1985/07/01 by Michael P. Richards, Michael Richards · 3 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture #Literary Theory and Cultural Hermeneutics #Media, Communication, and Education
paper · doi:10.2307/3317916
crossref issued 1985/07/01 · crossref published 1985/07/01 · crossref published-print 1985/07/01 · openalex publication_date 1985/07/01 · crossref created 2006/07/05 · crossref deposited 2018/04/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28 · crossref indexed 2026/07/28
Guatemala, like much of Central America today, is wracked by civil war. This paper uses an anthropological perspective to examine problem of insurgency and counterinsurgency in one region of Guatemala, Ixil area of northern Quiche province. In this paper, I examine contraposition of Utopia and State and establish an argumentfor existence ofa universalist cognitive rural-urban dichotomous The forms matrix for both agrarian and state ideologies, those respectively guiding insurrectionist movements and counterinsurgency responses. The paper spec/ically analyzes rural-urban from perspective of Guatemala's counterinsurgents-the officers and soldiers of army. By describing urban and state orientation of army members, in contrast to rural agrarianist ideology of rural guerrilla movement in Ixil region, thepaper argues that army counterinsurgency operations fundamentally derive from a cosmopolitan world view. Through descriptive illustration of officers' and soldiers' 'folk ideas, the paper attempts to show how a cosmopolitan world view guides 'folk model constructs in elaboration of specfic counterinsurgency measures.