Manolo E. Vela Castañeda

Manolo E. Vela Castañeda studied sociology at the national university, the University of San Carlos. In 2012, he moved to Mexico City and began working as a full-time professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana

Title: Small stories from a war. Los Josefinos, Petén, Guatemala

The purpose of this study is to test a new analytical approach from which we will demonstrate how people who, at some point in their past, experienced acts of political violence, deploy a repertoire of actions to transcend those events, memories, and aftermath, and continue with their lives.

The victims need to be more than victims. In these subjects, the memories of fear are mixed with forms of rebellion, but also, simply, with the joy of living. But the social sciences have insisted on capturing -absolutely- these people as victims. And in this we have contributed not only we, the social scientists, but also journalists, human rights organizations, and law firms. For all of them, these subjects have been nothing more than victims.

To prove our theoretical commitment, we will analyze, from 5 points of view, a case: a massacre that took place -in 1982- in Los Josefinos, Guatemala. What are those 5 points of view? 1) the second generation: seeing the massacre from the eyes of children; 2) the role that religion had (and continues to have); 3) the stories of the survivors as forcibly displaced persons.

Hosting Institution: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

• Los pelotones de la muerte. La construcción de los perpetradores del genocidio guatemalteco (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Editorial, 2025. Segunda Edición). 
• Micropolítica del terror y de la resistencia. Militantes de alto riesgo, escuadrones de la muerte y centros clandestinos de detención (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Editorial, 2023). 332 p.
• Guatemala, la república de los desaparecidos (Buenos Aires: Prometeo Editorial, 2023). 475 p.
• Guatemala, la infinita historia de las resistencias (Ciudad de México: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2020. Segunda edición.). 677 p.