This work would not have been possible without the financial support of the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) at Vanderbilt University, Tinker Award and The Maya Educational Foundation Guatemala (FEPMaya), Thesis Award. Marielos, members of the Ixmukane Association, who worked actively to provide assistance in the community and support the translation of the K'iche Maya.
The Narrative of a Tragedy
These aspects of the people who were involved in the armed conflict in Guatemala have several interpretations. Inequality in health matters increased during the period of armed conflict against Maya communities.
The Armed conflict context in Guatemala: Legacy of Violence in Maya Population and
Central America and Armed conflict
In addition, more than two million people were displaced as a result of political violence in Central America during this period of armed conflict (Manz, 1988). In Central America, the Nicaragua case is of special interest because it improved the health care system after the armed conflict.
Violence and armed conflict in Guatemala
Some social structural causes related to the outbreak of the armed conflict were the economic, cultural and social relations in Guatemala. Carmack reconstructs events by documenting oral history, in a deliberate attempt to comprehend the total devastation of the Mayan communities as a result of armed conflict.
The Green of Totonicapán -Le Rax Chumequena-
Some scholars believe that the K´iche Maya group were the founders of the Totonicapán area of Guatemala. It was the decisive moment when Totonicapánses14 felt the impact of the armed conflict in community life.
Guatemala Health Consequences in Maya Population
They described some of the problems faced by Mayan children after armed conflicts, such as fear, In the early 1990s, the collapse of the Guatemalan economy led to a decline in health and nutrition services available to Maya groups. The Guatemalan Peace Accords of 1996 were signed to end 36 years of armed conflict.
The consequences of armed conflict on health, well-being and nutrition have long-term consequences in adulthood with lasting health costs (PAHO, 2015).
Conclusion: Health Matters
The impact of the armed conflict in Totonicapán (a green zone) is not well documented. We cut firewood until the night, so that the people (guerrilla) hear the sound of the fire. use the fire nearby for protection). The citizen patrol took place in the structural context of intense racism and racial inequality ( Kobral, 1997 ); This required male members of the family. the father and the eldest son) to register for the program.
In this sense, illness is a disorder in a popular and structural context, but in a holistic view of interaction with the social context (Young, 1982; Kleinman, 1988 ;). The militarization of structural violence, under the armed conflict in Guatemala, was concretized in the community's relationship with repression.
Memories of Chronic Violence: Consequences for the Health Status in a Totonicapán
Typology of Violence: Means and Forms
This research specifically examines the implications of individual and community violence as a form of structural violence due to its consequences for individuals, communities, groups and collectives in relation to health care during and after the armed conflict in Guatemala. Anthropologists have proposed structural violence as a form of invisible violence because of its role in social structure (Galtung, 1969; Manz, 1988). The social categorization expands the understanding of violence and clarifies social and medical interactions that affect communities and populations that have suffered from the structural violence.
The chronic violence involves the violence as a medical concept embodied in the structural violence with long-term consequences in the health status of the population.
Research Methods
The NGO focuses on social programs in zones where the armed conflict has affected the life of the Mayan communities. I took field notes and described some observations about some experiences of the armed conflict outside of health issues. As an ethnographer, the methods of ethnography had limitations to be intimate in the life of the people who suffered the armed conflict in this local zone.
As such, it is a challenge to understand the real consequences of armed conflict in the lives of victims.
Harming Without Weapons, Dying in Silence
In this sense, the study followed the established tradition of the confidentiality, privacy and data security procedures described, making this risk quite low. Totonicapán has a majority K'iche Maya population who have experienced the direct and indirect consequences of the armed conflict over time. It brings a cultural perspective; the population of Totonicapán who participated in a cycle of violence suffered limited control of social coercion through military, guerrilla and economic repression that has limited the region's development and human indicators.
The generation composed of those born in Totonicapán in 1960 to 1980 grew up under the most vicious period of the armed conflict (Grey, 2004).
Memories
It started at the top of the land of San Antonio, they saw the plane. Also, the experiences of Veronica19, an 83-year-old K'iche Maya woman from the same community, reveal the effects of the home, in which some role models tended to fill life positions in the home. 18 Ethical issues: pseudonymity, the IRB has a prohibition to describe the real name as a form of protection and confidentiality of the participants.
Therefore, residents of the Mayan communities still fear the arbitrary nature of the violence because forms of violence remain in the community over time (Manz, 1988).
Multidimensionality of the Victims Through the Memories
Because communities and their individuals suffered different experiences and memories of different levels of violence during the armed conflict. Fourth, the legacy of violence in individuals could change the status of their perception. Denial of access to health care during armed conflict in Mayan communities constituted another type of violence.
This particular form of violence increased inequality and retarded development in the Maya population.
