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Intergenerational Conflict in the Postwar Era / 105 menting on his long hair and stating at some length that long hair on men was bad and set a terrible example for boys in the town. Some people took this as license to attack J. M. Apparently, several people started throwing punches at him; and when his younger brother tried to pull them off, they beat him, too. As the crowds surged around the altercation and more people started to join in beating him, J. M. was dragged out of the park and in front of the town hall, where people threw banana crates emptied on the spot, rotten fruit, and stones at him. Shortly thereafter, he broke free and managed to run the hundred feet or so to the weaving cooperative, where his father is president. Although cooperative associates and the full-time employee quickly closed the door of the cooperative building and bolted it shut, a large unruly crowd quickly collected in front of it and on top of a bus parked across the street. As the crowd grew increasingly menacing, rumors circulated that there were plans to gather gasoline to burn the wooden building in an effort to force J. M. out. Some villagers went to place calls to the departmental offices of MINUGUA (Mission for the Verification of Human Rights in Guatemala, the UN peacekeeping force), and two other community leaders quickly caught rides to the departmental capital to collect police to help calm the crowds and safely remove J. M. While this was happening, a friend and teacher walked past me with his son and commented, “Bad things happen to bad people.” Shocked by his seemingly passive advocacy of what was happening to someone else’s son, I turned away and my eye caught a few bloody quetzal notes that had slipped out of J. M.’s pocket when he’d been dragged down the street. Just then, another man directed his young son to pick up the bills. As midday approached, the buses rolled through town to take people back to their hamlets.The crowds dispersed somewhat, but people still remained in front of the co-op, calling for J. M. to come out or for his father to open the door of the building. All afternoon, small groups gathered throughout the village, discussing what had happened, either supportive of the mayor’s actions or strongly against them.One woman commented on what she referred to as the mayor’s stupidity and his penchant for speaking unwisely and incautiously in public without thinking about potential repercussions. “One day,” she said, “he’ll get somebody killed.” Others felt that J. M. had needed to be reprimanded, perhaps even publicly, if not quite in this fashion. Continuing to take advantage of the increased number of people present in the town center due to the market, the mayor allegedly issued a petition during the afternoon in an effort to collect 10,001 signatures or fingerprints (approximately 50 percent of the population plus one more) in order to lynch J. M. J. M. remained in the cooperative until about 9 p.m. that evening, when a truckload of police officers came from Huehuetenango. They removed J. M. 106 / Burrell and his father from the cooperative and brought them and two other family members to a hospital in the department capital. On Sunday, the following day, people flooded into town from the hamlets, perhaps to sign the petition or, alternatively, to finish their holiday errands. Although a town meeting was meant to take place in the central park, it did not materialize. Later, the petition was apparently dropped, although no one claimed to know why. Gossip circulating in the town center held that this near-lynching and the events following it were mostly caused by people from the aldeas (villages) (like the mayor) and not from the more civilized centro (urban center). I immediately thought of the aforementioned incident with the bloody quetzal notes, wondering how individuals construed their own tacit approval in such collective episodes by not using their influence in the community to attempt to put a stop to these incidents. Following a lull of several weeks while J. M. recovered from his injuries and stayed out of sight, there was an incident that raised the hackles of the community and demolished any sympathy that might have been lingering after the near-lynching. Each year, on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, a big picnic is held in a high...

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