Development and denial: Guatemalan post-genocide development narratives

Abstract

This paper investigates how genocide denial in Guatemala is utilized by the elites and the government to undermine Indigenous pursuits of justice, not only for war-era violence but also for ongoing issues related to racism, violence, and economic marginalization. While national lawmakers and economic elites in Guatemala insist that genocide recognition hinders economic development and national reconciliation, I argue that denial perpetuates the multifaceted marginalization of Indigenous populations as it works to maintain the status quo. Drawing from postcolonial memory studies, critical development literature, and decolonial scholars, this paper examines the ‘no hubo genocidio’ narratives alongside contemporary development and ‘solidarity’ campaigns to highlight the discursive and material motivations and implications of these forms of memory/forgetting work. In particular, I interrogate how the actors who produce both the contemporary development campaigns and the genocide denial narratives do so in an attempt to fix a specific collective memory, identity, and vision of development to the national level, which in Guatemala has always been problematic, fraught with racism, violence, and institutional forgetting.