I Ask for Justice: Maya Women, Dictators, and Crime in Guatemala, 1898–1944

6. Honorable Subjects: Public Insults, Family Feuds, and State Power

CHAPTER 6 Honorable Subjects: Public Insults, Family Feuds, and State Power To read Guatemalan criminal records from the first half of the twentieth century, one gets the impression that highlanders—indígenas and ladinos alike—were both extremely foul-mouthed and excessively sensitive. Defamation and slander cases consumed an inordinate amount of the municipal legal system’s time, and many such exchanges never made it to the courts. Chimaltenango department authorities too dedicated considerable resources to this litigation. Although they handled only 36 instances of slander (calumnia ) between 1900 and 1944, they dealt with 523 insult and injuria (offense ) cases—the seventh most common type of crime during that period (appendix 4). From 1932 to 1944, the National Police arrested 19,264 people on charges of injuria—the fifth most common crime during that period (appendix 3). Despite dictators’ efforts to buttress the authority of the state by instilling fear in the general population, locals directed choice words at each other and such agents of the state as market inspectors and police officers. Even as people who insulted each other and authorities seemingly upset portrayals of social order, defamation litigation helped the Estrada Cabrera, Herrera, Orellana, Chacón, and Ubico governments maintain the rule of law by upholding Guatemalans’ reputations and punishing those who offended them. By providing a language that linked personal reputations with national politics, honor became a medium through which authorities could exert their control and power. The November 10, 1942, Gaceta cover of Ubico and the term honradez (honesty, honor, integrity) offers one example of the ways dictatorships sought to associate themselves with notions and characteristics of honor (figure 6.1). By outlining the boundaries of acceptable behavior and respected reputations , honor regulated social interactions. Whether they took their offenders Figure 6.1. Honradez (Honesty, honor, integrity). La Gaceta, November 10, 1942. Image courtesy of Hemeroteca Nacional de Guatemala. Public Insults, Family Feuds, and State Power 193 to court or responded extrajudicially, those who reacted sharply to insults were not simply defending their personal reputations, they were also policing their communities. Their responses indicate that as in Mexico, the political history of Guatemala likewise was not simply one of power and resistance ; each individual’s preoccupation with his or her reputation and honor meant that for authoritarian regimes, the tyranny of opinion was as valuable a tool as the combination of persecution and co-optation.¹ If we recognize insults as central components of what historian David Sabean calls the “language of argument,”² then court testimonies from defamation litigation tell us much about the ongoing disputes over the meaning of culture and the importance of reputations. Honor signified dependability , resourcefulness, honesty, and integrity, and thus rural residents constantly had to buoy public perceptions of their individual value. One’s reputation affected everything from selling and purchasing property and goods, particularly on credit, to finding a spouse, keeping custody of or adopting children, and maintaining good relations with kin and neighbors. In small rural communities where job loss or crop failure were often all that separated families from destitution, honor was a crucial component of people ’s lives and values, yet it has received surprisingly little attention in postcolonial Guatemalan historiography.³ Based on the eighty-eight department and municipal cases I examined, defamation litigation involved Guatemalans from most walks of life: men and women, ladinos and indígenas, the educated and illiterate, and those who were single, married, and widowed; their professions varied from molenderas , vendors, and jornaleros to school principals, tailors, butchers, agricultores , and municipal officials (appendix 10). Regardless of one’s social position , everyone was subject to and could deploy the tyranny of opinion. As a cornerstone of quotidian relations and livelihoods, honor and the protection of it cut across class, gender, and ethnic lines. As recent studies of honor have demonstrated, plebeians’ lives, livelihoods , and perceptions shaped their constructions of honor more than elite notions did.⁴ Definitions of honor varied across place, time, class, gender, and ethnicity, while popular and state perceptions dovetailed around its intrinsic value. As forms of social capital, honor and reputation were defended like goods.⁵ Influenced by positivists like Herbert Spencer, Latin American legislators of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came to see honor as a commodity worthy of legal protection.⁶ Since more people gained access to the rights and liberties of citizenship after independence, honor became...