Secrecy and Insurgency: Socialities and Knowledge Practices in Guatemala

4. Secrecy, Sociality, Merographic Analogy

4 Secrecy, Sociality, Merographic Analogy Introduction InthepreviouschapterIdiscussednamingpracticesamongguerrillacombat­ ants and associates and their role in the articulation of secretive and complex relationalities, grounded in selective forms of disclosure and foreclosure. I argued that secrecy challenges knowledge practices and related understandings of sociality in terms of pluralities of discrete entities. I argued for the relevance of knowledge practices in post-­ plural scales for describing and understanding the partial subjectivities and socialities engendered in guerrilla secrecy. In this chapter I provide a different order of post-­ plural contextualization , and consider the ways in which violence and ambivalence, and their effects, fig­ ured in the narratives of ex-­ combatants of the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (FAR). Through the accounts of ex-­ combatants, I focus on representations of the conflict offered by the guerrilla, highlighting how entities were rarely viewed as monolithic, coherent, and opposed wholes. Rather, violence and secrecy, imbricating each other, produced ambivalence and indeterminacy in guerrilla subjectivities and socialities. The Secrets of the Maya: The Theft of Stones, Knowledge, and People On one of my usual visits, I passed by Luis, an ex-­combatant who had been involved in po­ liti­ cal organizing efforts and in the guerrilla organization for almost four decades. Luis, origi­ nally from Oriente but displaced to the Costa Sur from the age of five,1 had been a member of the very first FAR units that were active in the early 1960s. In 1966, following violent curbing of po­ liti­ cal activity among plantation workers in the Costa Sur, Luis migrated to Petén with his immediate family. Luis told me that while his 112 / Chapter 4 family came to Petén in search of land, the main reason for the move was to escape the repression that was being targeted at campesinos like himself who had links with the unions.2 I was asking Luis to comment on the indigenous question in Guatemala when he told me this story. Between 1977 and 1978, Luis had met an elderly man about eighty-­ eight years old. The elderly man was Q'eqchi' and Petenero, in the sense that he was Q'eqchi' and had been living in Petén for a long time. Luis and the old man started talking about the destruction of indigenous people in Guatemala (la destrucción de los indígenas). The elderly man said that he did not approve (no le parecía) of the murder and destruction of those people who knew the things of the Maya (sabían las cosas de los Mayas), as this knowledge was useful (útil) for the future. The man told Luis that a stone had been robbed (se habían robado) from Tikal, that the indigenous people in Cobán (los indígenas in Cobán) were still a Maya race (era raza todavía de los Mayas),3 and that proof (prueba) of this was in that stone where the name of a Maya person who was living in the highlands of Cobán appeared . The elderly man said to Luis that this was the definite proof that the Maya were not extinct/finished (terminado) and it was a coincidence ­(casualidad) that on that engraved stone (piedra escrita) that was stolen from Tikal by the Ameri­ cans (americanos) there appeared the name of that man and of his daughter, or rather [Luis said] the man’s granddaughter. In any case, there was the name, and the granddaughter could read/understand what was written on the stone. Six to eight months following the theft of the stone, the FBI arrived in Cobán to take the indita with them (para llevarse la indita).4 They told her father that they were going to pay for her education, so that she could get better schooling (para que se preparara major), and so that they could educate her. These were all lies (mentiras). At the time, people were really afraid (temorizada) and the Army accompanied those Ameri­cans and seeing an Army soldier (un militar) was like seeing the devil (diablo), as one was only waiting to be killed by them, as that was the only thing they were doing/did.5 So, there is no doubt (no cabe duda) that this eighty-­ and-­ over indigenous man (este indígena), no [said Luis], he was in fact one hundred and fifteen years old, [and] at this age he knew for sure that if he was not to give up his daughter , the Army (militares) would have killed him. Facing...