The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide:

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Roddy Brett

   Pages 1-32

3. Understanding the Violence

   • Roddy Brett

   Pages 33-70

4. Civilian Experience of Violence in Civil War and Armed Conflict

   • Roddy Brett

   Pages 71-90

5. The EGP: Insurgent Strategies in the Ixcán and the Ixil

   • Roddy Brett

   Pages 91-117

6. Brutality Unhinged: The Counterinsurgent Response

   • Roddy Brett

   Pages 119-145

7. War in the Rebel Heartlands

   • Roddy Brett

   Pages 147-193

8. Displacement and Exile

   • Roddy Brett

   Pages 195-211

9. Conclusions: And History Shall Not Be Unwritten

   • Roddy Brett

   Pages 213-235

10. Back Matter

    Pages 237-249

    PDF

This book rigorously documents and explains the genocide perpetrated by the Guatemalan state against indigenous Maya populations within the context of its counterinsurgency campaign against leftist guerrillas between 1981 and 1983. In doing so it brings to light a genocide that has remained largely invisible within both academic disciplines and the practitioner sphere.

In May 2013, former de facto president of Guatemala, General Efrain Rios Montt, was for ten days indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity within Guatemala’s domestic courts. Based upon over a decade of ethnographic research, including in survivors’ communities in Guatemala, this book documents the historical processes shaping the genocide by analysing the evolution of both counterinsurgent and insurgent violence and strategy, focusing above all on its impact upon the civilian population. The research clearly evidences the impact of political violence upon non-combatants; how military and insurgent strategies gradually implicate civilians in conflict and the strategies civilians may adopt in order to survive them. Convincingly framed within key theoretical scholarship from genocide studies and comparative politics it speaks to a broad audience beyond Latin Americanists.

• Genocide
• counterinsurgency
• insurgency
• political violence
• Latin America
• International Relations
• Security Studies
• latin american politics

“The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide is an important and ambitious book … . it shines a light on such an opaque period but also because it seeks so ardently and candidly to explain what happened and to understand it. Scholars can take many things from this book … that this is likely to become a definitive work of reference that explores key questions about the changing nature of political violence and how this can culminate in genocide.” (Gavin O’Toole, The Latin American Review of Books, latamron.com, August, 2017) 

• University of St Andrews , Fife, United Kingdom

  Roddy Brett

Roddy Brett is a Lecturer with the School of International Relations, where he directs the Masters Programme in Peace and Conflict Studies. He has published seven books on the themes of peace and conflict, political violence and social movements. He worked with the Centre for Human Rights Legal Action in Guatemala to prepare the evidence against in the legal case filed against three former presidents of Guatemala and their military high commands for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

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