Seeking the Right Side of Truth

Juan Manuel Gerónimo’s Testimony:
“We won’t be afraid. We will do this together. Because if we say that one person is in charge of this work, then we are just giving them a new martyr. But if we are all together, we can do this work. What we are doing is legal and the law isn’t going to put all of us in jail.” [from Sanford, pg. 39]

Over the past few weeks we have witnessed a variety of upheavals across the globe. Places like Iran and Honduras gaining attention for political turmoil. Over the past month or so, I have been pouring over books recounting the Guatemalan history of violence and civil war. It’s an uncanny experience to watch the present through the ghosts of political past. It is in regard to Honduras that I’m most tentative in my reactions—less so with the events in Iran.

My unease reached its peak as I read a response to an article I linked to my Facebook page. I posted the link because for me it represented the challenges of trying to understand what is going on in Honduras. The response only confirmed my feelings of caution. I feel that recent history has taught us that the only way to respond to these situations is with aggressive rhetoric. But is that the best route to handling global crises? It becomes a battle of who is right and who is wrong (in the most simplistic sense of the word). Ultimately it turns into a desire to lay blame completely on one side in order to feel morally, dare I say, righteous, about taking the other side. But the history in Central America is terribly complicated and to try to make black and white distinctions is utterly impossible for me. The back and forth battle for power seems to swing wildly in nations struggling for political and democratic stability. Fragile governments struggling to gain autonomous momentum after years of colonization, political meddling, and economic turmoil. These battles do not erupt out of nowhere. There is a deep history and the U.S. is not an innocent bystander in all of this, which I believe raises the stakes of our response to these global events.


Buried Secrets: This brings me back to my research on the history of the civil war in Guatemala. That past is fraught with uncertainty about the truth of La Violencia—the genocide that was wielded upon the Mayan people in the 1980s and through the early 1990s. There are debates about whether or not the guerrillas were responsible for provoking the massacres committed by the army across numerous villages. There is a perspective, perpetuated by Robert Stoll (1998) and his critique of Rigoberta Menchú’s narrative of the civil war, which asserts that the Mayan people were victims in the middle of a battle between the government’s army and the guerrilla army. That both armies used the people for their own selfish ends and the people became victims of power plays.

Victoria Sanford, in her book, Buried Secrets, recounts the excavation of clandestine cemeteries from the civil war and the Commission for Historical Clarification’s (Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico) search for who was responsible for the mass killings that took place in Guatemala during the civil war. The stakes of the right side of truth are high and can dictate public policy, political process, individual and community healing, and a host of issues for the nation. Because the stakes for truth are so high, it’s understandable that people would fight for their truth to be the truth of an event.

In their search for truth, the commission determined that the ‘two armies explanation’ asserted by Stoll for La Violencia is an inaccurate and incomplete explanation. In her book, Sanford provides a comprehensive explanation of the way in which the army enacted its terror of the Mayan people. She identifies seven phases of violence that constitute the “phenomenology of terror” (pg. 123) that occurred in Guatemala. These are: 1) premassacre community organizing and experiences with violence; 2) the massacre; 3) postmassacre life in flight in the mountains; 4) army captures and community surrenders; 5) model villages; 6) ongoing militarization of community life; and 7) living memory of terror (pg. 123). Within the phases of community surrender and the development of model villages, the army undermined the actions of the guerrillas and many innocent people, calling anybody who questioned the authority of the army ‘subversive’ and ‘guerrillas,’ which would lead to violent responses and fear among the people. As Sanford explains,

Social justice organizing was always met with accusations of leaders being ‘subversive’ or ‘guerrilla.’ These accusations heightened community fears of the army ‘ punishing’ them for these activities. Threats from military commissioners, sporadic army occupations of villages, and assemblies of civil patrollers at local army bases to denounce human rights activities reinforced ambient fear of the living memory of terror. It is within this memory that courageous community leaders came forward in the 1990s to demand justice. (pg. 144)

Ghosts of Coups Past: Military coups dominate the history of Central and South America, so it makes sense that to have the military forcibly remove President Zelaya from his home in the early morning of June 28 in his pajamas would bring back fears of that past. I can’t help but be reminded of President Arbenz in Guatemala being strip-searched in the airport before being sent off to Mexico. In the wake of his expulsion, Castillo Armas took control of the country and began the string of dictatorships that would rule over the country for decades.

