Violence and Political Participation in Northeastern Guatemala

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20975000
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Saskia Simon
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20975000

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 236, Vol. 48 No. 1, January 2021, 260–279

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20975000

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

260

Violence and Political Participation in

Northeastern Guatemala

by

Saskia Simon

Since colonial times, Northeastern Guatemala has been at the crossroads of legal and

illegal trade routes used by local elites and foreign investors. Organized crime has always

prospered there with the complicity and participation of the local authorities, while the

United Fruit Company started its first banana plantations there in 1904. Both rested their

capital accumulation on governmentalities mixing disciplinary and sovereign power

mechanisms as analyzed by Foucault. In response to the impact of these governmentali-

ties, centered on control and violence, the population has developed a tactical subjectivity

that presents obstacles to its political participation and collective mobilization.

Desde la época colonial, el noreste de Guatemala ha estado en la encrucijada de las rutas

comerciales legales e ilegales utilizadas por las élites locales y los inversionistas extranje-

ros. Allí, el crimen organizado siempre ha prosperado con la complicidad y la participación

de las autoridades locales, y la United Fruit Company sembró sus primeros platanares en

el territorio en 1904. Ambos bandos sustentaron su acumulación de capital en guberna-

mentalidades que mezclan mecanismos de poder disciplinario y soberano, tal y como los

define Foucault. En respuesta al impacto de estas organizaciones gubernamentales, cen-

tradas en el control y la violencia, la población ha desarrollado una subjetividad táctica que

presenta obstáculos a su participación política y movilización colectiva.

Keywords: Violence, Guatemala, Political participation, Capital accumulation,

Governmentality

Praised by many international observers and indigenous activists for their

democratic features, the Guatemala peace accords signed in 1996 ended 30 years

of civil war and initiated a long-overdue process of democratization. The insti-

tutional spaces of participation they created, coupled with somewhat less

repressive governments and international support, opened up opportunities for

a renewal of social movements and, more generally, of collective action in the

country (Brett, 2008; Mazariegos, 2007). Twenty years later, however, this

renewal is one of contrasts. While collective action and political participation

have shaped the democratization process, they have in turn been deeply shaped

by local power configurations and their ties with national and international con-

texts (Bastos, 2009; Ramos and Sosa, 2010; Yagenova, 2008; 2017). Consequently,

Saskia Simon is a part-time lecturer at the Université Catholique de Louvain and an associate fel-

low of its Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Prospective. Her research interests are in the intersection of

ethnography of violence and social movements in Guatemala and Belgium. Her latest publication

explores, from a Foucauldian perspective, the effects of neoliberalism considered as rationality.

975000LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20975000Latin American PerspectivesSimon / Violence and Political Participation in Northeastern Guatemala

research-article2020

Simon / VIOLENCE AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN NORTHEASTERN GUATEMALA 261

the nature of collective action varies greatly from one region and sector to

another, and one might even miss it if looking for something similar to what is

seen elsewhere (Hébert, 2011).

Social movement studies have stressed the importance of context for explain-

ing why people mobilize collectively at a certain time and place and why they

use a certain repertoire of action (Goldstone and Tilly, 2001; Tarrow, 2011; Tilly,

1984). In this regard, the strong and pervasive history of political repression in

Guatemala is a key element. The current impunity rate, verging on 99 percent

(IACHR, 2017), makes the country one of the most violent and dangerous for

activists. As Quentin Delpech (2014) has observed in the case of union mobili-

zation, repression in Guatemala is manifold—from insidious discredit to mur-

der—and may rely on a dense web of actors enmeshed in what Javier Auyero

has called a grey zone, a blurred space of opaque and fraudulent relations

between official political actors and conveyors of violence (Auyero and Mahler,

2011). However, very little attention has been paid to how this violence and

repression shape not only collective action but also the subjectivities of (would-

be) activists. How does the experience of violence affect the subjects and the

way they live and act together?

This question is at the core of this article. It was born not of a study of social

movements or collective protests but rather of their absence. Based on ethno-

graphic fieldwork in a Northeastern rural region of Guatemala, my research

started with puzzlement over what seemed to me a paradox: that the social

fabric in the region was dense and dynamic but, despite a number of official

committees, I could not identify any collective action. The action I sought was

not necessarily contentious in the sense of Tarrow (2011: 7): “used by people

who lack regular access to representative institutions, who act in the name of

new or unaccepted claims, and who behave in ways that fundamentally chal-

lenge others or authorities.” By “collective action” I simply mean here and back

then was searching for “the ways that people act together in pursuit of shared

interests” (Tilly, Tilly, and Tilly 1975), be it for a school event or for a regular

supply of water.

At first, much of my ethnographic research was focused on the how of this

social fabric more than on the why, although the recurrent murders were a big

hint as to the latter. They situated the question of collective action and political

participation in a specific context marked by daily violence. Therefore I framed

my analysis in terms of the ethnography of violence—considering violence as

an experience that alters the subjects and their sociality far beyond the imme-

diacy of the event (Das, Kleinman, and Lock 2001; Feldman, 1991; Riaño-Alcala,

2006). This allowed me to uncover the subjectivity of the region’s inhabitants

and their sociality as they were affected by the recurrent violence. However, the

question of how exactly violence was molding their subjectivity and sociality

to impede collective action remained unanswered.

This article intends to fill this gap by analyzing violence within the power

configurations that give it meaning and effectiveness. As Pierre Clastres (1997)

has shown, violence can be a way of maintaining the horizontality of relations

between equal and independent sociopolitical units. It does not arise naturally

from asymmetrical relations aimed at controlling subordinate populations.

Violence is a power technique that, alongside other techniques and intertwined