Identity and memory as resilience: Applications of liberation psychology in a rural Maya Achi community

The proliferation of non-governmental organizations focused on truth and reconciliation in humanitarian settings reflects an increased recognition of the legal, political, and psychosocial roles that memory can play in contexts of violence and displacement (Corntassel & Holder, 2008; Lindorfer, 2009; Martín Beristain, 2006; Perez Sales & Liria, 2015). Myriad organizations base their work on aid models aimed at responding to the traumas of armed conflict. Other collectives seek to mobilize support networks and services in order to mitigate ongoing cycles of poverty and violence that result in psychological distress. In spite of the potential of these interventions to promote positive change, valuable critiques exist of the ways in which they can also replicate dynamics of western cultural and economic hegemony. Even local memory reconstruction initiatives can eclipse diverse voices and perspectives, while imposing singular narratives about otherwise complex social histories (Fassin, 2008; Foxen, 2010). Although social movements and grassroots organizations may at times work from the influence of political agendas (see Fassin, 2008), these can also be sites of dialectal action both shaped by, and in resistance to, systemic patterns of cultural imperialism, neocolonialism, and neoliberalism. There is little research on the efforts of local movements engaged in social change and their unique approaches to community resilience.

Social movements in contexts of violence might integrate multiple perspectives of trauma and resilience in their objectives, and find themselves navigating possible tensions and contradictions over which conflicting historical and contemporary events are the “truth,” and what social, economic, and individual outcomes might truly be transformative. This article discusses student and staff perspectives of social factors in collective resilience at a non-governmental, non-profit Maya Achi educational institute in rural Guatemala. The institute is part of a broader social movement of non-governmental organizations engaging with popular education and liberation psychology principles in order to promote historical memory, healing, and change following the signing of the country's peace accords. Amid ongoing structural inequality, intergenerational trauma, exclusion, and violence, this research sought to understand student and staff interpretations of memory and identity, and how these might shape their considerations of social, cultural, and economic aspects of resilience in postwar Guatemala.

Liberation approaches to memory and resilience

The 36-year civil war in Guatemala resulted in 200,000 dead or disappeared, one million displaced, and 600 rural villages destroyed by the state's scorched earth policies (Rothenberg, 2012; Schirmer, 1998). The UN-mandated Truth Commission's report published as part of the peace accords in 1999 declared many of the counter-insurgency tactics used in the 1980s as a genocide against the country's Indigenous populations (Foxen, 2000; Rothenberg, 2012). In rural Guatemala, grassroots movements continue to seek justice through activities that promote truth and reconciliation, human rights, and development (Chávez et al., 2016; Perez Sales & Liria, 2015). Exhumations and investigations for the prosecution of war crimes draw upon mental health, legal, and community-liaison expertise in order to reconstruct the conflict's history and challenge official versions of events (Roberts & Thanos, 2003; Rothenberg, 2012). This approach “synthesizes the therapeutic and the political—a political dimension because the violence was political and because people's political visions are needed to restore communities, and thus, mental health” (Roberts & Thanos, 2003, p. 953; see also Arias, 2006; Drouin, 2010).

The integration of mental health concepts with truth and reconciliation discourses, often in collaboration with global human rights organizations, enacts a potential subjectivity through which affected communities might exercise political advocacy (Fassin, 2008). Similarly, acknowledging historical trauma as an ongoing legacy of social, cultural, and economic injustices might prompt public action to address health and mental health disparities in Indigenous communities in the present (Hatala et al., 2016). However, the documentation and testimony of violent events can also reproduce psychological or psychiatric models that pathologize distress, emphasize victimization and vulnerability, and overlook individual and collective sources of strength : “[T]he politico-legal instrumentality of the human rights concept—based in a broader Western discourse on individualism and rationality—often veils the untidiness, complexity and cultural agency through which people experience, interpret and remember the past” (Foxen, 2000, p. 359; see also Hatala et al., 2016). Denham (2008) questions the possible construction of PTSD and historical trauma as a diagnosis “being used for political or biomedical agendas” (p. 398). Similarly, Fassin (2008) critiques the imposition of clinical terminology on lived experiences of suffering and violence for political ends in humanitarian contexts. The forensic, investigative nature of historical memory work, by assigning a victim and a perpetrator, can obscure the ways in which communities may have had multiple experiences in a conflict, or practiced resistance and survival strategies in a variety of ways, for a variety of reasons (Foxen, 2000).

