Una temporada de machetes

Rwanda #2

by Jean Hatzfeld, María Teresa Gallego Urrutia (Translator)

En cien días, desde abril a julio de 1994, 800.000 tutsis fueron asesinados a manos de sus vecinos hutus. El machete usado en la vida agrícola de la región fue la principal arma ejecutora. El periodista Jean Hatzfeld consiguió autorización para entrar en la cárcel de Rilima, el epicentro del genocidio tutsi, y entrevistó, en largas horas de conversación, a una decena de los verdugos de aquella masacre. Los entrevistados en este libro muestran su deseo de contar la organización y la prolijidad de la masacre: durante tres meses, cada uno de ellos se dedicó a pasar por su machete a decenas y decenas de personas que hasta entonces habían sido sus vecinos. Tan cerca del mal absoluto como quizás nadie lo había estado desde Primo Levi, lo que vuelve imprescindible este libro es que Hatzfeld consigue hablar con los asesinos, con los mismos ejecutores del genocidio.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Africa, Rwanda, War, Politics, Psychology

296 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Jean Hatzfeld is a journalist. He worked for many years as a war correspondent for Libération, a French newspaper, before leaving to focus on reporting the Rwandan genocide.

Reviews

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

IL MALE NON È MAI BANALE


La Murambi Technical School era in costruzione nel 1994, e lo era anche quando ci sono stato io dieci anni dopo, ma i lavori erano per trasformarla nel Murambi Genocide Memorial Centre. Le foto sono state fatte lì.

Dopo un paio di lavori dedicati ai sopravvissuti, les rescapés, Hatzfeld cambia prospettiva e si dedica a intervistare i carnefici, a dare la parola ai genocidari.
Entrare nel cuore nero di un assassino, di un boia, parrebbe più arduo che comprendere le ragioni delle vittime, per cui l'empatia è spontanea, e il processo di immedesimazione automatico. Come percorso di scoperta è più rischioso e complicato, e, per questo, forse, più interessante.

Hatzfeld incontra in carcere un gruppo di amici colpevoli di multipli omicidi, quasi tutti all’arma bianca (machete).
Fuggiti in Congo per evitare l’arrivo dell’FPR, dopo due anni di campo profughi, sono tornati in Rwanda dove li aspetta e accoglie la prigione.


Machete.

Nel periodo post genocidio le condizioni delle carceri rwandesi erano di massimo sovraffollamento e pessima igiene: probabilmente non la situazione migliore per trovare raccoglimento, ri-elaborazione, e possibilmente, pentimento.

Anche per questo i primi incontri sono all’insegna della reciproca diffidenza.
Il giornalista francese si porta dietro un interprete locale, che ha perso la sua famiglia per mano degli intervistati, o dei loro sodali: una situazione esplosiva.
Questo però permette di ottenere testimonianze sorprendenti, non filtrate, non costruite ad arte per il giudice.



Il tentativo, ovviamente, è quello di cercare di capire come sia potuto succedere quello che è successo, e chi sono gli assassini, che ragioni li hanno spinti a uccidere.

Serve uno stomaco allenato per leggere certi passaggi, per esempio, la descrizione delle giornate di ‘lavoro’ alle barriere, o le battute di caccia in palude (dove le prede erano umane).
A un certo punto l’abitudine a uccidere si trasforma quasi in bisogno di uccidere: in assenza di prede (vittime), si minacciavano tra cacciatori (assassini). Oppure, uccidere diventa dipendenza come quella all’alcol (bere e ammazzare furono strettamente collegati).
Chiaro che l’essere in gruppo facilitava e giustificava la mattanza, portava apparente autoassoluzione (se lo fanno tutti, perché non io?).



Le crude testimonianze degli assassini sono intervallate da riflessioni dell’autore, oltre che sul genocidio rwandese, sui mali storici del continente nero, sulla Shoah e sugli altri genocidi moderni.

Per non lasciare tutto nel campo dell’inimmaginabile, del come è potuto succedere, non si dimentichi che accanto, e, soprattutto, precedente alla follia di massa che ha trasformato vicini parenti amici, centinaia di migliaia di persone normali in boia massacratori assassini, ci fu una capillare dettagliata pianificazione e preparazione del genocidio: liste di nomi, porte di casa segnate, obiettivi individuati, acquisto massiccio di armi.
Pianificazione che fu denunciata in anticipo da Dallaire, il generale canadese a capo della forza di pace ONU, ma la sua richiesta di mezzi uomini e possibilità d’intervento rimase inascoltata e disattesa.



Infatti, la scintilla che fece scoppiare il tutto fu l’attentato all’aereo presidenziale dove rimase ucciso l’allora presidente Juvénal Habyarimana: allora ne fu accusato l’FPR, quindi i tutsi – col tempo si è scoperto che non furono loro a lanciare il razzo, ma la stessa guardia presidenziale alla ricerca di un pretesto per scatenare la pulizia etnica.

Jean Hatzfeld è nato in Madagascar, ha vissuto in prima persona, come corrispondente giornalistico, tutte le maggiori guerre della storia contemporanea: oltre allo scontro fra hutu e tutsi, l’infinito conflitto fra israeliani e palestinesi, il conseguente infinito conflitto in Libano, le invasioni dell’Iraq e la dissoluzione della Jugoslavia.

[Mariel · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This gentleman I killed at the marketplace, I can tell you the exact memory of it because he was the first. For others, it's murky- I cannot keep track anymore in my memory. I considered them unimportant; at the time of those murders I didn't even notice the tiny thing that would change me into a killer."

Susan Sontag wrote the preface for Jean Hatzfeld's book Machete Season. She says: To make the effort to understand what happened in Rwanda is a painful task that we have no right to shirk- it is part of being a moral adult. Everyone should read Hatzfeld's book. (If you've ever read one of Susan Sontag's introductions and then read the book with a "Well, this bowl of risotto didn't give ME an orgasm" reaction then you know how hard it is to hit those octaves after one of hers.)
I agree that it is an important issue. Because it is important, Hatzfeld may have been let off the hook on pretty important things.

He contradicts himself repeatedly in Machete Season. Sometimes on the same page (I'll get to that later). I could have dealt without the constant comparisons to the holocaust. I really could have dealt without the measuring of one tragedy against another. Hatzfeld is in love with the word "genocide" and wastes time downgrading the tragedies of war, such as the horrific slaughter of Sbrenicans, because the women weren't systematically wiped out to prevent future breeding. If you see people as a group, not as individuals, then genocide is worse. I think killing people is bad if killing people is bad. I am at a loss why he felt he had to take time out of his book to say that what happened in Rwanda was worse than what happened to others, with the sole exception of Jewish people in the holocaust. I've seen this kind of thing before. The sixty-three million killed by Chairman Mao was not as bad as the twelve million killed by Hitler because it wasn't against different people than his own. People are people, people! I would think it would be important to question why life isn't so precious that war is inevitable.

The first time I wore my "Are you fucking kidding me?!" face was on page ninteteen/twenty.
This late settlement of the region renders all discussion about either ethnic group's rights of priority and legitimacy simply hopeless. All these immigrants to the Bugesera arrived at almost the same time, traumatized by the ordeal of having to find new land to feed themselves. (This is an historically stupid statement. I don't think I need to say why.)
Hatzfeld doesn't bring up colonization until page 210 and then he refers to it as "over simplistic" if you did think it was an unmitigated factor. Maybe the Belgian author didn't want to mention that the idea of ethnic identity cards did not arrive spontaneously into the minds of either tribe, that it was their Belgian colonizers who put the (as Hatzfeld disturbingly to me refers to them again and again) "slender" and "beautiful" Tutsis over the Hutus. The setting up of one group over another group seems to be a common factor in the matter of people doing fucked up shit to each other. The slow dehumanization over a period of time so that people get used to it and won't see it as wrong. Hatzfeld was busy shoehorning the Rwandan murders to fit next to the sickness of the Nazi regime and bypasses Cambodia on the grounds that he is more familiar with the former. Revenge, as well as racism, played a large part in the Cambodian genocide. Corruption under "leaders" set up under the French, and a memory that doesn't let go of the most twisted resentment turned brutal. Like the Hutus, the Khmer Rouge didn't have a plan beyond extermination. Today's itinerary is blood. Tomorrow? Blood. Hutus didn't have to remember what it was like during the centuries the Tutsis reigned over them. They inherited the grudges. To dismiss colonization boggled my mind a little. I would also say that the shooting down of the plane with the Hutu president was a catalyst. But what about the hundreds of Tutsis that the killers interviewed admitted drowning in rivers? The murders of their neighbors that they were getting away with before the summer of 1994? The Nazis did build up to it. The conclusion that I came to is it wasn't a big deal to the killers because they thought they were going to get away with. That is what the gang of Rwandan killers tell Hatzfeld himself. They say this more than once and it is said by more than a few killers. They felt they were not going to be liable for their crimes with an authority of society. That was the missing ingredient in the pot. That is why so many went along with the Nazis, why men who had once lived aside Jews could kill them. These Rwandan men had been simple farmers. If you are going to write a book about the killers in an attempt to understand why they did what they did, why would you focus your attention on the victims (Hatzfeld has a prior work about them)? Setting up differences between the groups is wrong. I had a lot of "But what about?" moments that would appear later in the book. Hatzfeld talks a little about Christopher R. Browning's book Ordinary Men somewhere in the last fifty pages (if you haven't read it I highly recommend that you do so) about how simple Polish men could turn into killers and follow through with the executions of all of those people. If any group could be turned on and wiped out then is it also true that anyone could turn into a killer? The similarities was in the killers. If they knew what would have happened afterwards that would have been a deterrent if "It is wrong to kill other human beings" was not.

