Silencing State-Sponsored Rape in and

Beyond a Transnational
Guatemalan Community

JULIE A. HASTINGS
Lawrence University

Although rape bysoldiers occurredfrequently duringtherecent civilwarin Guatemala,

rape survivors' own accounts have been excluded from public testimonials ofstatevio-
lence. It is commonly assumed that cultural ideologies that blame andstigmatize rape
victims are responsible for the underreporting of rape in war. Based on ethnographic
research inatransnational Guatemalan community, thisarticle challenges theclaim that
local culture silences survivors ofstate-sponsored rape. Rather, it demonstrates theways
national andinternationalforces collude in Ole depo/iticization ofrape andthesilencing
of rape survivors.

The 36-year civil war in Guatemala, popularly known as la violencia,

left more than 200,000 dead or missing, 1 million displaced, and-
as in so many other war zones around the globe-countless women
and girls raped by soldiers. Testimonies from hundreds of wit-
nesses and perpetrators of state-sponsored rape! in Guatemala-
collected during and after the conflict by human rights organiza-
tions, the Catholic Church, the Guatemalan Commission for
Historical Clarification (CEH), journalists, and social scientists-
suggest that Guatemalan soldiers systematically raped Mayan
women, particularly during the height of the conflict in the early
1980s (Amnesty International, 1987; Anderson & Garlock, 1988;
Carmack, 1988; CEH, 1999;Falla, 1994; Green, 1999; Hooks, 1993;
Jonas, McCaughan, & Martinez, 1984; Montejo & Akab', 1992;

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This article is based on research made possible by the financial sup-
port of the National Institute of Mental Health, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Insti-
tute for Women and Gender at the University of Michigan, and the Rackham Graduate
School at the University of Michigan. The author would like to thank Oren Kosansky and
Phyllis Hastings for their constructive feedback and assistance in editing.
VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, Vol. 8 No. to, October 2002 1153-1181
DOl: 10.1177/107780102236531
(02002 Sage Publications
1153
1154 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN I October 2002

Recovery of Historic Memory Project [REMHI], 1999;

Smith-Ayala, 1991). Although these collections of testimonies
contain hundreds of personal stories of physical and psychologi-
cal torture, mutilations, death threats, forced collaboration, flight,
theft, and destruction of property, there are very few firsthand
accounts of state-sponsored rape by the survivors themselves.
It was to explore this absence of firsthand accounts of
state-sponsored rape from public testimonials of Ia violencia that I
conducted 22 months of ethnographic research in the mid-1990s
with a diasporic community of indigenous Guatemalans origi-
nally from the town of San [ose.' Since the late 1970s,fear and eco-
nomic necessity have driven thousands of [osefios from their
highland Guatemalan home to Mexico and the United States. My
field sites thus included not only the town of San Jose itself but
also two main points of [osefio migration and exile: Guatemalan
refugee camps in Chiapas, Mexico, and the city of Los Angeles,
California.
My research involved both passive and active collection of vio-
lence testimonials from [osefios in these three places. In other
words, some people volunteered information about Ia violencia as
I participated in community life, and I also conducted formal and
informal interviews in which I specifically asked people to tell me
their stories. I made particular efforts to solicit the testimonies of
women and asked them directly about state-sponsored rape.
Throughout my fieldwork, I heard hundreds of personal narra-
tives about what had happened during la violencia but found a
pattern similar to that which I observed in published accounts.
Stories of rape were told from a distance: as hearsay, as second-
hand accounts, or as abstract events known to have occurred.
Never did I hear any woman speak of being raped herself.
Consulting the scholarly literature on rape, one finds a number
of factors that can inhibit survivors from reporting the experience
and hence potentially explain the silence of Guatemalan
state-sponsored rape survivors. Shame and self-blame, fear of
being stigmatized, and fear of being blamed by others are often
cited in the literature as reasons for rape survivors' silence
(Hanmer & Maynard, 1987;Herman, 1992;Stanko, 1985).A survi-
vor's experience of shame, stigma, and blame are inversely
related to how well the particular experience of sexual aggression
fits the ~ocial stereotype of a "real" rape (rape script) and how well
 Hastings / SILENCING STATE-SPONSORED RAPE 1155

the survivor fits the image of an "ideal victim" (Kahn & Mathie,
2000;Koss,1985; Pino & Meier, 1999;Williams, 1984;Wyatt, 1992).
The closer the fit, the less likely it is that the survivor will blame
herself and fear social stigma.
In this article, I consider whether these sociocultural factors are
responsible for the exclusion of firsthand testimonials of rape
from [osefios' narratives of la violencia and find they are insuffi-
cient in providing a complete explanation of that exclusion.
Although in cases of nonwar rape, shame, stigma, and blame do
inhibit [osefios from publicly denouncing their victimization,
incidents of rape by soldiers fit [osefios' "rape script." Fitting the
image of the "ideal victim" seemed to make no difference in the
willingness of survivors of state-sponsored rape to speak publicly
of their experiences. I found no evidence that any survivors were
blamed or stigmatized by the community. The few published
firsthand accounts of state-sponsored rape by Guatemalan
women do not suggest that the survivors felt ashamed or blamed
themselves for their victimization (Amnesty International, 1987,
p. 58; Ortiz, 1992, p. 35; REMHI, 1999, p. 152; Rich, 1996).
In the second section of this article, I argue that to understand
the absence of first-person accounts of rape by soldiers from
[osefio testimonials of violence, one must look beyond local cul-
tural ideologies to the international sociopolitical context of
testimonio discourse. The term testimonio refers to a genre of Latin
American political discourse conveying personal accounts of suf-
fering and struggle that are told by individuals but that are repre-
sentative of a collective experience (Sommer, 1996;Zimmerman,
1991). Among [osefios, testimonio emerged most prominently in
the refugee camps in Mexico, where Guatemalans were repeat-
edly asked to tell and retell their stories of violence to Mexican
officials and neighbors and to representatives of international
human rights, solidarity, and aid organizations.
In all three sites, [osefios faced direct and indirect pressures to
assert that they themselves were not guerrillas and that the moti-
vation for state violence was punishing and suppressing sus-
pected guerrilla supporters. Thus, the genre of testimonio dis-
course, which emerged in the context of fear and insecurity,
generally contained the following elements: army violence was
directed at suspected guerrillas and the agents of violence were
1156 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / October 2002

