Center Research Fellow Pilar Pérez presents on Indigenous territory and displacement in Guatemalan genocide survivor testimony

On April 11, 2024, 2023-2024 Center Research Fellow Pilar Pérez (Professor of History, National University of Río Negro, Argentina) delivered a lecture entitled “Indigenous Territory and Displacement in Guatemalan Genocide Survivor Testimony.” In her lecture, Professor Pérez discussed the 40 oral history testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive (VHA) she analyzed during her semester-long residency at the Center. In these testimonies, Pérez paid attention to how Guatemalan genocide survivors talked about Indigenous displacement, their relationships with territory and place, and how those relationships changed as genocidal violence escalated and changed the landscape.

From the Truth Commissions in the wake of the Guatemalan genocide, it is now known that over 80% of the victims were Indigenous Mayan people and over 600 villages were destroyed. Over the course of the Guatemalan genocide, 1.5 million people were displaced. In Guatemala, by the 1980s, Indigenous genocide had been ongoing for 500 years. However, Pérez noted that each case of violence must be examined in specific historical contexts. The Guatemalan government employed scorched earth campaign tactics, which fundamentally changed the ways Indigenous Guatemalans experienced and perceived territory.

In her lecture, Pérez focused on three regions in particular: Ixil, Rio Négro, and Ixcan. Her goal was not to make comparative conclusions, but to demonstrate how changes in the landscape differed throughout the country. Ixil was long-standing Indigenous territory. This region was fairly remote and largely disconnected from the rest of the country. With the Guatemalan government labeling this region a “red zone,” state actors surveilled the region heavily. Río Negro was also long-standing Indigenous territory while Ixcan was a fairly recent settlement, with the settlement taking shape in the 1970s.

In these three regions, Pérez centered her analysis around three focal points. 1) Milpa were the fields where crops were grown. They were the centers of many Indigenous societies and a site of knowledge transmission. Genocidaires burned down the Milpa, destroying many crucial aspects of Indigenous societies. 2.) Mountains were places of hiding and places of survival during the genocide. Prior to mass violence, mountains were a place that brought fear and problems (such as wild animals), but during the violence, many Indigenous groups retreated to the mountains where they organized new ways of living and replanted crops. 3.) State actors built model villages, where new ideas about citizenship were discussed and imposed. The ways in which Indigenous Guatemalans related to these built environments reflect the order and exploitation that the state was imposing on them, but also women knew that the threat of sexual violence was more pronounced outside of the model villages.

Throughout the lecture, Pérez demonstrated the ways in which these various focal points of Indigenous life, society, and culture changed as violence escalated in Ixil, Rio Négro, and Ixcan. Other state-built environments, such as dams, further perpetuated violence, such as with the massacres of Indigenous opponents to the Chixoy dam in 1982. In response to the violence, Indigenous groups organized cooperatives that created records of victims and formed new focal points for local groups. The perpetrators knew about the organization of these cooperatives and exploited this knowledge for maximum violence.

A lengthy and lively discussion followed Professor Pérez’s lecture. She spoke about clandestine cemeteries and the longevity of model villages after the end of genocide. She answered questions about resistance and themes of memory in testimonies. Pérez also explained her choice to use the term “la violencia” rather than genocide to describe the episodic nature of mass violence in the Guatemalan context of the 1980s.