The key to the mystery arrives by chance when, without realizing it, I sometimes pass from the informal, singular "you" (tu) to the plural "you" (vous). Each time, as if by magic, the replies became precise, and I finally grasp the link between the cause and effect.

Interviewing the men inside the prison of Rilima was an inspired choice. Here Hatfeld knew what he was doing. The men in Browning's book were hard to reach through the threat of imprisonment. Bypassing the fear of judgement is another matter. (A feeling that I had throughout was for those other Rwandans suspected by the world for murder. Eyes on them regardless of their possible innocence. Some have been exonerated. Did they get a plaque of proof for this? Did the men who shot down the plane of the Hutu president and then fled to refugee camps in Uganda think about the outcome they were setting up a million people to endure? Does anyone in a power play ever consider the casualities?) Choosing the men from a group of friends was even more inspired. The group mentality for killing is also what allows them to feel protected. It wasn't just me! His idea was that their insulated world of judgement within their own group would keep them honest. An inmate who denied responsibility would have to point the finger at the others. He would not be allowed into the shadows under their shoulders. All they had left of their old lives was this group. I don't know how accurate Hatzfeld's observations of the powerplay within the group was, though. It is too easy to assume the role of leader onto Adalbert, or prejudices about Tutsis onto the crotchetchy old-timer who was also acknoweldged to have killed the least, despite his years of threats against the people. It was ridiculous when he would dub one member "more repentant" than another member and then a paragraph later decide that a different guy was more honest and forthright in his confessions than the others. The book is best when letting the men speak and allowing the reader to try and know them through these. The back and forth admissions that they either couldn't remember the first kill or that those black eyes were pools they could drown in if they sunk for even a moment (no one actually says this. I'm guilty of my own editoralizing). I appreciate that it must have been frustrating for Hatzfeld to rely on testimony that would one day be open and the next as closed off as if they had just met. I wasn't reading the book so that those guys could be sorry enough, though.

The worst part of the killings was when they had outside help from neighboring hills. These men would collect more of the loot, or force them to work harder. Sometimes the reports are contradictory. They were helpful for those men who weren't naturals with their machetes (those who were used to killing goats had an advantage). Some men preferred farming as the easier work. Others thought it was a better day to go out and kill before the afternoons off to drink banana beer in cabarets (I thoroughly enjoyed the glimpses of their old lives. Both slavishly backbreaking work and taking what pleasures they could out of football. It's simple if you don't think too hard about the women who had to put up with no rights and alcoholic husbands, anyway). It all depended on who was talking or when you asked who was talking. Sometimes they claimed that they were forbidden their afternoon naps. You could get killed yourself if you lagged off. I believe that it was kill or be killed. If they had collectively not wanted to exterminate their neighbors it could have been done. They were informed of the plan before it happened (local authorities and teachers were let in on the plan so that they could tell everyone else in secret meetings). I didn't get the sense from this particular group interviewed that it was a concern of theirs, the lives of the Tutsis. That they were thinking about their own lives? Yes. It does make me think about people who "go along" with evil regimes. It may well be that the female Hutus were not kill! kill! kill! as their husbands claim they are (Hatzfeld talks to them too, thank goodness. I sensed a terror of these killers). I was disturbed by reports, by the killers, that some wives were JEALOUS of the Tutsis women raped by the men. I'm hesitant to sweep any one under the rug because of cultural influences so I can't decide for myself if the reason they didn't help (at least not as a whole) Tutsis was from their place in society of leaving all decisions up to the man of the house. When the book begins it is told from Adalbert's mother. I felt for this woman who had twelves sons. The cocky son who assumed control of them all had been drinking the night before. She knew that he was not going to be working in the farms that day (which would mean no food for them) and would instead head off to the cabarets with his friends. Not knowing that the plan had been set in place it reads that they pick up their machetes and go out to kill as wordless mind reading. Maybe like underwater beasts who can talk in ways that we cannot understand. They did have their own language of violence, however premeditated it was. I don't know that it was inevitable one bit. That's what makes it all the sorrier for them all. This is about so much more than judgement. That's why I think Susan Sontag overrated Hatzfeld's book. Judgement and understanding aren't necessarily the same thing.

I feel that the value of Machete Season lies a lot in that he interviewed the men as a group. Through them, as a group, I got a sense of their own lives that they murdered when they first pick up their machetes and kill. They want it to go back to the way it was before they knew that this could have happened. I'm not surprised that the remorse isn't crying out for the lives that were lost (is haggling over the definition of what qualifies as a genocide doing that either? The Tutsis cow numbers are back to their pre-1994 numbers. If the same was said of the population they would still not be the same lives that were lost!). I can still see that there was more lost in this than flesh and blood. It cannot ever go back to what was. Not as a letting off the hook because they were caught up in what everyone else was doing. I recently reread David Grossman's wonderful The Yellow Wind about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict (I highly recommend this book too) and in that book he wrote about George Orwell's said about how you demean yourself if you are an occupier. I need to reread Orwell's elephant story about losing his will to that crowd of Burmese behind him. He is holding the gun and they are holding him with their expectations. You can't just go home after you went all that way and face this enormous beast with your gun. You can't go back to that life after you have taken it,e either. It would take something that is just your own to be able to go home without taking theirs. I am all for that you are enslaving yourself if you decide to be authoritarian over someone else. Hell no do I let them off the hook for anything they did (and if you are going to wonder why the hell this happened why would you ignore that it WAS born out of the Tutsis rule over the Hutus? Was nothing bad going to come out of that? Fuck "ethnic claim" over land. There is no law of the land that can't be washed away with blood. There is no way that this is over either).

I don't understand how they could do it. I believe the men that they were terrified of the other Hutu killers. I know that they were right when they say that they would not have been able to stop killing, that they would turn on each other. Some of those men are in Congo and raping hundreds of women. The UN pulled out of Rwanda with no haste. I thought this recent article by Rachel Vincent from Ottawa Citizen was illuminating. Arresting the perpetrators. What a novel idea. I really want to know why nothing was done when they were killing the Tutsis to begin with? When hundreds were rolled into rivers? Why were they there at all, then? Call me a cynic but playing around with millions in foriegn aid for their own jobs may have more to do with it.

Oh yeah, the contradictions. Hatzfeld would write that no Hutus stood against the killer Hutus. Later he had a chapter about Hutus who did just that (they were killed). It was kind of cheesey the way he would dub them "the just" every time. Guess he never saw that film Hotel Rwanda. That makes me think of some Italian film from around 2006 that I forget the name of. The ads bragged that this Italian diplomat saved more lives than were on Schindler's List. Um, I didn't know it was a contest. Or that German film Sophie Scholl because the Germans needed, for their peace of mind, to cling to any small sign that one of their own resisted the Nazis. Thinking that one could redeem a group isn't right, to my way of thinking. The question should be how come people don't stand up more often? Would they if they saw more people do it? Would more people be enraged that the Holy Land Five are in prison for sixty-five years for providing humanitarian aid to Palestinian women and and children if it weren't socially acceptable to hate Muslims and despise them all as terrorists? If the party line wasn't "If you have nothing to hide..." would they care that others are constrained against the bonds that don't (yet) affect them? A recent and disturbing incident from my own hometown: The police department asked the VICTIM of a crime to pay for the cost of the investigation because he was a drug user and his kidnapping and hostage taking was therefore his own fault. Yes! How long before all victims are blamed? (Something like when Obama said that teen who was killed by drones should have had a better father. A neat little way to dehumanize someone.) What would the Rwandan men do if their countrymen returned and started raping their own women? The setting up of "groups" over another group... It sounds simple to say but that is fucked up and answerable to a lot. It terrifies me. Does it terrify you? That's all I've got on why this shit happens. They may have had something inside of them that wishes it never happened. It wasn't enough to stop it from happening.

