Abstract
This article deliberately examines the search for truth after decades of conflict in Guatemala. Excavations of mass gravesites and the painstaking exhumation processes carried out by professional forensic anthropology teams continue to allow families to locate lost relatives—reclaiming truth and supporting calls for justice. For Guatemalans, the search for truth now transcends national borders, especially among migrant communities in the United States. The family remains the central unit through which the work of Guatemalan forensic anthropologists is undertaken. In an effort to engender deeper insights about these exhumation processes from a social science perspective, this analysis promotes the use of specific “tools” in Guatemalan forensic anthropology investigations. The first is an exhumations concept map, which yields important questions meant to stimulate meaningful analysis. The second, Story Maps, is a technology application with the potential to mediate digital access to the emerging Guatemalan translocal space. The research in this analysis suggests that these “tools” strengthen Burton’s notion of “provention” in Guatemala.
Highlights
Guatemala continues to recover from the armed conflict that plagued the country for decades
A brutal civil war that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands saw violence that disproportionately targeted indigenous communities in the Guatemalan highlands
Exhumations carried out by professional forensic anthropologists have come to embody the search for truth in Guatemalan society given requests by the indigenous to locate their lost relatives
Summary
Guatemala continues to recover from the armed conflict that plagued the country for decades. Since the late 1980s, the process of exhuming human remains in post-conflict settings for the purposes of building criminal cases, creating a historical account or providing closure for victims’ loved ones has gained momentum This reality has created a space for hard science—namely forensic anthropology and archaeology—in transitional justice practices and literature. Forensic anthropologists are able to reflect on the use of their trade as it relates to human rights, yet typically through their unique lens They are able to analyze, for instance, how effectively they can identify a victim, his or her cause of death, age, gender, etc., from their remains. Social scientists typically seek to understand the broader implications for victims, communities, local and state power structures, etc., of the tools utilized to promote transitional justice Research in this vein, as it pertains to the use of exhumations, requires more attention. It is this work that places the family at the center in the experience of locality in Guatemala, as the transformation of the cultural landscape occurs slowly, thereby speaking in ways to the manner in which “provention” has been framed
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