Brad Carter

Political Science 150

Professor Hawkins

Blog 8

While flipping through the pages of a history book, we could undoubtably find dozens of references to political violence in history. We could read passages about the use of trench warfare in World War I, we could look at maps which chronicle the advance of Serbian forces during the Bosnian genocide, or we could read charts about the death tolls that occurred during the Holocaust. With a little bit of research, we could probably find the causes to each of these events and then explain their significance in history and with a bit more, we could create detailed timelines that would help us understand the chain of events in full. Yet, even when we see a full history of any conflict, somethings still feels absent, something critical. 

In his book Comparative Politics, David Samuels defines political violence as “the use of force by state or non-state actors to achieve political ends”. I disagree with Mr. Samuels. 

To explain why, let me ask one question: Do you know the name of a single person who died on the banks of the Somme, or in Srebrenica, or in a Nazi gas chamber? If the answer to this question is no, it is also unlikely that we know where that person was from, what he like to do in his spare time, or how long his wife cried when she found out he was dead. Human suffering cannot be abbreviated, condensed, or cut down. It is concrete, absolute, and real. Attempts to turn it into something abstract will ultimately fail because that abstraction eliminates the human element, which is the most basic feature of violence. The result of doing so is a husk, retaining only some of the outward features of the original while being completely devoid of content, and completely useless in terms of discussing the causes, implications, and solutions of violence. 

Violence cannot be defined in terms of a body count or a few trite words. Rather, because human suffering is the primary result of any violence, violence can only be measured in terms of the lives destroyed by it. 

Although it is factually correct to say that 200,000 Guatemalans died during the CIA-backed reign of terror which lasted from the 1950s to the 90s (Lormand), this definition only tells us what occurred, not the Guatemalan genocide was. To understand this second and more crucial point, we have to look through the eyes of someone who lived it, someone who felt the hurt as her brother became one of the 200,000. 

My name is Rigoberta Menchú Tum....On 9 December 1979, my 16-year-old brother Patrocino was captured and tortured for several days and then taken with twenty other young men to the square in Chajul....An officer of Lucas Garcia's army of murderers ordered the prisoners to be paraded in a line. Then he started to insult and threaten the inhabitants of the village who were forced to come out of their houses to witness the event. I was with my mother, and we saw Patrocino; he had had his tongue cut out and his toes cut off. The officer jackal made a speech. Every time he paused the soldiers beat the Indian prisoners. When he finished his ranting, the bodies of my brother and the other prisoners were swollen, bloody, unrecognizable. It was monstrous, but they were still alive. They were thrown on the ground and drenched with gasoline. The soldiers set fire to the wretched bodies with torches and the captain laughed (Blum 236)

Political violence and human suffering are not subjects which can be touched on lightly or briefly. Any definition with which seeks to define violence, political or otherwise, in terms of a body count, or a few trite words will not be able to accurately tell us what violence is. In order to truly define an instance of political violence we cannot create a trite label to apply to all cases. Each case is different, and deserves to be called what it was. In the case above, political violence means nothing more than a woman being forced to watch her brother burn to death. 

Works Cited

Blum, William. "Killing Hope." Google Books. Zed Books Ltd., 2003. Web. 16 Sept. 2012.

Lormand, Eric. "GUATEMALA: HOW WE CONTINUE THE GENOCIDE OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, IN THE NAME OF BIG BUSINESS." University of Michigan. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2012. <http://www-personal.umich.edu/ ~lormand/poli/soa/guatemala.htm>.

Samuels, David. Comparative Politics. 258. Print.