Fulgence: The suffering brought to light each person's natural kindness or wickedness. There were fierce people who urged us to cause pain. But they were the very few. Most appeared uneasy with the awful suffering. We always finished our jobs properly. Except with runaways who had made us sweat too much running in the swamps, of course. I did notice that those carrying guns never aimed at fugitives when they wanted to scatter them; they shot into the air to avoid sending them toward too swift a death."

There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it." - Roland Barthes
Dehumanization: Don't do it! Says that wise speaker (ha) Mariel. For that I appreciate that Jean Hatzfeld wrote this book. They are people too, as simple as it is for me to say it (it doesn't feel simple to say it. I have a lot of boiling frustration inside over people who don't even notice that black people are so much more likely to go to prison than white people. POOR people. My frustration is turning into rage a lot these days over justification of asshole behavior that does not need to be so). I feel for those Tutsis survivors who have to live on those hills with people who had tried to kill them. How did it feel to accept it as "the way it is" to make love to a husband who had been killing? To insist it was all them, not me if you had escaped prison. I feel for those future generations who are grown up now with this as their inherited memory. Memories get distorted. There's no way to tell what that will be. I think one of the most disturbing parts of the book were the accounts of the Rwandan men who taught their children how to kill. It is their culture for the children to learn tasks by shadowing their parents movements. Some kids practiced on corpses, others practiced on children. Amnesty would later release from prison anyone under fourteen who killed. I wonder what they are doing now. I wonder who is going to remember who did what. I wonder if they'll see each other as people and not go "you did that". The Hutus men bore grudges against Tutsis who were not the same Tutsis just as they were not the same Hutus who suffered under their rule. Will they be the same as they were then in 2012, in 2044?

[Guille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Como no se me ocurre otra forma mejor de empezar, aquí les traigo los primeros párrafos de mi comentario a «La vida al desnudo» , primer tomo de la trilogía:

A partir de la mañana del 7 de abril de 1994 y en cien días 800.000 tutsis fueron asesinados por sus vecinos hutus a machetazos. Jean Hatzfeld ha escrito una trilogía estremecedora acerca de este brutal genocidio ruandés que por muy inhumano que nos parezca, y esta es la gran moraleja de estos libros, ha sucedido en el pasado y volverá a suceder en un futuro en cualquier otro sitio y perpetrado por cualquiera de nosotros si se dan las circunstancias adecuadas.

La primera de estas obras, «La vida al desnudo», recoge los testimonios de los supervivientes; la segunda, la que ahora comento y quizás la más famosa de las tres, es el resultado de las entrevistas que el autor realizó a un grupo de hutus encarcelados por participar activamente en las matanzas; la tercera, que aún no he leído, es «La estrategia de los antílopes», donde se narra la convivencia entre tutsis y hutus años después de los sangrientos sucesos.

El libro trata de explicar, en base a las declaraciones de los verdugos, por qué se produjo el genocidio, cómo llegó a suceder; intenta esclarecer el misterio que supone que prácticamente toda la comunidad hutu se levantara como un solo hombre para empuñar el machete contra sus vecinos tutsis; el autor intenta dar respuesta a cuestiones como por qué no se limitaron a expulsarlos de sus tierra y arrebatarles sus bienes, por qué esa infinita crueldad en los asesinatos, cómo asumieron tal tarea con esa tranquilidad, cómo podían volver cada noche a su casa y dormir plácidamente en sus camas para levantarse a la mañana siguiente descansados y dispuestos a una nueva jornada sangrienta.

“… hay acciones por las que nos condecoran si vencemos y nos manda al cadalso si nos vencen”

El autor, cómo él mismo explica en el texto, tuvo enormes reticencias a escribir un libro como este en el que da voz a unos criminales. Tras la experiencia del doloroso silencio que siguió a la dictadura de Franco en mi país, estoy muy de acuerdo con Élie, uno de los verdugos: “si falta la parte de verdad de los que lo hicieron, las revelaciones acerca de esas matanzas andarán dado vueltas sin parar”. También expresa el autor su escepticismo previo a que contaran la verdad, cosa que, como descubrió alguna vez, no siempre hacían, sobre todo al principio (como intérprete tenía a una de las víctimas, vecino de los verdugos). Más tarde, a medida que iban adquiriendo confianza y en la certeza de que habiendo sido ya juzgados sus declaraciones no iban a perjudicarles, se fueron volviendo más comunicativos a la busca de… ¿qué?, ¿explicación, descarga, comprensión, expiación…? Hatzfeld se concentró en un grupo de amigos que actuaron juntos y juntos permanecían recluidos en la cárcel de Rilima, Ruanda. Ello ayudó a que se fueran abriendo con el beneplácito de los demás.

“Son agricultores, menos un funcionario y un maestro; no pertenecieron a formaciones interhamwe o paramilitares, con la excepción de tres. Dejando de lado a Élie, nunca llevaron uniforme militar o de policía. Ninguno se había peleado jamás con sus vecinos tutsis por cuestiones de tierra, cosechas, daños o historias de cama”

Aquellos que prefieran que el libro les vaya sorprendiendo en el transcurso de la lectura, cosa que estoy seguro de que hará, pueden dejar de leer aquí.

***********************************************

Para los que no lo leerán o prefieran saber a qué tipo de comentarios se van a enfrentar, aquí recojo unas pocas muestras (muy pocas en relación con lo muchísimo que he subrayado) de cómo algo que nos puede parecer inconcebible se puede vivir con normalidad.

Cada capítulo trata un tema distinto. Hay capítulos que abordan «La primera vez»,

“Para empezar, le partí la cabeza a una abuela, de un estacazo. Pero como estaba ya tirada en el suelo y la mar de agonizante, no sentí la muerte en la punta del brazo. Me fui a mi casa por la noche sin acordarme más de eso”

«La pulsión y la repulsión»,

“Cuando descubríamos tutsis en las ciénagas, ya no veíamos seres humanos. Quiero decir personas como nosotros, con ideas comunes y sentimientos parecidos”

“Cuánto más rajábamos, más inocente nos parecía rajar. Para unos pocos se volvía gustoso, por decirlo de alguna forma”

«Los castigos»,

“Al principio, era una obligación; luego, nos acostumbramos. Nos hicimos malos por naturaleza. Ya no necesitábamos que nos dieran ánimos o nos pusieran multas para matar”

«Los saqueos»,

“Esa era la norma: matar a la ida y saquear a la vuelta… A los que mataban mucho les llegaba menos el tiempo para saquear; pero, como todo el mundo les tenía miedo, lo compensaban por la fuerza. Nadie sacaba ventaja ni nadie se sentía robado…

Había rajadores que cogían chicas en las ciénagas; se aliviaban y entonces se les olvidaban los saqueos. Pensaban que ya saquearían más al día siguiente”

«Las mujeres»,

“Las mujeres eran igual de feroces con los niños y las mujeres tutsis a las que localizaban en casas abandonadas. Pero lo que más les importaba era pelearse por las telas y los pantalones. Iban pisando los talones a las correrías y desnudaban a los muertos. Cuando la víctima respiraba aún, la remataban…”

«Los sufrimientos»,

“Hubo algunos que maltrataron… cuando se limitaban a liquidar a un tutsi se sentían frustrados… Se notaban como estafados si el tutsi se moría sin decir nada. Y por eso ya no herían en las partes mortales, para disfrutar de los golpes y oír mejor los gritos”

«Y qué pasa con Dios»,

“En las ciénagas, los cristianos muy devotos se convirtieron en asesinos feroces. En la cárcel, los asesinos muy feroces se convirtieron en cristianos muy devotos”

«Remordimientos y arrepentimientos»,

“Todo el mundo lo lamenta, está claro, en la cárcel y en las colinas. Pero la mayor parte de los que mataron sienten no haber rematado el trabajo. Se acusan más de negligencia que de maldad”

«Se reanuda la vida»,

“… todo el mundo tiene que acostumbrarse al mal que ha vivido, aunque ese mal se les presentase de forma diferente a unos y a otros. Porque todo el mundo tenía que soportarlo a su manera”

Para terminar recojo tres testimonios que me parecen muy lúcidos y reveladores:

“Si tienes que obedecer consignas de las autoridades, si te han mentalizado como es debido, si sientes que te mangonean, si ves que la matanza va a ser total y sin consecuencias nefastas en el futuro, te apaciguas y te serenas. Y sigues adelante [con las matanzas] sin más apuro”

“Teníamos la seguridad de matar a todo el mundo sin que nadie nos mirase mal. Sin tropezar con la regañina ni de un blanco ni de un cura. En vez de disfrutar, hacíamos chistes. Estábamos demasiado a gusto con ese trabajo fuera de lo normal que había empezado bien. Pero el tiempo y la pereza nos jugaron una mala pasada… fue esa despreocupación tan grande la que nos resultó fatal”

“Antes sabía que un hombre podía matar a otro, puesto que los hombres se pasan la vida matándose. Ahora sé que incluso la persona con la que has metido la mano en el plato de comida o con quien has dormido puede matarte sin apuro. El vecino más cercano puede ser el más terrible”

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

With some books you get exactly what you expected, which in this case, was a bunch of ordinary guys from Rwanda talking about killing people with machetes, a lot. They were all interviewed at length in prison.

