Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. By Victoria Sanford. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2003. Pp. 313. $35.00, cloth.

Victoria Sanford’s book is a vehicle for survivors of La Violencia, the period of human rights abuses against Maya Indians in Guatemala, to tell their stories of persecution and, ultimately, of survival. Buried Secrets strives not only to tell the stories of the victims, but to show how their testimonies help to find both truth and justice for the Maya in Guatemala. Sanford uses the testimonies in two ways: to further her hypothesis that La Violencia was a systematic genocide and to show the power of the language of the testimonials in bringing about political power and justice to the Maya people.

Sanford’s describes the Guatemalan Army’s multiple genocides of the Maya people as a “phenomenology of terror.” The process began with the militarization of villages. The Army would infiltrate the town, accusing the villagers of sympathizing with the Guerillas. The next step would be the first instance of genocide: a massacre of the villagers. Usually those massacred would be men, but by the end of the reign of terror, women and children were also killed. The survivors fled the villages, usually because the army would burn buildings and crops to further punish the villagers for supposedly sympathizing with Guerilla forces. The second instance of genocide occurred once the survivors had fled, usually to the mountains, when the army would then hunt the survivors, to either kill them or force them into army control. Because of the hardships of hiding in the mountains—starvation, thirst, and extreme cold—many who were not captured surrendered to the army.

After being in army control, the third genocide against the survivors began. Survivors were placed into “model villages,” army-controlled townships built upon the same land as the original towns that were burned. These townships were parodies of the original towns, as the new buildings were shoddy and the citizens were not given their original land back. After being sent to the “model villages,” the Maya were then “re-educated” by the army to erase the supposed sympathy with the guerillas. The final step of the phenomenology of terror was the aftermath of such terror: survivors living in fear of the army and of citizen patrollers (who were little more than army puppets).

Telling the phenomenology of terror in an interesting way, Sanford resists the urge to collapse individual stories of the genocide, instead weaving multiple individual narratives into one whole picture. The power of the book lies in the fact that the story is told not by Sanford, but by the people who directly experienced the horrors. Sanford believes in the power of language—that the power of testimony can help the Maya reclaim power and space within Guatemalan politics and culture.

The transformative power of language is evident in many ways in the book. One way is the name for the horrors inflicted upon the Maya in Guatemala. While the massacres and militarization were occurring, the Maya could only call what was occurring “La Situacion.” After the signing of peace accords in 1996, the survivors could finally use more descriptive terminology of what had occurred: La Situacion became La Violencia. By finally being able to describe their plight as the violence it was, the Maya began to take power away from their persecutors, the Guatemalan Army and Government.

Language is used to broaden the scope of what occurred. For example, the genocide of the Maya is classified not only as the mass killings of civilians, but also the persecution and re-education of the survivors. Indeed, the word survivor was expanded to include not only the men who were targeted and yet survived the massacres, but also the women, children and elderly who witnessed the killings and fled to the mountains afterward. Sanford shows that the enlarging of traditional definitions of massacre, genocide, and survivor lets those who suffered at all during the genocide to tell their stories and begin the healing process.

Another instance of the transformative power of language is the use of language in the excavations of the mass graves (or clandestine cemeteries). In order for a town to have an excavation, it must be requested by the survivors and approved by the courts. Thus, the act of excavation, which is usually an act of healing for the survivors, begins in language. Indeed, the language is important in the process of excavation: the first step is the gathering of testimonials from the survivors in order to locate the mass grave and to help identify the bodies of victims that are buried there. The testimonials have opened up both a physical and political space of resistance for the survivors. The literal site of the massacre is taken back by the families of the victims, and by petitioning the government for the excavations, the survivors are engaging in the political process that was forbidden to them in the past.

Buried Secrets is an interesting book that explores the intersections of memory, history, and language. Though Sanford emphasizes that testimonies give the survivors some power, they are nonetheless working within a larger political system to gain its power. Readers can see how the survivors are gaining power by using the justice system to attain their goals of truth and justice. The courts are used to excavate graves, to punish those who committed the acts of genocide, and most importantly to learn the truth of what happened in the past. The survivors in telling their life stories are also reclaiming their history and ensuring their future.

—Sarah Lamoree

Copyright © 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Harvard Human Rights Journal / Vol. 17, Spring 2004