THE LAST TIME I SAW MYRNA WAS FIVE A.M. on June 30, when she dropped me off at the airport in Guatemala City. I was leaving the country after four years, en route tomy new job with NACLA. When the call came from Guatemala on September 12, I felt like I had stepped out my front door only to turn and see my house explode. "They killed Myma last night." The familiar, chilling Guatemalan grammar. Not" Myrna was killed." They killed her. Although the identity of her killers will almost certainly remain a mystery, in Guatemala the word "they" is as unambiguous as can be. Myrna Mack was a Guatemalan anthropologist: tal- ented, spirited, and ferociously dedicated. Her research in Guatemala's rural areas was pioneering, and I had the privilege of working with her. Early in the evening of Sep- tember 11, Myma was stabbed 17 times as she left her office in downtown Guatemala City. The brutality of the attack left even the police unable to cite robbery as the motive. It was, as the Boston Globe stated, one more example of the political violence that "makes any hope for progressive change in Guatemala seem a cruel joke." Apart from the Globe, the U.S. press ignored the murder. In contrast, the slaying of U.S. citizen Michael Devine received extensive coverage. Devine's nearly decapitated body was found June 9 near the tourist lodge he owned in Guatemala's Pet6n jungle; evidence suggests he was killed by soldiers from a nearby army base. Wash- ington's reaction was sharp: Ambassador Thomas Strook was said to be "ready to strangle" someone over the incident, and officials warned President Vinicio Cerezo that military aid could be withheld until the case was solved. On September 6, in a letter addressed to Strook, Cerezo admitted the likelihood of army involvement and promised a full investigation-confirmation that in Gua- temala foreigners are subject to a different set of rules. M YRNA HAD AN ELECTRIC WIT THAT COULD alternately override or underscore the black side of her country. "The difference between a U.S. scholar and a Guatemalan scholar," she told visiting researchers a few months ago, "is that in the United States, you say 'publish or perish.' Here, we say 'if we publish, we perish...."' A burst of laughter followed, even as the irony lingered. That irony shaped Myrna's life. For decades, Guate- mala has been a haven for U.S. scholars studying the country's Indian cultures, and, more recently, document- ing the effects of social upheaval on those cultures. While foreign academics can count on relatively unimpinged and risk-free access to even the most remote regions, few Guatemalan social scientists dare venture far outside the capital city. For Myrna, this double standard was infuriat- ing, and she was determined to break the barrier. When I arrived in Guatemala in October 1986, Cerezo's "democratic opening" was in its tenth month, a thaw on the crust of the glacier that Guatemalan society had become. There were some encouraging signs. A group of young social scientists, Myrna among them, had just founded a research center, the Association for the Ad- vancement of the Social Sciences in Guatemala (AVANC- SO). There was cautious optimism that the fear and silence of the last decade could give way to fresh and open inquiry, and that AVANCSO could be a catalyst by of- fering first-rate research and analysis. Myrna, especially, was anxious to study conditions in the countryside. In early 1987, when Myrna and I began to travel together, much of rural Guatemala was in shambles. The counterinsurgency campaigns of the early 1980s had left more than 400 villages destroyed, 200,000 refugees in Mexico, and several times that number displaced within the country. Myrna chose to research the return and reintegration of these populations, a politically delicate and unchartered subject. She was one of the first research- ers to travel to the isolated villages where the war had taken its heaviest toll, and with insight and sensitivity she chronicled the experiences of the displaced: the mas- sacres that drove thousands into hiding in the mountains and the slow return of villagers to their former lands. Over the next several years, Myrna became widely respected as one of the few people in Guatemala City who could accurately describe conditions in the highlands. HE GLOBE OBSERVED THAT MYRNA MACK was "cut from the same cloth" as the six Jesuits killed in El Salvador last year. Intellectuals who made choices and faced risks, and whose priority was not to gain tenure or collect higher honoraria but to generate knowl- edge that could help shape more dynamic and democratic societies. Tragically, Myrna's dynamism marked her as a target. In Guatemala, where creativity remains a capital offense, the best and the brightest are sentenced to die. And as the violence takes its toll on the vitality of each generation, Guatemalans can only joke that the country is rushing "headlong into the fourteenth century." Myma Mack's murder leaves a particularly bitter legacy. For the last several years, well-known personali- ties were assumed to be relatively safe, given the kind of outcry their deaths would presumably provoke. It was also thought, or at least hoped, that Guatemalan scholars would be allowed the "space" to research and analyze their own society. Now, it may be a long time before another Guatemalan anthropologist ventures afield to continue the work Myrna began. And now, more than ever, the weak assurances and bland promises of Guate- mala's civilian government seem, indeed, a cruel joke. Five soldiers were arrested for the Devine murder, the first time that the army faces prosecution for a killing. But, for the hundreds of Guatemalans killed this year alone, there is little press coverage, no ultimatum from Washing- ton, no arrests, not even the illusion of an investigation. For those of us who knew Myrna Mack, there is only the added irony that the double standard which shaped her life also marked her death. Elizabeth Oglesby
