'Politics, Religion and Memory in the formation of Post-Conflict Guatemalan Personhood'

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This research project will focus on a borderland area stretching from Tecun Uman in the San Marcos department, Guatemala, a town which sits on Guatemala- Mexico border, to the larger town of Tapachula in Chiapas, Mexico. My proposal speaks to four main areas of anthropological debate: constructions of citizenship, the anthropology of Christianity, borders, and indigenous minorities. The border has long been recognised as part of a passage used by Central American migrants to move through to America (Green, 2009) and much movement of informal workers and trade takes place across it (Sectretaria de Gobernacion, 2005: 29). Other theorists have noted how it divides people with a shared 'indigenous Mayan heritage' (Kauffer, 1997:169). It has often been unproblematically linked with the processes of structural violence (Farmer, 2003) that 'dispossess migrants of family and community, of collective attachments to place and to kin and extended networks' on the Mexican-US border (Green, 2009: 334). However, other theorists have noted the border allows cyclical migration of workers into Chiapas from Guatemala, as an integral part of the life-world of many indigenous Mayans (Wesiner & Cruz, 2003; Ayala-Carillo, 2012; Durni, 2008). Current research reveals the Guatemalan-Mexican border is becoming politicized as the locus of a convergence of American and Mexican immigration policy that aims to establish 'complete control' (President Nieto, 2014) through an increasingly militarized border zone due to the changing nature of migration: Mexico as well as the US is a migrant destination (Stockton, 2014; Morrison, 2014; Durni, 2008). Both countries are proposing changes to border operations with technology and the possibility of the US National Guard (Jane, 2012; Stockton, 2014). I aim to challenge the work of (Green 2009) by viewing the border as part of a unique 'political construction' that is not simply used to facilitate 'neoliberal immigration policies' [state sponsored violence, endemic racism, segregation of migrant population] (Wallis, 2006). On the micro-level I believe it is central to explore the effects border changes are having on those living in Chiapas and San Marcos given the significance of the border in local memories of the Guatemalan civil war, fitting this into a wider research aim of examining the roles Christianity, shared Mayan indigenous identity and forms of citizenship have in both localities in navigating the increased militarization and neo-liberalization of the border and state practices upon it. In examining citizenship, I will look at how sovereignty projects are constructed on the periphery, exploring their graduated, nested and multiple characters (Humphrey, Ong , 2000; Tsing, 1993; Seider, 2011), especially in the context of the changing nature of the border. Further, by looking at how subjects mediate different regimes of sovereignty, and how such mediation practices are suffused with memories of violence, I aim to provide an important person-centred ethnographic dimension to studies of sovereignty, exploring how their multiple characters are lived. Tied in to my examination of citizenship is a desire to engage in the fertile debate exploring citizenship and Christianity in post-conflict settings (O'Neill, 2009). I want to scrutinize whether O'Neill's concept of 'Christian citizenship' based on Neo-Pentecostalism, can account for the role Christianity plays on the periphery of Guatemala, in a region permeated with Latter Day Saints Christian movement and associated with memories not just of violence but also flight from it. There is a need to explore the nature and multiplicity of Christian practices and beliefs on the border and to theoretically integrate them into the graduated and multiple natures of sovereignty projects taking place there. Through this I hope to engage in the current debate of the role of Christianity in producing forms of citizenship. EXCEEDED WORD LIMIT