Collective processes of reconstruction are additionally contentious in a national climate that effects a “depoliticization of historical memory” (Oglesby, 2007, p. 82), where the structural causes of past violence, such as colonialism and institutional racism, are silenced. In Guatemala, national counter-insurgency campaigns attempted to destroy, “through various forms of physical and psychological terror,” the cultural basis from which people sought meaning (Foxen, 2000, p. 360). In rural areas, a widespread state strategy forced the recruitment of locals into Civil Defense Patrols (known in Spanish as PACs), whose participation in the terror further undermined group solidarity and severely divided communities for decades to come (Dill, 2005; Godoy, 2006). Memory and human rights work thus occur in a polarized environment of ongoing fear and risk “amplified by residues of trauma from decades of armed conflict” (Benson et al., 2008, p. 40; see also Godoy, 2006; Lopez de Gamiz, 2009). These risks are illustrated by the 1998 assassination of Bishop Juan Gerardi, the director of the nation-wide Interdiocesan Project of Recuperation of Historical Memory (RHEMI), whose report Guatemala: Nunca Mas publicized human rights violations during the civil war. Gerardi's death is evidence that “the concepts of ‘truth’ and ‘memory’ are thus critical—and lethal—socio-political issues in Guatemala” (Foxen, 2000, p. 356).

In spite of the complexity and dangers, truth and reconciliation initiatives continue working to address the intergenerational consequences of displacement, dispossession, and violent repression on the region's Indigenous and marginalized populations, and to restore the social fabric of communities (Martín Beristain, 2006; Perez Sales & Liria, 2015). Many draw upon Latin America's rich traditions of liberation psychology, radical theology, and popular education, including the work of Brazilian popular educator Freire (1972) and the Salvadoran liberation psychologist Martín-Baró (1994). A key concept in liberation theories is Freire's notion of concientizacion: a collective, participatory learning process promoting critical awareness of historical patterns of oppression and resistance. Martín-Baró, in addition to sharing Freire's emphasis on historical memory, challenged psychology's western, individualistic bias, compelling the discipline to engage in a process of “posibilitar,” or making alternatives to the status quo possible in order to put knowledge “in the service of human liberation” (1994, p. 9). These critical approaches to postwar reconstruction and development resonate with medical anthropological observations that cultures experiencing violence make meaning through political and historical explanations “that posit anger and distress as valid expressions of a desire for social justice and accountability” (Foxen, 2010, p. 70).

Liberation theories and practice seek to transform the political and social dimensions of problems typically pathologized as symptoms of trauma. They are part of a broader paradigm shift to conceptualize mental health and resilience beyond individual traits, residing “in the durability of interpersonal relationships in the extended family and wider social networks of support” (Kirmayer et al., 2011, p. 85; see also Lindorfer, 2009). Cross-cultural resilience research increasingly views mental health from a community perspective, with interest in “collective processes of suffering, healing, and rebuilding” (Foxen, 2010, p. 72; see also Perez Sales & Liria, 2015). Harvey's ecological theory of resilience suggests that reactions to different stressors are best understood in light of the values, behaviors, skills, and meanings present in communities (Foxen, 2010, p. 72). Similarly, Hatala et al. (2016) call for research that contributes to “a strengths-based concept of resilience to counteract the potentially negative implications of historical trauma narratives that can frame Aboriginal health issues within a narrative of pathology, victimization, and disparity” (p. 4). They emphasize “a plurality of perspectives” of trauma and resilience in order to understand their manifestations in unique contexts.

Mental health disciplines have traditionally overlooked the importance of stories, songs, and cultural resilience in situations of trauma and in humanitarian settings (Denham, 2008; Kirmayer, 2010; Teo, 2012). Grassroots interventions that promote collective narrative and meaning-making can draw upon community strengths that may historically have supported resistance (Martín-Baró, 1994). Denham (2008) suggests that the chronological ordering involved in narrative can help individuals to integrate and overcome the fragmented sense of self that results from traumatic memory first experienced as sensations or feeling states, while connecting them to their social and familial environments and rebuilding a sense of identity. While many community-based organizations throughout Latin America have documented their truth and memory activities at the local level, much of this work has yet to be systematically compiled or researched toward more global application (Perez Sales & Liria, 2015).

