Care/full!

• In Event: Interrupting the Care/Violence Nexus in Times of War and Peace – II

Abstract

In Guatemala to tell someone to be careful, you cry “¡Aguas!” (waters). Folk etymology says this comes from the practice during the 36 year civil war of throwing bodies into rivers to hide the perpetrators (being careful with evidence). Similarly, “dar agua” (to give water) can mean to kill. I learned this slang during a military parade with a float showing soldiers running a water pump for Mayan children, celebrating army-run re-settlement camps: a scary double entendre. “Giving water,” the military’s “care” for Mayan genocide survivors was classic bio/necro/politics. Now the same areas are targeted for massive hydroelectric projects extracting power from local rivers. “¡Aguas!” These are “run of river” sociotechnologies claiming to care for riparian environments and—as “renewables”—for the planet. Companies also claim to care for indigenous river dwellers: providing jobs, installing roads and other infrastructures, and excavating and restoring pre-Colombian archaeological sites. Mayas’ terror at a return of state violence mixes with difficulties in saying no to “development” projects, yet many are organizing to care for the river in other ways, including by reviving organizational technologies like Mayan council, which were smashed during the war. They are committed to cultivating more care-full relations to time, community, ritual, non-human worlds, and reciprocal relationality, as well as court cases and political lobbying. This paper will explore these contestations over care and worlds through ethnographic methods.

Author

• Diane Nelson, Duke University