Mayan Cognition, Memory and Trauma
2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/02757200902887964
ISSN1477-2612
Autores Tópico(s)Cambodian History and Society
ResumoAbstract The argument of this article is organized around the following general themes: understanding representational "exaggeration" for signifying indigenous others; assessing the differences for the social agency of recollection, especially in relation to lawyer‐oriented depositions and researcher‐oriented interviews; analysing the cognitive aspects of surviving the Guatemalan genocide and examining the cognition of discrimination among Mayan‐immigrants in South Florida. Empirical data for this essay is based upon oral histories of three Mayan‐immigrants currently living in Palm Beach County, Florida, and archival data from legal depositions in the 1980s and 1990s of five Mayan‐immigrants in Martin County, Florida. Important aspects of this paper analyse the historical consequences of the Guatemalan Civil War during the 1980s and the role of social memory, episodic trauma, semantic trauma and the ontological effects of violence. In addition, notions of differing forms of time in relation to trauma are introduced as "synchronic trauma" and "diachronic trauma". Keywords: Mayan‐ImmigrantsCognitionGenocideDiscriminationMemory Acknowledgements The author wishes to acknowledge the Alexander Von Humboldt Grant (2005–2007); a President Faculty Research and Development Grant (PFRDG) from Nova Southeastern University; a Dean's travel grant from the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences (SHSS) of Nova Southeastern University; and a small travel subvention from Georg‐August University in Goettingen, Germany for making this article possible. Importantly, the author is also grateful to the following individuals: especially, Julia Chaitin of Sapir College, Israel; so too, Gabriele Rosenthal and Michaela Koettig of Georg‐August Univerity in Goettingen, Germany; and above all my graduate students, especially Patrick Hiller, but also Denese Edsall, Mamyrah Prosper, Paloma Ayala Vela, Alison Hall, Robin Cooper and Diana Riviera; without whose hard work and dedication to the Humboldt project none of these findings would have been possible. Further, the author is grateful to Dean Honggang Yang for his steadfast support of this research. Also, the author is grateful to the following universities and conferences and conference organizers for invitations to present different versions of this paper: The International Conference of Ethnicity, Belonging, Biography, and Ethnography held at Georg‐August University in Goettingen, Germany, 2007; the Department of Anthropology at New College of Florida, Honors College, especially Eben Kirksey for his invitation and hospitality, 2008; and comments by Maria Vesperi and Lucia Stavig; also, to the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies (CILAS), the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), and the organizers of the First Conference on Ethnicity, Race, and Indigenous Peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean (ERIP), University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and fellow panellists, 2008; and I am especially grateful to the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS) and the organizers of the conference, Contested Modernities: Indigenous and Afro‐descendant experiences in Latin America and especially to the following people for their help and suggestions and making the conference a worthwhile experience: Virginia Garrard Burnett; Pauline Turner Strong; Michelle Wibbelsman; Jill Robbins; Arturo Arias; Charles Hale; Bryan Roberts; Roddy Brett; Sandro Jiménez‐Ocampo; and Paloma Diaz. At Oxford, I am grateful to Marcus Banks for his insight into concepts of ethnicity, and to Sandra Ott for her mentorship. I am also grateful to the following people during fieldwork in South Florida: Clifford Brown of Florida Atlantic University; Father Frank O'Loughlin, Emelyne Smith, Jerónimo Camposeco, Patricio Silvestre, and Sister Marta Tobon; and also, to the attorneys, Robert A. Williams, Director of the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project, Florida Legal Services (FLS), Tallahassee, Florida, and Peter Upton of Indiantown, Florida; and to the following organizations: Guatemalan‐Maya Center; Corn Maya, Inc.; and El Sol Neighborhood Resource Center of Florida, and anthropologist, Shelton 'Sandy' Davis. Most especially, I would like to thank all of the Maya participants who made this work possible. May everyone know their stories, and those of all Mayas, about Mayan hardship for survival resulting from the Mayan Diaspora and genocide. Notes [1] The INS is no longer under the US Department of Justice and is now called, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) under the US Department of Homeland Security. [2] There is a well‐known Hollywood film with this same title, El Norte (1983, Director Gregory Nava, 139 mins.). [3] My knowledge of this is not from a US State Department official but rather from immigration lawyers who dedicated their work in seeking political asylum for Mayan immigrants in the 1980s and early 1990s. For a confirmation of this elsewhere, see Grandin (2004 Grandin, G. 2004. The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 190). [4] I would like to acknowledge personal communication with Pauline Turner Strong and her pointing