government soldiers carrying out the legitimate (if sometimes

misdirected) counterinsurgency project of the state.
Although the rape of women and girls by soldiers fit the com-
munity's rape script, it did not fit the community's testimonio
script. In other words, stories of rape did not conform to the strate-
gic, political claims through which the testimonio genre was con-
structed. Rape committed by soldiers was understood by [osefios
to be directed at women whose connection or suspected connec-
tion to guerrillas was seen as irrelevant to the women's victimiza-
tion. [osefios viewed the perpetrators as men acting out their male
desire rather than as government agents performing their
state-defined duties.
This depoliticization of state-sponsored rape and the conse-
quent exclusion of survivors' accounts from public testimonios
was not solely, or even primarily, a product of [osefio gender ide-
ologies. Governments, including that of the United States, have
routinely denied political asylum to survivors of state-sponsored
rape because it is not considered a political crime. Consequently,
[osefio survivors have little political incentive to offer their per-
sonal testimonios of wartime rape. To do so would entail the risk of
being set apart as gendered victims rather than as political victims
and hence excluded from the category of legitimate refugee.

THEORIES OF SILENCE: BEYOND LOCAL CULTURE

Reports of the rape camps in Bosnia in the early 1990sbrought a

new level of international attention to the use of sexual violence in
war. In the past decade, human rights reports from conflicts
around the world have begun to identify the Widespread occur-
rence of sexual violence as a specific human rights violation.'
Although scholars have also paid increasing attention to war rape
(Allen, 1996; Arcel, 2000; Hicks, 1995; Mulligan, 1990; Seifert,
1996; Stiglmayer, 1994; Turshen & Twagiramariya, 1998), few
have specifically addressed the underreporting of sexual
violence.
Some human rights analysts who have addressed the issue sug-
gest that the same mechanisms that silence survivors of rape in
nonwar contexts are responsible for the silences of war-rape sur-
vivors as well. These mechanisms include negative reactions of
comm~nity members and self-censorship of the survivor based
 Hastings / SILENCING STATE-SPONSORED RAPE 1157

on shame and self-blame (Thomas & Ralph, 1994; Wali, 1992;

Women, Law, & Development International [WLDI], 1998). For
example, a United Nations (UN) manual for refugee workers pro-
vided the following profile of rape survivors:

• Refugee women and girls are discouraged by their cultures and

religions from revealing that they have been raped or openly dis-
cussing their experience.
• After the experience, the refugee victim usually thinks that she is
unclean and bad.
• Women and girls who have been raped do not wish to talk to other
people about their tragedy because they feel they have been
"shamed."
• Unfortunately for the rape victim, when other refugees in the
camp learn of her experience, they talk ill of her. (Wali,1992,p. 133)

In this portrayal, rape survivors' silence is the result of social pres-

sures from the local community as well as internalized cultural
ideologies.
Those who have commented on the underreporting of war rape
in Guatemala have also viewed it as an extension of local cultural
values and taboos. The Guatemalan Archdiocese's Recovery of
Historic Memory Project (REMHI), which collected thousands of
testimonials from Guatemalans, suggests that the lack of first-
hand testimonials of rape "may be due largely to the stigma
attached to rape and the difficulty of talking about the experience
or its aftermath" (REMHI, 1999, p. 80). The report particularly
cites the "cultural and religious value attached to 'purity' and sex-
ual intimacy" as the root of the stigma (REMHI, 1999, p. 81). To
support this analysis, the REMHI authors specifically draw on
Western scholarship on the underreporting of rape (REMHI, 1999,
p.76).
Studies of nonwar rape in the United States and elsewhere have
elaborated the connection between culturally defined rape scripts
and rape survivors' silence. They show that survivors' willing-
ness to acknowledge their experience was rape and to reveal
information about the rape to others is often directly related to
social stereotypes of "real" rape (Kahn & Mathie, 2000; Kahn,
Mathie, & Torgler, 1994; Koss, 1985; Pino & Meier, 1999; Pitts &
Schwartz, 1993). Reactions of community members and the survi-
vor's own interpretation of the incident vary according to whether
the assailant was a stranger or an acquaintance (Sudderth, 1998),
1158 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / October 2002

whether force was used (Bachman, 1998),and how closely the sur-
vivor fits the community's notion of an "ideal victim" (Williams &
Homes, 1981). Negative community reactions to disclosure about
rape are based on these social stereotypes and often result in
the survivor feeling shame and self-blame, and they decrease
the likelihood of future disclosure (Hanmer & Maynard, 1987;
Stanko, 1985; Sudderth, 1998). Rape scripts are often deeply
rooted in a community's gender and sexual ideologies (Shalhoub-
Kevorkian, 1999;Williams, 1984; Wyatt, 1992).
Several researchers have shown, however, that war rape cannot
be understood merely as an extension of rape in nonwar contexts.
In their work with Guatemalan and Salvadoran survivors of state-
sponsored rape, Adrianne Aron and her colleagues have persua-
sively argued that the institutionalized, government-sanctioned
nature of the violence increases the degree of trauma experienced
by the survivor (Aron, Corne, Fursland, & Zelwer, 1991). Impu-
nity for soldiers also inhibits survivors of state-sponsored rape
from publicly denouncing the violation (Allen, 1996; Aron et al.,
1991;Twagiramariya & Turshen, 1998). The impunity provided
to the perpetrators of state-sponsored rape does not stem from
local cultural ideologies but rather is rooted in the national and
international systems of justice that fail to hold soldier-rapists
accountable.
In the case of Guatemala, rape by soldiers was not only con-
doned but encouraged by high-ranking military officers. Pedro
Luis Ruiz, who served in the Guatemalan army, testified to the
following:

The lieutenant himself would teach us how to rape women. He

would tell us to get women. Wewould grab those who didn't want
to go and take them to him. He would then tum them over to the
soldiers; and since we were brainwashed, we thought this was
good. (jonas et al., 1984,p. 70)

Having effectively destroyed the country's judicial system, the

Guatemalan military has been free to commit rape and all manner
of atrocities without fear of punishment (Americas Watch Com-
mittee, 1987; Amnesty International, 1987; CEH, 1999; REMHI,
1999).
National and international forces not only provide impunity to
soldiers but also shape the way survivors represent state violence
 Hastings / SILENCING STATE-SPONSORED RAPE 1159

