Paper Cadavers , livre ebook

352

pages

English

Ebooks

2014

Écrit par
Weld Kirsten Weld

Publié par
Duke University Press

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352

pages

English

Ebooks

2014

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

21 mars 2014

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9780822376583

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

3 Mo

In Paper Cadavers, an inside account of the astonishing discovery and rescue of Guatemala's secret police archives, Kirsten Weld probes the politics of memory, the wages of the Cold War, and the stakes of historical knowledge production. After Guatemala's bloody thirty-six years of civil war (1960-1996), silence and impunity reigned. That is, until 2005, when human rights investigators stumbled on the archives of the country's National Police, which, at 75 million pages, proved to be the largest trove of secret state records ever found in Latin America.The unearthing of the archives renewed fierce debates about history, memory, and justice. In Paper Cadavers, Weld explores Guatemala's struggles to manage this avalanche of evidence of past war crimes, providing a firsthand look at how postwar justice activists worked to reconfigure terror archives into implements of social change. Tracing the history of the police files as they were transformed from weapons of counterinsurgency into tools for post-conflict reckoning, Weld sheds light on the country's fraught transition from war to an uneasy peace, reflecting on how societies forget and remember political violence.

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Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

21 mars 2014

EAN13

9780822376583

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

3 Mo

ABBREVIATIONS— i

AMERICAN ENCOUNTERS/GLOBAL INTERACTIONS A series edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Emily S. Rosenberg

This series aims to stimulate critical perspectives and fresh interpretive frameworks for scholarship on the history of the imposing global presence of the United States. Its primary concerns include the deployment and contestation of power, the construction and deconstruction of cultural and politi cal borders, the ﬂuid meanings of intercultural encounters, and the complex interplay between the global and the local. American Encounters seeks to strengthen dialogue and collaboration between historians of U.S. international re lations and area studies specialists.The series encourages scholarship based on multiarchival historical research. At the same time, it supports a recognition of the representa tional character of all stories about the past and promotes critical inquiry into issues of subjectivity and narrative. In the process, American Encounters strives to understand the context in which meanings related to nations, cultures, and political economy are continually produced, challenged, and reshaped.

PAPER CADAVERS

KIRSTEN WELD

T H E AR C H I V E S O F D I C TATO R S H I P

I N G UAT E MAL A

duke university press

durham and london 2014

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Weld, Kirsten, 1982– Paper cadavers : the archives of dictatorship in Guatemala / Kirsten Weld. pages cm—(American encounters/global interactions) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn978-0-8223-5597-7 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn978-0-8223-5602-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Guatemala—Politics and government—1945–1985—Sources. 2. Guatemala. Policía Nacional. Archivo Histórico. 3. Guatemala—Relations—United States—Sources. 4. United States—Relations—Guatemala—Sources. 5. Archives—Political aspects. I. Title. II. Series: American encounters/global interactions. f1466.5.w452014 972.8105'2—dc23 2013026391

Photographs on cover and p. i by Daniel Hernández-Salazar and used by permission of the photographer.

For the workers, past and present,

of the Proyecto para la Recuperación del

Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional

CONTENTS

List of Abbreviations ix Acknowledgments xiii

introduction1 The Power of Archival Thinking

PART I:EXPLOSIONS AT THE ARCHIVES 27 chapter 1:Excavating Babylon 29 chapter2: Archival Culture, State Secrets, and the Archive Wars 50 chapter3: How theGuerrillero69Became an Archivist

PART II:ARCHIVES AND COUNTERINSURGENCY IN COLD WAR GUATEMALA chapter4: Building Counterinsurgency Archives 91 chapter5: Recycling the National Police in War, Peace, and Post-Peace 119

PART III:ARCHIVES AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION IN POSTWAR GUATEMALA chapter1536: Revolutionary Lives in the Archives chapter1837: Archives and the Next Generation(s)

PART IV:PASTS PRESENT AND THE FUTURE IMPERFECT chapter8: Changing the Law of What Can Be Said, and Done 213 chapter9: Conclusion: The Possibilities and Limitations of Archival Thinking 236

Notes 257

Bibliography 301

Index 323

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Association of University Students, University of San Carlos(Asociación de Estudiantes Universitarios)

Accord on the Strengthening of Civil Power and the Role of the Armed Forces in a Democratic Society (Acuerdo de Fortaleci-miento del Poder Civil y Función del Ejército en una Sociedad Democrática)

General Archives of Central America (Archivo General de Centroamérica)

Archives and Support Services of the Presidential General Staff (Archivos Generales y Servicios Apoyados del Estado Mayor Presidencial)

Historical Archives of the National Police (Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional)

Agency for International Development

Nationalist Republican Alliance, El Salvador (Alianza Republicana Nacionalista)

Association of Military Veterans of Guatemala (Asociación de Veteranos Militares de Guatemala)

Special Investigations and Narcotics Brigade (Brigada de Investiga-ciones Especiales y Narcóticos)

Special Operations Reaction Brigade (Brigada de Reacción deOperaciones Especiales)

Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations (Comité Coordinador de Asociaciones Agrícolas, Comerciales, Industriales, y Financieras)

Anti-Communist Council of Guatemala (Consejo Anticomunista de Guatemala)

International Advisory Board, Project for the Recovery of the Na-tional Police Historical Archives (Consejo Consultivo Internacional)

National Advisory Board, Project for the Recovery of the National Police Historical Archives (Consejo Consultivo Nacional)

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