Notes
Notes Introduction 1. Peace negotiations were inaugurated by the “Procedures for the Establishment of a Firm and Lasting Peace” convened in Esquipulas, Guatemala, August 1987. A sec ond phase of peace negotiations began in March 1990 and produced the “Basic Agreement on the Search for Peace by Po liti cal Means,” known as the “Oslo Agreement.” This was followed by the “Agreement on Procedures for the Search for Peace by Po liti cal Means,” known as the “Mexico Agreement,” and by the “Agreement on a General Agenda,” both signed in April 1991. The “Framework Agreement on Democratization in the Search for Peace by Po liti cal Means,” known as the “Querétaro Agreement,” was signed in July 1991 and concluded the sec ond phase of negotiations (Jonas 2000). 2. The Guatemalan Peace Accords encompass a framework, “Framework Agree ment for the Resumption of the Negotiating Process between the Government of Guatemala and the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca,” signed in Mexico, D.F., Janu ary 1994, and eleven Agreements: (i) “Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights,” signed in Mexico, D.F., March 1994; (ii) “Agreement on Resettlement of the Population Groups Uprooted by the Armed Conflict,” signed in Oslo, Norway, June 1994; (iii) “Agreement on the Establishment of the Commission to Clarify Past Human Rights Violations and Acts of Violence That Have Caused the Guatemalan Population to Suffer,” signed in Oslo, Norway, June 1994; (iv) “Agreement on Identity and Rights of Indigenous People,” signed in Mexico, D.F., May 1996; (v) “Agreement on the Social and Economic Aspects and Agrarian Situation,” signed in Mexico, D.F., May 1996; (vi) “Agreement on the Strengthening of Civilian Power and on the Role of the Armed Forces in a Democratic Society ,” signed in Mexico, D.F., Sep tem ber 1996; (vii) “Agreement on the Definitive Ceasefire,” signed in Oslo, Norway, De cem ber 1996; (viii) “Agreement on Constitutional Reforms and the Electoral Regime,” signed in Stockholm, Sweden, De cem ber 1996; (ix) “Agreement on the Basis for the Legal Integration of the Uni dad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca,” signed in Madrid, Spain, De cem ber 208 / Notes to Pages 2–10 1996; (x) “Agreement on the Implementation, Compliance and Verification Timetable for the Peace Agreements,” signed in Guatemala, De cem ber 1996; and (xi) “Agreement on a Firm and Lasting Peace,” signed in Guatemala, De cem ber 1996 (Guatemalan Peace Accords 1996). 3. See Haraway 1989; 2003; Strathern 1988; 1999. 4. The use of vernacular in the book is inspired by, and pays homage to, the work of Ricardo Falla (1978; 1992). 5. See also Moore’s discussion of a feminist anthropologist’s “anthropological imagination” (Moore 1994, 129–50). 6. Taussig (1987, 121) notes, in the context of his analysis of the rubber boom in the early twentieth century in Colombia, that “[a]ll societies live by fictions taken as real. What distinguishes cultures of terror is that the epistemological, ontological and otherwise philosophical problem of representation—reality and illusion, certainty and doubt—becomes infinitely more than a ‘merely’ philosophical problem of epistemology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. It becomes a high- powered medium of domination, and during the Putumayo rubber boom this medium of epistemic and ontological murk was most keenly figured and thrust into consciousness as the space of death.” 7. According to Geertz, “[w]hat the ethnographer is in fact faced with . . . is a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit and which he must contrive somehow first to grasp and then to render” (Geertz 1973, 10). In sum, according to Geertzian thick description, the task involves “grasping” strange, irregular, and inexplicit conceptual structures, and “rendering” them adequately . 8. This point is also made by Valentine Daniel (1997). With reference to an interview with an Estate Tamil woman recounting the death of her father in war- torn Sri Lanka, Daniel (1997, 334) notes “the ambivalence of her charge to me, to tell and yet not to tell.” However, Daniel’s work is not concerned with exploring the connection between the charges to tell and not to tell, on the one hand, and secrecy, on the other hand. 9. The report did charge that genocide was perpetrated in four regions of Guatemala , namely the north of Huehuetenango, the Ixil and Joyabaj areas in Quiché, and Rabinal in Baja Verapaz. This declaration informed the genocide case against a number of defendants presented not in Guatemala, but rather before the...
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