(Coronil & Skurski, 1991; Malkki, 1995; Robben, 1995; Turner,

1995). As many anthropologists who have researched la violencia
have observed, one aspect of the terror unleashed by the Guate-
malan army on its citizens was silencing survivors and control-
ling what was said and to whom (Davis, 1988;Falla, 1997;Green,
1999; Hale, 1997;Warren, 1993;Wilson, 1995). One way this con-
trol was achieved was through the criminalization of victims,
claiming that those killed by the army were guerrillas and guer-
rilla supporters (CEH, 1999; Falla, 1994; REMHI, 1999;Schirmer,
1998). Amnesty International (1987) has cited numerous govern-
ment documents and soldier testimonials insisting that the vic-
tims of army murders and abductions (including young children)
were targeted because they were guerrillas, despite overwhelm-
ing evidence to the contrary. As Beatriz Manz (1995) has argued,
the necessity of constantly claiming and proving one's innocence
of guerrilla actions, thoughts, and sympathies was one of the
objectives and outcomes of the terror.
It is not only the Guatemalan government that has shaped sur-
vivor testimonials of violence but the international community
and the governments of Mexico and the United States as well. In
his examination of human rights reporting in Guatemala, Richard
Wilson (1997) has argued that the style of writing in international
human rights documents has influenced Guatemalans' own "pri-
vate narratives," such that they have begun to reflect that stylistic
genre. Guatemalan refugees in Mexico have a long history of
using testimonials of state violence to confront the Mexican gov-
ernment's suspicions of guerrilla involvement and to secure legal
recognition, protection, and aid (Billings, 1995; Freyermuth &
Godfrey, 1993).In the United States, Guatemalans faced a govern-
ment that ignored or denied their experiences of violence and
rejected their applications for asylum (Burns, 1993; Hernandez,
1984; Loucky, 2000; Wellmeier, 2000). Such governmental and
international pressures have influenced the ways Guatemalans
represent la violencia, particularly in determining what is included
and what is excluded from the category of political violence.
Thus, to understand the silencing of Guatemalan survivors of
state-sponsored rape, we must look beyond the local cultural rape
script and the community's treatment of rape survivors. We must
take into account the international political and historical contexts
in which testimonials of state violence are produced.
1160 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / October 2002

LOCAL IDEOLOGIES OF RAPE

Turning attention to the specific community of [osefios in Gua-

temala, Mexico, and the United States, I begin by exploring the
possibility that the silence of [osefio survivors of state-sponsored
rape is the product of their indigenous cultural beliefs and local
community pressures. I identify [osefio community definitions of
rape and the "ideal victim," and I elaborate the circumstances that
might keep a survivor from talking about an experience of
nonwar rape, such as fear of being blamed and fear of the perpe-
trator. Considering these definitions and circumstances in rela-
tion to state-sponsored rape, I argue that local cultural ideologies
and social sanctions cannot fully explain the exclusion of first-
hand accounts of war rape in the context in which testimonials of
other manifestations of state violence are produced.

JOSENO DEFINITIONS OF "REAL RAPE" AND

THE "IDEAL VICTIM"

Although sexual aggression occurs among [osefios, it is not

always considered wrongful. In many circumstances, men's sex-
ual aggression toward women is understood as legitimate within
a cultural logic that takes age, marital status, and intention into
account. In Josefio sexual ideology, an act is only likely to be recog-
nized as rape in very circumscribed cases: when the aggression is
committed against an unmarried (virginal) woman whom the
perpetrator does not intend to marry.
In dominant [osefio ideology accepted by both men and
women, sexual aggression against married women by their hus-
bands is often excluded from what is considered "real rape."
Married women are obligated to have sex with their husbands.
One [osefia who had conducted women's health surveys for a
nongovernmental organization told me that although some
women enjoy sex, others "don't feel satisfied ... They do not like
to have [sexual] relations. They only do it because they have to."!
When I asked [osefia women in Mexico about sexual aggression
within marriage, many were surprised by the notion that a hus-
band could "rape" his wife. Because sexual submission is consid-
ered a wife's obligation, immoral sexual aggression within mar-
riage was almost inconceivable. During workshops I conducted
 Hastings / SILENCING STATE-SPONSORED RAPE 1161

in the refugee camps, one woman responded to my questions

about marital rape with the following comment: "Sometimes our
husbands will force us to have sex against our will, and we won't
say anything to the ladinos: because we are embarrassed. We are
embarrassed because we never heard that having sex with your
husband is rape." She represents marital rape as a new idea, for-
eign to the indigenous Guatemalan community.
Premarital sexual aggression is also systematically excluded
from consideration as rape in dominant [osefio sexual ideology.
According to a report by the Guatemalan refugee women's orga-
nization, Mama Maquin, "Kidnapping and rape are accepted as a
natural way for couples to be formed" (Mama Maquin/CIAM,
1994, p. 50).6 Among josefios, unmarried females are considered
to have been raped only when marriage does not follow, and the
criterion for determining rape in such instances depends not on
the consent of the woman but on the intent of the man. As a con-
ventionalized form of courtship, sexual aggression is excluded
from the category of communal crime worthy of sanction.
Previously married women, those abandoned by husbands or
widowed, are often considered to be sexually available, both
because of their previous sexual experience and because of the
lack of the protective presence of a husband. This availability is
reflected in the Kanjoballanguage, in which the word xek'ix refers
to both widows and prostitutes. In one refugee camp in Mexico,
Petrona, the woman with whom I stayed, told me about a young
man who unsuccessfully tried to rape a widowed woman.
Although the man was charged and found guilty by the elected
camp representatives, he resisted paying the 50 peso fine (equal to
approximately 5 days' pay). Petrona referred to the woman as no
longer "green" (tiema, literally "unripe"), apparently to signify
both her age and her sexual experience. This appellation provided
a partial explanation of the man's choice of victim, his
contestation of the fine, and the camp representatives' sluggish-
ness in enforcing the punishment. As a woman with two children,
the victim was known to have had sexual experience. As a middle-
aged widow, she was far from the ideal (young, unmarried) rape
victim.
Sexual aggression committed by non-josefios against [osefia
women, on the other hand, is almost always considered rape.
Both Mexican landowners and members of Los Angeles street
1162 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / October 2002

gangs have been known to sexually assault Guatemalan women.

