Secrecy and Insurgency: Socialities and Knowledge Practices in Guatemala

3. Secrecy, Relation, Connection

3 Secrecy, Relation, Connection¡Identifíquese compañera! Identify yourself, comrade! Introduction This chapter opens with a discussion of an ethnographic moment of partial disclosure, when I first realized that ex-­ combatants deployed different names for themselves and others and that names qualified different, multiple , and complex relationalities. I discuss naming practices and argue that whatever the scale, through names, pseudonyms, and nicknames partial relations and connections were established. Connections may have been articulated positively through disclosure, or occurred through negation and foreclosure, but led to connections nonetheless. I also consider names and naming practices in relation to secrecy, and the implications of secrecy for guerrilla hermeneutics of the Other, and for knowledge practices more broadly. I argue that while guerrilla naming practices may be thought of as holographic, guerrilla secrecy engendered forms of connective relativization . The guerrilla secret subjectivities and socialities, and related partialities and connectivities, require relinquishing appeals to a plurality of discrete cultural/social entities and subjects to envision instead post-­plural scales. The scales of post-­ plurality exhibit specific temporal qualities and ever-­ shifting horizons that may be imagined as a performative operation through which the conditions of possibility for resignification and a break with context are enabled. Positionality and Difference, Partiality and Connection In the early stages of fieldwork in a community of Fuerzas Armadas Re­ beldes (FAR) ex-­ combatants and their families, I learned about community life, having been granted permission to visit the settlement regularly by the Junta Directiva, that is, the group of community members randomly Secrecy, Relation, Connection / 89 selected (sortear) out of a pool of candidates. Members of the Junta Directiva were appointed on a fixed-­ term basis and took on legal responsibility for the running of the settlement. To ensure continuity and to limit the loss of experienced members, only about half of the Junta Directiva was replaced by new appointments every year. In accordance with Guatemalan national law, the structure of the Junta Directiva reflected the legal requirements that applied to cooperatives and any other association or group that wished to manage funds and that therefore must seek legal recognition. A president, vice-­ president, secretary, treasurer, and two administrators (vocales) made up the Junta Directiva. Alcaldes auxiliares (auxiliary mayors ) also worked closely with the Directiva. In this community, where the population was made up of mainly FAR ex-­ guerrilleros/as and their families , there were a number of additional committees. The Comité de Trabajo (Work Committee) for instance, was dedicated to the organization of collective daily labor. Although labor (actividades productivas, productive activities) was organized collectively, the Comité de Trabajo allocated time for individuals to undertake household-­ based work and subsistence agriculture. Other committees were the Comité de Jovenes (Youth Committee ), coordinating activities for and by the youngsters, and the Comité pro-­Mejoramiento (Committee for Improvement) in charge of planning the economic and social development of the community. The Comité de Seguridad (Security Committee) had responsibility for security matters but also dealt with unforeseen crises such as forest fires encroaching on community land during the dry season. The Comité de Mujeres (Women’s Committee ) successfully lobbied the Work Committee to take into account women ’s triple burden of domestic, collective, and po­ liti­ cal work. As a result, women who were full members and beneficiarias, that is, who had formal and legal status as members of the cooperative, were granted shorter collective labor shifts. Temporary committees such as the Comité pro-­Feria were instituted to coordinate activities for the celebration of the first anniversary of the community. When the community was founded, subsistence agriculture had also been collectively managed. Agricultural collectivization was, however, short-­ lived, as agricultural techniques were taken to be a key signifier of (cultural) difference. There was general agreement that agricultural work was culturally specific and that the plurality of views on how to best approach “agri-­ cultural” tasks such as planting and harvesting was ultimately too difficult to manage collectively, notably in a multicultural community such as the one at hand. As a result of the perceived unmanageable quality of “agri-­cultural” difference, it was decided that plots of land be given to ­ beneficiarios/as, 90 / Chapter 3 and that households be responsible for their own subsistence. Some ex-­ guerrilleros/as argued that individualization of “agri-­ culture” amounted to positive engagement on the part of the ladino majority and an example of ladino acknowledgment of the “agri-­ cultural” difference among them, and...