Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala

by Kirsten Weld

In Paper Cadavers , an inside account of the astonishing discovery and rescue of Guatemala's secret police archives, Kirsten Weld probes the politics of memory, the wages of the Cold War, and the stakes of historical knowledge production. After Guatemala's bloody thirty-six years of civil war (1960–1996), silence and impunity reigned. That is, until 2005, when human rights investigators stumbled on the archives of the country's National Police, which, at 75 million pages, proved to be the largest trove of secret state records ever found in Latin America. The unearthing of the archives renewed fierce debates about history, memory, and justice. In Paper Cadavers , Weld explores Guatemala's struggles to manage this avalanche of evidence of past war crimes, providing a firsthand look at how postwar justice activists worked to reconfigure terror archives into implements of social change. Tracing the history of the police files as they were transformed from weapons of counterinsurgency into tools for post-conflict reckoning, Weld sheds light on the country's fraught transition from war to an uneasy peace, reflecting on how societies forget and remember political violence.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Anthropology, Latin American History, Grad School, Research, Justice

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Kirsten Weld is Assistant Professor of History at Harvard University, specializing in 20th-century Mexico, Central America, and the Southern Cone. Hailing from Canada, she holds a PhD from Yale University. Her research interests include revolutionary and counterrevolutionary movements, the Cold War, dictatorships and transitional justice, memory, indigenous history, and the politics of history, history-writing, and archival access in society writ large. In addition to her academic work, she periodically serves as an expert witness on behalf of Central American immigrants facing deportation.

Reviews

[Mlhoganjr · Rating 4 out of 5]

The C.I.A. taught the Guatemalan police and military the power of well-documented surveillance in the early days of the civil war. In turn, those forces unleashed a torrent of genocide, murder, and torture that even made the U.S. intermittently recoil in horror and reassess its friendships with the military-led governments. Meticulous records of their work were maintained for decades. Finally, in a twist of fate and justice that seems like something out of a movie, those same surveillance tactics have proven to be some of the perpetrators’ undoing in the 21st century.

Kirsten Weld’s account of the fragile, tedious, and dangerous work reconstituting Guatemala’s national police archives is a story that, at first glance, would seem to appeal to a minute audience. However the stories within will interest anyone who seeks tangible details on Cold War barbarism in South America, the devastating permanent shockwaves of U.S. foreign policy in the 20th century, or the deadly vacuum left when democracy fails and a corporate-backed authoritarian government fills that void.

The circumstances surrounding the treasure trove that are the national police archives are fascinating by themselves. But the process of organizing, preserving, rescuing, and defending something so delicate (bundles of paper left to the elements sometimes literally dissolving in the hands of those who touched them) all the while the project seemed to be teetering on the brink of catastrophes from Molotov cocktail attacks to political pressure to making payroll for the archivists involved, creates for an awesome and suspenseful tale.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this at the end of my time doing research in the archives of the Chilean human rights defense (Vicaría) and thus the discussion of archival science and politics rang relevant. I mostly found myself comparing the Chilean and Guatemalan archival situations, and the corresponding political parallels. And that is the key of what made Paper Cadavers interesting even for someone not working in the archives: that it's really about the arc of Guatemalan history as mapped in a paper trail and the fight over who has access to papers. The book was written with enough of a personal, anecdotal touch that it didn't feel dry and academic and I quite enjoyed it.

[Ashtyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

hysterically this marks my 21 of 21 books for my 2023 reading challenge. i say hysterically bc i put in all my syllabi into my planner today and now know that number will nearly double by december. should be an interesting couple months folks 🫡 anyway this book was brilliant, very good analysis of archival science and very readable for those not familiar with Guatemalan or Central American history like myself

[Jorge · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 2005, following an explosion in the military base of Mariscal Zavala (Guatemala), a team of experts, among those, historian Edeliberto Cifuentes, was sent to investigate the motives of the blast, accidentally ‘discovering’ the Guatemalan National Police’s archives. The papers, for a long period believed to be the product of popular imagination, laid in hundreds of piles inside one of the buildings. The discovery of this archive initiated an international campaign to fund the task of organizing, transcribing and cataloguing the documents, and soon a team of volunteers was put together. Kirsten Weld analyzes in this monograph how Guatemalan society dealt with such discovery and the social and political responses toward the process of recovering and processing such critical information that threw light on the involvement of the country’s National Police with state terror campaigns and repression during the long Guatemalan Civil War.