Regardless of whether or not the military in Honduras was simply carrying out the orders of the Supreme Court and Congress, the image of that past cannot leave my mind. I wonder, even if they were trying to prevent Zelaya from democratically planting the seeds of a dictatorship, was it the best way to remove him? I can’t say, because I am not there and I only know what I’ve read on the situation. But I can’t help but feel the sharp pain of the deeper past in Central America and then the more recent 2002 Chávez debacle. And so I ask again, is aggressive rhetoric the best route to handling global crises such as these?

Reading academic books on Guatemala as I pour over news reports and blogs about the events in Honduras I find my skepticism grow. The search for truth is a process, especially when confronted with the histories and stories of people living through (or who have lived through) social upheaval and trauma. But people must decide on the truth after reading and researching events going on around them. Something I am working on at the moment. I just find in these moments that I’m unable to complete my thoughts. I’m unable to come to a final decision. Perhaps because so much is still unfolding—both in the news on Honduras and my research on Guatemala. This is particularly true with today's outbreak of violence as a result of Zelaya’s attempted return to Honduras. The one thing I am certain of is that we cannot be too hasty with our judgments and that in moments such as these I’m better at asking questions than coming to clear resolutions.


Works Cited:

• Sanford, Victoria. Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
• Stoll, Robert. Rigobera Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Boulder: Westview Press, 1998.

Remembering and Misremembering: Marking Time with Michael Jackson and Crissy

Fall of 1983: We were running out to the playground. Crissy had her boom box in her hand and we scoured the playground for a place to ourselves—but not too far away from others. We did want to be noticed. So we found a place on the jungle gym. She balanced the boom box on the top of the bars and pressed play. There was the music and then that voice to remember. “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” waved through the air. We laughed and jumped around to the music. The warm fall air, filled with the smell of dried leaves, lingered around us as we danced and played.

June 25-6, 2009: When I heard that Michael Jackson was dead, I was sitting at Atomic with Angela. We were talking about our research on Guatemala. I didn’t believe it at first. I looked at the CNN headline and just sort of thought it was a joke. I still don’t really believe it’s true to be honest with you. Part of me wants it to be a big publicity stunt for his great comeback. As I write this, though, it brings back lots of memories of growing up. I’ve been in an '80s nostalgia mode these days, so this just tipped me over the edge.

Remembering December 2, 1983: Crissy, and I eagerly awaited the world premiere of the “Thriller” video. Crissy was my best friend in the 5th and 6th grade. She was my first best friend. I remember being excited that the video would premiere on Friday Night Videos because my family did not have cable. Having it on Friday Night Videos meant that I could actually see the video for the first time when the rest of the country saw it for the first time. It was a time to celebrate, because not only was the video premiering, it was also less than a week before my birthday. For the occasion my parents let me invite Crissy over to spend the night.

That night has been significant for me—and not just because we watched “Thriller” for the first time. I was in the sixth grade and my family and I were living in the farmhouse in Defiance, Missouri. It is a house full of terrible memories, but that night—that night was one of the best nights I had in that house. I had a wood stove in my room and I remember that it was nice and warm—so toasty. Our firewood supply was often touch and go and luckily we had enough before our next trip into the woods. (Yeah, it was the sole source of heat for us.) So Crissy and I spent the evening doing all those things girls typically do. It was rare for me, because I almost never invited friends over to my house. My father was just too unpredictable with his drinking to trust bringing friends over. But this was an exception. It was near my birthday and it was Michael Jackson. I took the risk.

We had so much fun that night. Crissy and I played games, did each other’s make-up and hair, gossiped about the boys we liked at school, and, of course, talked about how awesome the video was going to be. By the time Friday Night Videos came on, we were poised with our popcorn—nearly ready to jump out of our skin with excitement. We watched it on the small tv in my room, because we wanted to digest it by ourselves, without parents. Crissy loved Michael Jackson. It was on the playground out school that I first heard Thriller. We were in our own little world when we listed to it at recess. When I would go to her house, she would pull out her album, opening it up to look at the full-length photo of Jackson that lay within it. White suit, cool hair. As the album played on her turntable, we would read the sleeve over and over again—memorizing the lyrics and all the acknowledgments.

June 25-26, 2009: So I’m sitting here listening to Larry King Live with all the famous people talking about the life of Jackson and their experiences with him. It’s strange, but I get frustrated with these obsessive tributes to famous people who die. It makes me feel disconnected from my own emotional responses to those figures. It becomes less and less meaningful as the news shows try to capture the moment as it is happening. There is no time to mull things over, to let yourself digest, not only the person’s death, but what such an event means to your own life. And it is an event. Michael Jackson was not just another person, his image was no longer his own. And if any of you are like me, you build your memories around those images, those events. Like it or not, popular culture is a marker for all of us. It reminds us of our immortality. It provides a way for us to remember events in our own lives—events that might otherwise melt away into the recesses of our minds. Oh, how I am a product of the 1970s and 1980s.

