The internal logic of the cosmos as 'justice' and 'reconciliation': micro-level perceptions in post-conflict Guatemala

Recently there has been greater interest from academics and practitioners in the role of 'traditional' justice mechanisms in politics of peace, reconciliation and transitional justice efforts after a period of large-scale human rights violations. However, this call for 'culturally sensitive' approaches remains at a rhetorical level. This article attempts to fill the knowledge gap of empirical local studies and focuses on post-conflict processes in Guatemala. It explores the actual and potential role of particularities of Mayan Q'eqchi' culture in local social reconstruction processes after the internal armed conflict. Based on extensive ethnographic field research, the article explores how concepts of justice and reconciliation are locally and culturally understood. It uncovers the existence of multiple ways of understanding these concepts and further, the fact that they are perceived very differently from interpretations in international law and transitional justice studies. Impunity, as defined by international law, is not the end of accountability, nor truth recovery or reparation. Here, the internal logic of the cosmos through an invisible spiritual force, fosters social and spiritual repair at community level, contributing to the lack of demands of justice by Q'eqchi' survivors

La Justicia Transicional y Contexto Cultural en Guatemala: Voces Q'eqchi'es sobre el Programa Nacional de Resarcimiento

This chapter explores, through the analysis of testimonies, the perceptions and needs of indigenous q'eqchi' victims, survivors and internally displaced people regarding the National Reparation Programme. At the same time it evaluates this administrative reparation programme from a bottom-up perspective and discusses the challenges from an indigenous perspective of the reparation of gross human rights violations.Este capítulo analiza a partir de testimonios de víctimas, sobrevivientes y desplazados internos indígenas q'eqchi' sus percepciones y sus expectativas sobre el Programa Nacional de Reparación (PNR). Asimismo, realiza una evaluación de este programa administrativa de reparación desde una perspectiva "desde abajo" (bottom-up) y plantea los retos y desafíos en torno a la reparación de graves violaciones de derechos humanos desde la percepción indígena

La relevancia local de procesos de justicia transicional voces de sobrevivientes indígenas sobre justicia y reconciliación en Guatemala posconflicto

A well- established assumption among human rights defenders is that all victims of massive human rights violations want to see the perpetrators brought to court. This article, based upon multi-sited ethnographic field research among Maya Q’eqchi’ victims and perpetrators in postconflict Guatemala, analyzes the local and cultural understanding that indigenous survivors’ have of the armed conflict as well as their concepts of justice and reconciliation. It is argued that at the vernacular of indigenous communities’ visions exists –embedded in their indigenous normative order and cosmovision– that challenge and problematize the dominant paradigm of transitional justice. In fact, from Q’eqchi’ point of view, impunity –as defined by international law– is not the end of accountability, nor truth, reparation or reconciliation

Voices from the shadows: the role of cultural contexts in transitional justice processes: Maya Q'eqchi' perspectives from post-conflict Guatemala

This PhD research intersects the fields of human rights, transitional justice and anthropology and investigates the actual and potential role of cultural contexts in dealing with grave violations of human rights in societies emerging from an armed conflict and authoritarian regimes. The study of this central research question is based on the analysis of the case study of post-conflict Guatemala for which 21 months of ethnographic field research among Maya Q’eqchi’ survivors has been carried out between 2006 and 2010. This study shows that Maya Q’eqchi’ survivors mobilise a hybrid entirety of practices, attitudes and engagements on the individual as well as collective level to unveil the truth and attain justice, reparation, memory recovery and reconciliation. Within this hybrid operates a complex, interrelated and fluid mixture of local cultural practices, attitudes and engagements which are rooted in the Maya Q’eqchi’ cosmovision and related to normative order as well as being grafted onto transitional justice mechanisms provided by the Guatemalan State and activities organised by outside actors

Indigenous water ontologies, hydro-development and the human/more-than-human right to water: A call for critical engagement with plurilegal water realities

