the city in Guatemala; the United States also played a crucial role in the civil wars whereby it gave advice to the Guatemala officials, offered training to troops, machinery, and war equipment, and green berets and rangers in cases of counterinsurgency. The government used disappearance as a strategy in the urban centers, whereas aerial bombing was used to kill the villagers. Death squads would be used by the government to wipe out a group of civilians, and Manz states that “that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake”.
The Mayan communities were viewed as natural enemies by the army since they possessed lots of wealth and therefore rebelled and were to be repressed. Since they rebelled and allied to the guerillas, their human rights were violated. All the communities were linked to guerrillas, including the elderly, women, and children. The scorched earth policy was used against them, and this included wiping out any living thing in the surroundings including the livestock and every basic essential for survival. They lost their wealth and many family members. The victims of the counterinsurgency were tortured in many ways, which included being buried alive, the opening of women’s wombs, amputation of victims limbs, and many more, which left the survivors physiologically tortured and degraded those who ordered, perpetrators and those who condoned such acts. Cultural symbols, sacred places, ceremonial centers, and the social life of the Mayan communities were repressed too. Their social structure was also destroyed through the introduction of military commissioners. Spiritual activities were also obstructed, and the displacement and refuge prevented them from practicing their own culture; Manz further states that “People were killed selectively in some communities, and others fled to Mexico to escape the army. Three entire settlements were also completely exterminated: Trinitaria, Santa Clara, and El Quetzal. It is estimated that army action in 1982 accounted for”. Arbitrary executions were also carried out, and the perpetrators were military commissioners, specialists, troops, army officers, death squads, or the civil patrols who violated human rights. Sexual violence, especially to the Mayan women, was used to lower their dignity was common, and the survivors are to date traumatized by these acts, and this has become a society’s collective source of shame. Forced army recruitment against the Mayan communities was a common occurrence, and the victims included the minors and the aged who were forced directly into the hostilities.
The ethnic divisions aided the political violence in many ways, and one community would carry out massacres on another community.
During the civil war, the civil patrols were the civilian adjuncts to the army in Guatemala and were commanded by the military, who forced them to carry out some abuses to the Mayan communities and other communities. The patrols were to act as civilian adjuncts and more so protect the communities from armed opposition and were all called Guatemalan national revolutionary Unity. Though the membership was voluntary in many rural areas like the Santa Maria Tzeja village, membership was obligatory for males between 10to 60 years, failure to which they would face death penalty. They could be commanded by the military officers and be trained too. The civil patrols are responsible for the human right abuses in the Mayan community.
References
Beatriz Manz (2005) Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope, University of California press, California
American Ethnologist.