
































Demilitarized Guerrillas and the Cultural Legacies of State Sponsored 

Violence in Guatemala 

Review by M. Gabriela Torres 

Secrecy and Insurgency: Socialities and Knowledge Practices in Guatemala 

by Silvia Posocco  

University of Alabama Press, 2014

Secrecy  and  Insurgency is  purportedly  about  the  demobilization  of  guerrilla  insurgents  and  their

resettlement in the department of Petén in Northern Guatemala. Using extensive tracts of narratives

from former guerrillas, it traces how individuals and communities once coalesced by their agency in

armed conflict reckon with their identities and social relations as they settle in a national backwater in

the wake of  war.  In  doing so,  however,  Posocco’s  volume also actively interrogates the processes

through which we make ethnographic knowledge.  As a  result,  it  is  a complex text  with extensive

reference to the scholarly debates and legacies that inform the author’s framing of the lives of former

guerrillas in a geographic periphery.

Secrecy and Insurgency provides a unique perspective on the historical and ethnic context that

gave rise to the conflict and its dissolution. Like others, Posocco claims that ethnic diversity often

mapped into Guatemala’s geography is a defining feature of any knowledge produced about the country

in popular and scholarly rhetoric. Yet because she is focused on an, until recently, understudied region

and on former guerrillas of mixed ethnicity who resettled out-of-place, Posocco presents a Guatemalan

reality that lies outside the typical narrative produced by scholars. One of the unique features of the

volume is its thorough history of the Petén’s development understood as a project of governmentality.

As such, it charts how the region fit into national development schema and the deep and institutionally

entrenched participation of the Guatemalan Armed Forces in its development. Secrecy and Insurgency

also  interrogates  the  underlying  ideological  motivations  for  the 20th century “colonization” of  the



Petén  which  draws  the  reader  squarely  into  understanding  Guatemalan  ethnic  politics.  Posocco’s

ethnography is particularly focused on the “scramble of ethnicities” (p. 80) that resulted from the 20th

century push to make the now geopolitically important and resource rich Petén region a regular part of

the Guatemalan nation.

The former guerrilleros/as featured in Posocco’s ethnography draw particular attention to how

identities and social positions are framed, disclosed and obscured through particular naming practices.

Drawing on narratives of life in the midst of war, Posocco shows that the use relational pseudonyms

and  their  constant  change  as  guerrillas  traveled  and  settled  now  result  in  naming  practices  with

“holographic  effects”  (p.  103).  Secrecy  and  Insurgency suggests  that  to  understand  how  one  is

identified and engage in the art of identifying others in Guatemala, a wealth of sometimes illusive

information is necessary to decode the partial representations of everyday life. Secrecy, a hallmark of

living through war,  has left  a legacy in interpersonal  interactions which in Nelson’s work is  often

defined are duplicities.  Importantly,  duplicities are relational  in  Secrecy and Insurgency.  Posocco’s

suggests that instances of duplicitous naming are more than intentional misinformation, rather the very

practice of constructing obscured identities has become essential to the fractured yet still-relational

identities guerrilleros/as make in their post-conflict lives.

Additionally, the narratives of war-time and its remnants presented by ex- guerrilleros/as show

that militancy developed a national consciousness that was previously lacking. Choosing now to reside

in communities of former militants rather than returning to ethnic enclaves, ex- guerrilleros/as narrate

the importance of the shared experience of combat and survival to their own sense of self, community

and future. Ex- guerrilleros/as attained a shared experience in combat but also developed what Posocco

identifies as a “shared substance” (p. 155) which was through their struggle and cohabitation under

constraints. The connections that ex- guerrilleros/as developed were so akin to family relationships that

they are often described in kinship terms. Yet, the guerrilla experience did not only alter the social

fabric, according to Pocosso, it also reframed moralities impacting their sexuality and the ways that

they understood the value of life.

Interestingly,  the  importance  of  the  shared  experience  of  war  sometimes  extended  to  ex-

guerrilleros/as’ relationships with former army personnel. Posocco suggests that ex-  guerrilleros/as

develop a “merographic capacity” (p.  132) that  allows for particular forms of rapprochement  with

former enemies in battle.  In the narratives Posocco collects  such rapprochements do allow for the

imagination of shared identity  categories,  like the peasant  community,  that  transcend the war-time

identification of former enemies. Posocco’s work shows that the development of possibilities for shared

national identities happens through war in very specific terms and in the words of the men and women



she interviewed throughout the Petén.

The social transformations that result from war are evidenced in much of the ethnographic work

that is being produced by Guatemalan specialists of post conflict (Nelson 2009, Levenson 2013, Weld

2014). Ethnographers of post-conflict often place emphasis on the fluidity of identities, focus on the

conjuring – our own and our subject’s – that yields a sometimes ephemeral grasp of realities and on

tracing the perennial partiality of social allegiances. Silvia Posocco’s  Secrecy and Insurgency shares

this  emphasis.  Importantly,  Posocco’s  work  also  contends  that  post-conflict  contexts  inevitably

challenge the assumptions of current ethnography’s turn to thick description. Co-existing practices of

open  secrecy  and  performative  disclosure  often  exemplified  in  post-conflict  Peace  Accords  force

anthropologists to contend with the partial and performative knowledge production. Posocco clearly

understands that “ethnographies of violence and conflict must simultaneously expose and conceal” (p.

16).  Secrecy and Insurgency offers a deep engagement with our disciplinary constraints whilst also

providing a unique perspective into Guatemala’s current social rebuilding.

References Cited

Nelson, Diane

2009. Reckoning: The Ends of War in Guatemala. Durham: Duke University Press.

Levenson, Debora T.

2013.  Adiós Niño: The Gangs of Guatemala City and Politics of Death. Durham: Duke University

Press.

Weld, Kristen

2014. Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala. Durham: Duke University Press.

M.  Gabriela  Torres,  an  Associate  Professor  of  Anthropology  at  Wheaton  College,  MA,  is  a

Guatemalan-born anthropologist  specializing in the study of the violence and state formation.  Her

work  explores  the  impact  of  violence  on  gender  relations,  nation-building  and  post-conflict

reconstruction has most recently been published in  Anthropologica and the  Anthropology of Work

Review. Her forthcoming co-edited book (with Kersi Yllö), Marital Rape: Consent, Marriage and Social

Change in Global Context, is the first book to examine rape in marriage as a global problem affecting

millions of women.



© 2015 M. Gabriela Torres  