Paper Cadavers traces the story of this discovery and the work of dozens of volunteers who took part in the project. Paying special attention to archival work and information processing and data collection, Weld shows how the archive was historicized so the volunteers could better understand their labor as amateur archivists. They received training in archival work, and followed an objective methodology for data collection to protect the prestige of the initiative. For Weld, this process of historicization reflects the duality of the archive and its files. On the one hand, acting as a key instrument for the Guatemalan National Police to survey, control and repress political opposition. On the other hand, its later transformation into a source of popular memory for the condemnation of human rights abuses and war crimes against the civilian population. Weld develops the concept of ‘archival thinking’ as a methodology to guide her research on this archive. First, applied as a historical analysis, to understand and locate these documents within a historical framework; and second, as a political analysis, to conceive the archive as an institution exploited for political means. Following such premises, Weld therefore explains why ‘‘we must place archives–with their histories, their contingencies, their silences and gaps, and their politics– at the heart of our research questions’’ (p.13).

The ‘historical myopia’ that, Weld argues, Guatemalan society has toward its past is evidenced in the mistreatment that historical institutions like archives suffer in the country. As a result, in the book we can see mounting tensions regarding the preservation of popular memory and the available channels to manage it, giving way to, what she terms, are ‘archival wars’. These wars must be understood, according to Weld, as the ongoing battles that civil society fights against the state for the access of documentation that can help them better understand their past. The state and its sub-branches, as monopolizing institutions of information and power, not only contest these demands, but also prevent them from materializing, as they can threaten the established order and social peace. Examples not only include the conversations regarding the public access of these newly discovered files, but also other incidents that Weld narrates, such as the fifty-four-page military report that documented the killings of 183 people by the army. Published by human rights activists in 1999 and commonly known as El Diario Militar, this incident resulted in growing demands to access government files and the antagonization of the military, who in their case, rejected their involvement and labelled the report as false.

In conclusion, Paper Cadavers provides an analysis of the National Police archives by stressing their double function as institutions of power; on the one hand as instruments of surveillance, control and repression, on the other hand as tools for the reconstruction of broken societies, providing channels to seek reparations and justice for the victims of state repression and terror. For that reason, archival work and the preservation of documentation are essential for the reconstruction of postconflict societies, and looking at examples like the National Police Archive in Guatemala we can see, Weld argues, ‘‘how a state deals with its past bureaucratic production, and how citizens respond in turn, reveals much about the present and perhaps the future contours of that society’’ (p.238).

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and engaging, if not somewhat dense, monograph detailing the use of the archives in Guatemala, and how their shifting use has led to different outcomes.

[Mary Bronson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was interesting. I had to read this for my Public History class, but I actually thought it was a well written book. I had never knew about the Civil War in Guatemala until now. This book had so much information about what happened and after the secret police's archives were re discovered and how archives can bring on discussions on history, memory and the justice system.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great introduction into memory, how memory is owned / controlled in deliberate and consequential ways, and how archives contribute to collective histories and memories. I was eager to read it because of my interest in contemporary Guatemala, but this book stretched my brain and gave me a lot to reflect on beyond that specific case.

[Jeff Hirschy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

This was a very interesting book. I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to know about this new world of archives.

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant study into how archives are central to state violence. Important read for folks doing surveillance, privacy, and anti-state terror work.

[Domingo X · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a remarkable dive into the importance of record-keeping and archival processes, but one that I was not expecting to get into and would warn any reader to prepare themselves for a lot of dense research and high-minded decisions on how to preserve the past. Thus this book became more of a slog to get through than one that gripped me.

However, it is a important book about the atrocities and surveillance that the secret police and military committed in Guatemala during its 36-year civil war, which hit their peak in 1982-1983 under military dictator Efrain Rios Montt and his Victoria 82 plan. This book revolves around the post-war period when a vast trove of secret documents were found concerning the civil war and dictatorship. Ultimately this led to a large national fallout, pitting those who are seeking the truth regarding these dead and lost relatives, and those wishing to "move on" for various reasons.

[Talia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was for my history class, so it was very heavy content wise and i felt lost a lot of the time tbh. I also was told after I finished reading it that we would have been fine just reading the very beginning and end, but I had already read the whole thing lol. Anyways, not my kind of book at all, but it was interesting I guess

[Kaveri Sarkar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book felt like a great balance between a anthropological and historical account! Was insightful about the politics of archives and tools of state repression though it became painfully repetitive by the end!

[Laxy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The history I found tedious (as I usually do) but the stories
of the workers were inspiring.

[Giovanni Gregory · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excruciating and repetitive and times, but happy I am to have read it.

[Maxwell O'Toole · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 Once again, a previous read. Super interesting though it was very dense and, if you aren't interested in archival work, could be a little tedious.

[Bern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Catch me crying over my class readings

[Joann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have GOT to reread this book and keep it on my bookshelf somewhere. Simply the best thing I have read ever. No Notes.