'In Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala Virginia Sanford\r'

'In Buried Secrets: Truth and man Rights in Guatemala Virginia Sanford goes into the heart of Guatemala to six assorted locations of hush-hush cemeteries to interview survivors of mass suicides that occurred during the bound that is straightaway kn affirm got as La Violencia. Sanford strives to give voice to the Maya, who have been suppress all these years, and chose to have them write their own history of what happened during those menacing years.By let outing the dark secrets of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary eruptnership as well as those of the irregular Army of the poor, the Guatemalan good deal were up to(p) to dispirit to heal, to find referee, to become stimulate to send a nominate for social channel and to ultimately take apply fend for over their own lives and participate in the nation that they paying(a) so in a heartfelt way for (p. 73). Sanford constructs a â€Å"phenomenology of terror” by dint of a forensic anthropological study o f the clandestine grave sites at six several(predicate) locations across Guatemala that the crimes over against the Maya ultimately resulted in toy racial extermination.These kills occurred during a period known as La Violencia (1978-1982) under the regime of world-wide Lucas Garcia (1978-1982) and General Rios Montt (March 1982-Aug 1983) (p. 14). According to Sanford, La Violencia went from selective terror into mass terror culminating in the â€Å"scorched earth” campaign and ultimately the violence did not cease until the disarming of the last civil patrols and the signing of the 1996 intermission Accords (p. 15).The Maya were the weak common flock caught in the middle of a vicious contend between the communist rebel and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (GNRU); where both sides took advantage of the Maya using them for food and treasure and veiling them with petite thought if they got in the way for whatsoever reason (p. 101). The Maya were ele mentary farming people for the most part and their rights were easily stripped away and they were tempered like slaves for years and after La Violencia, they were left maimed, poor and big businessmanless.The phenomenology of terror that Sanford constructed from the goal records, b unitary analytic thinking, testimonio and other public records/media consists of septenary escalating assortments of violence and domination (p. 32). . Through analysis of these stages Sanford proves the depth of the GNRU’s crimes and therefore add ups them out in public for the Maya people to begin their work on of healing. The phemomenology of terror starts with the â€Å"pre-massacre society of interests of interests organizing” which amounted to the Maya’s attempt to advance their own community often done the local churches to nominate infra social structure for clean water etc.Because this organizing sometimes include guerilla organizing (which Sanford indicates was often brought intimately by idolize tactics on the guerilla’s part), it attracted violent repercussions from the GNRU (p. 127). The phase two, â€Å"the modus operandi of army massacres,” Sanford describes as the beginning of genocide because the GNRU felt they could not prevent the guerilla from organizing and they used this as an excuse to kill innocent civilians who baron or might not have been involved, in fellowship to scare everyone else away from the idea of constituent the guerilla (p.129). In the â€Å"post-massacre life in f luminousness,” or phase three, the Guatemalans fled the killing field of their own villages and took refuge in the mountains with little or no supp inhabits or tax shelter against the elements and m some(prenominal) of them died of illness or exposure. The guerilla found them here too and sometimes forced them to kill their own children in order to survive (p. 132). In phase four the â€Å"army captures a community” a nd the Maya were basically treated like prisoners of war: they were pain, raped, punished, and were forced to run for their food (p.135). In phase five, â€Å"model villages,” the Guatemalans experienced something similar to German concentration camps where they lived under uniform military control and were forced to work under fear of creation tortured or killed (p. 138). In phase six, â€Å"the ongoing militarization of community life,” the civil patrollers, or police, were handed over control from the army but the struggle was still the same, the Maya keep to experience torture and abuse of power(p. 141).In Sanford’s last denoted phase titled â€Å" maintenance retrospect of terror,” the Maya struggle to arrange their lives keep going together while living in terror and with diminished rights. The police act to control their lives and prevent them from bettering their communities in any way (p. 143). The uncovering of the phenomenology of te rror is scarce how the healing process was instigating. The Maya people realise their need for healing when the bodies of their love ones were macrocosm uncovered and when they heard the stories of their peers being t out of date and established that their own story needed to be revealed as well.Sanford chose multiple excavation sites in order to have a variety of communities but also so that she could generalize. The communities she chose included: Ixil, K’iche’, Kaqchikel, Q’eqchi’ and Achi villages from the northwest highlands to the central lowlands to the east mountains (p. 17). Uncovering these clandestine grave sites amounted to taking back their villages, taking back their loved ones and heavy(p) them the respectful sepulchre that they deserved. In doing this it created a political spot that was stolen from the Maya in the reign of terror (p.73). This political space allowed the people to come together and gain power in numbers; they neve r allowed themselves to be separated off so that no one person could be alienated for the cause of bringing out