This article belongs to the Special Issue The Politics of the Human Right to Water.Water conflicts across the world are bringing to the fore fundamental challenges to the anthropocentric boundaries of the human rights paradigm. Engaging with the multi-layered legal ethnographic setting of the Xalalá dam project in Maya Q’eqchi’ territory in Guatemala, I will critically and empirically unpack not only the anthropocentric boundaries of the hegemonic human rights paradigm, but also the ontological differences between indigenous and Euro-Western legal conceptualizations of human-water-life. I argue that it is necessary to pave the way for urgent rethinking of the human right to water and, more broadly, human rights beyond the modern divide of nature-culture. International law and human rights scholars should therefore not be afraid of plurilegal water realities and should start engaging with these ontologically different concepts and practices. Embarking on a bottom-up co-theorizing about human and beyond-the-human water rights will be imperative to avoid recolonization of indigenous knowledges-ontologies by non-indigenous scholarships and public policy.The writing of this article was possible thanks to the following funding (chronological order): PhD research project (2006-2010) "Cultural context and transitional justice: the role of non-western legal traditions in dealing with gross human rights violations in post-conflict countries" - Research Fund Flanders (FWO)-Belgium; Municipality Herent, Belgium (2014,2015); Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (2016-2018) GROUNDHR-Challenges of Grounding Universal Human Rights. Indigenous epistemologies of human rights and intercultural dialogue in consultation processes on natural resource exploitation (Grant Agreement 708096) and ERC Starting Grant (2019-2024) RIVERS-Water/human rights beyond the human? Indigenous water ontologies, plurilegal encounters and interlegal translation, (Grant Agreement 804003), under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program

Life is priceless: Mayan Q’eqchi’ voices on the Guatemalan national reparations program

Little in-depth research has been conducted on or attention paid to the experience and opinions of survivors regarding issues such as reparation, justice, reconciliation and truth in dealing with the aftermath of atrocities. Less still has been said of the way in which victims' identities impact on these views or are considered in the design of programs aimed at redress for past violations. This article focuses on Guatemala's National Reparations Program (PNR) as critically viewed by Mayan Q'eqchi' victims. The Q'eqchi' are the second-largest Mayan group in the country and among the most severely affected by the internal armed conflict of 1960 to 1996. In Guatemala, the dominant culture is nonindigenous, although the majority of the population is indigenous Maya. This raises the complex issue of the actual and potential role of cultural context in dealing with grave human rights violations. In this regard, it is pertinent to establish how reparation is understood in different cultural contexts and to question how governmental reparations programs take these contexts into account. The results of extensive ethnographic field research conducted between 2006 and 2009 reveal the need for a locally rooted and culturally sensitive PNR

Dealing with the legacy of gross human rights violations in Guatemala: grasping the mismatch between macro level policies and micro level processes

This article addresses the important nexus between macro level responses and micro level processes when dealing with the aftermath of gross human rights violations. It focuses on the case of Guatemala and the issue of financial compensation for people affected by the internal armed conflict. One of the key mechanisms of the horror of the counterinsurgency war was the forced mass involvement of the civilian population through the imposition of the Civil Defence Patrols in rural indigenous communities. This raises the thorny question of who is victim in a micro reality of blurred lines between victims and perpetrators. Several socio-political parameters ensured that two distinct compensation programmes were created: one aimed at compensating the ex-civil patrollers; and a National Reparations Programme for the victims. Ethnographic accounts from Maya Q’eqchi’ victims and ex-civil patrollers reveal that these two state initiatives expose frustration and incomprehensiveness among the beneficiaries towards both programmes and reveal a mismatch between macro initiatives and micro reality, which undermines the fragile process of rebuilding community trust

Transitional justice and cultural contexts: learning from the Universality debate

Whenever a society faces the difficult process of substantial political transition after a period of gross human rights violations, the issues of justice, reconciliation, truth and reparation appear on the agenda. They form the key concepts of the emerging global paradigm of transitional justice. This booming field is faced with several unresolved and contested issues one of which is a criticism based on local and cultural particularities. In this article it is argued that it is useful to draw lessons from the universality-diversity debate in international human rights law and confront them with local and cultural challenges that arise in the transitional justice context. It seems that the ideal of inclusiveness that remains hard to realise in human rights law, despite theoretical consensus, might have better chances of being put in practice in transitional justice initiatives