In such cases, women are seen to be the helpless victims of abusive
men. Exposed to extracommunal rape in the context of urban
gang violence, [osefios in Los Angeles view rape back in San Jose
as virtually nonexistent. As one woman explained,

There, in San Jose, the woman accepts what the man says. I have
never seen a man who has seized a woman. They always ask us yes
or no, right? But the worst [are] the gang members in the streets
without respect ... Here [in Los Angeles] there is more sexual vio-
lence because here people are really drugged. There is more vio-
lence, more rapists. There, it's very rare. Sometimes you hear about
it, but it's very rare.

"Real rape" is thus defined as perpetrated by violent gang mem-

bers on drugs. According to this rape script, only in rare cases are
rapists members of the community.

ASSESSING BLAME

Victims of sexual aggression who do not fit the ideal and whose
experience does not fit [osefio definitions of "real rape" often do
not acknowledge or report their experiences. Yet, even when sex-
ual aggression is considered rape, survivors may be reticent to
speak publicly out of fear of being blamed themselves or fear that
the perpetrator will seek retribution.
In the few cases of rape I heard about that occurred within the
[osefio community, there was often an implication that the victim
could have done something to avoid her fate. For example, in San
Jose, I was told that in cases of covert courtship, a girl who is raped
by her boyfriend would not tell her father for fear of being blamed
herself for inciting the incident. Even in cases in which men have
been held accountable for their sexual aggression, women are
often considered complicit. For instance, in San Jose, Minga told
me about a 15-year-old girl who was raped by her boyfriend. By
way of explanation, and apparently justification, Minga
described the girl as being very "bold and bossy" in the relation-
ship. The girl's family denounced the assault, and the young man
was forced to pay a fine, but the victim's behavior was thought to
have incited the boyfriend's aggression.
 Hastings / SILENCING STATE-SPONSORED RAPE 1163

Two stories I heard in Los Angeles reflect [osefios' belief that

females sometimes provoke sexual aggression. A young [osefio
man told me one of the stories as justification for his refusal to let
his wife wear miniskirts. The story, which he had heard from a
Catholic" priest, was about a teenage girl who wore "provocative"
clothing to a Catholic mass. The scantily clad girl caused a young
man in the congregation to have "bad thoughts," which he later
confessed to the priest. Although the narrator of the story por-
trayed both girl and boy as sinners, it was clear where the fault
ultimately rested. The girl was blamed for dressing as she did,
whereas the boy was portrayed as a hapless victim.
The second story was told to me by Juana, a [osefia woman with
whom I shared an apartment in Los Angeles. It was about how her
relative, Martin, caught his wife and his brother together. All had
been living together in a small apartment. As the story went, one
night Martin left to rent a video but after starting out, decided
against it. When he returned to the apartment, Martin knocked on
the door, but no one answered. After several minutes, Martin
looked through a window above the door and saw his brother
coming out of the bathroom with his trousers still unzipped.
Enraged, Martin broke down the door and punched his brother.
He found his wife in the bathroom and, assuming she had been a
willing participant, hit her as well. When Juana told me the story,
she withheld speculation about the complicity of Martin's wife.
Juana stressed, rather, that Martin presumed his wife had played
an active role. According to Juana, Martin's parents blamed the
incident on their son's wife, even though Martin's brother admit-
ted to having been on drugs at the time. Although it is possible,
even likely, that Martin's brother raped Martin's wife, Martin was
viewed as the victim. Such assumptions about female complicity
in illicit sexual activity are common among [osefios,
Although [osefia women and girls can be blamed for provoking
sexual aggression based on their attire, attitude, and behavior,
male perpetrators can often avoid blame and punishment by ral-
lying the support of others. A report published by Mama Maqufn
told of 13-year-old Carmen, a refugee girl who denounced a refu-
gee man for raping her. The man was found guilty and was pun-
ished by the Mexican authorities, but the camp representatives
supported him. These representatives withheld food aid from the
1164 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / October 2002

girl and her family and convinced the other members of the camp
that she had lied. "The people cornered and stoned the family,
who, once they harvested their crops, repatriated" (Mama
Maquin/CIAM, 1994, p. 52). As this case illustrates, families that
make public claims for restitution face the antagonism of the
accused and his supporters. The community sanctions against
those who speak publicly about rape can be harsher than the pun-
ishment leveled at the perpetrator.

STATE-SPONSORED RAPE AND COMMUNITY RESPONSE

As we have seen, many aspects of [osefio cultural ideology dis-

courage victims of sexual aggression from defining their experi-
ence as rape and reporting it publicly. Various types of sexual
aggression are excluded from [osefio definitions of "real" rape.
The survivor who does not fit the [osefio "ideal victim" image
may legitimately fear being blamed herself for provoking the vio-
lence. Moreover, there are very real social costs to denouncing a
rape when the perpetrator has the support of the community. Yet,
when applied to state-sponsored rape, these same local commu-
nity ideologies and reactions would seem to encourage rather
than discourage public denunciation.
In the first place, state-sponsored rape conforms to the ideal
[osefio rape script. The perpetrators were not married to, court-
ing, or intending to marry the women and girls whom they raped.
For the most part, Guatemalans who had been drafted into the
army were not stationed in their own communities. As a conse-
quence, the soldiers who committed rape and other violence in
San Jose were not [osefios, As violent male outsiders, soldiers fit
the [osefio image of "real" rapists.
Furthermore, the willingness of state-sponsored rape survivors
to share their stories publicly appears unrelated to how closely the
survivors fit the "ideal victim" image. According to [osefio testi-
monials, Guatemalan soldiers raped females of all ages and mari-
tal statuses: unmarried girls as young as 9 years old, older married
women, women who were pregnant, and elderly widows.
Regardless of how closely they fit [osefic notions of the "ideal vic-
tim," they did not make their victimization part of public testimo-
nials of state violence. [osefios indicated that the survivors did,
 Hastings I SILENCING STATE-SPONSORED RAPE 1165

however, tell other members of the community, both family and

neighbors, about the rapes.
[osefios did not view state-sponsored rape victims as complicit
or blame them for having been raped by soldiers. In my inter-
views in the refugee camps in Mexico, I asked [osefio men and
Women to identify the responsible parties in cases of rape by sol-
diers. The question often caused confusion because the answer
seemed so obvious. The blame for state-sponsored rape was
placed unequivocally on soldiers. As Micaela explained, "The
women aren't asking for the soldiers to rape them."
When I asked Guadalupe, a [osefia living in Los Angeles,
whether she knew anyone who had been raped by soldiers, she
told me about two sisters who were abducted and gang-raped by
soldiers during the fiesta (the annual festival in honor of the
town's patron saint). The girls' family had since fled to Los
Angeles. I told Guadalupe that women in the United States who
have been raped are often reluctant to talk about their experience
because they are afraid they will be blamed themselves. I asked
her if Guatemalan survivors of rape by soldiers might also feel
this way. She replied,

I don't think so. It's different. Like what happened to these

girls ... The day after they arrived [in Los Angeles], a lot of people
came to see them. And the father told them [about the rape]. And
they felt bad about what happened to them. Butwe understand the
violence that happened there.

