In her recent contribution to Ohio University Press’s Latin America Series, Rachel May attempts to explain the evolution of “popular organizations” in response to political violence between 1954 and 1985. According to May, during Guatemala’s internal conflict, they evolved from vertically oriented, hierarchical and personalistic organizations into horizontally oriented, democratic movements and true reflections of Guatemala’s popular will. By focusing on the relationship between a repressive state and popular organizations, May seeks to identify these changes over time and suggest how the historical lessons of popular mobilization might aid Guatemala in building true democracy (as opposed to a mere functional democracy).
In framing her arguments (apparently based on her master’s thesis at Tulane University), May seeks to explain why political violence occurred, how violence perpetuates itself and, most important, how Guatemala can “move beyond such a violent history” (p. 14). She proposes a dialectical-cyclical model for understanding Guatemalan violence, in...