Without the marker of Thriller and the video’s premiere, I might not still remember the deeper things that were going on in my life in that period between 1982 and 1984. Or at least I would never be able to remember that time with the mixture of joy, bitterness, dark humor, and hope that currently defines those years for me. At same time, I find myself creating a narrative around big events, even if they don’t exactly align in real time.

Misremembering December 8, 1980: Here is how I always tell the story of what happened the day that John Lennon died: It was my birthday and we were living in the farmhouse. I threw a big birthday party with most of the girls from my class. I remember my mom glued to the television that evening, crying. I felt sad for my mom and sad that Lennon was dead. I just knew something big was happening even if at that moment I was more consumed with my friends and the drama of being a young girl than the news reports.

But that story is now all mixed up for me. The timing is all wrong. As I was reflecting on the date of when I watched “Thriller” with Crissy, it didn’t jibe with my memory of events during our time living in the farmhouse. If it was 1983 when I was sitting there with Crissy, watching “Thriller” and John Lennon died in 1980—the day of my 9th birthday, then that means we were not living in the farmhouse. We were living in the mobile home in Bonne Terre, Missouri. But that memory is so vivid. So clear. I see my mom on the couch in the living room in the farmhouse, crying and pacing. I see myself watching her from the doorway leading into the living room, leaving my friends in the back rooms on occasion in order to check in on her. It is so tangible, so real.

It was one of those dependable memories—until today, June 25-26, 2009. The story is no longer possible and it blurs into the many memories of that time in my life. Those memories are like helium balloons floating in the sky. They float and fluctuate, some fly away out of sight, some bump into other memories. Most are not attached to solid ground and I try to catch their strings to grasp onto something—anything that has coherency. But I find myself making and remaking those stories. Clumping events together that I know did not happen together in real time. All those memories of moving back and forth between California and Missouri are one big streak of movement with anecdotes making pock marks along Interstate 70. And then the years between the trailer in Bonne Terre and the farmhouse in Defiance merge, conflate, and push there way in and out of my consciousness.

Remembering December 2, 1983: After watching the video and talking about the dancing, the storyline—just completely dissecting each moment of the video, we got ready for bed. We stayed up, talking into the night about almost everything. It was the first time I felt I had a real friendship, that I had let the walls of my secret world down to share with somebody. Up until that time, I never really had a close friend. I just lived in my own world, which consisted largely of books. That night was the first time I ever told anybody that my dad was an alcoholic and that he was prone to fits of rage. She, then, shared with me her own struggles at home. I do not feel comfortable revealing those struggles, but suffice it to say, it made me realize that I was not alone. Although I would retreat into my shell about a year later when our friendship dissolved (it just couldn’t survive the transition from grade school to junior high), that moment was an awakening. It opened up something inside of me. It is a soft memory that rests outside of the many jagged and sharp memories that define that time in my life.

June 26, 2009: I keep looking at the dates of my life in Missouri, calculating the years and where I was living and when. It is messy. My memory of that time is full of mistakes and errors. I keep leaping for a string to attach at least one memory to solid ground. I’d like to think that the “Thriller” night is one such memory, but who knows. Right now, though, I don’t care. It is real. And it is me. It is how I can (and want to) mark the trajectory of my life. And I will take Crissy and Michael Jackson with me in this memory journey.

Walking...Meandering

I could see him walking toward me in the distance. He was stumbling up the road. It was clear he was drunk even from several blocks away. He would walk straight for a few steps, then veer to the right, catching himself and straightening out his gait. As he crossed the street, I was worried he would get off course again and walk into the middle of the street, but he didn’t. He kept getting closer to me, stumbling and swerving. I had a momentary pang of nervousness, like I wanted to find an alternative route to walk. I’m not sure why entirely. But I realized it was not only impossible to change my course at that point but I felt terrible that I was treating this poor man like a pariah and diminishing his humanity with each glance to find a way out of interacting with him. And I knew I would have an interaction with him. I seem to attract the attention of inebriated older men. It’s never a scary thing, but it is always awkward and uncomfortable for me.

