Silence(ing), voice(s) and gross violations of human rights: constituting and performing subjectivities through PhotoPAR
2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/1472586x.2010.523276
ISSN1472-5878
Autores Tópico(s)Children's Rights and Participation
ResumoAbstract This article analyses selected micro-processes of 'taking pictures' and 'telling stories' in a participatory photography and action research process that was published as Voices and Images: Maya Ixil Women of Chajul. This collaboration was initiated by 20 rural Maya women and the author during the years immediately following the signing of peace accords that ended Guatemala's 36 years of civil war and genocide. They sought to create new spaces through which local Maya could embrace and re-signify traditions threatened through genocidal violence and perform emerging and multiple subjectivities as community organisers, educators and defenders of human rights. These performances reflect a situated polyvocality, challenging stable and essentialising gendered discourses of war and post-conflict peacemaking processes that 'other' Maya women. Drawing on field notes, memorias from project workshops, minutes from small group meetings and individual photovoices, the author analyses some of the complexities and contradictions in the iterative processes of developing photonarratives, problematising her performances as 'outsider' – that is, as human rights activist scholar – and interrogating her positionality and voice as 'missionary', 'monitor' and 'sister-in-solidarity'. She argues that local Maya women's and girls' voices emerged or were silenced in the production of a final set of 56 published photonarratives, and identifies some possibilities and limitations of photography and PAR as resources in human rights activism in post-conflict situations. Notes [1] I introduced this term, which I took from Caroline Wang (see Visual Voices 1995) to the women of Chajul when I took a copy of Visual Voices to Chajul to share with them. Although the project which we developed incorporated a range of other photographic, visual and creative resources (see Lykes 2001 Lykes, M. B. 2001. "Creative arts and photography in participatory action research in Guatemala". In Handbook of action research, Edited by: Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. 363–71. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. [Google Scholar] for more details), they referred to our work together and to the final book as PhotoVoice. I have adapted that language so that PhotoVoice refers to the book as a whole, and photovoice (without capital letters) signifies the original photograph and its situatedness in the photographer's original story. I employ the term photonarrative to describe the final picture-text which is presented in Voices and Images (Women of ADMI/PhotoVoice and Lykes 2000). Finally, I call the process and project PhotoPAR because it is significantly different from other projects that are referred to as PhotoVoice. Specifically it is situated within nearly two decades of ongoing collaborative work between me and women in Chajul. Moreover, as part of those processes, there is a wealth of data that, for purposes of the work described herein, contributed significantly to intermediary steps in a process including individual photovoices, group analyses, oral history interviews and interviews with the men, women and children interviewed by the PhotoVoice participants, as well as field notes and memorias – that is, minutes from our psychosocial, methodological and analysis training workshops. All written documents were originally drafted in Spanish, although some are transcriptions from Ixil or K'iche' taped interviews. Translations in this article are those of the author. [2] The CPR were 'groups of local peasants who fled the army's scorched earth tactics and established well-organised "hidden" communities in remote regions including Chajul … and in this way resisted army persecution' (Women of PhotoVoice/ADMI and Lykes 2000 Women of PhotoVoice/ADMI (Asociación de la Mujer Maya Ixil) and Lykes, M. B. 2000. Voces e imágenes: Mujeres Mayas Ixiles de Chajul/Voices and images: Mayan Ixil women of Chajul, Guatemala: Magna Terra [Texts in Spanish and English, with a methodology chapter by M. B. Lykes]. [Google Scholar], 108). [3] The term ladino is used synonymously with the term mestizo in other Latin American countries, referring today to both descendants of the Spaniards and those who are either born of mixed parentage and/or have chosen to assimilate to the dominant, mixed cultural group. [4] A fuller historical discussion of ethnic and interethnic relations within Guatemala is beyond the scope of this article. Moreover, although contemporary debate among anthropologists and Mayan activists and scholars argues for considerably more fluidity than has historically been reflected in understandings of the categories Maya and ladino, scholars and human rights activists alike affirm the importance of not underestimating the profound impact of racism on life within Guatemala (Bastos and Camus 1996 Bastos, S. and Camus, M. 1996. Quebrando el silencio: Organizaciones del pueblo maya y sus demandas [Breaking the silence: Mayan organizations and their demands] (1986-1992), Guatemala: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencas Sociales/FLACSO. [Google Scholar]; Fischer and Brown 1996 Fischer, E. F. and Brown, R. McK. 1996. Maya cultural activism in Guatemala, Austin: University of Texas Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Warren 1999 Warren, K. 1999. Indigenous movements and their critics: Pan-Mayanism and ethnic resurgence in Guatemala, Austin: University of Texas Press. [Google Scholar]). The recently published report of the Comisió n para el Esclarecimiento Histó rico[Commission for Historical Clarification] (CEH) confirms this through its documentation of how institutionalised racism contributed to the disproportionate numbers of Maya who were killed and disappeared in Guatemala's nearly 36-year war. They characterised this violence as genocide (CEH 1999 Comisió n para el Esclarecimiento Histó rico [Commission for Historical Clarification] (CEH). 1999. Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification, Guatemala: Memory of silence Tz'inil Na'tab'al. hrdata.aaas.org/ceh/report. [Google Scholar]). [5] Ximena Bunster, a Chilean anthropologist working in urban markets in Peru, developed a photo-elicitation strategy using professional photographs of and focus groups with market women to develop a photo-based storyline to elicit narratives (Bunster 1985 Bunster, S. 1985. "Epilogue". In Sellers and servants: Working women in Lima, Peru, Edited by: Bunster, X. and Chaney, E. M. Granby, MA: Bergin and Garvey. [Google Scholar]). The PhotoVoice process that developed in Chajul drew on this work as well as on earlier work I had developed using a more psychologically robust photo elicitation strategy (see Lykes 1994 Lykes, M. B. 1994. Terror, silencing, and children: International multidisciplinary collaboration with Guatemalan Maya communities. Social Science and Medicine, 38(4): 543–52. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and on that of Wang and Burris (1997) and her colleagues. The latter came to describe our work locally and through its publication, the women of ADMI embraced that name 'FotoVoz' [PhotoVoice] as their own. [6] These identifiers have been mobilised by more contemporary Mayan women, including, most publicly, Rigoberta Menchú, who celebrate the pan-Mayan identity by dressing in the traje of a wide variety of communities. However, these transgressions have not appeared within Chajul. [7] In Voices and Images we defined 'costumbre' as 'a custom or tradition; refers to a complex set of Mayan rituals (often with Catholic syncretic elements) and lifestyle whose usage is an important part of defining a "traditional Maya"' (Women of PhotoVoice and Lykes 2000 Women of PhotoVoice/ADMI (Asociación de la Mujer Maya Ixil) and Lykes, M. B. 2000. Voces e imágenes: Mujeres Mayas Ixiles de Chajul/Voices and images: Mayan Ixil women of Chajul, Guatemala: Magna Terra [Texts in Spanish and English, with a methodology chapter by M. B. Lykes]. [Google Scholar], 108; see also Warren 1978 Warren, K. 1978. The symbolism of subordination: Indian identity in a Guatemalan town, Austin: University of Texas Press. [Google Scholar]).
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