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4.5
To clarify - the title says "Latin America", but aside from the Intro and Conclusion the entire book is about the Maya of the Polochic Valley in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.The author actually changed how I think about 20th century Central America, and he openly starts by challenging a common narrative. If you look at Guatemala from a big picture, you will see the descent from Spanish exploitative negligence to 19th century planter tyranny to 20th century mass genocide. This is all true, but the author highlights an alternate perspective. Latin America as a region is plagued by political violence, and in light of that what is remarkable is the tenacity of communities that spend generations fighting for their rights and dignity.The "Last Colonial Massacre" is a reference to the 1978 Panzos Massacre in Guatemala, which marked a turning point from periods of protest, negotiation, and concessions to blatant state mass murder. The author explores the period before that - roughly 1920 to 1978 - and how the Maya peasants of the Polochic Valley negotiated their situations with the government and with ladino landowners. This encompasses the decade of the far-right Ubico dictatorship, 1944 October Revolution that brought Arevlo and then Arbenz to power via free and fair elections, the 1954 coup, and the subsequent decades of ever-intensifying state repression and terror.The Maya peasants were always on the back foot - they were the main economic producers, but they did not have the legal title of the landlords nor the weapons of the state. And yet, we can follow the careers and tactics of labor organizers as they sought to end the repressive laws that tied workers to the land, while denying them ownership of the land they worked. Through the author's work, we can examine this history with all of it knottiness, and the unsexy back-and-forth of conflict and negotiation, petition and violence, and community divisions over how to proceed.We can follow the earliest activist, José Icó - dressed in "blue wool pants, white shirts, dark jackets, and white rimmed hats" (p. 34) as he used populist authoritarianism to "round up Q'echi's to vote for revolutionary candidates" (p. 62), and we can see how even some Q'echi's were not in full support. "When asked if any Q'echi's opposed the reform, he confessed that a few did but they were wealthy and lived in Carchá's center. When questioned about rural Q'echi's who testified on Alvarado's behalf, or about why supposed support quickly turned after the fall of Arbenz, Cucul admits that there were some who did not agree with the Revolution" (p. 61).We can read about how in 1952, the CIA dumped plans to openly topple Arbenz because Tacho Somoza was a blabbermouth who "began talking openly of invasion plans" (p.77).We can see just how different the Catholic Church was a few generations ago. In the 1950s, the Catholic Archbishop of Guatemala wrote that "The disorganized tribes that inhabited our America would have disappeared had not the Spanish conquest arrived so providentially to unite them and give their triple gifts of religion, blood, and language," or again "In the shade of Christ's cross was forged the temperate character of our ancestors, to whom we owe what is noble and generous in our high classes and patient and abnegated in the popular classes" (p. 80 - 81). This is a prelate who opposed not only social security but the entire Enlightenment project.We can read about the interesting scenario where a planter actually sold off his land (relatively) cheaply to his former workers, on condition that they pay off the mortgage. The community was divided 50-50 between those who would accept this and those who wanted the government to grant the land for free. As a result, the ones who accepted paying burned down the houses of all who refused and destroyed their crops, forcing them out. (p. 114).The 20th century conflict between Maya peasants and ladino landlords did not just consist of contemporary displeasure, but also entailed generations of exploitation and disagreement about the nature of society. "I fed your grandfather, I fed your father, and I fed you," stated one planter, to which an unmoved peasant leader supposedly retorted "No, you exploited my grandfather, you exploited my father, and now you are exploiting me" (p. 147).What is amazing is that after the colonial period, "republican" governments resurrected or even intensified the systems of colonial exploitation "republican governments resurrected a range of colonial coercive mechanisms, from debt peonage and vagrancy laws to government organized labor drafts, in order to secure workers for agricultural commodity production" (p. 179). The army itself "continued to view national security as synonymous with a defense of social hierarchy" (p. 163), and it is was this intensifying exploitation that escalated to the guerrilla movement and reactionary genocide of the later 20th century.The conclusion is an absolute masterpiece, that ties this local story into the author's broader point about Latin America in the Cold War. The story of social movements and democracy does not begin in the last quarter of the 20th century, but extends throughout the 20th century and even into the 19th. Millions of people suffered unspeakable brutalization, and yet - generation after generation, and in the wake of deepening repression - people still fought for their rights. The author paints the grim yet hopeful image of a continent where ordinary people really do believe in the ideals of liberty, equality, fraternity. This is the story - the grim, blood-soaked, and forgotten story - of ordinary people struggling for Enlightenment democracy.