me to Ricœur's notion. Even so, I think it worth explaining the notion more in depth: "Ricœur insists therefore on the need for a hermeneutics of suspicion which demystifies our illusions, permitting us to decipher the masked writings of desire, will and interest. Hermeneutics doubt reminds us again and again that consciousness (individual or social) is a relation of concealing and revealing which calls for a specific interpretation" (Kearney 2004 Kearney, R. 2004. On Paul Ricœur: The Owl of Minerva, Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 7–8). [5] We may regard the Guatemalan Civil War as roughly the period beginning in 1962 to the peace accords in 1996, even though violence has continued well after the peace process in the form of vigilante justice and other internal forms of violence. [6] Even so, it must be noted I am fully aware of the ethnic and cultural differences between the more than twenty linguistic groupings of Mayas of Guatemala, whether characterized as Kanjobal, Mopan, Mam, or Chuj. (Some linguists will distinguish between as many as thirty‐two Mayan languages in Guatemala.) Each of these groupings may have quite distinct weaving‐patterns associated with them and their own particular traditions. Yet in order to protect my informants, those individuals interviewed and those individuals in the deposition archival, I have purposefully left out language‐ethnic grouping identifiers. [7] I have critiqued Connerton (1989 Connerton, P. 1989. How Societies Remember, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) for his study of collective memory elsewhere (Linstroth 2002 Linstroth, J. P. 2002. "History, tradition, and memory among the Basques". History and Anthropology, 13(3): 159–189. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), and I will not dwell on him here. Suffice it to say that Connerton concentrates on European memory and history rather than non‐Western forms, such as indigenous forms of knowledge and memory‐making. [8] To this end, my views are also distinct from clinical and psychological studies as those held by the contributors to the volume edited by Wilson and Drozdek (2004 Wilson, J. P. and Drozdek, B., eds. 2004. Broken Spirits: The Treatment of Traumatized Asylum Seekers, Refugees, War and Torture Victims, New York: Brunner‐Routledge. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), Broken Spirits: the treatment of traumatized asylum seekers, refugees, war and torture victims. [9] The Mayan testimonies excerpted here were originally taken as legal depositions in the 1980s. They form part of an archive, which is representative of the trauma suffered by this group of immigrants who fled the civil war zones of Guatemala and eventually arrived in South Florida, USA. None of the names of those who gave these testimonies are used here. Pseudonyms have replaced real names, and all identifying place names (towns and villages) and regional locations have been de‐identified to further protect the witnesses of these horrific events. It must be stated that many Guatemalans still suffer from the fear of reprisal today. These are justified fears because of the current political situation there, and the continued violence suffered by much of the populace in rural areas of the country, despite the passing of more than a decade since the Peace Accords in 1996. [10] This is contrary to the likes of Harbury (1995 Harbury, J. 1995. Bridge of Courage: Life Stories of the Guatemalan Compañeros and Compañeras, Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press. [Google Scholar]) in her descriptions of the guerrillas in Guatemala. [11] The statistics related to CEH reports are directly quoted from their website, see: http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/conc1.html and http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/conc2.html. Other important statistics may be found on the website for "Office of Human Rights of the Archbishop of Guatemala" (Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala, ODHAG), especially Part IV: http://www.odhag.org.gt/03publicns.htm. Also see Beatriz Manz 2002 Manz, B. 2002. "Terror, Grief, and Recovery: Genocidal Trauma in a Mayan Village in Guatemala". In Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide, Edited by: Hinton, A. L. 292–309. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]. [12] http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/conc1.html http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/conc2.html [13] Again, see: http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/conc2.html [14] http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/conc1.html [15] http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/conc2.html [16] For a further discussion of "testimonial" or testimonio, see Beverley (2008 Beverley, J. 2008. "Testimonio, Subalternity, and Narrative Authority". In Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry , 3rd edn, Edited by: Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, Y. S. 257–270. London: Sage Publications. [Google Scholar]); even so, Beverley does not distinguish between oral histories from interviews and depositions, as in my analyses. [17] Purposefully, I have left out the work of Roy D'Andrade (1995 D'Andrade, R. 1995. The Development of Cognitive Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) mainly because, with the exception of p. 190 in