Community organizers throughout Latin America adopt liberation approaches not only to clarify the intellectual and material authors of human rights abuses, but also to start to heal the intergenerational effects of conflict by promoting social change in the present. Little research exists regarding how these grassroots movements contend with the task of articulating shared narratives from which to challenge power on one hand, while maintaining openness to a plurality of meaning and experiences on the other. In divisive postwar settings still influenced by western economic and cultural hegemony, the reach of asymmetric power relations can permeate many aspects of community organizing, including how historical traumas are interpreted, how cultural identity is experienced, and how resilience is understood. A multi-voiced approach to these concepts is perhaps best considered in light of Foxen's (2010) elements of individual and collective resilience: “identity, continuity, and purpose as defined within the context of particular communities and value systems” (p. 83). This study explores whether and how these aspects of resilience are experienced and articulated by members of a popular education collective located in the Rabinal region of Guatemala's Baja Verapaz department.

Research setting: The New Hope Rio Negro Foundation

The New Hope Rio Negro Foundation's objectives (Fundación Nueva Esperanza or Spanish acronym FNE) include rural community development, increased participation of Indigenous Achi youth in society, revitalizing Achi culture, and teaching historical memory, particularly of the massacres that occurred in nearby Rio Negro. The village of Rio Negro first drew accusations of connections with guerilla interests in the late 1970s when many community members opposed the construction of the Pueblo-Chixoy Hydroelectric Project, and impending relocation from their ancestral lands (Colajacomo, 1999; Lopez de Gamiz, 2009; Osorio, 2003). In 1982, state forces attacked Rio Negro and nine nearby communities in order to complete the project, torturing and killing over 400 men, women, children, and elderly people in a period of six months (Lopez de Gamiz, 2009; Rothenberg, 2012). Throughout the Rabinal region, military and paramilitary groups killed at least 4,411 people, targeting civilians and burning property, tools, and domestic animals (Lopez de Gamiz, 2009; Rothenberg, 2012). The Chixoy dam was flooded in January 1983 (Lopez de Gamiz, 2009). One survivor, Jesus Tecu Osorio, who was a child at the time of the massacres, later went on to lead the establishment of the New Hope Rio Negro Foundation in 2003.

In addition to its mandate to teach local history and revitalize Achi culture and language, the New Hope Foundation encourages learners to create more equitable and sustainable approaches to peace and development in the present (Einbinder, 2010;  New Hope Rio Negro Foundation, n.d.; Osorio, 2003). At the time of research, the Foundation worked in collaboration with the local chapter of Guatemala's community psychosocial action team (Equipo Comunitario de Accion Psicosocial or Spanish acronym ECAP). These and several other organizations work together to change patterns of historical marginalization of Indigenous peoples in Guatemala through community-based education and action. The school's teaching methods are inspired by participatory education philosophies from throughout the region. Their approach is founded on a local research initiative entitled the Methodological Recreation of Intercultural Bilingual Education project (Spanish Acronym REM-EBI) (New Hope Rio Negro Foundation, n.d.).

The Foundation's curriculum manual grounds its praxis in REM-EBI and in principles of Maya cosmovision, which it describes as valuing the collective good and honoring the interrelatedness of people, nature, and the universe (New Hope Rio Negro Foundation, 2006; see also Chaveste & Molina, 2013; Lopez de Gamiz, 2009). The REM-EBI philosophy emphasizes the complex, changing nature of Achi culture and of cultures in general, as well as the importance of interchange between different ways of knowing:

Interculturalism requires a different sort of relationship between the different cultures that are coexisting … pluri- and multiculturalism acknowledge the existence of different cultures in the same space, in other words, their coexistence, but they ignore the relations that exist or could exist between them. As such, we are looking to establish fluid, equal, and just relationships with and between the different cultures present in our country and throughout our continent, knowing that it will be enriching for everyone. (New Hope Rio Negro Foundation, n.d.)

Methodology

The reflections discussed in this article were part of qualitative field research with staff and students at the New Hope Foundation's Intercultural Education Institute. The Institute is located on the outskirts of Rabinal, whose population is predominantly Maya Achi Indigenous. Participants included six adult staff members between the ages of 20 and 60, and 13 youth between the ages of 12 and 18. Half of the adult participants were male and half were female, and of the youth participants, five were male and eight were female. All participants self-identified as Maya Achi. The combined school and staff population was approximately 100, and sampling was achieved by inviting volunteers to participate. In order to capture as wide a sample of the school staff and student body possible, and to maintain an equitable and inclusive process, anyone who wanted to participate was able to. Ethical approval was initially gained from the Dalhousie University Research Ethics Board, and consultations were held with the board and staff of the organization regarding local protocols. The research objectives and invitations to participate were presented at a parent community meeting and through classroom visits. Oral consent was obtained at the beginning of each interview, as well as parental consent for student participants.

