Genocide Lives in Us: Women, Memory, and Silence in Rwanda

3. Amplified Silence: Hegemony, Memory, and Silence’s Multiple Meanings

­ 110 Under­ stand­ ably, the mass kill­ ing in the 1994 gen­ o­ cide lends it­ self to gen­ er­ al­ iza­ tions in which Tutsi are por­ trayed as vic­ tims and Hutu are por­ trayed as per­ pe­ tra­ tors. In­ deed, many em­ pir­ i­ cal re­ al­ ities sup­ port this ideo­ log­ i­ cal frame­ work. Ap­ prox­ i­ mately eight hun­ dred thou­ sand Rwan­ dans lost their lives in the gen­ o­ cide, and most of these vic­ tims were Tutsi. Thou­ sands of Hutu ci­ vil­ ians par­ tic­ i­ pated in the gen­ o­ cide by de­ nounc­ ing Tutsi who were in hid­ ing, by loot­ ing prop­ erty, by par­ tic­ i­ pat­ ing in umu­ ganda to “clear the bush,” by kill­ ing Tutsi with clubs, ma­ chetes, or guns, or by rap­ ing or sex­ u­ ally tor­ tur­ ing Tutsi women and girls. These em­ pir­ i­ cal data feed into sim­ plis­ tic under­ stand­ ings of Rwan­ dan his­ tory as a strug­ gle ­ between two “sides,” a strug­ gle ­ between “good” and “evil” where the “good guys” are the RPF, “Tutsi,” and “sur­ vi­ vors” and the “bad guys” are “Inter­ ahamwe,” “Hutu,” and “per­ pe­ tra­ tors.” A nu­ anced ac­ count of the gen­ o­ cide, the civil war, and the post­ gen­ o­ cide pe­ riod ­ yields a much more com­ pli­ cated his­ tory. In­ di­ vid­ ual vi­ o­ lent 3 Am­ plified Si­ lence Hegemony, Memory, and Silence’s Multiple Meanings Amplified Silence 111 ex­ pe­ ri­ ences dur­ ing the civil war, gen­ o­ cide, or in­ sur­ gency do not fit ­ neatly into the ­ dyadic Hutu per­ pe­ tra­ tor/Tutsi vic­ tim logic. Many Hutu died in the gen­ o­ cide be­ cause they op­ posed the ex­ tre­ mist re­ gime that chose gen­ o­ cide as its pol­ icy, be­ cause they “looked” Tutsi, be­ cause they were mar­ ried to Tutsi, or be­ cause they hid or pro­ tected Tutsi. Fol­ low­ ing the gen­ o­ cide, many Tutsi lived in the ref­ u­ gee camps in Zaire (now Dem­ o­ cratic Re­ pub­ lic of the Congo) and Tan­ za­ nia along­ side Hutu ci­ vil­ ians, for­ mer govern­ ment of­fi­ cials, sol­ diers, and Inter­ ahamwe mi­ li­ tia­ men who fled ­ Rwanda and the ad­ vanc­ ing RPF. Tutsi who did not re­ turn to ­ Rwanda sur­ vived the ­ forced camp clo­ sures and sub­ se­ quent mas­ sa­ cres in east­ ern Zaire in 1996 and 1997. Some Tutsi were mar­ ried to Hutu ei­ ther ­ through mar­ riages that pre­ ceded the gen­ o­ cide or­ through mar­ riages that were ­ forced upon Tutsi women and girls dur­ ing the gen­ o­ cide. Oth­ ers had suc­ ceeded in pass­ ing as “Hutu,” had es­ caped the gen­ o­ cide, or were ­ afraid to re­ turn to ­ Rwanda, where they might be tar­ geted by the ­ RPF-led govern­ ment or RPF sol­ diers. RPF sol­ diers ­ killed Hutu and Tutsi ci­ vil­ ians in in­ di­ vid­ ual acts of re­ venge for the gen­ o­ cide, in mil­ i­ tary op­ er­ a­ tions to elim­ i­ nate “per­ pe­ tra­ tors” who lived in inter­ nally dis­ placed per­ sons or ref­ u­ gee camps, in ­ small-scale mas­ sa­ cres, or in counter­ in­ sur­ gency op­ er­ a­ tions to elim­ i­ nate op­ po­ si­ tion to the new ­ RPF-led govern­ ment. Tutsi women mar­ ried to Hutu men faced pres­ sure to di­ vorce their hus­ bands and take RPF sol­ diers as hus­ bands (Twag­ i­ ram­ a­ riya and ­ Turshen 1998, 112). As dis­ cussed in the pre­ vi­ ous chap­ ter, the in­ her­ ently po­ lit­ i­ cal na­ ture of na­ tion­ al­ ized, ­ state-sponsored mourn­ ing prac­ tices and the RPF’s par­ a­ dig­ matic his­ tory of the 1994 gen­ o­ cide have ­ pushed in­ di­ vid­ ual mem­ o­ ries and inter­ pre­ ta­ tions of the gen­ o­ cide and civil war into hid­ den ­ places. In post­ gen­ o­ cide ­ Rwanda, only cer­ tain so­ cial cat­ e­ go­ ries were al­ lowed to speak pub­ licly about the past or com­ ment on govern­ ment pol­ i­ cies. Gen­ o­ cide sur­ vi...