Abstract
Jennifer Burrell continues in the long and rich tradition of anthropological work in Guatemala by examining how the micro-macro struggles of everyday life in Todos Santos are differentially affected by culture, multiple forms of violence, security, and governance, after a thirty-six year civil war. She reveals a transition filled with uncertainty, anxiety, hope, and ambiguity amid physical reminders of death and violence. Her ethnographic work spans twenty years and reflects a complex analysis of the process and implications of adapting and co-opting culture, neoliberalism and poverty, massive wage labor migration, and local and national conflict. The organization of the book lends itself more to an ongoing analysis of how conflict is framed and resolved between community members as well as how the negotiations between community and state are managed and affect Todosanteros.
Throughout the book, Burrell brilliantly demonstrates how the “fault lines of historical conflict run deep” (p. 37), specifically in terms of how the state’s desire to combat post-war violence through security patrols and other policies often led to an increase in violence, leaving many Todosanteros feeling that little had changed during the transition to democracy. The three main findings she garners from her grounded ethnographic work include intergenerational conflict, the differences between urban and rural spaces, and how culture is repressed and revitalized. In the first three chapters she centers how history structures the present. For example, she discusses at length how the past is silenced and reconstructed by the state leading to loss of history and culture, as well as revitalization efforts from indigenous groups as a survival strategy. By showing how cultural practices such as Fiesta, in Chapter Four, have transformed over time, Burrell shows that culture is not fixed. She also pays heed to the fact that the Mam Mayan, when negotiating justice, are often fearful because in the past they have been met with genocide and currently face an instability of their rights. Furthermore, in Chapter Five she interrogates the murder of tourists in Todos Santos and uncovers how the national government was unresponsive and ineffective. The Guatemalan state, along with other international accounts, blamed the incident on the indigenous and in effect rendered Todosanteros backward in order to fulfill a national promise of progress and stability. This is partly explained by her analysis of how rural areas like Todosanteros continue to experience exclusion based on proximity and ethnicity.
Burrell also explains how massive migration and remittances change the local landscape and how return migration has shaped local governance. For example, return migrants frequently have a large influence on the cultural traditions such as Fiesta, Corrido de Caballos, and Baile de los Conquistadores that she argues, “allows us to examine yearly reinvisioning of community across borders” (p. 96). These accounts seem to parallel much of the work on how transnational migrants affect local spaces and, in this case, lead to the migrants participating in order to reconnect to their homeland. But what is her most convincing and nuanced analysis comes in Chapter Six where she addresses the role of gangs in regards to culture, intergenerational conflict, and the paramilitary style of security. Here she eloquently challenges that violence begets violence and that gangs specifically did not represent the unsavory people of the town. Burrell reveals how the anxiety and desire for the townspeople to quell the gangs resulted in security committees with paramilitary training that often led to more violence. By tracing the life of and killing of Alfonso she gives personhood to someone who has been stripped of humanity because he is considered a threat to “progress.” Here, Burrell indicates the deep generational cleavages that were expressed through criminalization and impunity. In sum, Burrell states: “Instead, current generations are defined by the historical moments that have shaped their lives: war and counter insurgency for parents and postwar/post-Accords for their sons and daughters….Intergenerational strife may be exacerbated in times of conflict, when scarce resources are battled over under conditions of severe inequality” (pp. 145–6).
Burrell makes concerted efforts to create inclusive and critical ethnography, such as the mapmaking and history workshops, that allow for range and specificity of the experiences by empowering some of the members of Todos Santos to tell their own histories/stories. Her in-depth ethnography spanning over time allows a better analysis of the pre- and post-war continuity of culture, violence, and governance, and the heterogeneity of these experiences. But the fact that she does not mention her positionality and how that can affect ethnographic research is problematic. Many other anthropologists have been critical of their social location and built their analysis of it into their work. This would have provided Burrell an opportunity to speak to the politics of positionality and privilege, thereby contributing to a more critical study. This seems especially important when she admits that elders did not talk to her and did not participate in the mapmaking and history workshops because they feared state sanctions. Furthermore, she does not address how this might have affected her analysis in particular when it came to intergenerational conflicts. Equally, while Burrell’s engagement in the vast literature of many topics proved to be comprehensive and robust, she could have more systematically sustained a framework and analysis that challenges narratives of colonial tropes. Overall, this book proves a critical resource to all those who want to understand how macro-level structures such as economic inequality, neoliberalism, transnationalism, and complexities of violence affect rural indigenous members of Todos Santos—and the Central American region that is plagued with similar harsh realities.