his book, he does not develop similar models of cognitive anthropology in relation to episodic and semantic forms of memory as do Whitehouse and Boyer in their works. Moreover, his models are somewhat dated in comparison to new findings from the British School of Cognitive Anthropology. [18] One eminent anthropologist not mentioned here, who is also a psychiatrist, is Roland Littlewood, primarily because his work does not focus on the same analytical problems of memory in relation to refugees, or even memory and trauma to the degree of Robben. This by no means diminishes Littlewood's significant contributions. To wit, I am in complete agreement with him when he states: "… anthropology and psychiatry, but also medical jurisprudence, cognitive science, ethology and the sociology of knowledge—the practical problems of reconciling causation and volition become especially salient" (Littlewood 1998 Littlewood, R. 1998. The Butterfly and The Serpent: Essays in Psychiatry, Race, and Religion, London: Free Association Books. [Google Scholar]: x). [19] For a thorough exploration, albeit prescriptive investigation, of Whitehouse's theories on religious ritual, the reader is recommended to attempt McCauley and Lawson (2002 McCauley, R. N. and Lawson, T. E. 2002. Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). [20] Regarding "flashbulb memories", Brown and Kulik (1977 Brown, R. R. and Kulik, J. 1977. "Flashbulb memories". Cognition, 1(5): 73–99. [Google Scholar]: 75) state: "an actual photograph, taken by flashbulb, preserves everything within its scope; it is altogether indiscriminate. Our flashbulb memories are not". They further stipulate the "higher consequentiality of an event for an individual works both to make more elaborate flashbulb memories and also to compel more frequent rehearsal of that which is all or part of the FB memory. An event which has great consequentiality for an individual is more likely both to be 'on the mind' of the person … and to be worked into conversation …" (Brown & Kulik 1977 Brown, R. R. and Kulik, J. 1977. "Flashbulb memories". Cognition, 1(5): 73–99. [Google Scholar]: 85). [21] For further studies on "flashbulb" memories, see Tulving (1972 Tulving, E. 1972. "Episodic and Semantic Memory". In Organization of Memory, Edited by: Tulving, E. and Donaldson, W. 381–403. New York: Academic Press. [Google Scholar]); Winograd and Neisser (1992 Winograd, E. and Neisser, U., eds. 1992. Affect and Accuracy in Recall: Studies of "Flashbulb" Memories, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]); Conway (1995 Conway, M. A. 1995. Flashbulb Memories, Hove, , UK: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [Google Scholar]); Finkenauer et al. (1997 Finkenauer, C., Gisle, L. and Luminet, O. 1997. "When Individual Memories Are Socially Shaped: Flashbulb Memories of Sociopolitical Events". In Collective Memory of Political Events: Social Psychological Perspectives, Edited by: Pennebaker, J. W., Paez, D. and Rimé, B. 191–207. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. [Google Scholar]); and McCauley (1999 McCauley, R. N. 1999. "Bringing Ritual to Mind". In Ecological Approaches to Cognition: Essays in Honor of Ulric Neisser, Edited by: Winograd, E., Fivush, R. and Hirst, W. 285–312. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [Google Scholar]). There are, it should be noted, critics of "flashbulb" memory studies (namely Brewer 1986 Brewer, W. F. 1986. "What is Autobiographical Memory?". In Autobiographical Memory, Edited by: Rubin, D. C. 25–49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Neisser 1986 Neisser, U. 1986. "Nested Structure in Autobiographical Memory". In Autobiographical Memory, Edited by: Rubin, D. C. 71–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Barclay 1986 Barclay, C. R. 1986. "Schematization of Autobiographical Memory". In Autobiographical Memory, Edited by: Rubin, D. C. 82–99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Fitzgerald 1986 Fitzgerald, J. M. 1986. "Autobiographical Memory: A Developmental Perspective". In Autobiograpical Memory, Edited by: Rubin, D. C. 122–13. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]). What these latter psychologists argue is that so‐called "flashbulb" memories cannot be distinguished from autobiographical or personal memories, and that such memories need not be limited to a traumatic recollection such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy. However, what none of them take into account are how "flashbulb" memories become reproduced as much through collectives and groups, especially indigenous peoples, as simply from individual recollection. It is my contention throughout this essay that episodic memories of trauma experienced by native peoples are distinctive from Western notions of trauma (a more obvious point for anthropologists than unavoidable for psychologists). It is not that indigenous peoples have different mental capacities, but rather how they relate to such memories in a collective sense as a group and the manner in which such memories are recalled through storytelling. Similarly, the same may be said for the contributors in Winograd and Neisser (1992 Winograd, E. and Neisser, U., eds. 1992. Affect and Accuracy in Recall: Studies of "Flashbulb" Memories, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), that while critical of flashbulb memories, they do not take into consideration non‐Western forms of collective memory production (also for obvious reasons in that they probably never needed to consider them). On the other hand, McCauley (1999 McCauley, R. N. 1999. "Bringing Ritual to Mind". In Ecological Approaches to Cognition: Essays in Honor of Ulric Neisser, Edited by: Winograd, E., Fivush, R. and Hirst, W. 285–312. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [Google Scholar]), among others, such as Whitehouse (2000 Whitehouse, H. 2000. Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]; 2004 Whitehouse, H. 2004. Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission, Oxford: AltaMira Press. [Google Scholar]) has provided counter‐arguments to such critiques in their examination of religious rituals of non‐Western peoples as in Papua New Guinea. [22] As Suárez‐Orozco and Robben (2000 Suárez‐Orozco, M. M. and Robben, A. C. G. M. 2000. "Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Violence and Trauma". In Cultures Under Siege: Collective Violence and Trauma, Edited by: Robben, A. C. G. M. and Suárez‐Orozco, M. M. 1–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]: 20–21) contend regarding post‐traumatic stress disorder: "PTSD has become a blanket term for a wide array of conditions. Current uses of PTSD generally fail to take into account key aspects such as the context of the traumatic experience, whether the trauma was inflicted on an individual or a group, through natural disaster, conventional warfare, state terror, or interpersonal acts of violence". [23] It should be noted that I did not concentrate on the idea of repressed memories in my argument. Mostly, this is because the subjects for this study were not asked specifically if they tried to block out the traumatic memories they had experienced as children from the genocide in Guatemala. For an excellent discussion on memory repression, see Loftus and Kaufman (1992 Loftus, E. F. and Kaufman, L. 1992. "Why Do Traumatic Experiences Sometimes Produce Good Memory (Flashbulbs) and Sometimes No Memory (Repression)?". In Affect and Accuracy in Recall: Studies of "Flashbulb" Memories, Edited by: Winograd, E. and Neisser, U. 212–223. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). [24] Such traumatic memories are similar to those encountered by other researchers and their interviews with Mayan informants (see Carmack 1988 Carmack, R. M., ed. 1988. Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. [Google Scholar]; Falla 1992 Falla, R. 1992. Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcán, Guatemala, 1975–1982, Edited by: Howland, J. Oxford: Westview Press. (1994) [Google Scholar]; Harbury 1995 Harbury, J. 1995. Bridge of Courage: Life Stories of the Guatemalan Compañeros and Compañeras, Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press. [Google Scholar]; Carlsen 1997 Carlsen, R. S. 1997. The War for the Heart & Soul of a Highland Maya Town, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. [Google Scholar]; Montejo 1999 Montejo, V. 1999. Voices from Exile: Violence and Survival in Modern Maya Mistory, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. [Google Scholar]; Green 1999 Green, L. 1999. Fear As a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala, New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]; Nelson 1999 Nelson, D. M. 1999. A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]; Fischer 2001 Fischer, E. F. 2001. Cultural Logics and Global Economies: Maya Identity in Thought and Practice, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. [Google Scholar]; Sanford 2003 Sanford, V. 2003. Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Moller 2004 Moller, J. 2004. Our Culture Is Our Resistance: Repression, Refuge, and Healing in Guatemala, New York: Powerhouse Books. [Google Scholar]; Manz 2004 Manz, B. 2004. Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Wilkinson 2004 Wilkinson, D. 2004. Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]; Sexton 2001 Sexton, J. D., ed. 2001. Joseño: Another Mayan Voice Speaks from Guatemala, with I. B. Ujpán, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. [Google Scholar]; StØlen 2007 St⊘len, K. A. 2007. Guatemalans in the Aftermath of Violence: The Refugees' Return, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. [Google Scholar]). [25] Grandin (2000 Grandin, G. 2000. The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]: 228), for example, refers to racism in Guatemala in claiming: "racism is a powerful ideology in Guatemala, and it manifests itself in multiple ways: social exclusion, political repression, economic exploitation". [26] Via personal communication, I am grateful to Julia Chaitin for insight into her work on children of Holocaust survivors, and for providing me with an intergenerational understanding of long‐term trauma and her critique of these present findings (see Bar‐On & Chaitin 2001 Bar‐On, D. and Chaitin, J. 2001. Parenthood and the Holocaust, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Publications Search and Research, Lectures and Papers 1. [Google Scholar]). [27] I am grateful, via personal communication, to Pauline Turner Strong for making me think more about the concept of healing. As she explained, probably without knowing, I felt the need to show some pictures of Mayan rituals of healing and renewal at the end of my Powerpoint presentation.
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