After the Coup: An Ethnographic Reframing of Guatemala 1954

4. The Politics of Land, Identity, and Silencing: A Case Study from El Oriente of Guatemala, 1944-54

4 the Politics of land, identity, and silencing A Case Study from El Oriente of Guatemala, 1944–54 christa little-siebold The indigenous alcalde received word that the U.S.-backed Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas was to set up camp in Quezaltepeque after invading from neighboring Honduras. The alcalde had to act quickly, with dignity, and in a way that showed the sense of responsibility he felt toward his fellow campesinos. Not all municipalities, particularly in Guatemala’s Oriente, had succeeded in electing indigenous mayors during the period of democratic spring (1944–54) after the overthrow of dictator Jorge Ubico y Castañeda (1931–44). Yet because he was one of the few indigenous mayors in the region, Castillo Armas might immediately assume he supported Jacobo Arbenz and have him killed. He decided not to go into hiding. Instead, the alcalde sent word for other leaders to leave as he went to face the colonel and his mercenary army. He shook hands firmly with the coup leader, offered him his own bed, and looked the colonel in the eyes when responding to questions about Quezaltepeque’s political alliances . That the invaders killed only one person in Quezaltepeque was a point of pride for the alcalde years later, given the wholesale slaughter of leftist and rural activists that would follow in the weeks and months to come. The alcalde’s pride was tinged with regret, though, because the man executed was remembered by fellow townspeople as someone whose life and actions did not merit such an end: a silencing act of public terror that took place on the outskirts of their very own town. This chapter examines the local politics of land, identity, and memory in Quezaltepeque, Chiquimula, during the Diez Años de Primavera (Ten Years 100 . christa little-siebold of Spring). Quezaltepeque is where Arbenz’s administration ended, as it was the site of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas’s entrada de la liberación (assault of the liberation) and march to Guatemala City. The short-lived period of democracy brought about dramatic changes in the political landscape after decades of dictatorship and military rule. I have pieced together what was going on in a small community in the Eastern Highlands during the ten-year period. Working with consultants, particularly those who were active during the Arévalo and Arbenz administrations , I collected stories about the cattle that went to town, and the saint who went to jail, although he never entered a church. I learned about the local listas negras (black lists), and about a few alcaldes indígenas (indigenous mayors). These stories are about people—many of whom are still alive—who made local history during those extraordinary years between 1944 and 1954. Their actions still inform the ongoing struggles over land and survival that are embedded in a complex set of racialized identities.1 The term that weaves many of the story threads together is campesino, a term that reemerged during the Ten Years of Spring. In the midst of so many silences concerning this period, the widely used term campesino serves as an ambiguous identity term or “fuzzy category” that positively conflates connotations embraced by rural and town dwellers, indigenous and nonindigenous, progressives and conservatives. the Place and the People Quezaltepeque is a municipio of the department of Chiquimula, with its town center nestled in a valley at the edge of a highway that connects Guatemala with El Salvador and Honduras. It is the southeastern edge of the Maya Ch’orti’ territory, although the Ch’orti’ language has long been lost in the municipio itself. The town center with its trapiche-processed sugar cane, and its vegas (small fertile valleys) washed with rivers shaded with tropical fruit trees, is a dot of warm, humid emerald green flanked by cool, windy pine forests and grassy high peaks. Quezaltepeque is in the highlands of Guatemala’s Oriente, a geographical and sociological region highly identified in the nationalist imagery with the ladino and with “wild west” stereotypes of lawlessness, cattle, and men. Digging into Quezaltepeque’s identity landscape, however, challenges the Guatemalan dichotomy between an “Indian West” and a “Ladino East.”2 In Quezaltepeque, any accounting of indigenous versus nonindigenous identity that merely draws on visible differences of dress, language, and mate- the politics of land, identity & silencing · 101 rial life (for example, presence or absence of footwear, house style) obscures a more complicated set of relations...