Global Coloniality of Power in Guatemala: Racism, Genocide, Citizenship

Global Coloniality of Power in Guatemala is an original and intricately analytical reflection on power dynamics and systemic injustice in Guatemala in the context of historical and ongoing Western colonialism. Egla Martínez- Salazar masterfully unravels and explores both structural and quotidian violence and power imbalances in terms of class, race and gender, and, crucially, epistemic violence. . . .Global Coloniality is a remarkable endeavour which successfully brings together an analysis of power of the Global North and local elites, everyday experience of this violence, and the multiple resistances of those ‘ejected’ from humanity and their struggles for social and epistemic justice.

Speaking from an epistemic space of decolonial autoethnographic interrogations, Global Coloniality of Power in Guatemala: Racism, Genocide and Citizenship is a riveting tour de force that speaks truth to power the normalization of racial and sexual violence towards Indigenous communities, students, and working class folks in Guatemala during the US backed civil war, and beyond. And not only does it call out the violence of the US backed genocide in Guatemala, it speaks to the ongoing colonialities of power that subject Maya struggles for survival against a Ladino driven racial symbolic violence. It is riveting, brilliant, and a must read for those interested in indigenous struggles, human rights, subalternity and gender respect in the Américas.

The novelty of Martínez Salazar’s work derives not from her arguments per se, but from the application of her arguments to the specific case of Guatemala. … Global Coloniality of Power in Guatemala is an indispensable examination of how the logic of coloniality persists in contemporary power relations today. Through the integration of theoretical and analytical insights with Indigenous epistemologies, life histories, and personal accounts, Martínez Salazar admirable succeeds in contributing to the epistemic decoloniality.

This is a very clearly written, richly detailed polemic by a sociologist of contemporary Guatemalan society. Martínez Salazar (Carleton Univ., Canada) argues that a nation such as Guatemala, while ostensibly freed from the former bonds of colonialism, is still permeated by the racism, economic injustice, and patriarchy typical of colonial oppression and terror. She reviews Guatemalan history from conquest to the present, and then, often referring to interviews she conducted with people from various walks of life, documents enduring injustices. Martínez Salazar pays special attention to racism, exhibited not only by postcolonial elites, but by progressives and revolutionaries as well. She also explores the heavy toll that state power and genocide exacted from Maya women. And she traces the important international connections between state power and the great powers that have so powerfully influenced Guatemala’s oppression of its own citizens. The author’s emotionally moving documentation of individual episodes of oppression, rape, torture, and murder lead inexorably toward the conclusion that decolonial resistance–the continual struggle for economic, social, and cultural liberation–is still alive and necessary in Guatemala. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.