Reviews
The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy by Jennifer Schirmer, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998, 344 pp., $47.50 (cloth). How inexorably antidemocratic is the...
...It is the confluence of these two phenomena that are at the heart of his explanation of the uprising...
...Schirmer's book has informative chapters on the army's changing response to the guerrillas, its use of Mayan Indians as counterinsurgents, and the dreaded G-2 death squad...
...The Guatemalan army's play book continues to include selective assassination, as underlined by the April 26, 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, head of the Catholic Church's Recovery of Historical Memory project...
...Womack's narrative is most compelling in two areas: the political evolution of Bishop Samuel Ruiz, and the political awakening of desperately poor indigenous groups in the highlands of Chiapas...
...Organized as a long introductory essay and 32 historical "readings" going back to 1545 but most from the fairly recent past, the book is a useful-at times compellingnarration and analysis of events...
...This is the question anthropologist Jennifer Schirmer asks in her new book, summarizing 15 years of research into the institution which is central to the Guatemalan violence...
...A Violence Called Democracy scrutinizes the army's "return to the barracks'" which has allowed civilians to be elected to the presidency since 1985 but protected the army from accountability for the massacres of the early 1980s and more selective killings since then...
...How inexorably antidemocratic is the Guatemalan army...
...Womack's easy, conversational style of writing and skillful selection of source material make this an extremely reader-friendly book...
...David Stoll Rebellion in Chiapas: An Historical Reader edited by John Womack, Jr., The New Press, 1999, 372 pp., $17.95 (paper...
...The role of the Bishop of San Crist6bal, Samuel Ruiz, the trajectories of various revolutionaries who worked with indigenous groups in Chiapas, the peculiar Mexican interaction between local bosses (caciques) and national political elites, the "intricate collusion of businessmen and politicians" that makes up Mexico's dominant political culture, and the country's ubiquitous sense of "crisis" are all treated succinctly and clearly in Womack's opening essay...
...Now that the report of the UN-sponsored truth commission will lead to attempts to prosecute officers for wartime offenses, Schirmer's book will serve as a valuable baseline for evaluating army compliance with the peace agreement...
...John Womack lends his strong narrative skills to this compendium of sources on the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas...
...The intimidation of witnesses points in a familiar direction, to die-hards in the officer Vol XXXII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1999 corps whom the high command is unwilling or unable to control...
...Chief among Schirmer's preoccupations is "national stability" doctrine, which purports to be more sophisticated than the old "national security" doctrine positing Communism as the most serious threat facing Guatemala...
...They have consented to checking (although usually not punishing) the most egregious extracurricular offenses by brother officers...
...Particularly fascinating is the chapter on the Oficiales de la Montalia, right-wing coup-plotters challenging the "constitutionalists" who uphold at least the appearance of civilian rule...
...Not misery itself, he argues, but the gradual development of "a new sense of right and justice" is the essential background to the Zapatista uprising of New Years Day, 1994...
...Under the aegis of national stability doctrine, the army's more astute officers have distanced themselves from the most reactionary ones...
Vol. 32 • May 1999 • No. 6
