Race, Massacre, and Historical Memory: The Case of Guatemala with Luis Rodrigo Salvadó

 Learning About the Guatemalan Civil War

When I heard about this webinar, I knew I wanted to attend for multiple reasons. First, I am writing my semester-long project in my Myth-Folklore class on Mayan folktales, and the stories I write take place in Guatemala. Second, in high school, I took multiple trips to Guatemala, and many of the people we met told stories about losing family members in the violent civil war during the 1980s. I wanted to learn about this violence from a more holistic, historical perspective. I knew that the war was tragic based off of one person's story, but during the presentation I learned that there was a total of 669 massacres throughout the war—it was even more deadly than I expected.

During this talk, Luis Rodrigo Salvado talked about the complex ethnic relationships in Guatemala, because the talk was held in remembrance of the Tulsa race massacre. In Guatemala, Ladino and various indigenous Maya groups being targeted at different times. During the massacres of the 1980s, the Maya communities were targeted. These were the same communities that had been held back from economic development and that were excluded from greater participation in society. When they showed signs of unrest, the government cracked down with brutality.

Image from a town I visited in Guatemala, 2018.