Peace without social reconciliation? Understanding the trial of Generals Ríos Montt and Rodriguez Sánchez in the wake of Guatemala’s genocide

I wish to thank Bridget Conley-Zilkic and Alex de Waal at the World Peace Foundation for their financial support.This article argues that the legal trial against Generals Efraín Ríos Montt and José Mauricio Rodriguez Sánchez for genocide and crimes against humanity has evidenced the interplay between the complex factors shaping post-conflict reconstruction and social reconciliation in post-genocide Guatemala, and, ultimately, the disjunctive impact of the country’s peace process. The ‘genocide trial’ then is more than a legal process in that it represents a thermometer for Guatemala’s peace process and, ultimately, for testing the nature and stability of the post-genocide/post-conflict conjuncture. Interiorization of human rights frameworks and justice mechanisms by indigenous and human rights activists, including of the Genocide Convention, has consolidated a partial rights culture. However, the trial and the overturning of its verdict have simultaneously evidenced the instability, fragility and disjunctive nature of post-conflict peace and the continuing impact of the profound legacy of the genocide and of social authoritarianism. The article argues that while the trial has wielded broad impact within both state institutions and society, consolidating indigenous political actors, it has simultaneously fortified spoilers and evidenced indigenous collective memory as a fragmented and contested sphere.PostprintPeer reviewe

Embodied Reconciliation : A New Research Agenda

Despite a growth in research exploring corporeal dimensions of peacebuilding, scholarship addressing intergroup reconciliation after violent conflict currently pays too little attention to the human body, and to the consequences of the embodied impact of political violence upon reconciliation. Rather, research tends to focus upon the narrative and discursive aspects of relationships between formerly warring parties. As a result, little is understood about how corporeal experiences of war might influence intergroup reconciliation. This article contends that a paradigm shift towards an embodied approach to reconciliation is necessary, specifically in our understanding of three interrelated spheres of application: the conceptual-theoretical, the practical, and the policy-oriented pillars of intergroup reconciliation after atrocious violence. Reconciliation is in practice embodied; this has, to date, been under-appreciated in the literature and so we require a more body-aware approach to understanding reconciliation; that latter approach will in turn allow for more effective practical and policy-related interventions.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Jano y las caras opuestas de los derechos humanos de los pueblos indígenas

Este libro busca presentar a la comunidad académica nacional e internacional uno de los productos de trabajo de investigación del Observatorio de Redes y Acción Colectiva (ORAC) en su línea de trabajo sobre procesos transnacionales y derechos de los pueblos indígenas. Sus páginas ponen a disposición del lector un conocimiento sustantivo, fundado en investigaciones sociales, sobre la participación de representantes indígenas y especialistas en derecho de los pueblos indígenas en la promoción de causas relativas a los derechos humanos de estos pueblos. En la primera parte del volumen se presenta el proceso de internacionalización del campo de los derechos de los pueblos indígenas

Earth Impact Effects Program: A Web-based computer program for calculating the regional environmental consequences of a meteoroid impact on Earth

We have developed a Web-based program for quickly estimating the regional environmental consequences of a comet or asteroid impact on Earth(www.lpl.arizona.edu/ impacteffects). This paper details the observations, assumptions and equations upon which the program is based. It describes our approach to quantifying the principal impact processes that might affect the people, buildings, and landscape in the vicinity of an impact event and discusses the uncertainty in our predictions. The program requires six inputs: impactor diameter, impactor density, impact velocity before atmospheric entry, impact angle, the distance from the impact at which the environmental effects are to be calculated, and the target type (sedimentary rock, crystalline rock, or a water layer above rock). The program includes novel algorithms for estimating the fate of the impactor during atmospheric traverse, the thermal radiation emitted by the impact-generated vapor plume (fireball), and the intensity of seismic shaking. The program also approximates various dimensions of the impact crater and ejecta deposit, as well as estimating the severity of the air blast in both crater-forming and airburst impacts. We illustrate the utility of our program by examining the predicted environmental consequences across the United States of hypothetical impact scenarios occurring in Los Angeles. We find that the most wide-reaching environmental consequence is seismic shaking: both ejecta deposit thickness and air-blast pressure decay much more rapidly with distance than with seismic ground motion. Close to the impact site the most devastating effect is from thermal radiation; however, the curvature of the Earth implies that distant localities are shielded from direct thermal radiation because the fireball is below the horizon.The Meteoritics & Planetary Science archives are made available by the Meteoritical Society and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] for further information.Migrated from OJS platform February 202

Indigenous Politics and Democratisation in Guatemala: evolution, transformation and impact

This chapter analyses the complexities and contradictions that shape the exercise of indigenous peoples' rights in Latin America, in particular in Guatemala, by looking at the limitations to demands framed in terms of social, economic and cultural rights

Peace Stillborn? Guatemala’s Liberal Peace and the Indigenous Movement

Guatemala’s peace process, in which seventeen accords were signed, was proposed as the means through which to bring a definitive end to the causes and consequences of the country’s genocidal conflict, subsequently representing the principal motor for political democratization. Unprecedented measures aimed at redressing integrally the historical discrimination and exclusion of the majority indigenous population were adopted; the accords framed the post-conflict State as multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and pluri-lingual. This paper argues that the peace process and the content of the peace accords were undergirded by individual rights and sidelined collective rights. At the same time negotiations did not respond directly or adequately to the underlying structural causes of armed conflict (historically embedded horizontal inequalities, land distribution), nor did they incorporate sufficiently the demands and cultural focus of the majority indigenous population. Whilst civil society formally participated in the negotiations, the process lacked ownership. Indigenous movements sought to adapt the straitjacket imposed by the Liberal Peace, with varying degrees of success. The Liberal Peace, and the accompanying a rights cascade, was imposed upon a largely indifferent society by the international community and accompanied by imposed neo- liberal economic policies. By not addressing the causes of armed conflict, the design of the peace process impeded the possibility to generate minimal conditions to prevent future conflict and sowed the seeds for renewed violence, contributing to Guatemala’s spiralling post-conflict violence