Stories about Past, Present and Future: Memory and Narrative between Refugee Pasts and Migrant Futures among Young People in Chiapas, Mexico

This article explores processes of memory among diasporic children and grandchildren of Guatemalan refugees, by reflecting on a postmemorial theatre project in Southern Mexico. The theatrical performances enable me to analyse how young research participants perform their ‘postmemorial repertoire’ and how their performances are being evaluated by older residents. The encounters and clashes between eye-witness accounts and postmemorial mediation and imagination are both conflictive as well as productive. In a second step, the postmemorial processes are put in conversation with the ways young people participate actively in the creation of other types of memory, which are anticipatory and contain narratives around migration.

The Practice Of Trust, Disclosure, And Collaboration With Guatemalan Refugees

My practice of anthropology is guided by the constant development of trust, disclosure, and collaboration. I will discuss how trust was fostered and disclosure deployed in a multi-year collaboration to obtain legalization for indigenous Mayans from Guatemala who for more than thirty years remained stateless in Mexico. I will identify how reduced legal options to regularize status created barriers to political, economic, and cultural incorporation in Mexico and left significant family members—documented and undocumented alike—vulnerable to deportations and family separations. I will also highlight our success to obtain legal status for twenty-six stateless subjects in late 2016. My practice of anthropology has resulted in productive ways of “giving back” to study participants, fostering a type of liberatory praxis that motivates our efforts to assist others who fled military conflict in Guatemala and remain stateless in Mexico.

Father Luis Olivares a Biography

This is the amazing untold story of the Los Angeles sanctuary movement’s champion, Father Luis Olivares (1934-1993), a Catholic priest and a charismatic, faith-driven leader for social justice. Beginning in 1980 and continuing for most of the decade, hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees made the hazardous journey to the United States, seeking asylum from political repression and violence in their home states. Instead of being welcomed by the “country of immigrants,” they were rebuffed by the Reagan administration, which supported the governments from which they fled. To counter this policy, a powerful sanctuary movement rose up to provide safe haven in churches and synagogues for thousands of Central American refugees. Based on previously unexplored archives and over ninety oral histories, this compelling biography traces the life of a complex and constantly evolving individual, from Olivares’ humble beginnings in San Antonio, Texas, to his close friendship with legendary civil rights leader César Chávez and his historic leadership of the United Neighborhoods Organization and the sanctuary movement.

Estados Nacionales Y Víctimas Sacrificiales: Consideraciones Sobre El Genocidio Maya-Ixil En Guatemala

"Tierra Arrasada" (Scorched Earth) was a military program applied in Guatemala by former President José Efraín Ríos Montt, against Mayan communities accused of collaborating with the guerrilla force, and had the aggravating elements of a genocidal campaign. The guiding question of this essay is: “What is the reason for the genocides against ancestral peoples?”, and has the following starting hypothesis: the modern nation states, as "imagined communities", contain an inherent “bio-racial” component which gives sense and structure to the power instrumentation. Racism is recognized as a root element in Guatemalan history and, together with socioeconomic and political factors, has led to the genocide of Ixil people. Following René Girard, this paper proposes that Ixils were "sacrificial victims" in the contest for power between the Guatemalan State and the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP) in order to sustain the hegemonic power with low political and military costs. Methodologically it is the results of field studies among communities of former Guatemalan refugees in Quintana Roo, Mexico, as well as historical and discourse analysis. The aim of this paper is to present the semantic potential of a theory of mimetics for the study of genocides in modern states.