Though time and resources did not permit a fully participatory research methodology, in the spirit of the Foundation's mandate the research sought to involve staff and students in aspects of the design and interpretation wherever possible. Both group and one-on-one discussions were held regarding research objectives and integrated into research and interview questions. Focus groups were also held with students following the interviews to discuss emerging data. Semi-structured interviews were held in Spanish and centered on themes related to peace, culture, memory, identity, education, and development, in order to learn how participants navigate multidimensional perspectives of these in their interpretations of resilience and social change. Data were transcribed by the author and analyzed using a combination of thematic (Braun & Clarke, 2006), grounded theory, and case study approaches (Yegidis et al., 2012).

Case studies allow for observation and description of the actions, attitudes, and perceptions of an organization (Yegidis et al., 2012). Engagement with school events, staff meetings, and cultural activities, as well as interview questions regarding school objectives, were an initial springboard for learning about the living mandates of the New Hope Foundation and participant interactions with these mandates. The combination with thematic and grounded theory was considered an appropriate lens by which “to learn what meanings people give to certain events in their lives” (Yegidis et al., 2012, p. 180). These were approached first with a process of open coding, in which participant ideas and reflections were labelled. The most prevalent codes were then clustered into common categories. These categories were grouped into major themes and then grouped further into subthemes. A narrative “story line” describing observations of the data was written in tandem with the themes. Relevant passages were translated by the author, and pseudonyms are used throughout the analysis in order to protect confidentiality. For purposes of scope and space, the three themes discussed below were considered the most salient in connection to community resilience. These themes were “Understanding violence of the past and present,” “Reframing stigma, re-claiming identity,” and “Community development.”

As a non-Indigenous, Canadian woman, the author sought to devise a methodology that honours the culturally embedded processes entailed in the construction and reconstruction of knowledge (see Apentiik and Parpart, 2006; Murray et al., 2003). For both participant and researcher, the design, interpretation, representation, and expression of experience are fraught with ambiguity: “Privileging experience as foundational to knowledge, or as a transparent window of the ‘real’, denies its situatedness in discourses that constitute subjectivities in the first place, and that enable articulation of experience from discursively constructed subject positions …” (Luke, quoted in Choules, 2007, p. 170). In order to integrate subjectivities but also seek to counter potential biases, the author drew from Ollman's (2001) process of abstraction, in which the separation of data into component “parts” for study necessitates constant revisiting and re-abstraction in order to build understanding of the relationships between meanings, events, and experiences. This approach is part of an overall critical realist framework, which acknowledges the subjective experience of participants as agents of change in their environment, but also recognizes the significant, though not deterministic, influence of material and social conditions in shaping subjective realities (Bhaskar, 2008; Roberts, 2014). Through this lens, the study engages with staff and student articulations on the role of memory and identity in relation to community resilience, and how these interact with the structural factors of distress outlined above.

Memory, identity, and transformation: Toward multidimensional narratives of resilience

In its manual outlining a community focus for mental health, Guatemala's Community Psychosocial Action Team (ECAP) identifies violence, aggression, family or inter-group conflict, and drug and alcohol abuse as indicators of distress (Duque, 2006). This framework, while acknowledging the importance of supporting individual needs and symptoms, seeks to prioritize a collective, psychosocial approach to mental health, emphasizing the key role of revitalizing culturally relevant advocacy for more just and equitable living conditions (Duque, 2006; Martín-Baró, 2006; Perez Sales & Liria, 2015). Rebuilding the social fabric through liberation psychology's focus on strengthening social support networks, popular education, and reconstruction of historical memory have become cornerstones of psychosocial action in the social movement in Guatemala and regionally (Martín-Baró, 2006; Perez Sales & Liria, 2015). They are consistent with a broader shift in mental health and social science research to conceptualize approaches to distress that are “transformative rather than ameliorative,” particularly in humanitarian settings (McMillan & Burton, 2009, p. 200).

