Privatizing the Tzuultaq'a? Private property and spiritual reproduction in post-war Guatemala

Abstract

This study considers how Guatemalan genocide survivors mediate their identities through property relations on a former development pole, or strategic hamlet built on the ashes of a scorched earth massacre. It traces the historical trajectory of a lowlands Q'eqchi' community's land tenure, from a land conflict with a plantation owner that sparked a military massacre to their resettlement under army auspices. I conclude that the community did not choose to privatize their land titles because they joined up with a neoliberal project. Rather, they used individualized titles as a strategy to ward off violent dispossession. Further, the study argues that spiritual leaders explained their decision to leave sacred sites unmarked on the grid of private titles as a means of protection. Today, the community as a collective renews their spiritual relationship with the hill-valley spirit and seeks permission to plant on private property.

Keywords:

• Guatemala
• Q'eqchi' Maya
• property
• privatization
• villagization
• spirituality

Notes

¹Names and dates have been changed in the interest of confidentiality. Likewise, I do not provide full citation for archival and reference material that would reveal the community's identity.

²The case presented here is one of four case studies conducted using archival research, interviews, and 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork. While I do not discuss the other cases in depth, they inform my analysis.

³Ladino is an ethnic term meaning non-indigenous; understood to be Guatemala's dominant social group.

⁴In the late nineteenth century, the Guatemalan government dispossessed Q'eqchi' communities and granted Germans large swaths of lands. The Germans immediately put the highlands to use as coffee plantations, but not the lowlands.

⁵USAID took over these functions when it was created.

⁶Almost all survivors I interviewed from her hamlet were men, who were not at home when the army arrived.

⁷Due to similarities between this grotesque violence and other massacres, the truth commission concluded that this was a deliberate army strategy of genocide, a crime against humanity.

⁸Q'eqchi' word for non-indigenous, originally used to describe Spanish invaders.

⁹Some villagers described EGP and the Catholic Church with a significant amount of slippage, as though they were the same organization. This varied widely across times and places.

¹⁰His formulation assumes that all Ladinos have money and networks in urban areas.

¹¹Ríos Montt was a military officer who became president in a coup. His influential friendships with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson began networks of US Evangelical aid to rural communities that continue today.

¹²This is positively correlated with counterinsurgency – where counterinsurgency campaignswere most intense (northern Cobán and Chisec), most villages are centralized. Where counterinsurgency campaigns were relatively lax (Chahal), most homes are still dispersed.

¹³Also called market-led agrarian reform.

¹⁴The World Bank approved major funding in 1998, but there are still significant technical problems and roughly half the territory (as protected areas) was excluded.

¹⁵K'ux was displaced during primary school. Later, he learned to read and write through adult education programs.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Megan Ybarra

An earlier version of this work was presented at a session on Indigenous Peoples, Property and Geography at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington. A National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant provided research support. I was able to place oral histories in context with archival research in the CIRMA archives and the Ak' Kutan library. Nancy Peluso, Christian Lund, and anonymous reviewers offered incisive comments on drafts. I am especially grateful to the community of Yaab'alhix for opening their lives up to me. I am responsible for all translations. Any remaining errors are my own.