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Cet article veut démontrer les disparités entre le terme "veuve de guerre » présent dans trop d'oeuvres littéraires au GuatemaL· de l'après-guerre civile et les individus que ce terme cherche à décrire.
Este articulo se propone demostrar las disparidades entre el término 'viuda de guerra' presente en L· literatura escrita después de la guerra civil en Guatemah y las individuas reales que el término trata de describir.
Social scientists who write about Guatemala's state violence surrounding the 36-year civil war, at its height in the early 1980s, ending in 1996, and resulting in the estimated death or disappearance of at least 140,000 people, often claim that Maya who suffered the majority of the aggression were either the innocent victims of the army or the naïve constituency of the guerilla. This paper considers early feminist works in the post-conflict period as part of an overlooked feminist literature, as it reflected on at the roles of women in the process of post-conflict reconstruction and the national recovery from the scorched earth campaign carried out by the Guatemalan military against the Maya.
This paper looks critically at three early feminist interpretations of Guatemalan post-conflict widowhood: Victoria Sanford's Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala (2003), Judith Zur's Violent Memories: Mayan War-widows in Guatemala (1998) and Linda Green's Fear as a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala (1999). Given the space constraints, only the two earlier texts will be dealt with here; both Green's Fear as a Way of Life and Zur's Violent Memories were published at a significant time in Guatemalan history and during the postconflict reconstruction, yet neither have been adequately critiqued by feminists. Sanford's more recent work deserves a separate and more extensive critique with reference to recent literature. In all three texts, gender is an important component in the documented oral histories, especially as women are represented as wives and widows. To varying degrees, these texts use the testimonies of women to bear witness to the repression suffered by the Guatemalan Maya. All rely on interviews and write life histories and personal narratives in an effort to give voice to underrepresented women's experiences during the civil war.
Maya women often noted the "difference" they felt in their communities and their personal identities...