The visitors' reactions to the girls' rape ranged from sympathy

("they felt bad") to empathy ("we understand") but did not
include criticism of the girls' conduct or character. According to
Guadalupe, the girls went on to marry [osefios and have children.
[osefios apparently did not blame or stigmatize these girls for
their victimization.
Among [osefios, the impunity of soldier-rapists was consid-
ered absolute. [osefios believed that their only recourse against
soldier-rapists was through those authoritative state agents (i.e.,
mayors, judges, etc.) whose power rivaled that of soldiers. This
meant that denunciations and claims for justice could only be
brought before agents of the same government that had sent the
soldiers in the first place.
1166 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / October 2002

Miguel, in Los Angeles, repeated the same story told by

Guadalupe of the two girls who were raped by soldiers during the
town's fiesta. In his description, the impunity of the soldiers is
clear: "The girls' family, their father and mother, went around ask-
ing for help [saying], 'They took my daughters.' But no one could
help because the soldiers were there and if you said something
you would die." The family's attempt to garner community sup-
port failed but not because of intracommunity factionalism, as
in the case of the rape of Carmen in Mexico. The lethal power of
the army is clearly identified as the force that protected soldier-
rapists from community- or state-imposed punishment. When I
asked [osefios about the community's response to soldiers raping
women and girls, a typical response was, "Who are we going to
tell? The people can't do anything for fear. They didn't say any-
thing because the soldiers have guns."
[osefios knew that soldiers would not be punished for any
type of violence, but they expressed particular frustration that
the soldiers would not be held responsible for their acts of state-
sponsored rape. Although the impunity of soldiers was always
guaranteed, they were not presumed to be culpable in all cases of
violence. At times, [osefios placed ultimate blame on the guerril-
las, who many believed to have provoked army attacks, rather
than on the soldiers who committed them. In the case of rape,
however, the soldiers were considered ultimately culpable (not
the guerrillas). The guilt of soldiers, however, was not of a politi-
cal nature but of a naturalized and individualized one. The fol-
lowing section examines these two recurrent features of [osefio
testimonio: the blaming of guerrillas for army violence and the
depoliticization of rape.

TESTIMONIO AND STATE-SPONSORED RAPE

[osefios consider the sexual aggression of soldiers to be rape of

the most egregious kind: The perpetrator had no sexual rights to
the victim, the victim was not complicit, and the victim and her
family were denied access to compensation. Yet firsthand
accounts of rape have not been incorporated into [osefio testimo-
nials of state violence. Going beyond the local context to explain
this e~clusion, I examine here the ways national and international
 Hastings / SILENCING STATE-SPONSORED RAPE 1167

power structures and discourses collude with Josefio cultural ide-

ologies in shaping what is included and excluded from testimonio.

INNOCENCE AND THE POLITICS OF TESTIMONIO

In Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States, a central compo-

nent of [osefio testimonials about state violence has been estab-
lishing innocence of guerrilla subversion. Threats of violence,
deportation, and public rejection pressured [osefios to distance
themselves from identification with the guerrilla movement.
In San Jose, association with guerrilla activity frequently led to
abduction, torture, and death at the hands of the Guatemalan mil-
itary. [osefios in Guatemala often repeated to me versions of the
state's official history that justified army violence by claiming that
the victims were guerrillas deserving punishment and the sol-
diers were performing their legitimate duty to protect the state
and its people from the subversives. During the week of All Souls
and All Saints Days in San Jose in 1994, I stayed with Andres, a
well-respected catechist and former mayor of San Jose. While we
talked after supper one night, Andres told me about his children
now living in the United States. His daughter had been a teacher
in a nearby town when she fled the country because the "subver-
sives" had come and wanted to take her to the mountains. "But
you weren't afraid?" I asked him. "You didn't have any prob-
lems?" He explained, .

No, I was not afraid at all. I trusted in God. God protected me. Peo-
ple came and said, "Let's go! Leave your house." But why should I
leave? I haven't done anything. I don't have any weapons. Only the
word of God is my weapon ... Why should I listen to what the peo-
ple in the mountains (i.e., the guerrillas) say? The only laws that
have to be obeyed are those of the Guatemalan state ... I did not
have anything to do with the guerrillas. It was the people who had
supported the subversives who had to flee. Lots of people fled.
They left their houses empty and locked up. The army burned
down their houses, saying that they must be subversives if they
fled.

In his narrative, Andres both asserts his own innocence of guer-

rilla involvement and asserts the legitimacy of the army's coun-
terinsurgency campaign.
1168 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / October 2002

For the thousands of [osefios who fled to Mexico, identification

with guerrillas meant the constant threat of denial of refugee sta-
tus and aid. Along with hundreds of thousands of other Guatema-
lan refugees, more than 2,000[osefios set up camps in the state of
Chiapas, very close to the Guatemalan border (Clay, 1984). The
Mexican government was slow to officially recognize and protect
the refugees because it feared that the refugees were supportive of
the guerrillas and that they might spread revolution to the indige-
nous people of Chiapas. In the meantime, Guatemalan army
incursions over the border resulted in the murder and capture of
many refugees, including several [osefios. Even after granting ref-
ugee status to the Guatemalans, Mexican officials remained sus-
picious of the Guatemalans' association with the guerrilla move-
ment. As a way of keeping them apart from the indigenous
population of Chiapas, the Mexican government prohibited the
Guatemalan refugees from going beyond a certain radius of the
camps. Their economic opportunities thus limited, the refugees
were largely dependent on aid from the Mexican government and
international humanitarian organizations.
Throughout this process of Mexican government recognition
and restriction, refugees were asked to tell and retell their per-
sonal testimonials of state violence to Mexican neighbors, govern-
ment officials, international solidarity groups and UN High Com-
mission for Refugees representatives to justify why they had
entered Mexico and why they should be allowed to stay. Refugee
testimonial discourse in Mexico, which grew out of this dialogue,
has been sustained and constrained by three factors: (a) the pres-
ence of international and local human rights, solidarity, and
church organizations in the refugee camps; (b) pressure by the
Mexican government and Mexican press for the refugees to return
to Guatemala; and (c) accusations of guerrilla connections by the
Guatemalan government. These discourses constrain refugee
narratives of "what happened" such that in interview situations,
refugees respond to questions in stylized ways that anticipate
counter arguments against Guatemalans' legitimacy as refugees.
Thus, a testimony of "what happened" must establish the inno-
cence of the refugees against accusations of insurgency, the guilt
of the army in committing politically motivated atrocities, and the
suffering of the refugees as victims of state-sponsored violence.
 Hastings / SILENCING STATE-SPONSORED RAPE 1169

Although in the United States, testimonio among [osefios was

far less uniform and successful in establishing refugee status than
it was in Mexico, it contained similar claims to innocence of guer-
rilla subversion. Gregorio's account of la violencia, for example,
echoed those used by [osefios in Mexico.