Health or Healing in a Maya Community
Research on the medical botany of the Mayan groups has examined perceptions, attitudes, and treatment choices related to health (Kufer, 2005; Michel, 2008). In Guatemala, especially among the Maya of the western K'iche highlands, healing traditions during armed conflict related to fear have been studied in much less detail. The period of internal armed conflict in which both the injuries during the war and the immediate recovery after the war are limited to the culture of fear.
Fear is preserved in the memory of the Maya societies as an expression of the violence that was subjected, e.g. Generas remembers, but the Mayan people try to survive and forget the fear.
The Trauma Issues
In this context, these dynamics have effects not only on the victims of armed conflict, but also on their families and communities. The consequences of the armed conflict in Guatemala extend throughout the lives of the people who inhabit Totonicapán communities. Physical, coercive, and psychological forms of structural violence in individuals and communities during and after armed conflict are associated with adverse health outcomes.
In this sense, it explains the persistence of health inequalities in Guatemala's rural communities through the structural violence suffered under the armed conflict.
Conclusion: A legacy in health
The result was a retrospective snapshot of food access in the community over that period. Anita went on to describe the men's absence from homes: “The men were taken by the army, they went into the mountains with the military groups and they made everything the army said. Thus, the distant armed conflict is still present in the environment of community life in the highland of Totonicapan.
This allows for an assessment of the human cost of armed conflict on food and nutrition issues.
Food Access a Legacy Inherited form Chronic State
Food and Structural Violence
In Chapter III, I describe the consequences of structural violence, as chronic violence, on the health status of the Mayan community. The reduction of human potential is the result of a lack of macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates and fats) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) in food. In the same way, Paul Farmer (2009) describes the link between structural violence and human rights abuses.
Boer's argument can be applied in the form of human rights abuses in the K´iche Maya people.
Feeding in the Olden Times
This provides an interpretation that periods of hunger extend to long-term suffering among the villagers. The local river was the main source of access to water; the distance could have been a dangerous situation in this conflict. This table describes general information about the types of problems local villagers faced in accessing food.
The Male Role in Food Access
These narratives have been stored in the memory of the local K'iche Maya villagers over time. Walking trails in the mountains of the municipality lead to roads to isolated and remote houses. The little house on top of the mountain was where I found Anita's house.
The absence of men in the country's crops led to the presence of the women as pickers.
Food Access as a Weapon of War
Also, the emotional distancing and separation of mothers changes the role of female responsibilities, eg, food pickers, had consequences for the eldest son in the family. In this context, some women reported that access to food in armed conflict was complicated. Armed conflict thus led to severe food insecurity through a violent restriction of food consumption; See Figure 4.
The control and manipulation of the food and water sources was therefore a tool to promote fear in the local community.
Eating Under Warfare
The presence of strange people with guns was a warning that sometimes happened in the community. We didn't have water, we didn't have other home sources (food) because they were killers (guerrilla military groups) they became here in the community during the day, we were sad because we only ate native plants. Therefore, grief is materialized in the emergency memories of how the people obtained food under armed conflict.
Many local villagers, in the small K´iche Maya community, accumulate stress that continues to face food deprivation.
Conclusion: Chronic Malnutrition a Legacy of the Armed Conflict
Food insecurity and malnutrition are endemic, with a catastrophic legacy of armed conflict for Mayan communities. The community is located in the middle of the road between the departments of Totonicapan and Quiche. This social health problem has affected the bodies and minds of victims of the armed conflict.
Do you need more medical care or special attention because you lived through armed conflict?
Conclusion: Everything Kept in the Memory
Events of Life Embodied
Each of the stories shared by people, in my research, showed the damage that changed the state of health. The whole series of past events related to the armed conflict was violating the customs and behaviors of the community. This series of events were the experiences of individual sufferers, they can also be read as cases to reveal particular patterns of embodiment of injustice, exposure and victimization of the conflict.
While the perception of armed conflict makes the concept of disease appear; this concept - disease - refers to the perceptions and experiences of certain socially devalued states, eg, the effects of armed conflict.
Feeding the History
Therefore, violence during armed conflict was an expression of disease, sickness and disease in the Maya community of Totonicapán. Indeed, directly or indirectly, armed conflict affected the lives of most people in the community, often with lasting and costly food consequences. As a result, malnutrition among the Maya population was estimated at the highest percentage, and the mainly rural population of the western highlands, eg, Totonicapán.
The above features have added to a long history of forms of oppression through the structural violence experienced by K'iche Maya society during and after the armed conflict.
The Green Maya
Do you believe that your life is better, worse, the same as before the armed conflict. Compare food consumption during the armed conflict and now, do you believe you have a better food consumption, why or not. Compare access to water during the armed conflict and now, do you believe you have better access to water, why or not.
The war machine and global health: a critical medical anthropological examination of the human costs of armed conflict and the international violence industry.
Western Guatemala
The Department of Totonicapán
Origins and Outcomes of Chronic Violence
Food Consumption in the Armed Conflict
