Maya Memories of Genocide in Guatemala and Kaqchikel Survivors’ Speech

Abstract

This paper analyzes Maya-Kaqchikel survivor testimony from the genocide in Guatemala through a review of victims’ memories in truth commissions and their perspectives in post-conflict transitional justice processes. It shows that an exclusive focus on what facts survivors narrate is incomplete because of broader questions about power and culture embedded in Indigenous narration. It examines how survivors narrate their experiences based on an understanding that Mayan languages and the speech of the Kaqchikels are cultural vehicles that transmit historic memory through the centuries for speakers of Mayan languages. Thus, it argues the manner in which survivors tell their stories conveys often unrecognized cultural epistemologies and ones that often are undervalued by non-Indigenous interlocutors. Accordingly, the article presents phonological, morphological, syntactic, and discursive data from witnesses’ speech to show the pervasiveness of Kaqchikel linguistic and cultural elements that function as central vehicles of Maya epistemologies. It concludes that analytic perspectives from linguistics and anthropology provide a deepened knowledge of silenced voices in state terrorism.