The poor people, they were innocent. They didn't have any guilt.
The others, the guerrillas who go around in the mountains, are the
ones who provoke these problems. But the innocent people, like
we are here with family ... they are the ones who paid.

Like those in Mexico, [osefios in Los Angeles faced certain

requirements for securing political asylum following the UN cri-
teria for refugees. Eligibility for political asylum requires that an
individual prove he or she has a reasonable fear of persecution on
the basis of race, religion, or political opinion, either actual or
attributed to them. Almost all those Guatemalans who applied for
political asylum were denied." U.S. policy on the matter has con-
sistently been based on official denial that Guatemalans fear per-
secution in their home country." Despite the odds, however, many
[osefios applied for political asylum because in doing so, they
were granted temporary working permits. to Through the asylum
process, [osefios learned that only persecution based on actual or
suspected involvement with a political group was considered
legitimate. Strongly anti-Communist American public sentiment
added pressure for [osefios to deny association with guerrillas
and reinforced [osefios' perceptions of the legitimacy of state
authority in carrying out its counterinsurgency campaign.
Although [osefios' claims of innocence of guerrilla involve-
ment has been a constantly recurring theme in their narratives of
la violencia, they have excluded victims and potential victims of
rape by soldiers from these claims of innocence. In testimonials
that included stories of state-sponsored rape, the innocence of
women and girls of being guerrillas is neither established nor
denied. [osefios view the victims of rape as women who, as a
category, are not considered potential subversives. As such,
this gendered category is removed from [osefios' 'discursive
construction of political innocence. Furthermore, [osefios view
the perpetrators of war rape as men acting out male desire, rather
than as state agents carrying out the political agenda of
1170 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / October 2002

counterinsurgency. State-sponsored rape, therefore, finds no

place in the key frames in which testimonio is constructed.

IDENTITY OF VICTIMS: WOMEN, NOT GUERRILLAS

In [osefio testimonios of state violence, men as a category are fre-

quently identified as having been targeted by the state for guer-
rilla involvement, but women are not. [osefios do consider indi-
vidual women as being capable of guerrilla involvement, but in
[osefio accounts of individual women who were targeted by the
army for supporting the guerrillas, the violence that the women
suffered is no different than that suffered by men (i.e., they were
tortured, killed, forced to flee). None of these accounts of sus-
pected women guerrillas suggest that the women were raped by
soldiers, nor do any of the accounts of women who were raped by
soldiers suggest they were targeted because they were suspected
of being guerrillas.
Petrona's brother-in-law had been a teacher in San Jose and was
disappeared after being summoned by the military to the depart-
ment capital of Huehuetenango. When I told Petrona that my
research was about whether people still remember La uiolencia and
how it affects them now, Petrona welcomed the opportunity to
talk with me. She told me, " We are afraid to go back. They still do
not respect us. If we went back, they could corne into our house
after awhile and kill us. We can't do anything. There was so much
killing and violaci6n." The Spanish word "uiolacion" can refer to
either "violation" (i.e., a general violation of rights) or "rape" (i.e.,
the sexual violation of women). Unsure of what Petrona meant, I
asked whether women were raped in San Jose.

Yes, in Yalan Huitz. There was a woman who had just given birth.
Her husband wasn't there. The soldiers went in and raped her, left
her dead in the plaza. It was Friday. Sunday the people came to buy
and sell in the plaza, and they saw her body and that she was
raped. They were scared and went away running. On July 19, 1981,
they dropped bombs in Yalan Huitz. I remember the day because it
was at dawn on the 20th that my daughter was born when they
were bringing the dead bodies in from the mountains. They would
come into the houses looking for men and ask where the husband
was. It was the men who were persecuted the most. If he wasn't
there, they would say he was in the guerrilla. They came into our
 Hastings / SILENCING STATE-SPONSORED RAPE 1171

house to registerus. We were trembling. Myhusband wasn't there

because he was hiding in the hills. He just took his tortillas with
him and slept in a cave.

Although Petrona acknowledges that soldiers had raped

[osefia women, she shifts her attention to more clearly political
forms of state violence. In specifying that it was "the men who
were persecuted most," Petrona genders political violence.
Labeling violence against men persecution, a term she does not use
when speaking of rape, reflects the depoliticization of gender-
specific violence committed against women. As Petrona explains,
men were considered to be persecuted by the state, rather than
merely targeted by soldiers, because as a political category, they
were accused of guerrilla involvement.
In contrast to testimonios in which state-sponsored violence
against men was clearly recognized as politically motivated vio-
lence against innocent citizens, state-sponsored rape directed
against women was glossed over as a nonpolitical crime.
Micaela's father, for example, had been among those killed by sol-
diers in a mine in one of San Jose's hamlets. When she spoke to me
in a refugee camp in Mexico, Micaela insisted that her father, the
other men who were killed with him, and her entire family were
innocent of guerrilla subversion. When I asked if she knew any
women who had been raped by soldiers, Micaela replied, as
follows:

Micaela: Yes, women were raped. Pregnant women were raped.

Author: How many?
Micaela: Of the women who lived in my village, they took two mar-
ried women.Theytookfour girlsonly9 yearsold and raped them.
Oneelderlywomanwas raped also.Shewas in her house when the
soldiersarrived, and they entered her house and raped her.There
were several soldiers that raped her.

