Legacy of Civil War Violence in Guatemala: Exploring Intergenerational Effects

• In Event: Democracy, Coups and Rebellions in Latin America

Abstract

This paper explores long-term effects of civil war violence against civilians. We inquire what effect this violence has on those who did not experience civil war atrocities first-hand because they were not yet born but whose families had suffered in the atrocities. We address this question through a multi-generational survey we conducted in 2017 of the Ixil, a native Mayan population in the highlands of Guatemala, who were subjected to a genocide in the early 1980s in the context of the Guatemalan civil war. The nature of the violence targeted at the Ixil – especially the use of torture – was plausibly exogenous to the characteristics of specific family units. We measure the precise nature and extent of suffering that a family experienced in interviews with first-generation respondents who lived through the atrocities. The legacy of that violence is measured in interviews with second-generation respondents who had not yet been born at the height of the civil conflict. We find that second-generation respondents from families that had experienced more violence are systematically different from their peers whose families were not subject to violence when it comes to ethnic identity, political engagement, and socioeconomic practices.

Author

• Noam Lupu, Vanderbilt University