Going home: Giving voice to memory strategies of young Mayan refugees who returned to Guatemala as a community

Around 1982, thousands of Guatemalan Mayas fled their villages and lands to escape the Rios Montt scorched-earth policy implemented in rural areas. Af ter more than a decade of exile, many of those refugees have returned to th eir homeland. This paper looks at the ways in which young Mayan refugees wh o have returned home after extended exile in Mexico appropriate and distanc e themselves from the collective project of going home. Two Mayan communiti es of retornados (returnees), whose paths into exile and home again differ slightly, are compared. Outside support from international organizations an d cohesion in the refugee camps enabled the young people of La Victoria to see disclosure of the traumatic past from a position of strength and confro ntation as the key to social change. In La Esperanza, the past is rebuilt b y the youth around avoidance of recent history, and tradition appears as a bridge between past and future. The way the youth of the two communities co nstruct their homecoming demonstrates how small changes in the migration ex perience may result in considerable differences in the choice of strategies , and raises important questions about assistance programs that might be de veloped for these populations.