Typical of similar conversations I had with other [osefios, Micaela

made no explicit mention of the innocence of the girls and women
who were raped. There is no suggestion here, or in ~ny of the
[osefio testimonial narratives that I heard, that women were
raped as punishment (deserved or not) for something they had
done wrong, some alleged crime they had committed against the
state or anyone else.
1172 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / October 2002

When I asked Micaela how she knew that the elderly woman
had been raped, she explained,

She herself told us. She came over. We left because the soldiers
were coming to the houses, and we did not want to be raped by the
soldiers. We went into the cornfields to hide. The lady couldn't
leave so she stayed in the house. And when the soldiers left, we
came back to the house, and she came to the house crying and told
us, "They raped me. They did this to me." That's how we knew.

What we see here is that when speaking about women, Micaela

does not hesitate to admit that they fled from soldiers. However,
the acts of fleeing the house and hiding are represented very dif-
ferently than when Micaela referred to men's flight. Earlier in the
interview, when Micaela had spoken of the violence directed at
her father and other men, she emphasized that staying at home
represented political innocence. When soldiers entered her town,
Micaela had said, "We knew we hadn't committed any crimes so
we were at home." The men (collectivized into a "we" that
included her) believed that soldiers would not punish them for
something they had not done. But Micaela, and all the women
who were able, fled their houses because they "didn't want to be
raped by the soldiers." The women's innocence of guerrilla sub-
version was irrelevant. It would not have protected them from
being raped.

IDENTITY OF PERPETRATORS: MEN, NOT STATE AGENTS

As the previous section suggests, [osefio gender and sexual ide-

ologies collude with the international politics of testimonio in the
exclusion of rape from consideration as politically motivated per-
secution. [osefios' beliefs about the inherent sexual desires of men
were also instrumental in their interpretations of rape by soldiers
as the isolated acts of libidinous men rather than strategic acts of
political persecution.
[osefio men and women often spoke of sexual desire, rather
than political or strategic directives, as the motivation that led sol-
diers to rape women. Note Miguel's description of the rape of the
two girls during the town's fiesta celebrations.
 Hastings / SILENCING STATE·SPONSORED RAPE 1173

The soldiers were there in San Jose and saw that the girls were very
well dressed, and when the fiesta was over, everyone went to their
houses but the soldiers arrived and kidnapped ... They took the
girls ... They took the girls for one night to the camp. Then, in the
morning, they let them go and they appeared again at their house.
They say that they took them and raped them.

In this narrative, the attire of the girls does not indicate their own
complicity in the rape. (The girls are described as "well dressed"
rather than scantily dressed.) The appearance of the girls does,
however, identify them as sexual rather than military targets. The
soldiers are represented as desirous men more than as counterin-
surgency agents.
In Los Angeles, Teresa was adamant that soldiers killed inno-
cent people and burned their houses because they believed that
the people were guerrilla supporters. She gave a very different
explanation for why women were raped by those same soldiers.

Teresa: A lot of women were raped and little girls were raped by the
soldiers because they were left alone by their husbands. Most of the
husbands were coming to the United States to work and bring
them to the United States. And they were left alone and when they
were left alone, the army got in and raped them.
Author: Why did they do that to the women? Did they think the
women were guerrillas?
Teresa: I don't know the reason why they get the women. I guess they
just wanted them.

Teresa identifies soldiers carrying out the counterinsurgency

objectives of the state as those who killed, tortured, and destroyed
the homes of suspected guerrilla supporters. Yet,it was naturally
desirous men who raped vulnerable women.

THE INTERNATIONAL DEPOLITICIZING

OF STATE-SPONSORED RAPE

As I have argued, the testimonial genre is not simply a product

of indigenous Guatemalan ideology. It has been shaped by
national and international discourses of legitimate state power,
refugee status, and human rights. Understanding state-sponsored
rape as individual acts of naturally libidinous men against
1174 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / October 2002

inherently vulnerable females transcends local cultural bound-

aries as well. Despite efforts by international feminist, human
rights, and refugee organizations to publicize the political nature
of state-sponsored rape as a gendered war crime, the perception
of wartime rape as an individual act of wayward soldiers
continues.
Such depoliticization finds clear expression in U.S. govern-
ment responses to applications for political asylum. In this con-
text, rape is individualized as an isolated experience devoid of
strategic military implications, and rape survivors are routinely
denied refugee status (Aron et al., 1991).In one case, a Salvadoran
woman who had been raped by a soldier escaped to the United
States but was denied political asylum. Although the immigra-
tion judge found her story "altogether credible," he decided that
the rape did not qualify as an act of persecution but "was more
because she was a female convenient to a brutal soldier acting
only in his own self-interest" (Amnesty International, 1991,p. 49).
Similar rulings have been issued by immigration judges and the
Board of Immigration Appeals in numerous political asylum
cases involving the rape of women by soldiers. In many cases,
even though judges believed that applicants had been raped, the
women were not deemed to qualify for asylum because their per-
secution was not contingent on their political opinions or political
opinions attributed to them (Mulligan, 1990).

CONCLUSION: RAPE, INNOCENCE, AND

THE (lL)LEGITIMATE STATE

The silencing of state-sponsored rape survivors is not simply

an extension of social norms and cultural values that effectively
silence intracommunity sexual crimes against women. The previ-
ous examination of [osefios' cultural norms and values revealed
that in cases of state-sponsored rape, many of the community-
level factors that otherwise effectively silence reports of rape in
nonwar contexts are not applicable. [osefio discourse about state-
sponsored rape calls into question the assumption that victims of
state-sponsored rape are necessarily blamed by their communi-
ties for their victimization. [osefios' accounts did not suggest that
 Hastings / SILENCING STATE-SPONSORED RAPE 1175

the victims were or felt responsible for having been raped. Sexual
aggression by soldiers is considered rape, and their victims are
presumed to be innocent of complicity.
Despite the many factors that have made sharing personal
experiences of state-sponsored violence valued and valuable
among [osefios, rape is excluded from testimonio because it is not
harnessed to the claims of innocence that frame the genre. La
uiolencia, as it emerges in testimonio, is in this sense gendered mas-
culine. Women as a category emerge in [osefio narratives only as
gendered victims rather than as political ones. Women's vulnera-
bility as victims of rape is considered a natural consequence of a
condition in which men have power over women. In short,
women do not constitute a political category as potential guerrilla
sympathizers or combatants. Although the power of soldiers to
commit rape with impunity is enhanced by their association with
the state, their motivation for committing the crime is seen as per-
sonal rather than political.
Testimonials of state violence, which focus on establishing
one's innocence of guerrilla subversion, allow [osefios to make
some sense of the terror. Through their narratives of violence,
[osefios establish themselves as innocent of guerrilla association
and lay claim to protection by the governments under which they
presently live. In the process, [osefios regain a sense of security
that la violencia undermined. In this morally constituted world,
political innocence should protect [osefios from all other types of
state violence. Such innocence, however, does not protect [osefia
women from being raped.
There are also significant repercussions for women who
include firsthand accounts of rape in their testimonios. These sanc-
tions, however, are not imposed by the local community but
rather by national and international forces. In many contexts, ref-
ugee women who have included such accounts in their applica-
tions for political asylum have found their claims denied. Rape is
generally not considered political persecution, and public revela-
tions of rape are individualized and depoliticized by state author-
ities. Women who include their experiences of rape in testimonios
of violence are thereby viewed primarily as victimized women
rather than as persecuted citizens.
1176 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / October 2002