This research sought to engage with members of an organization sharing these transformational objectives in order to understand how they might manifest in their understandings of resilience and change. The study builds upon previous work establishing the key role of memory in postwar reconstruction and justice (Dill, 2005; Martín-Baró, 2006; Roberts & Thanos, 2003) as well as the importance of cultural identity for enhancement of community support networks and the social fabric for psychosocial rehabilitation and collective resilience in the region (Duque, 2006; Martín-Baró, 2006; Monterroso, 2018). The New Hope Foundation, though primarily focused on popular education, works in collaboration with ECAP and embodies the conviction that a change in conditions for Achi youth must form part of a larger movement toward postwar social justice and healing. Reflections of students and staff at the New Hope Foundation identify signals of distress at the community level, including high levels of insecurity and violence, discrimination, and stigma. Many also share the vision of improved living conditions and transforming inequalities as important for changing these situations in their communities. Though participant reflections did not contend with specific psychosocial outcomes, their emphasis on collective markers of distress and structural factors of change is thematically resonant with the work of regional social movements toward postwar healing, and could position youth organizations such as the New Hope Foundation as a base for building community resilience in contexts of intergenerational trauma.

Participants often made reference to “overcoming” in order to change patterns of violence by promoting access to economic resources and education, historical memory and cultural identity, and alternative models of development. The prominent, albeit multifaceted, role of identity and memory in participants’ perception of education and development as a means “to overcome” structural inequalities share characteristics with Foxen's (2010) broader concept of resilience as the “ability to maintain a sense of self and identity, continuity and purpose, of control over life and relationships, and of cultural cohesion, social justice, and spiritual meaning” (p. 72). Perspectives differ among institute students and staff when it comes to what overcoming in this way can mean, just as no community or movement will have a uniform vision for what resistance against oppression entails (see Freire, 1972; Jara, 2010). Some participants placed more emphasis on youth receiving a good education and having access to economic opportunities, others placed value on learning about Maya Achi history and culture, while still others acknowledged the potential tensions between excelling in the dominant culture and maintaining Achi culture. These differing perspectives speak to the ways in which grassroots movements for change may simultaneously reinforce, coopt, and subvert discourses of power amid ongoing hegemonic patterns of conquest, conversion, and mass consumer culture (see Arias, 2006; Asgharzadeh, 2007; Green, 2008).

The paradoxical task of social change as resilience, of both navigating and subverting oppressive social and economic structures, is perhaps most evident in the institute's work to reconstruct historical memory. Several participants acknowledged the importance of understanding past repression, violence, trauma, and community resistance as instructive for change in the present. However, in this and countless other processes of commemoration and reconciliation around the globe, the question of what concepts and whose definitions of trauma and violence substantiate historical acts of injustice can be contentious and politicized (Denham, 2008; Fassin, 2008; Foxen, 2000). As Foxen (2000, p. 359) reminds us, “memory is never a fixed, coherent, static story of the past, but is rooted in the present, and often shifting, political and social spaces, as well as visions of the future.” While a shared narrative of past events and present vision for change can arguably privilege certain perspectives over others, the Foundation's teachings on the genocide aim to challenge dominant versions of history which tend to blame, essentialize, or negatively portray disenfranchised communities in Guatemala and throughout the region (Asgharzadeh, 2007; Martín-Baró, 2006; New Hope Rio Negro Foundation, n.d.; Poppema, 2009).

Giving voice to histories typically silenced or left untold could allow upcoming generations to draw more positive identity conclusions and promote resilience in the face of adverse events (Martín-Baró, 2006; Perez Sales & Liria, 2015). Such a process might, as outlined in the Foundation's objectives and suggested by participants’ pride in their language and customs, support youth to transcend and transform racial and cultural dichotomies:

[W]e, as Achi people, must have already established our own self- respect, firmly grasped our own knowledge, and begun to revalue Achi culture. This is especially important for our youth who will make up our future generations. Only in this way could we arrive at intercultural relationships in which everyone involved respects not only their own cultures, but, based on this idea of self-respect, one is then able to respect and value other cultures as well. (New Hope Rio Negro Foundation, n.d.)

