Are revolutions still possible? Crisis and social transformation in Guatemala (1917-2025)
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https://orcid.org/0009-0008-2215-7232
Abstract
During the last two decades, the term crisis has been ubiquitous on the pages of news media and research publications. Despite its popularity, the term has been critiqued for its tendency to represent catastrophic situations as anomalies in the social order that deviate from desired normalcy and for its inability to recognize the causal role of normative practices and values in the creation of crises themselves. This article summarizers the history of the crisis concept, its uses and surrounding debates, and asks the question: What interventions to the use and assumptions of the term does the anthropology of disasters in Latin America and, more specifically, Guatemala, offer? The article discusses three issues: that the concept and its popular usage in Europe and the United States has created the expectation that crises mechanically lead to socially progressive social changes in a way that diminishes the role of human agency in such transformations; that the historical experience of Guatemala illustrates how conservative, oligarchic, military, and imperialist sectors have manifested their agency through the use of state and paramilitary violence in order to prevent the potential of crises to open spaces for progressive social transformations; and highlights the role of state violence in the destruction of the popular imagination among Guatemala’s non-indigenous (Ladino) population for conceptualizing progressive transformations.
How to Cite
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crisis, disaster, Guatemala, earthquakes, social change
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