Reviews
Fear as a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala by Linda Green. Columbia University Press, 1999, 229 pp., $57 (cloth), $20 (paper). It is fitting that Linda Green's book on Mayan...
...As long as this is the case, and it has been for some 500 years in Guatemala, fear will continue to be a way of life...
...More than one million Guatemalans were displaced by the war and many of them, like Adela and her children, made their way to Guatemala City...
...People's Power offers an instructive and informative analysis of the Cuban system of municipal and provincial assemblies...
...Green shows that these women-at once considered victims and suspects-embody the very national and historical pathos that has shaped the character of modern Guatemala...
...As the the ongoing climate of violence illustrates, fighting for human rights and social justice in Guatemala is still a dangerous business...
...The intertwining of violence and survival has structured how the Maya exist and operate in a world that remains eternally uncertain and ambiguous...
...The initial discussion of the historical and theoretical basis for the origins of the assemblies in Cuba draws on the philosophical underpinnings of the Paris Commune, Karl Marx's analysis of the events of the Commune of 1871, and how this provided the underpinnings for Lenin's ideas about the organization of the Soviets...
...There they moved into a community of displaced persons that had laid claim to state-owned land on the outskirts of the capital...
...Women in Guatemala are no longer willing to remain passive in the face of government-sponsored repression...
...If the result of violence and fear were simply compliance and acquiescence, then the question of Mayan resilience and will could easily be ignored...
...According to Roman, the municipal and provincial assemblies in Cuba were modeled after the 1905 and particularly the 1917 Soviets...
...It then brings the ancient tale up to date by pointing out that the Maya, who constitute more than half of the present-day population of GuateREVIEWS mala, are treated as second-class citizens, suffering disproportionate levels of poverty and oppression...
...The author deftly recalibrates the way we look at Guatemala, challenging revisionist accounts that minimize the centrality of state violence in Guatemala...
...Stefan Bosworth...
...Readers both new and familiar to Guatemala are presented a penetrating analysis of the poignancy and stakes of everyday life through an exploration of the relationship between material conditions and lived experience...
...Both assemblies operate with little interference from the central government or the Communist Party, and the pattern of recall reminds one of the early Soviets while also illustrating that the people have ultimate control over the delegates...
...Everyday acts like the grinding of corn and the weaving of cloth, along with the richness of associational life both in religious groups and mutual aid societies, are testimony to the dignity and determination of the Maya...
...The strength of Green's work lies in its willingness to embrace in all its complexities and contradictions the very heterogeneity of violence and the manifold nature of power as it has operated over time, place and social context...
...She also argues against those who discount anthropological works focusing on the operations of fear or terror...
...Roman then goes on to describe the functioning of the municipal and provincial assemblies...
...Roman's approach is wellbalanced, and he does not shy from offering criticism of the system's weaknesses...
...Fear as a Way of Life should be read as a primer on the subtle and insidious ways power and violence operate...
...This documentary is a moving account of how the brutal oppression inflicted upon Guatemala's indigenous population by the military dictatorships of the early 1980s resulted in an increasing and active involvement of Mayan women in human rights organizations...
...The first section of the book traces the legacy of violence in Guatemala...
...People's Power is essential reading for anyone interested in learning about Cuba's political system...
...Central to this relationship in Guatemala is the role of violence...
...This tour de force provides a powerful context for understanding how historical processes and material forces have combined to shape contemporary Mayan culture...
...The film contains beautifully filmed scenes of the Guatemalan highlands that serve as a backdrop for the telling of the ancient Maya creation tale, the Popol Vuh...
...It is fitting that Linda Green's book on Mayan widows comes out at the end of the century...
...The accounts of widows surviving their losses with dignity illuminate exactly what has been, and continues to be, fiercely contested and at stake throughout the body politic of Guatemala...
...But those critiques aside, the author convincingly argues that Cuba has successfully developed a grassroots democracy that generally serves the needs of the people, in good times as well as during the severe economic crisis that developed in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union...
...At great personal risk, these women have reached out to international organizations for support and have succeeded in gaining minimal concessions from the Guatemalan government...
...Green's historicized and subtle account requires skeptics to seriously consider how violence and fear are constituent elements of everyday life...
...Yet Green's dialectical treatment of violence, particularly in the second section of the book, reveals the impressive capacity for survival and resistance of the Mayan people...
...The absence of war does not mean that peace reigns as long as the institutions of violence and impunity remain intact...
...He makes a convincing case that both the election process for the assemblies and the debates that take place in the assemblies are largely democratic processes at the grassroots level...
...The documentary makes its point by telling the stories of three indigenous women who were all propelled into human rights activism as a result of being victims of government-sponsored oppresion...
...Justina, whose family was forced to flee its village because of the army's scorched-earth campaign, responded by helping to organize the human rights organization, the Council of Ethnic Communities (CERJ...
...Garry M. Leech People's Power: Cuba's Experience with Representative Government by Peter Roman, Westview Press, 1999, 304 pp., $60.00 (hardcover...
...In the case of Adela, she and her children fled their village when the army massacred 22 people, including her husband...
...However, as the film aptly points out, many of the promises of the 1996 peace accords have yet to be fulfilled...
...Francesca, a Mayan priestess and CERJ activist, exemplifies how the violence not only resulted in a greater organization among Mayan women to defend their human rights, but also how it prompted efforts to ensure the survival of Mayan culture...
...Green describes how both structural and political violence conspire to constrain agency, induce silence and maintain fear...
...This eloquent and sophisticated ethnography of Mayan Indians in general, and Mayan widows in particular, provides much-needed insight into the reality of violence and survival in Guatemala today...
...James Quesada Forging Peace in Guatemala Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 53 minutes, $149.00 (800) 257-5126...
...Regardless of whether the violence exercised is direct, as in military bombings, or indirect, as in the fear of being wrongly accused, violence has shaped the structure of everyday life and limited the range of options individuals and communities can exercise...
Vol. 33 • January 2000 • No. 4