During the killings I no longer considered anything in the Tutsi except the person has to be done away with. I want to make clear that from the first gentleman I killed to the last, I was not sorry about a single one.

For anyone who needs reminding, the events described in this so easy to read, so very difficult to think about book can be summarised quickly. Rwanda is a tiny African country, current population around 10 million. Here it is :



There were and are two main ethnic groups, the Hutu and the minority Tutsi. In the 1970s there was a revolution and the Hutus threw out the Tutsi monarchy. In the 1990s ethnic relations went over the cliff into unknown territory, and culminated in the genocide of Tutsis over a three month period in Spring 1994. Approximately 800,000 Tutsi people were killed by machete, since all Rwanda men own machetes, since they’re all farmers, so they were handy. 800,000 was 75% of the entire Tutsi population.

Jean Hatzfeld makes a telling point about the nature of this event here:

After the genocide, many foreigners wondered how the huge number of Hutu killers recognised their Tutsi victims in the upheaval of the massacres, since Rwandans of both ethnic groups speak the same language with no discernible differences, live in the same places, and are not always physically recognisable by distinctive characteristics. The answer is simple. The killers did not have to pick out their victims: they knew them personally. Everyone knows everything in a village.

Yes, this was village by village. There were no concentration camps, no need for any of that paraphenalia. This was a low tech carbon neutral genocide. As one of the guys put it :

In killings of this kind, you kill the Tutsi woman you used to listen to the radio with, or the kind lady who put medicine plants on your wound, or your sister who was married to a Tutsi. Or even, for some unlucky devils, your own Tutsi wife and your children.

Of course genocide is pretty much sanctioned in the Bible, as anyone who recalls the exploits of Saul may remember:

1 Samuel chapter 15

Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.

Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.

And Saul gathered the people together… And he took Agag the king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.

So what was it like for the guys? Well, turns out that genocide can be tough on the perpetrators. Most people don’t think about that :

For someone plodding up the slope of old age, that killing period was more backbreaking than stoop labour. Because we had to climb the hills and chase through the slime after the runaways. The legs especially took a beating

But for the younger ones, it was great :

We overflowed with life for this new job. We were not afraid of wearing ourselves out running around in the swamps. We abandoned the crops, the hoes, and the like. We talked no more among ourselves of farming. Worries let go of us.

Killing 800,000 people by hand is a lot of work, you can believe that. This wasn’t Treblinka. Hatzfeld says that actually, this was more people killed in a three month period than the Nazis managed even at the height of the Holocaust. I’ll take his word for that, I have no desire to check the figures.

I think the dictionary definitions of certain words are ideologically motivated. Take the word inhuman :

Lacking kindness, pity, or compassion; cruel; deficient in emotional warmth; cold.

Well, no. This is wrong. These characteristics are absolutely, quintessentially human. It's inhumanity which makes us human.

I was glad that Hatzfeld pointed out the extreme strangeness of this Rwandan genocide. He says of black Africa that when seeming ethnic conflicts do break out, they’re actually regional (South against North, Sudan) or religious (Christian against Muslim, Nigeria) and usually for control of resources (Sierra Leone, Liberia). They’re not actually one ethnic group against another.

Black Africa is a formidable medley of willingly assumed ethnic identities of a diversity equalled only by the spirit of tolerance that keeps them in equilibrium.

That’s actually the loveliest sentence in the book. Well, it doesn’t have much competition. It’s not that kind of book.

So – this is an essential book which I am not recommending unless you were knocked out by the recent documentary The Act of Killing and/or you’re a fan of Christopher Browning’s great book Ordinary Men and/or you like to find out just how dreadful things can get here on Earth.

Last word goes to one of the guys :


I wrote short notes of apology to some families of victims I knew and had them delivered.

[Kavita · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1897, the Germans conquered Rwanda. They brought their burgeoning racial discrimination theories to the country and started applying them to the local population. What for centuries had been not an issue suddenly divided into ethnic differences. The Tutsis, believed to have descended from the biblical Ham, and thus more "Europeanised" than the Hutu population, became the natural favourites to rule Rwanda on behalf of the Germans. The Germans sowed the seeds of racism in Rwanda.

In 1916, Germany bequeathed its erstwhile colony to the Belgians. The second phase of ethnic division started. The Belgians began to measure the heights and noses of people for their "research" by means of a tool called Vernier Caliper. They also issued identity cards to the population, carefully enshrining their ethnicity in stone (or paper, as the case here). Belgium too followed a pro-Tutsi policy, leading to continuous tensions between the two communities.

When Rwanda erupted in violence, no one realised the extent of the damage. It was only later that the staggering numbers became known, and the massacre was classified a genocide. However, ethnic violence had been constantly mounting since the late 80s and tensions had been around ever since the last Tutsi king died and the Hutus latched on to power.

Hatzfeld wrote three books on this subject, this being the second book in which he talks to the killers about their deeds. It's a good idea and had the potential to throw some light on a rather obscure subject since people are still debating why the genocide even happened. But I don't think this book answers those questions completely, or indeed, at all.

Machete Season offers very little insight on why the killers killed. Though the author offers a good explanation of why he chose people who killed together in a group, this also prevented him from gaining better insights on the diverse types of people who killed during the genocide. The group of people said pretty much the same thing and repeated themselves quite often. They squarely placed the blame on the politicians, and indeed, much of the blame lies there, but I did not get much of a sense of soul-searching from any of these guys. This is where this book fails for me. I would totally read a book by any killer who lays out his thought processes neatly for the world to understand this tragedy. But none of the people chosen by Hatzfeld did so.

One of the things that did strike me was that this appeared to be a very male operation. Wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters were mostly left at home to deal with the daily grind and fill the stomachs of those who returned after a satisfactory killing and looting session. Apparently, even the organisers of the genocide told the women to stay home. The men easily blamed the women for wanting more loot and claimed that their wives wholly supported them. What utter bullshit! This in itself shows there is little remorse and even less honesty. I would be very interested to know what all the women in Rwanda think of their male relatives who have killed. Did they even have an opinion? Were they allowed to?

A second thing that came out consistently was how every Hutu had to kill or be killed himself. I don't know how far this was enforced. Was it just in the countryside or in the cities as well? And if this were the case, how far were men who were forced to lift their machetes be blamed for putting their own lives over others? But again, this was not explored in detail.

The most annoying thing about Machete Season was its insistence on bringing up the Jewish Holocaust at every opportunity. This is just another manifestation of colonisation where a tragedy can't be discussed without comparing it to the Holocaust, an European event. I was also flummoxed at how easily Hatzfeld dismissed the Bosnian genocide as not being a genocide because the women were not systematically murdered. Another strange theory of Hatzfeld was that colonisation did not have a big part in the Rwandan genocide. Are you kidding me? Personally, all this made me lose faith in the author as someone who is aware of history in its proper context, despite his credentials.

I think there are much better books on this subject, but I don't regret reading this one because of its unique perspective. I just wish that the sample size were larger and the subjects were explored in more detail and in depth.

[João Barradas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A malvadez humana parece equiparada a um poço sem fundo nem tão pouco com um mísero lençol de água para amparar uma provável descida aos infernos... Quiçá pela proximidade, quando se menciona a palavra genocídio rapidamente surgem na mente imagens de campos de concentração, aludindo ao Holocausto (embora, recentemente haja quem duvide que tais atrocidades tenham ocorrido).
Estes massacres, no entanto, não se limitaram aos tempos da Segunda Guerra Mundial nem tão pouco ao continente europeu. Há 25 anos, no centro do coração de África, uma "guerra às bruxas" culminou na morte de 800000 tutsis, dizimando uma cultura. Só esta descrição já causa desconforto mas quando se soma o facto de tais assassinatos terem sido cometidos por vizinhos, amigos e conhecidos, todo o caso toma proporções de insanidade.
Testando os limites da compreensão, Jean Hatzfeld empreende uma investigação jornalística para perceber junto dos criminosos as razões (se é que as há!?) para o ocorrido. Pelo meio, fornece-nos uma leitura viciante, pela dificuldade de idealizar que um pesadelo desta dimensão se tenha materializado. O seu amplo conhecimento é necessário para não cair no esquecimento, sob pena de decepar com o gume de uma catana um Mundo, já de si sem cabeça.

[Regina Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Ours is appallingly, an age of genocide, but even so, what happened in Rwanda in the spring of 1994 stands out in several ways. In a tiny, landlocked African country smaller than the state of Maryland, some 800,000 people were hacked to death, one by one, by their neighbors. The women, men, and children who were slaughtered were of the same race and shared the same language, customs, and confession (Roman Catholic) as those who eagerly slaughtered them." (pg 5) All this in twelve weeks.