Like the time in Buffalo when I was walking to a local café one morning. My boyfriend was with me, but that didn’t matter. The man came directly up to me and started telling me about how he was just released from jail. Basically incarcerated for being drunk in public and having nowhere to go. You see, I seem to inspire conversations with these men about their lives and struggles. So I listen. He told me that I looked like a kind person and he kept telling me he was glad he ran into me, thanking me for listening to him and giving me a hug. He smelled of alcohol and stale cigarettes. He wanted nothing from me except for me to listen to him.

I think some of it comes from my penchant for walking. No matter what city I’ve lived in, I am compelled walk around it as much as I can. I make sure I don’t just view where I live from the false security of the car. You miss a lot about a city when you just drive through it. When you walk a city, you take in a lot of subtle undertones that make the city what it is. You are forced to interact with other people, animals, nature, the buildings—even if it is for just a moment. These interactions taught me how to feel out people and figure out when it’s okay to smile and say hello as I pass and when it’s better to just look straight ahead toward my destination. You learn a lot about yourself in those moments.

So this man kept walking toward me and I was struggling for the best way to pass him. Do I make eye contact and smile? Do I look at the ground and pretend to be in my own head space? I think I was struggling because on my walks in Fargo, I have not had to face this type of situation. I know it sounds strange, but it was out of context. It was a Sunday morning. It was Father’s Day and here was this older man walking toward me visibly under the influence of alcohol. You see, this town is good at hiding its problems with alcohol and homelessness. You don’t really see homelessness in Fargo unless you really look for it. It’s the only city I’ve lived in that didn’t have a visible homeless population. And it’s not because homelessness doesn’t exist here. I think that is the misconception. Instead, I think the homeless population is marginalized and rendered invisible by a city that misunderstands what homelessness is and who is affected by it.

It’s unclear if this man was homeless, but I could not help but wonder what kind of life this man lived. And what led him to this moment when our paths crossed. I know a lot of strange things led me to that moment, so I can’t even begin to imagine the circumstances that led to his presence that morning. To see this man was out of context for me in Fargo and it immediately transported me to other moments, other walks in other cities when there was dynamic public space with a variety of characters and individuals that would enter and exit my life.

Working at Bulldog News on University in Seattle was always an experience with the local homeless community. One older gentleman would come in regularly. He was probably in his 70s. I can still see his face. Thick white whiskers all over his face. Long eyebrows with eyes sparkling and glistening as he spoke to me. His face had deep wrinkles and you could see how the sun and dirt had darkened his face and neck. His clothes were stained and worn and he usually had a stale and pungent odor. He had a shopping cart overflowing with newspapers and books that he would push around. He would park the cart at our door and ask me to watch it for him. He would then browse all the political magazines for the evening. He never bothered me. Often I would work the night shift with only one other person—the barista. So, he would talk to me at length about various political conspiracy theories. You could tell this man had one of those brilliant minds that disconnected him from ‘normal’ life--whatever that means. He would never answer my questions about his life. He would only talk about politics and his current quest for a book or information. He always reminded me that looks are deceiving and you cannot judge a person by their appearance. I would see him often as I walked to work or school or wherever I happened to be going. Even after I left the job at the newsstand and started working at the university library, I would see him there, coming in on the cold wet days to read. I’m not sure if he knew I was the same person from the newsstand but we would still talk politics and about various theories he had about the government.

As the man came closer to me and we were about to pass, I looked at him and smiled. I realized it was the appropriate response. Nothing about him made me feel I should worry. But then I noticed he was saying something to me, so I removed my headset and stopped. He looked at me and said, “You are beautiful.” I had no idea how to respond, so I just thanked him and told him to take care. Again, the awkwardness was there, but it was only for a moment. He continued on his path and I went on mine. As I walked, I looked back to see him still stumbling and swerving.

I continued on, realizing how much I missed living in a city that afforded me various opportunities for interactions with people outside of my small social sphere. But then I also realized I, too, am responsible for my insulted day-to-day life. It’s not just Fargo. It’s also this life that I’ve created in Fargo and the place I am in my life. I miss taking chances with strangers and being reminded of the diversity of life out there. It’s too easy to create a protected world in this small community. It is too easy to make excuses for myself, worrying about what image I’m supposed to project as a professor at a university. I miss the moments in which I felt the freedom of nothing to lose and everything to gain. As I passed that man, the heaviness that marks my small world became too oppressive to ignore. And all I wanted, as I walked on and finally stopped looking back at him, was to allow the walls I built around my world to shatter, releasing the pressure and density of my fears into the expansiveness of this open flat plain in which I live…. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” –Kris Kristofferson