Stateness as Landgrab: A Political History of Maya Dispossession in Guatemala

Castro, Juan E. De; Picq, Manuela Lavinas

doi:10.1353/aq.2017.0065

Cited by 18 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…In the cases discussed here, public victims were often “unidentified” or their bodies were described as “unclaimed”. This discursive coding once again conjures the settler colonial dynamics discussed earlier: by racially prefiguring particular spatialities as “unclaimed” “wastelands” (Castro and Picq 2017), the bodies in those spaces become disposable. The absence of friends or kin to “claim” victims’ bodies strengthens the “ sexoservidoras ” or “ mareras ” narrative offered by state agents and subsequently crystallised in media.…”

Section: Social Circle Failurementioning

confidence: 88%

“…Simpson’s (2016) latter insight is crucial to the analysis that follows: because of the (racialised) land that they are taken to represent, indigenous women’s bodies are pre‐figured as “already violated” and thus “violatable”. Indeed, understanding why public femicide victims emerge representationally as “the garbage of society” in Guatemala requires accounting for the ways in which indigenous women’s bodies are pre‐figured as embodying spaces framed as “wastelands” by colonial dynamics (Castro and Picq 2017), and thinking through the implications of these logics. As Sherene Razack (2000) has argued, space is necessarily racialised in settler societies: public streets and marginalised neighbourhoods are framed as “occupied by racial Others”, which produces enormous consequences for indigenous and poor (and thus racialised) women.…”

Section: Settler Spaces Disposable Bodiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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“The Garbage of Society”: Disposable Women and the Socio‐Spatial Scripts of Femicide in Guatemala

Fuentes

2020

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This paper explores the processes of meaning-making around femicide in Guatemala, highlighting how particular bodies and spaces are pre-figured as "disposable" through racialised and gendered imaginaries. I draw upon Butlerian epistemologies of violence and indigenous and feminist scholarship from Guatemala and the Americas to analyse why femicides are scripted differently for victims who emerge in "public" spatial formations. Grounded in analysis of the main national newspaper's reporting and the state's regulatory framework around violence, and supplemented with interviews and ethnographic observations that emerged in the context of a high-profile "private" femicide, I argue that "public" victims are read relationally against two subjects who-through reactivated historical scripts of violence-help communicate public victims' disposability. This paper contributes a rich account of the socio-spatial logics informing how bodies matter in Guatemala; more broadly, it emphasises the productive work of states and powerful institutions like media in reinforcing hierarchies between victims of femicide. Resumen: Este art ıculo explora los procesos mediante los cuales se interpreta el femicidio en Guatemala, enfatizando los imaginarios racistas y sexistas que prefiguran ciertos cuerpos y espacios como "desechables". Mi trabajo se basa en epistemolog ıas Butlerianas de la violencia y las obras de mujeres ind ıgenas y feministas de Guatemala y las Am ericas, con el fin de analizar la manera particular en que se presentan los casos de v ıctimas de femicidio que emergen de formaciones espaciales "p ublicas". Bas andome en un an alisis de reportajes del peri odico de mayor circulaci on en el pa ıs y las pol ıticas estatales alrededor de la violencia, suplementado con entrevistas y observaciones etnogr aficas que emergieron en el contexto de un caso considerado de alto impacto, sostengo que las v ıctimas "p ublicas" se presentan en relaci on a dos sujetos quienesa trav es de discursos hist oricos reactivadoscomunican la desechabilidad de las v ıctimas "p ublicas". Este art ıculo brinda un recuento de las l ogicas socioespaciales que informan el significado de los cuerpos en Guatemala; en t erminos m as generales, enfatiza el trabajo productivo de los estados y de instituciones poderosas como los medios de comunicaci on, para reforzar las jerarqu ıas de las v ıctimas de femicidio.