Hatzfield, has a collection of work on the Rwanda genocide. After completing Into the Quick of Life Stories from the Rwandan Marshes, which is a look at events from the perspective of survivors from the commune of Nyamata, questions posed by readers prompted Hatzfield to explore the story from the killers’ point of view. Gaining permission from the Rwandan government and prison officials, Hatzfield successfully convinced ten member of a gang from Nyamata to share their stories. The members ranged from those of various ages (early 20’s to 60’s at the time of the killing) and standing in the community (students, teachers, police officers, and political leaders). In my opinion, Hazfield produces one of the most chilling, educational, and jaw dropping accounts of work I’ve read in quite some time.

One of the things I most appreciate about this work is the way in which Hatzfield finally connected the dots for me. I have read a little on the period and I have seen multiple documentaries at the Houston Holocaust Museum on the subject. It is always so difficult for me to wrap my mind around the cause of this event. If you follow my reading at all you know I’m an avid World War II reader. There is such a breadth of work analyzing everything from the cause of the hatred of the Jews, to the political landscape leading to Hitler’s rise to power, to the world’s non-response, to the psychology of Germans that allowed events to take place. With Rwanda I could never understand what happened beyond the plane crash of President Habyarimana. But, Hatzfield provides an excellent timeline at the beginning of the book beginning in 1921 and takes the reader through important events through 2003.

It is always tempting to compare any event like this one with the Holocaust, but events in Rwanda are vastly different. Rather than falling into that temptation, Hatzfield uses the Holocaust as a contrast, which I find quite effective. What follows is a deeply disturbing understanding of what I’ve missed. This was not a well-organized campaign carried out by soldiers and law enforcement personnel with registrations and demarcations, "The killers did not have to pick out their victims: they knew them personally. Everyone knows everything in a village" (pg 67). Of course they did. This was neighbor killing neighbor, teacher killing student, soccer teammate killing teammate, and family member killing family member. "The first day, a messenger from the municipal judge went house to house summoning us to a meeting right away. There the judge announced that the reason for the meeting was the killing of every Tutsi without exception. It was simply said, and it was simple to understand." (pg 18). With that order Hutu members of the village picked up machetes and spent twelve weeks attempting to irradicate every single Tutsi from the village.

The other contrast, when you read WWII accounts, while you spend some time in dredges of human darkness, there are amazing tales of bravery. Unfortunately, according to Hatzfield, that is not the case in Rwanda, "And at the end of the war (WWII) we were dumbfounded to learn about the thousand and one touching anecdotes we could never have imagined. In Nyamata, however, we find not one comradely impulse among teammates, not one gesture of compassion for helpless babies. No bond of friendship or love that survived from a church choir or an agricultural cooperative. No civil disobedience in a village, no rebellious adolescent in a gang of budding toughs. And not a single escape network, although it would have been easy to set one up in the forty kilometers of uninhabited forests between the marshes and the Burundi border" (pg 103)

I think the reader needs to beware, this is a difficult read. It is only about 250 pages in length and written in very concise paragraphs but the sterile nature in which the killers discuss their actions and the obvious lack of remorse is simply disgusting, "I want to make clear that from the first gentleman I killed to the last, I was not sorry about a single one." (pg 54). Those that do discuss “forgiveness” do so only in terms of how the prisoner can return to life he once knew one day with little regard to what his return will do the survivors.

Big thanks to Isabelle for bringing it to my attention!

[Andrew Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d like to share some thoughts about this book specifically but after reading this, I feel compelled to read the author’s other books on the topic first, at least the first three.

In the meantime some passages so I dont forget them when I return my copy to the library:

“During that killing season, we rose earlier than usual to eat lots of meat, and we went up to the soccer field at around nine or 10. The leaders would grumble about latecomers and we would go off on the attack. Rule number one was to kill. There was no rule number two.” (Page 10)

“[I remember] the first person who looked at me at the moment of the deadly blow. The eyes of someone you kill are immortal, if they face you at the fatal instant. They have a terrible black colour. They shake you more than the streams of blood and the death rattles, even in a great turmoil of dying. The eyes of the killed, for the killer, are his calamity if he looks into them. They are the blame of the person he kills.” (22)

“In truth, it came to me only afterward: I had taken the life of a neighbour. I mean at the fatal instant I did not see him as he had been before. I struck someone who was no longer either close or strange to me. His features were indeed similar to those of the person I knew, but nothing firmly reminded me that I lived beside him for a long time. I am not sure you can truly understand me. I know him by sight without knowing him. He was the first victim I killed. My vision and my thinking had grown clouded. (24)

“These gentlemen [on the radio] were famous artists, great comic virtuosos.What they said was so cleverly put, and repeated so often, that we Tutsis as well, we found them funny to listen to. They were clamouring for the massacre of all the cockroaches, but in amusing ways. For us, the Tutsis, those witty words were hilarious. The songs urging all the Hutus to get together to wipe out the Tutsis— we laughed out loud at the jokes. Same thing for the Hutu 10 Commandments, which vowed to do us in. We got so used to these things that we didn’t listen to the horrible threats.” (55)

“The principal and the inspector of schools in my district participated in the killings with nail-studded clubs. Teachers, colleagues who we used to share beers and student evaluations, set their shoulders to the wheel. A priest, the burgomaster, the sub-prefect, a doctor—they all killed with their own hands. These well educated people were calm, and they rolled up their sleeves to get a good grip on their machetes. For someone who has spent his life teaching the humanities, as I have, such criminals are a fearful mystery.” (68)

“The culprit and the victim will ask forgetfulness for a little protection. It won’t be for the same reason. And they will not be asking for it together. But they will appeal to the very same forgetfulness.” (164)

“The things that happened in nyamata, in the churches, in the marshes, and on the hills, were the abnormal actions of perfectly normal people.” (225)

“To make the effort to understand what happened in Rwanda is a painful task that we have no right to shirk— it is part of being a moral adult.” From the preface by Susan Sontag.

[Cristobo De · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazement. That`s my reaction to this book. So this journalist visits a Ruwandan prison and gets six of the Hutu executioners during the 1994 genocide to speak freely about their crimes. This time it is not a novel writer doing his best to sound spooky, this time it is not some sane, decent person like Primo Levy describing mass murder from the victim`s side. This time you get to the other side, as close as you can get to the real core of horror. What these men did goes so far beyond my experience, so far beyond my mindset, that I can`t grasp it, even after reading the book. Yeah, amazement is the word.
The book itself gets a bit confusing at times. The murderers often use eufemisms and seem to step back when they get to describe the actual killings. Anyway the whole thing sounds so unreal that sometimes it grows difficult to follow what they say. As a whole, however, the book is engaging, very well written and full of shocking information.
I would like to re-read it, and I guess that`s the best endorsement you can give a book.
On a sideline, these confessions may dispel many myths about the horrors of the 20th century.
1) It was very interesting to discover that Hutus really hated Tutsis without any encouragement from Western powers. It was also revealing that they were happy when the "whites", including diplomats, eventually left the country and they felt free to kill their countrymen without unwanted interference. There is some side hint at French complicity but at the end of the day, the genocide was an African enterprise, conceived and (very efficiently) organized by Africans. So bad for white post-colonial guilt.
2) It is interesting too the way they put aside their moral, their religion. As one of the killers put it: "We were getting so much tin roof, we were grabbing so much cattle, we were growing so rich that we didn`t need God any more". Simple as that.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I noticed that one of my Goodreads friends who is a Holocaust librarian was reading this book, so I decided to follow his lead. Words cannot begin to convey the depth and complexity of emotions which this book elicits. More than anything else, it is devastating, and insightful: giving the reader a glimpse into the minds of the Hutu killers during the Rwandan genocide.
All I can do is provide you with one small, chilling example of what one Hutu farmer thought when asked about the word genocide:

Pio: Killing Tutsis... I never even thought about it when we lived in neighborly harmony. Even pushing and shoving or trading harsh words didn't seem right to me. But when everyone began getting out their machetes at the same time, I did so too, without delay. I had only to do as my colleagues did and think of the advantages. Especially since we knew they were going to leave the world of the living for all time.
When you receive firm orders, promises of long-term benefits, and you feel well backed up by colleagues, the wickedness of killing until your arm falls off is all one to you. I mean, you naturally feel pulled along by all those opinions and their fine words.
A genocide - that seems extraordinary to someone who arrives afterward, like you, but for someone who got himself muddled up by the intimidators' hig words and the joyful shouts of his colleagues, it seemed like normal activity.

"It seemed like normal activity." I will remember those words for a long time to come. This is a book that leaves the reader with many unanswered questions concerning evil, forgiveness, and human nature. Highly recommended.

[Borja Alvarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entre abril y julio de 1994, más de 800.000 tutsis murieron a mano de extremistas hutus en Ruanda. Un auténtico genocidio, incomprensible como todos.

