War by Other Means: Aftermath in Post-Genocide Guatemala

by Carlota McAllister (Editor), Diane M. Nelson (Editor)

Between 1960 and 1996, Guatemala's civil war claimed 250,000 lives and displaced one million people. Since the peace accords, Guatemala has struggled to address the legacy of war, genocidal violence against the Maya, and the dismantling of alternative projects for the future. War by Other Means brings together new essays by leading scholars of Guatemala from a range of geographical backgrounds and disciplinary perspectives.Contributors consider a wide range of issues confronting present-day Guatemala: returning refugees, land reform, gang violence, neoliberal economic restructuring, indigenous and women's rights, complex race relations, the politics of memory, and the challenges of sustaining hope. From a sweeping account of Guatemalan elites' centuries-long use of violence to suppress dissent to studies of intimate experiences of complicity and contestation in richly drawn localities, War by Other Means provides a nuanced reckoning of the injustices that made genocide possible and the ongoing attempts to overcome them.

Contributors. Santiago Bastos, Jennifer Burrell, Manuela Camus, Matilde González-Izás, Jorge Ramón González Ponciano, Greg Grandin, Paul Kobrak, Deborah T. Levenson, Carlota McAllister, Diane M. Nelson, Elizabeth Oglesby, Luis Solano, Irmalicia Velásquez Nimatuj, Paula Worby

Genres: History

408 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

All of these contributors are luminaries in the field of contemporary Guatemala studies, and I've read work by many of them previously. Many of the essays addressed specific, interesting side aspects of the civil war and the peace process, particularly the civil patrols. The essays were often very personal, dealing with the author's experience, and very ethnographic, full of stories and Guatemalan voices. The peace process period is a very fuzzy time frame to analyze, because it's so intimately connected to the civil war, which in turn is inherently part of the entire arc of Guatemalan history. I felt that the essay format failed to fully address and analyze the complexities and contradictions that are the peace process aftermath. However, I can see this book being very valuable in a survey Latin American class.