REPOLITICIZING STATE-SPONSORED RAPE

Many discourses of rape collude to render the act and the vic-
tims apolitical and thus marginal to the very process by which
testimonio takes shape. Yet consideration of rape as a political
crime was not entirely erased in [osefio testimonials of state vio-
lence. In conclusion, I want to raise the possibility that [osefios'
inclusion of secondhand accounts of rape in testimonio sometimes
results in a powerful critique of both state violence and patriarchy.
References to state-sponsored rape can open a space for a cri-
tique of the state that the focus on innocence of guerrilla involve-
ment does not allow. When framed as strategic political violence
directed not at presumed guerrillas but at unblamable indigenous
women, [osefios' accounts of state-sponsored rape reveal la
violencia as not merely the unintended consequence of an other-
wise justified counterinsurgency.
When speaking of state-sponsored rape in general, some
[osefios represented it as a strategy of state terror. A few refugees
in Mexico told me that soldiers raped women and girls because
they lacked respect for indigenous people. Micaela noted,
"The community has more fear of the soldiers because they do
this to us." When I asked Francisco in Los Angeles about state-
sponsored rape, he replied, "The army, that's their way. That's
how they try to beat the people down." As these examples dem-
onstrate, some [osefios viewed rape as one aspect of the military's
broadly aimed agenda of terror, which involved undermining
community cohesion and destroying people's will to resist state
domination.
In the refugee camps in Mexico, some [osefias have begun to
take the critique of the state even further. Organizations such as
Mama Maquin are connecting women's rights discourse with citi-
zen and refugee rights and in so doing, begin to gender la uiolencia
feminine rather than masculine.

In Guatemala, the soldiers are the ones who rape. They rape young
girls. In our country, there is a lot of raping. A lot of women whose
husbands were killed were also raped by the soldiers since women
don't have any rights at all.

In this young woman's narrative, which I recorded during a

workshop on women's rights that I conducted in the camps, the
 Hastings / SILENCING STATE-SPONSORED RAPE 1177

killing of husbands and the rape of women by soldiers are both

represented as political crimes against women who "don't have
any rights at all."
Other women from the same workshop continued the critique
by making explicit links between state violence and domestic
violence.

In the past, we didn't have rights. We were discriminated

against by the government. We were treated like nothing. In the
past, we didn't have rights. The men discriminated against the
women. Some men abused their wives. They would force their
wives to do things they didn't want to do, and that's discrimina-
tion. That doesn't happen in every family, but in some families,
women are discriminated against just like the government dis-
criminates against us. They killed everybody: our mothers, our sib-
lings, our fathers, everyone ... Here in Mexico, we are organizing,
and now, as women, we know what our rights are.

Here the "we" is explicitly feminine. This re-gendering of la

violencia not only suggests a powerful critique of the state's treat-
ment of its citizens but also critiques the patriarchy on which state
authority relies. It not only politicizes state-sponsored rape but
also politicizes all rape, including the rape of wives by husbands.
The articulation of state and domestic violence poses a radical
challenge to local, national, and international systems of gender
oppression.
Blaming a rape survivor's "culture" for her silence ignores the
national and international power structures and discourses that
shape survivor testimonio and collude in the depoliticization of
rape. It also ignores the creative role that women and men play in
both reproducing and challenging the power structures and dis-
courses that support state-sponsored rape and silence the
survivors.

NOTES

1. I use the term state-sponsored rape to refer to rape perpetrated by agents of the
national government with the knowledge and implicit or explicit support of that govern-
ment (d. Aron et al., 1991).
2. To protect the identities of my informants, I use pseudonyms for the town, the
camps, and all individuals mentioned.
1178 VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN / October 2002

3. See the Web sites of Amnesty International (www.amnesty.org) and Human Rights
Watch (www.hrw.org)forexamplesfromSierraLeone.SriLanka. Kosovo, Tanzania, and
Peru.
4. In her work on women in another highland Guatemalan town, Tracy Bachrach
Ehlers (2000) found very similar attitudes toward sex as a marital obligation and the belief
that "it is the woman's part to lie still and tolerate the need her husband has for sexual
release at her expense" (p. 171).
5. Persons of mixed indigenous and European descent.
6. Articulating its feminist ideology, the language of Mama Maqufn is clear in its desig-
nation of this type of "courtship" sexual aggression as rape. But the acceptance of this
aggression as "natural" suggests that among indigenous Guatemalans, "rape" refers to
other, unacceptable offenses.
7. Missionaries introduced Catholicism to [osefios in the mid-20th century, and it has
since become the adopted religion of a majority of the [osefio population.
8. Throughout the 1980s, asylum was granted to only 14 out of 1,475 Guatemalan
applicants nationwide (Burns, 1993). In Los Angeles, only 2 out of 320 applications for
political asylum were approved (Hernandez, 1984).
9. As Los Angeles Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) official Orner Sewell
stated in 1984, "In general, the [state] department feels there is no merit in their statements
that they fear persecution" (as cited in Hernandez, 1984, p. 3).
10. At the height of the refugee influx, this waiting period could last 3 to 4 years, during
which time the applicant would be legally employable.

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Julie A. Hastings (PhD., University ofMichigan) is currently anassistant pro-

fessor ofanthropology at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, where she
teaches courses onLatin America, gender, andhuman rights. This article is part of
alarger ethnographic project involving a transnational community ofindigenous
Guatemalans living in Guatemala, Mexico, andtheUnited States. The project is
concerned with thecultural representation andpolitical negotiation ofautllOrity
and violence in thecontext of stateterror and its aftermath.