Este es un libro impresionante, y lo más llamativo es que el autor entrevista a aquellos que perpetraron el exterminio, contando con sus testimonios, viendo de qué manera justifican sus acciones. Además, se presenta el contexto histórico, el punto de inflexión que dio comienzo a este episodio, y todo lo que lo rodeaba.

Imprescindible y espeluznante.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is absolutely horrifying as it deals with first hand accounts of several killers from Rwanda during the genocide. I think I was looking for some kind of insight into the mentality of these killers, and how seemingly normal people could commit such acts of evil. Ultimately the complete banality and lack of remorse these killers felt, both during and after, the atricious murders of babies, neighbours, pregnant women etc., just left me feeling devasted.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note: This review is for the full four-part series.

French reporter and longtime resident of the African continent, Jean Hatzfeld, documents the Rwandan Genocide in more detail than any other historian or journalist. But don't look to his series for a complete historical context or a full examination of the motives of the killers or the previous crimes of the Tutsi people and the colonialists. Other books, like Philip Gourevitch's excellent We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families informs and educates the reader more thoroughly on context, motivation, and history.

Hatzfeld instead offers direct contact with the killers and the survivors. He tracks life in one small village as it progresses over 24 years from the 100 days of the "cuttings" of the genocide, through the forced return and imprisonment of the escaped Hutu killers, to the killers' pardon in 2003 to live side by side with the survivors, and finally to the legacy of the genocide for the next generation of children, the children of both the killers and the survivors. Hatzfeld's series of four poignant and well-written books focus on the lives of the people of the Bugesera, a modest-sized district in the southeast of Rwanda--a place where Hutus slaughtered an estimated 100,000 Tutsis. Hatzfeld is detailed in his dispatches, following the same small group of people, gaining their trust by breaking through a haze of trauma and for the killers by passing through prison walls. It's doubtful any other reporter or historian will even gain similar access and intimacy with all the players. What is missing, for the most part, is the role the government of long-time President Paul Kagame plays in their lives.

Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak introduced us to the Rwandan voices, the survivors of the Bugesera, men, women, children, all who ran from the blades for 100 days until the Tutsi army-- led by Paul Kagame, refugee turned General turned President--could reach the marshes and the hillside of the district. It is here that Hatzfeld first introduces the reader to the victims and survivors of evil.

Hatzfeld's second installment, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak is a short and dark tome offering up direct testimony and confessions of one small group of "cutters" who terrorized their small community for 100 days, they a part of a larger group that murdered thousands using mostly machetes, killing more efficiently than the Nazi death camp apparatus killed Jews. Reading Hatzfeld's commentary on his meetings in the crowded Rilima Prison, I detect little joy in his work and note his reticence during interviews of genocidaires.

The Antelope's Strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide, book three, titled because the victims of the genocide, when they could run, ran like the Antelope, staying in their herd, knowing that the Hutus would "cut" the slow, the old, the infirm, and those who carried their babies first. On the hilltops of the Bugesera in 1994, the comfort of the pack helped Innocent Rwililiza only so much. Out of the thousands that sought safety above the village, just a few dozens survived--the rest cut down by their Hutu neighbors and the Interahamwe. If it was possible to report a more dark and horrifying version of the genocide than that provided in books one and two, Hatzfeld finds it, as he documents Innocent's Rwililiza's story of survival.

In Blood Papa: Rwanda's New Generation, Jean Hatzfeld introduces readers to the children of the genocidaires and the survivors. While much of the book is spent with the children, Hatzfeld researches the community or Gacaca courts organized in Rwanda to free up the enormous backlog in the traditional court system. He tells the story of one particular case, a "cutter," a man whose confession Hatzfeld documented in Machete Season, a man who served seven years in prison and was then pardoned by President Kagame along with many other second-tier offenders in 2003, and a man who committed a crime so atrocious and evil that in 2010 his community's Gacaca court immediately dispatched the offender to life in prison.

[Jem Hai · Rating 4 out of 5]

feels somewhat inappropriate to give this one a pun, but we’ll worth a read

[Joel Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is largely comprised of interviews from the men who perpetrated the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. I definitely enjoyed the authenticity of hearing from e men themselves. The author also inserts some background information and occasional observations about the nature of genocide.

I enjoyed several things about this book:
1. It gave me a great understanding of the historical background for the events in Rwanda.
2. It gave me a small sense of what it would have been like to be there during the events - The book recorded mundane details like the killers' daily routines.
3. It probed the psychology and social mechanisms that would allow something like this to happen. One factor, for instance, was the fact that people had to be personally involved in the killings or be perceived as sympathetic to the Tutsis. In some cases they killed in order to avoid being killed. This dynamic in turn, seemed to develop because the killers wanted the guilt to be distributed. They wanted everyone to be equally liable.
4. It probed the psychology of someone trying to escape the guilt of terrible things they have done. it exposed the fact that many of the killers were not ultimately sore for what they did so much as they sought to minimize the consequences. As the book recorded it, true repentance was hard to find or nonexistence. Even after the fact it seemed like the men were trying to rationalize their actions and under the same circumstances would be fairly likely to do the same thing again.

An excerpt from Pio (one of the killers):
"Seeking forgiveness is a natural thing. Bestowing forgiveness is a huge thing. But who today can decide this forgiveness? Those who did nothing, like the whites and such? those who arrived too late, behind he soldiers of the RPF, coming home with their savings and their memories of revenge? those who happened to elude death by sneaking into the papyrus? Even the mama of the child who was cut, what can she forgive in the name of her little one, who is no longer here to be questioned?

I see too many difficulties for us to exchange forgiveness on the hills. Too many bad memories will grow again on the fine words, like the Bush in the middle of a plantation. Someone who grants you forgiveness on a day of mercy, who can say he won't take it back some other day in anger, because of a drunken squabble?

I can't imagine any forgiveness capable of drying up all this spilled blood. I see only God to forgive me—it's why I asked that of Him every day. Offering Him all my sincerity, without hiding any of my misdeeds from Him. I don't know if he says yes or no, but I do know that I ask Him very personally" (206-207).

[R.L.S.D · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm honestly not sure how Hatzfeld managed to conduct these interviews - it is a feat of journalism. Here, the farmer-choirboys who enthusiastically took up machetes to kill their cattle herding neighbors and fellow parishioners, get to speak for themselves. Hatzfeld inserts his own voice into the narrative every few chapters. He wrestles with the ethics of his project, relates events in Rwanda to the Holocaust of his own family memory, and insists that his readers learn the difference between war crimes and genocide. I agree with Susan Sontag's inroduction - "making the effort to understand what happened in Rwanda is part of being a moral adult."

[Sebastien · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If killers come to church to pray to God on their knees, to show us their remorse, I cannot pray either with them or against them. Real regrets are said eye to eye, not to statues of God. The accommodation of killers is not my concern." - Gaspard, a survivor.

This book opens up a real big historical and philosophical can of worms. Hatzfeld interviews a group of friends in prison who actively participated in the Rwandan genocide. The most anti-Tutsi of them killed the least. The man who had never before considered that the Tutsi were not equal to the Hutu premeditated their genocide months in advance. The killers barely seem to own up to their participation in the genocide, and their egocentrism will make most readers livid. Rwanda is doing its best to move forward, but everything clearly is not okay.

What am I supposed to do with this information? What is forgiveness in the context of genocide? Is forgiveness meant more for the perpetrator or the survivor? Can a survivor truly move on? Do most of the perpetrators really only care about what's in store for themselves? This book brings up more questions than it answers, but the questions need to be asked.

Hatzfeld contradicts himself throughout the book, the most notable contradiction being that he asks why more Hutus didn't try to stop the genocide or try to save more Tutsis, and he implies that barely any did. He later goes on to mention that Hutus did try to save Tutsis but were killed or forced to kill in most cases. Also, hasn't Hatzfeld heard of Paul Rusesabagina? It sometimes seems like he was desperately trying to prove a particular point, which I never did quite get.

This book made me lose some faith in humanity, and it might do the same for you. It still needs to be read.

[LibraryCin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author first wrote a book where he interviewed 14 survivors of the genocide in Rwanda. I haven’t read it, though I've read plenty of other books about it. It was only later that he thought to interview some of those who killed during the genocide. In this book, the interviews were interspersed with history, sometimes a description of interview process and how it came about that the author decided to write this one, sometimes the voices of some of the survivors are included.

The killers just came across to me as very cold, no remorse – to them, it was a job. I wonder if that’s why the book didn’t affect me all that much? I felt detached while reading it. Overall, I’m rating it ok, but for me, there are much better books about Rwanda out there.

[elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

m & j,

I read parts of this as part of a philosophy class probablg about 10 years ago, but only now read it all the way through. what an insane journalistic project. really engaging, really horrifying. what do we do when people commit atrocity??? also facinating reading in conversation with clint smith's atlantic article on rwanda from 2024.