the right of these massacres. Even those who still believed that the GNRU were manifesting the integrity about the massacres, that the only people killed were communist guerillas, were brought to see the truth about La Violencia because â€Å"the bones founding father’t lie” (p. 47).Even military officials came to give public deferred payment of the murders but gave many justifications for their ruthless actions (p. 16). by and by Sanford herself uncovered a woman’s corpse face go through in a mass grave dimension a small baby, it became clear that civilians, including women, children and the antiquated were a large part of the sacrifice do at mass executions made by the GNRU (p. 43). Records indicate that most of the bodies at the Plan de Sanchez site were women, children and elderly (p. 47).The Maya went to the Ministerio Publico (prosecu tor) as a group and said, â€Å"We want a Christian burial for our families because they aren’t dogs, and we don’t want them piled up in those graves like dogs” (p. 39). They were not put down by the Rabinal when they were ordered to be a meeting that amounted to them trying to control the Maya and prevent them from colluding with the foreigners to uncover the truth. â€Å"Leave the bloodless in rest” the sub-commander told them, but the Maya already knew that the dead were not in peace and stopped at nothing to uncover the rest of the truth so that they could be (p.44). By pushing fore and glutinous together the Maya was fitting to strip the power from the â€Å"memory of terror” to hold them down and instead used it to drive them forward for qualify and legal expert (p. 230). Sanford shows that the excavation process gave healing through several opposite avenues, besides with child(p) the Maya strength in coming together and publicly r evealing the truth, the excavation also brought healing through religious religious rite and public consecration of the burial sites.The rituals at burial sites â€Å"implicate the order of deeply held beliefs about the individual and community identity and reckoning in the past(a) as well as the record” which Sanford believed was the powerful key to opening a future for the Maya in their own humbled land (p. 40). Long after the plea and re-burial, the temples built on the sites allowed the Maya to continue their sorrow process and to continue to heal and have a displace where they could go for medical record of their loved ones and the pain they experienced (p. 245).In addition, the exhumation inspired the local people to organize once again to try to better their communities and used the memory of terror as inspiration to work hard for change rather than allowing it to hold them down in fear (p. 211). These local initiatives included things such as support groups a nd groups advocating yet more than exhumations. (p. 243). Sanford describes another type of healing that took place because of the exhumations and resulting testimonies that amounts to the clinical treatment for Post traumatic Stress Disorder: testimonial therapy (p. 239).By giving survivors the chance to â€Å"understand the impossible temper of the situation to which they had been exposed” and to transfer â€Å"the nitty-gritty of responsibility to the perpetrators of violence and to the repressive structures that fomented their traumas” they were able to heal the emotional wounds of those experiences (p. 241). The final quality in healing is providing the people with justice through charging those guilty of leading the massacres. in the end the confessions and the exhumations helped to bring those guilty of these horrible crimes to light for the sake of justice.The Maya faced the obstacle of â€Å"auto-limpieza,” which was the act of killing those who we re in charge of giving orders for the military on behalf of the men who were in the upper echelons of the military power structureâ€in other words, the men who could tell the truth about who was ultimately liable for these massacres were killed (p. 211). In addition to this obstacle, the government attributed any challenge to their authority to equate to a national security threat. So when the Maya began to assay for those guilty of these war crimes, they faced the old threat of terror (p.251). According to Sanford, â€Å"justice, overlook of law, and truth commission are now seen as a critical tincture for societies experiencing the transition from military rule,” therefore it was of expiration importance to the Maya to pursue justice and bring closure on the dark La Violencia era (p. 249). With the help of other underlying American countries and international organizations such as the Human Rights Watch and the United Nations, the Maya people were given the added strength to bring justice to at least a fewer war criminals.Without their help the Maya may never have been able to overcome the memory of terror which stood in the way of them being able to participate in the democracy that they paid so dearly for (p. 253). last the trials of the authors of this violence helped to construct, â€Å"a viable democracy by demonstration that the rule of law extends to the powerful as well as to the poor” (p. 270). In conclusion, Virginia Sanford shows through a forensic anthropological study of the massacre sites that genocide did indeed occur against the Mayan people and she lays out the timeline of violence in seven phases that she calls the phenomenology of terror.Through the process of constructing this phenomenology the Maya are brought together again and inspired to better their community and agitate for justice. They experience healing through testimonio (of their PTSD) and through public recognition of their loved one’s sacrif ices in religious ritual and the consecration of the burial sites. By consecrating those public spaces and bringing to justice those who were responsible, the Maya were able to break fear of the memory of terror and take their just place in the democracy that they paid so dearly for.\r\n'