In the aftermath of Genocide: Guatemala’s failed reconciliation

Abstract

This article seeks to understand the factors that have impeded meaningful intergroup reconciliation in Guatemala by drawing on scholarship addressing reconciliation, the connections between ideology and violence and wider literature in Peace and Conflict Studies. The article interrogates how the ideological and identitarian frameworks that drove the narratives that precipitated and sustained Guatemala’s genocide against the indigenous Maya have continued to shape the post-genocide social and political landscape. It is the continued instrumentalization of these frameworks in the wake of Guatemala’s peace process that has impeded intergroup reconciliation. Specifically, the article contends that a core driver of Guatemala’s failed reconciliation has been the reticence of the economic and political elites and the Guatemalan military to accept the revision of Guatemala’s conflict history and any meaningful challenge to elite privilege and power. As a result, Guatemala experiences a nexus of continuity between the past and present, between war and peace.