"Resisters" vs. "Acceptors": The Unanticipated Political Division of Guatemalan Society
In addition to disruption and division at the village/communal level and the familial level, there exists a consequential disruption of both familial and communal life at the political level.
While state-sanctioned terrorism most likely calculated the massive political acquiescence and passivity of society, not all violence survivors addressed their experiences in this way. This often brought discord in both families and communities.One respondent described the divisions in his community between himself, an organizational member of a group working to find the disappeared, and his neighbors. While his neighbors also have disappeared family members, he reported that they stated to him “Why keep investigating if they are no more?”
But I'd respond that in the ebb and flow... the effort, right? That doesn't move backwards. I feel that when I think that no... no, he's not an animal or... like we're not going to feel it [the pain of disappearance], right? In the first place, it's family. And we want to at least know what's up, right? How was the disappearance. And for him [son] we cannot vacillate. If we were to remain vacillating, we'd be lost. That's how I look at it. And another thing... that I say these things to my children, as siblings of my son, but they don't get up the courage to join in [the group struggle]. They fear because they hear many things. Many sequesters... one has much fear. But more than myself, I say, I am disposed to the fact that something happen to me, because... as it's a right, really, perhaps I'll give my life, perhaps not. Yes.