These inherent contradictions can present dilemmas for collective reconstruction efforts such as those of FNE, but need not paralyze them. Foxen (2000) credits the ability of Indigenous communities in Guatemala to navigate multidimensional, paradoxical meanings amid asymmetrical power relations to “a culturally embedded tendency to draw on and combine internal and external (or traditional and modern) discourses, world-views and practices for the sake of survival” (p. 362). Similarly, Vanthuyne (2009) highlights the historical and contemporary role of “flexible identities” in Maya advocacy (p. 206). Reclaiming traditional identities while also employing language and skills from the dominant society are key sources of agency in national discourse and educational spaces:

(Indigenous) traditions are no longer to be seen as symptomatic of a fundamental inferiority; rather, they should be read as proof of existence of an authentic alterity, one that legitimates their claims to the rights of a People: language rights, spiritual rights, socioeconomic rights, and self-determination rights. (Vanthuyne, 2009, pp. 207–208)

For community organizations asserting these rights, what, then, constitutes an “authentic alterity?” Which aspects of alterity are resisted, co-opted, or re-claimed, and who decides? And can these changes truly alleviate experiences of collective distress identified locally and regionally as sequels of armed conflict? On these themes, FNE member reflections do not express a singular vision of cultural identity nor of its potential as a starting point for changes in conditions underlying distress. Rather, they suggest ongoing, multidimensional dialogue with implicated sites of power and agency. State schooling and dominant discourses are identified both as tools of assimilation and as vehicles for overcoming discrimination. Historical memory is articulated in stories of repression and intergenerational trauma, but also in narratives of cultural survival and of resistance. Finally, development and participation in the economy are acknowledged as important for overcoming marginalization and reducing societal violence, but consumerist ideals, the hallmark of neoliberal policies, are also questioned.

New Hope Foundation members reveal a rich dialectical possibility within the organization's mandate for reconstruction of historical narratives in the pursuit of social, economic, and cultural change, and in turn for the broader role of popular education in promoting collective resilience. Their diverse applications of themes such as memory, identity, and development to peace and social change indicate the presence of multiple narratives of oppression and resistance: “The accumulation of both traumatic and resiliency processes, which takes form through history and generations, informs the subjective and collective memories, as well as the future hopes and aspirations that underlie people's psychosocial well-being” (Foxen, 2010, p. 83). Further study on the ways in which the REM-EBI methodology formally engages with multiple perspectives within the community, and how and whether its requisite flexibility of thinking is implicitly or explicitly promoted, could shed light on how social movements might channel ambiguity and resolve tensions in the tenuous work of collective meaning-making for social change. Throughout these processes, dialogues intercepting structural violence must integrate contradictory interpretations of memory, distress, and resistance in order to contend with the patterns of division, dispossession, and inequality upon which current systems are founded.

Conclusion

Popular education spaces such as the New Hope Foundation, in collaboration with broader psychosocial efforts toward postwar healing, can provide communities with a forum to draw upon memory and identity in order to change the cycle of violence and its effects. However, the related task of building collective narratives, particularly narratives that engage with sites of power, inevitably presents challenges in polarized communities still affected by contemporary violence and inequality. Reflecting on the postwar context in the Maya Quiche highlands, Foxen (2010) poses the question, “How can psychosocial interventions help to repair social fabrics and heal minds and bodies that have been assaulted not only by the bloodshed and massacres of the war, but by a present filled with economic and social instability?” (p. 81). Understanding the key role of community organizing and trust, the desire of many civil society groups in Rabinal and throughout the region is to rebuild community on social, cultural, and political fronts via collaboration between multiple services and supports (Einbinder, 2010; Lopez de Gamiz, 2009; Martín-Baró, 2006; Perez Sales & Liria, 2015). Overall, in light of increased engagement with social determinants of mental health in the field, better understanding is needed regarding the challenges and successes of grassroots organizations and communities engaging directly with these factors.

Though the construction of collective narrative and memory is not invulnerable to politicization and power, efforts to articulate previously denied social and historical memories can act as a starting point for communities to undergo the key therapeutic process of attributing meaning and explanations to complex, distressing, and traumatic events, particularly in contexts of mass violence (Amaya, 2013; Corporacion Avre y Corporacion Vinculos, 2011; Perez Sales & Liria, 2015). Memory work can also help to define and effect meaningful individual and collective change by identifying strengths and challenges (Perez Sales & Liria, 2015). Future research could further explore the ways in which collective processes might prompt action toward individual and collective factors of resilience, such as the focus of the New Hope foundation on renewal of Maya Achi language, culture, and history, and local sustainable development, which are part of a broader civil society movement to re-weave the social support networks and Indigenous cultural values frayed by state violence (Lopez de Gamiz, 2009; Roberts & Thanos, 2003). Approaches such as the REM-EBI one of embracing interculturality and a non-dichotomous approach to identity can provide one example of a framework for equitable, critical dialogue about what community healing and resilience might consist of, how this is decided, and what rights and supports are valued in order for communities in contexts of violence and displacement “to overcome.”