Abstract

RODAS-NUNEZ, Isabel. The state, institutions and population fronts in Guatemala's northeast: the case of Usumacinta inhabitants. agric. soc. desarro [online]. 2010, vol.7, n.2, pp.137-154. ISSN 1870-5472.

This article has the objective of reflecting, first, on some factors that allowed rural populations in Guatemala's northeast to turn to displacement as a subsistence strategy. Among them, we want to highlight a type of conglomerate of individuals, that we will call population front, from peasant groups. In the second place, we will highlight that these groups move in spite of the State agencies' interventions and projects for development. Their contradictory interventions did not prevent the breakdown and impoverishment of social forms in peasant domestic units. Thirdly, beyond the identity classification as indigenous/ white with which otherness in Guatemalan population is understood, we attempt to open a discussion regarding the construction of a collective meaning in these inhabitants. As a result of displacement as a subsistence strategy and the unstable relationship with the state during the second half of the 20^th Century, emotions - the notion of suffering - prevail in the construction of social memories. There is an attempt to abandon the idea that refers to ethnic collective identities, present in the south of the country since the Spanish Colony, a conceptualization based on which development strategies are designed, in the case of Petén. In conclusion, we describe the processes that configure contents in the construction of meaning in these rootless groups, synthesized in the suffering with which these populations interiorized displacement.

Keywords : Pioneer fronts; narrative identities; internal migration; peasant domestic units.

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