[Jen]

Since

"In a tiny, landlocked African country smaller than the state of Maryland, some 800,000 people were hacked to death, one by one, by their neighbors. The women, men, and children who were slaughtered were of the same race and shared the same language, customs, and confession (Roman Catholic) as those who eagerly slaughtered them." (p.vii)

and

"When there has been one genocide there can be another, at any time in the future, anywhere -- if the cause is still there and no one knows what it is" (Jeannette, a survivor)

and

"to make the effort to understand what happened in Rwanda is a painful task that we have no right to shirk -- it is part of being a moral adult" (Susan Sontag, p. viii)

then, read the book but you will still not understand, just that

"A genocide is a poisonous bush that grows not from two or three roots but from a tangle of roots that has moldered underground where no one notices it." (Claudine, a survivor)

and all that you do know for sure is (in the words of one survivor):

"Before, I knew that a man could kill another man, because it happens all the time. Now I know that even the person with whom you've shared food, or with whom you've slept, even he can kill you with no trouble. The closest neighbor can turn out to be the most horrible. An evil person can kill you with his teeth: that is what I have learned since the genocide, and my eyes no longer gaze the same on the face of the world."

The book is well-written, and I know more details that I did before, but I was horrified and appalled.

[Galina Trefil · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good read on the collective psychopathy of the mob mentality. It takes care to emphasize that, contrary to more popular portrayals, the genocide did not spring out of nowhere, but had been decades of pogroms in the making. Also compelling to note how it had much less to do with Hutu vs. Tutsi at the root and much more to do with general poverty and a lack of very basic resources, leaving one to wonder how much would have taken place at all if the country were better off financially in the first place.

To criticize: the author does spend a good deal of time talking about how the men were drunk on a daily basis, but the concept of mass organized alcoholism is never addressed, though it has been present not only at this genocide, but at others before it. Also, while there is a great deal of discussion regarding the killings, there is little to no detail about the period when the hunters transitioned into their loss of mob power, let alone how they were able to cope with that after falling in love with non-stop murder, rape, and looting. Psychological aspects which would have been interesting, had the author questioned them about it. Given that the men maintain the alcoholism which they needed in order to kill - and this issue is not addressed by the Rwandan government - it leaves one wondering how likely they would be to pick up their machetes again and continue to kill, if ever given the opportunity.

[FiveBooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Writer Philip Gourevitch has chosen to discuss Jean Hatzfeld’s Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject - Rwanda, saying that:

Hatzfeld wound up going back to Rwanda and the whole group of killers who had been pursuing the survivors he’d been writing about in his first book were all in one prison nearby. And he arranged to meet with them on a regular basis, individually and collectively, to hear their stories. And it’s the most direct (I guess you could say honest) account, by people who took part in the genocide, of the excitement and thrill of the hunt and the kill that motivated a lot of them.

The full interview is available here: http://five-books.com/interviews/philip-gourevitch

[Álex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesante libro construido a partir de entrevistas a perpretadores del genocidio Tutsi. Se echa en falta que el autor ponga en contexto lo ocurrido antes de las matanzas así como una visión más global que ayude a situar los acontecimientos.
Algunas partes de las entrevistas se hacen algo repetitivas.
Buenas analogías con el caso del exterminio judío y las conclusiones obtenidas por Arendt a la hora de despojar a los asesinos de una suerte de aura maligna por la que estaban predestinados a cometer los peores crímenes.
El hecho de que se usen palabras no traducidas, y en algunos casos se omita también su explicación (ligadas a ese periodo de la historia de Ruanda), no ayuda a meterte en la historia.

Por otra parte, resulta fascinante leer lo acontecido aquellos meses directamente de la boca de los causantes de miles de asesinatos, la forma que tienen de excusar sus crímenes y la frialdad con que lo cuentan habiendo pasado tan poco tiempo desde que lo llevaron a cabo.

[Daniel DeLappe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very disturbing book that should be read by everyone. It is amazing to see these people try to excuse their behavior. Of course they were not responsible for their behavior and of course the people they slaughtered were some how at fault in their deaths. Two things that really stand out in this book. These murderers actually are a bit put off that their victims families did not forgive their transgressions and a few of these shit stains are actually walking around free today. Read this book folks and look what is going on in the world. It is amazing that this behavior continues all over the world.

[Roman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Choć autor praktycznie pomija znaczenie kolonializmu w roznieceniu waśni między Tutsi i Hutu, a jego porównania z Holocaustem są dość powierzchowne (w "Nagości życia" nie podejmował tych tematów), to jednak książka zachowuje ogromną wartość jako zapis rozmów z jednymi z uczestników ludobójstwa w Rwandzie. Każe na nowo zastanowić się nad mechanizmami takich zbrodni, "banalnością zła" i palącym pytaniem: jak ja zachowałbym się na ich miejscu.

[Renée Wyman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult to read, but a narrative that everyone should. The stories and perspectives of Rwanda's worst were not at all what I expected. The realities this novel depicts are ones we all should face in order to prevent history from repeating itself.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crazy. From horror to the banal and matter-of-fact accounts, this collection is key for anyone wanting to get a better grasp of what happened in Rwanda.

[Ola · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hutu w Jerozolimie


W lutym 2012 wydawnictwo Czarne polską edycją Sezonu maczet zamknęło trylogię rwandyjską Hatzfelda, słuszniej byłoby jednak nazwać ją trylogią o znieczulającym, obezwładniającym i usprawiedliwiającym wpływie innych i jego skutkach. A także o nieufności. Jean Hatzfeld przyjeżdża do więzienia w Rilimie, by tym razem oddać głos osadzonej tam grupce przyjaciół z Kibungo, zabójcom pochodzenia Hutu, nie bez wcześniejszych wątpliwości, czy w ogóle należy to robić – tak w skrócie można by przedstawić tematykę książki. Jak zwykle w takich przypadkach, byłoby to ujęcie bardzo uproszczone i niezwykle ubogie.

Zastanawiałam się, czy po zrecenzowaniu poprzednich części będę w stanie powiedzieć cokolwiek nowego. A jednak. Sezon maczet różni się, i to znacznie, od pozostałych dwóch pozycji. Z racji tematyki od samego początku przywodził na myśl Eichmanna w Jerozolimie Hannah Arendt i wydawał się być bardziej rozprawą o psychice zabójcy w ogóle, niż relacją z Rwandy jako taką. Kolejna książka francuskiego reportera jest odmienna od reszty tym bardziej, że autor częściej wystawiał twarz zza rządków liter i zdarzało mu się nawet tłumaczenie się z rozmów z zabójcami. Ta zmiana jest uderzająca, zwłaszcza wziąwszy pod uwagę typ dziennikarstwa który Hatzfeld reprezentował w Nagości życia i Strategii antylop – zdecydowanie rejestrującego. Interwencja autora ograniczała się właściwie do wyboru cytatów, mających się ostatecznie znaleźć w gotowym tekście plus krótkiego wprowadzenia. W Sezonie[...] reporter umieścił także swoje szersze uwagi na temat charakteru ludobójstw w ogóle, nawiązania do prac o Holocauście, zdarzyło mu się porównywać zagładę Żydów i Tutsich. Z rozmaitym skutkiem.

To, czy morderców, jako tych, którzy utracili wszelkie prawa, należy raz na zawsze wrzucić do oubliette, nie rozmawiać z nimi i nie pytać nigdy o nic, czy też powinno się raczej starać dojść do motywów ich działania – jest sprawą indywidualną. Ciekawość Hatzfelda możnaby nazwać zainteresowaniem na zamówienie – pojawiło się ono, jak przyznaje, dopiero po listach czytelników, którzy zastanawiali się nad procesami, mającymi miejsce w umysłach ludobójców. Hatzfeld zaś, zamiast odesłać ich do Arendt (co, jak mi się chwilami wydaje, na jedno by wyszło), postanawia napisać o tym książkę, chociaż przedtem temat wydawał mu się niewart pracy. Nie wiem jednak, czy uznawał go za zbyt banalny i oklepany, czy sądził, że Hutu nie zasługują na nic, poza zapomnieniem. W końcu z ocalonymi łączą go, jak sam wielokrotnie wspomina, bardzo bliskie stosunki, a nawet przyjaźń.

Poza tym, że autora w Sezonie[...] jest jakby więcej, zmienił się także sposób zdobywania przez niego materiału. Ponieważ zabójcy nie byli w stanie rozmawiać w pojedynkę, czy to z obawy, że ich słowa zaszkodzą im w trakcie procesów, czy z powodu zwykłego wyparcia – a tak właściwie z powodu skrajnej nieufności – Hatzfeld poszukiwał grupy znajomych, którym mówić będzie łatwiej. Czas pokazał, że jedynie cierpliwość i rozmycie osobistej odpowiedzialności w uspokajającym -my pozwoli na uzyskanie zeznań. Sporo w nich niezgodności z rzeczywistością, nie jest jednak łatwo rozsądzić, czy tym razem chodzi o świadome kłamstwo, czy też urojenia i oficjalne wersje wydarzeń przeznaczone dla sądu tak pomieszały się ze sobą, że nawet opowiadający nie są już w stanie ich oddzielić.

