Narrating the Mountain: Memories of the Communities of Resistance in the Guatemalan Highlands

Abstract

The article analyses the memories of Ixil Maya women survivors from the Communities of Population in Resistance
of the Sierra (CPR-Sierra), which emerged during the genocide perpetrated in Guatemala in the early
1980s. Based on qualitative research conducted in Nebaj between 2017 and 2018, using biographical and group
interviews as well as participant observation, the text proposes an understanding of ‘the mountain’ as a multidimensional
space-time of memory. More than a geographical setting, the mountain condenses the experience
of forced displacement, political organisation and collective practices of care and defence of life in the face of
state violence. In the narratives, ‘going to the mountain,’ ‘living under the mountain,’ and ‘leaving the mountain’
structure a temporality of their own that articulates territory, temporality, and political action. The article argues
that the mountain functions as a polysemic notion that allows experiences of extreme violence to be communicated
without reducing them to testimony of horror, also integrating dimensions of solidarity, resistance, and
community reconstruction that continue to be projected into the present.