Personal experiences and terror

I think that Lovell's use of personal stories in the broader context of the civil war is extremely effective. I have read other articles about massacres in Guatemala and other countries in Central America, but in a lot of ways Lovell's chapters were more effective; the personal experiences give insight as to an overarching terror. Like other students have said in their posts, this terror not only involves murder, but torture, mutilation, and pitting neighbors against each other as well. The army put the Mayas and other Guatemalans under a constant mentality of terror. In this way, they could more effectively break down opposition than through killing alone.

Rigoberta Menchu demonstrates this mentality of terror in her testimonies. The terror is experienced by entire communities and not just by the individual; Lovell uses this argument to justify the inclusion of somewhat innacurate material in her memoire. His reasoning is that Menchu is giving the public a "collective, repressentative witness" of the horrors that the Mayans endured (23). The fact that not all of these atrocities were aimed directly at Menchu is unimportant; Mayans all over Guatemala had to deal with horrors that we can't imagine. The mentality of terror is real even if not every single fact in the memoire is perfect.

(On a slightly off-topic note, I disagree with Lovell's argument to some extent. He is condescending towards Stoll, and Stoll does make a valid argument. There are a lot of good reasons to avoid exageration and/or keep to actual facts as much as possible. I think that the best reason is this:
I know that what happened in Guatemala was horrible, and I don't need to base all of my knowledge of what happened on Menchu's memoire. However, many people in her target audience might rely completely on her book for information. For them, learning that some of the information is false may unfairly undermine the seriousness and tragedy of what happened in Guatemala. There is really no exageration needed and the facts speak for themselves. That is another reason why I really liked the Lovell reading for this week. He included true stories from several different witnesses. This helped to enhance my understanding of what happened without raising concern about whether the events were factual or not.)

On page 28, Lovell refers to 'violence institutionalized' by the government/army. He also talks about Mayan traditions of community and reverence for the land, and how these traditions probably gave Mayas more ability to cope with violence than their poor ladino counterparts. These quotes lead me to the question of where Guatemala can go from here. It seems that these divides between cultures and socioeconomic classes only get bigger as time goes on. Can everybody live together and respect each other in the future?