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Section: Social Circle Failurementioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Settler Spaces Disposable Bodiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“The Garbage of Society”: Disposable Women and the Socio‐Spatial Scripts of Femicide in Guatemala

Fuentes

2020

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“…In a meeting with the community assembly, residents of Sachaj explained that they relied on an agrarian heritage that is highly communal in nature-since there was no individual title; no one person was able to sell their land entitlements in the absence of broad consent. The Peace Accords changed that with a new mandate on land administration authority, and with an emphasis on individual land titles (see [46] for more on land titles and the history of dispossession in Guatemala). On the one hand, this indeed upset communal land holdings.…”

Section: Respect and Protect-land Accessmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Tenure Guidelines in Policy and Practice: Democratizing Land Control in Guatemala

Tramel

2019

Land

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This paper explores the challenges for democratizing land and natural resource control in Guatemala through use of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests (Tenure Guidelines). This international human rights instrument comes at a critical moment, in which the current global land rush has shaped contemporary agrarian transformation with serious implications for the right to food and control of natural resources. The Tenure Guidelines provide us with a unique opportunity to put land and natural resource tenure squarely under the prescriptions of international human rights law, rather than allowing tenure to be subsumed by a narrow understanding of property rights based on civil and merchant law. In Guatemala, we are witnessing a political opening, where the government has incorporated the language of the Tenure Guidelines into its regulatory framework unlike any other country in Latin America. At the same time, the world watches on while a slow-motion coup engulfs the Central American country, reflecting a global trend of gutting democracies and coopting the language and legislation meant to protect them. Thus, the implementation of the Tenure Guidelines is strongly contested by state and corporate actors seeking to use the instrument in order to gain political legitimacy for the expansion of agribusiness like oil palm and sugarcane, and other forms of extractive industry. This paper’s findings indicate that when applied together with a rights-based approach, the Tenure Guidelines are a powerful social and political tool. Such is especially true of the most marginalized populations who require protection and respect for their existing tenure rights, promotion of reforms for better access to and control over land and resources, and restoration of tenure rights resulting from displacement or dispossession.

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“…El tercero de los pliegues contrahegemónicos de cara a las continuidades históricas del despojo agrario y la exclusión social es el manejo colectivo del bosque en el occidental departamento de Totonicapán. Este, de hecho, es un caso abundantemente documentado (Veblen, 1978) que supone el ejercicio descentralizado e ininterrumpido del poder político más antiguo en el continente americano (Castro & Picq, 2017). En este caso, la constitución de una subjetividad en resistencia en términos agrarios pasó por negociaciones con la Corona de España durante los años de la Colonia y un tejido social pacientemente constituido desde unas oportunas lecturas de la coyuntura.…”

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Coyuntura agraria y desigualdad en Guatemala, un contrato social postergado Agrarian conjuncture and inequality in Guatemala, a postponed social contract

Prado-Córdova¹

2020

CSH

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La mirada de la larga duración ofrece la coherencia diacrónica para un análisis teórico de las continuidades agrarias de la realidad guatemalteca, desde una perspectiva metodológica inspirada en la ecología política. Se parte de los principios agrarios coloniales propuestos por Severo Martínez Peláez y de sus equivalentes contemporáneos, en una sociedad cuya estructura agraria presenta síntomas agudos de injusticia social, deterioro medioambiental y conflictividad rural. El acaparamiento de tierras en este contexto es un fenómeno arraigado que perpetúa las causas estructurales de la pobreza rural. Se evidencia, de hecho, una estructuración de lo agrario inspirada en un ethos señorial heredado de un pasado colonial y de las prácticas liberales puestas en marcha a finales del siglo XIX. Por otro lado, este trabajo rescata los instantes de humanidad benjamianos asociados a los esfuerzos contrahegemónicos encabezados por un sujeto colectivo en resistencia y, en definitiva, por una lógica coherente con una ética de la tierra. Finalmente, las continuidades identificadas se describen en el marco de una realidad contemporánea profundamente contradictoria, en la que asistimos a la disputa por el relato de un mundo agrario abocado al colapso de la agricultura campesina, como resultado de la reificación generalizada de la vida rural. Avances de este estudio fueron presentados como comunicación en el II Congreso Internacional: Transiciones en la Agricultura y la Sociedad Rural, Los desafíos globales de la Historia Rural, en junio de 2018 en la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, España.

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Stateness as Landgrab: A Political History of Maya Dispossession in Guatemala

Cited by 18 publications

References 1 publication

“The Garbage of Society”: Disposable Women and the Socio‐Spatial Scripts of Femicide in Guatemala

“The Garbage of Society”: Disposable Women and the Socio‐Spatial Scripts of Femicide in Guatemala

The Tenure Guidelines in Policy and Practice: Democratizing Land Control in Guatemala

<b>Coyuntura agraria y desigualdad en Guatemala, un contrato social postergado</b><br/><i> Agrarian conjuncture and inequality in Guatemala, a postponed social contract<i>

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