Fear as a Way of Life

by Linda Green

Between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s, the people of Guatemala were subjected to a state-sponsored campaign of political violence and repression designed to not only defeat a left-wing, revolutionary insurgency but also destroy Mayan communities and culture. The Mayan Indians in the western highlands were labeled by the government as revolutionary sympathizers, and many Mayan women lost husbands, sons, and other family members who were brutally murdered or who simply "disappeared."

Based on years of field research conducted in the rural highlands, "Fear as a Way of Life" traces the intricate links between the recent political violence and repression and the long-term systemic violence connected with class inequalities and gender and ethnic oppression--the violence of everyday life.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published July 5, 1999

About the author

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Reviews

[Alex Knipp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Green's work is fundamental to understanding the embodiment of violence. Our bodies are living testaments to our experiences and environments. Favorite quotes below:
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- Illness represents a shift not only in one's experiences but also in one's experiences of oneself For many widows this has meant coming to terms with a new self, a self constructed through experiences of trauma and violence.

- In this way the body is an oppositional space, a space of resistance. The resistance to which I refer is both passive and active. It is passive in that pain is individually felt, yet illness has also generated agency among the same women when animated in a group. The body bears witness to the violence perpetrated against not only individual women but the Mayan people, as their memories are sedimented into their bodies. As such, sensation and emotion are simultaneously experienced and Western notions of mind-body, subject-object dualisms break down.

- Embodiment in this sense is neither a metaphor for social relations nor a text to be read but the actual contested terrain where human beings struggle.

[Neal Hampton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dramatic and in-depth look at the Mayan widows of the Scorched Earth campaign of the early 1980s. Inspired somewhat by Nancy Scheper-Hughes "Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil." An anthropological account with a conscience, as it should be.

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

not only a stunning ethnography, but an amazing metamorphosis of a woman (green), excellent!