Memory Politics and Cultural Resistance / Memoria Política Y Resistencia Cultural
Chair/Moderadora: Marjorie Becker, History and English, USC
- Ricardo Falla, Anthropology, Santa María Chiquimula, Guatemala
“Enfoques del genocidio y la resistencia, una experiencia personal”
(“Perspectives on Genocide and Resistance: A Personal Experience”)
- Emilio del Valle Escalante, Romance Languages, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Maya Responses to Genocide in Guatemala: The Poetics of Survival in Sabino Esteban Francisco’s ‘Gemido de huellas’”
(“Respuestas Mayas al genocidio en Guatemala: Poéticas de la sobreviviencia en ‘Gemido de huellas’ de Sabino Esteban Francisco”)
- Betsabe A. Martínez Manzanero, Antropología Social, El Colegio de Michoacán, Mexico
“Memoria y resistencia cultural entre los Mayas guatemaltecos del sur de México”
(“Memory and Cultural Resistance among Guatemalan Mayans in Southern Mexico”)
Marjorie Becker holds a doctorate and two of her three masters in Latin American History from Yale University. Her Yale dissertation, long taught in graduate courses, reveals the material cultural roots of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico’s most important twentieth century president’s approach to government. Long viewed as highly popular, her multi-archival and oral historical work revealed the complex authoritarianism characteristic of his rule. Her other M.A. is in History with a focus on the Deep South, African American History, the multiple relationships between Mexican poet Octavio Paz and the Mexican revolution; this M.A. is from Duke University. She served in the Peace Corps in rural Paraguay, teaching nutrition, textile arts, health and first aid to Paraguayan women and girls, and she did so in the unwritten indigenous Guarani language. She was invited to return to Paraguay to direct the program in which she served. She also worked as a former print journalist writing about race relations, health, the emerging nature of Southern life and culture. She has written and published about the Mexican revolution, its attendant counter-revolution, about the artist Frida Kahlo, about Mexico’s distinctly gendered time which she has named “ghost time.”
Betsabe Martinez Manzanero
Currently, I am PhD student in Social Anthropology at El Colegio de Michoacán, México. At this stage I’m working on the final manuscript of my thesis. I focus on Guatemala’s genocide survivors who live in Mexico (specifically in a former refugee camp in Campeche, called Maya Tecún), and also in some persons who took refugee in Canada. I try to understand the forms of the memory and the new paths of mobility of these people, with the project: “Las artes del camino: memoria, movilidad y otros pasajes del refugio guatemalteco.”
Actualmente soy estudiante del doctorado en Antropología Social en El Colegio de Michoacán, México. En esta etapa estoy trabajando en el manuscrito final de mi tesis. Me intereso en los supervivientes del genocidio de Guatemala que viven en México (en concreto en un antiguo campo de refugiados en Campeche, llamado Maya Tecún) y también en algunas personas que se refugiaron en Canadá. Trato de entender las formas de la memoria y las nuevas rutas de movilidad de estas personas, con el proyecto: “Las Artes del camino: memoria, movilidad y otros pasajes del refugio guatemalteco”.
Ricardo Falla, nacido en Guatemala en 1932, jesuita y antropólogo, Ph.D. en Texas U en Austin. Ha realizado trabajo docente por cortos periodos en la URL y en la USAC de Guatemala, y en la UCA de San Salvador. Ha hecho más trabajo de investigación desde institutos, como CIERA (Centro de investigación y estudios de la reforma agraria) en Nicaragua, y CIASCA (Centro de investigación y acción social) en CA sobre temas de organización campesina, cambio religioso, juventud y violencia. Publicaciones principales: Quiché Rebelde (1978), Esa muerte que nos hace vivir (1984), Masacres de la Selva (1992), Historia de un gran amor (1995), Migración trasnacional retornada (2008), Negreaba de zopilotes…(2011) Trabaja actualmente en la publicación de escritos no publicados o dispersos en una colección que se llama Al atardecer de la vida… El cuarto volumen de la colección dice relación a este Congreso: Ixcán. Masacres y sobrevivencia. Guatemala.1982 (2016).
Emilio del Valle Escalante (K’iche’ Maya, Iximulew) is an Associate Professor of Spanish at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. His teaching and research focus on contemporary Latin American literatures and cultural studies, with an emphasis on indigenous literatures and social movements, Central American literatures and cultures, and post-colonial and subaltern studies in the Latin American context. He is the author of Maya Nationalisms and Postcolonial Challenges in Guatemala: Coloniality, Modernity and Identity Politics (SAR Press 2009). He is completing his second book, Before and After Genocide in Guatemala: Re-Building the Maya World Through Literature (1960-2012).