Przejdę do meritum: jeżeli ktokolwiek miał złudzenia co do tego, że z Sezonu[...] dobiegną go skruszone głosy złamanych ludzi, przerażonych skalą swoich własnych czynów, srodze się zawiedzie. Z kolei czytelnik Eichmanna[...] (znowu!) wcale zaskoczony nie będzie. Sposób, w jaki osadzeni w Rilimie wypowiadają się na temat wydarzeń z bagien, wygląda na pozbawiony rzeczywistego poczucia winy i świadomości. Każda kolejna wypowiedź wydaje się być bardziej przesiąknięta biernością, posłuszeństwem i poczuciem braku wpływu na własne akcje.

"Najwyższe władze wpakowały nas w wojnę z powodu uraz nagromadzonych od czasów panowania królów Tutsi, by przekształcić ją w ludobójstwo. To nas całkiem przerosło. Stanęliśmy przed faktem dokonanym i trzeba było wprowadzić go w czyn, że się tak wyrażę. Kiedy niespodziewanie dowiedzieliśmy się z Kigali o planie ludobójstwa nie cofnąłem się nawet o krok. Pomyślałem: jeśli władze dokonały takiego wyboru, nie ma powodu, żeby się ociągać."

Zabójców Hutu wygląda na to, wszystko usprawiedliwia i nic nie obciąża. Ich czyny były kierowane przez inspiratorów z Kigali, przez intelektualistów, komendantów interahamwe, a przede wszystkim, przez innych Hutu, zagrzewających się wzajemnie do eksterminacji karaluchów i kontrolujących jedni drugich. Powstrzymać ludobójstwo, jak stwierdza jeden z nich, mógł tylko Bóg. Komfortowe.

"(...)przy okazji tych morderstw nie dostrzegłem nawet tego czegoś, co miało zmienić mnie w zabójcę" – mówi Léopord, skazany na siedem lat pozbawienia wolności i wypuszczony już w 2002 roku. A ja mu nie wierzę, nie ufam żadnemu z nich, bo z dalszych rozmów wynika wyraźnie, że jeżeli czegoś żałują, to raczej tego, że nie udało im się dokończyć planu. Słowa więźniów odsłaniają chwilami wyjątkowo niezborny światopogląd; jakby sami z trudem godzili nowy obowiązujący pogląd, że Tutsi są jednak równymi im ludźmi, z tym, czego nauczono ich wcześniej. Przypominają rasistów, których obecna sytuacja siłą nauczyła poprawnego politycznie słownictwa. Zdradza ich język.

"Byliśmy pewni, że zabijemy wszystkich i nikt nie krzywo na nas nie spojrzy. Że żaden biały czy ksiądz nie będzie niczego nam wypominał. Drwiliśmy sobie z tego, zamiast wykorzystać okazję. Czuliśmy się zbyt swobodnie w tej niecodziennej pracy, która tak dobrze się zapowiadała. Ale czas i lenistwo spłatały nam przykrego figla. W gruncie rzeczy staliśmy się zbyt pewni siebie i zaczęliśmy się ociągać. Ta zbyt wielka beztroska okazała się dla nas zgubna."

"Tu, w naszym powiecie, szykowaliśmy się do kolejnych masakr w odwecie za ataki inkotanyich. Jednak braliśmy pod uwagę jedynie zwykłe zabójstwa, takie, jakie znaliśmy już od ponad trzydziestu lat."

"To dowódcy organizowali patrole, rozstrzygali spory podczas dzielenia łupów, każdego dnia wyznaczali nam trasę. Gdyby ich nie było, rolnicy nie wpadliby na pomysł, żeby zacząć tę pracę. Byliby źli z powodu samolotu i obracaliby maczetę w ręku, a potem wrócili na swoje pola. Może nawet pociliby się na bagnach, ale nie tak długo. Zachowaliby umiar."

To beztroska, nie zabijanie, była zgubna. Masowe masakry to żaden problem. Zabójstwo dziesiątek Tutsich to oznaka umiaru. Nikt nie używa słowa 'ludobójstwo', dopóki nie zaczyna obwiniać 'inspiratorów'. By mówić o ludobójstwie, trzeba przyznać ofierze status istoty ludzkiej i przyjąć odpowiedzialność za własne czyny oraz wybory. Przyjaciele z więzienia w Rilimie mówią o krzywdach, które wyrządzili, by niedługo potem z porażającą naiwnością poruszać kwestie wybaczania. Ich brak zrozumienia jest gorszy, niż cokolwiek innego, bo brzmi jak zapowiedź kolejnej tragedii. "Ludobójstwo to nie jakiś krzak, który wyrasta z dwóch czy trzech korzeni, ale splot korzeni, które gniły pod ziemią i nikt tego nie zauważył".

Sezon maczet mimo wszystko jest najsłabszym ogniwem trylogii, a osłabia go właśnie to, czym różni się od pozostałych dwóch książek. Uwagi Hatzfelda, łączące Szoah i Rwandę często są trafne, ale równie często oczywiste i powierzchowne; na dodatek styl, w jakim zostały napisane, jest zbyt prosty. Niekiedy wydają się zwyczajnie naciągane. "W kraju filozofii, jakim były Niemcy, ludobójstwo miało na celu oczyszczenie bytu i myśli. W kraju wiejskim, jakim była Rwanda, ludobójstwo miało na celu oczyszczenie ziemi, pozbycie się rolników1 karaluchów" – pisze reporter, a ja marszczę nos.

Paul Rusesabagina, Hutu i pierwowzór bohatera Hotelu Rwanda oraz Paul Kagame, obecny prezydent Rwandy, z pochodzenia Tutsi, zostali zawziętymi wrogami, publicznie oskarżając się to o kłamstwa, to o faworyzowanie własnej kasty i ograniczanie wpływów drugiej. Po osiemnastu latach od ludobójstwa, Hutu, który ocalił wielu Tutsich i Tutsi, który pozbawia Hutu jakiejkolwiek realnej władzy, znowu stoją naprzeciwko siebie, wyzywając się od zbrodniarzy. Nikt nie zamierza ustąpić jako pierwszy. Politykę narodowego pojednania, którą promuje Kigali trudno nazwać inaczej, jak forsowanym zapominaniem, bolesnym dla jednych i niezwykle wygodnym dla drugich. Przyjaciele z Kibungo traktują wybaczenie jako coś, co zostanie im zapewnione, jeżeli tylko postawią Tutsim odpowiednią ilość butelek primusa i szaszłyków. A gdy już je uzyskają, wrócą na swoje parcele, gdzie wszystko będzie tak, jak przedtem. I w zasadzie mają rację.

______________________________________________________________________


1Nie jestem w stanie ocenić, czy to pomyłka autora książki, czy tłumacza, ale Tutsi nie byli rolnikami, a hodowcami bydła.

[Dipesh Mistry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rwanda has always been close to my heart. Back in 1994, I wondered and asked my dad, why are there so many refugees walking on a narrow, lonely, long road to Congo? Back than I was too young to understand the tragedy that had gripped the people there.

"Machete Season by Jean Hatzfeld" is a tough book to read!, it lets the killers speak for themselves, why they did what they did. Reading their stories, made me angry towards them, but sometimes helpless.

There are two extremes that live within us, on one side, we are all capable of compassion, kindness, empathy. The other extreme, maybe it is a narrow generalization... but given the right conditions, we are also capable of committing extreme violence, which is not rational at all, but we just do it, as if something has just possessed us. The explanation of this may lie in nature, evolution, our distant cousin the Chimpanzees.

The killers mentioned in the books are Hutu neighbors who ate and set with their Tutsi neighbors, had Primus Beer, plowed the same land, played in the same soccer team. On the ill-fated night of 7th April, they turned into something, which even some of the the killers themselves do not take responsibility for, but instead blame it to the 'devil'.

The task for humanity ahead is not to blame the devil, but to recognize this problem and refine ourselves to be as far as possible from this primeval violent tendencies.

[Emily Cauduro · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very important book to read and it contained a lot of interesting information but I found the book to be very surface level and lacking much depth. Easily this book could have been divided into minimum 3 books; interviews with the killers, methodology used by the researcher, and research analysis of the interviews.

Because the book tried to cover so much information, I found it lacking a lot of details and only allotted for the killers interviews every other chapter. As a qualitative research I thought this writing style did a little of a disservice to the telling of the story as the richness was lost.