The Reconstruction of Community and Identity among Guatemalan

This article deals with the construction of livelihoods and identities in the context of forced migration. It is based on anthropological fieldwork in La Quetzal, a com-munity near the river Usumacinta in the Petén region of Guatemala, inhabited by people who have returned to Guatemala from different refugee camps in southern Mexico after twelve to fifteen years in exile. They are now in the process of con-structing a new community in the Lancandón jungle of the Petén.1 The return to La Quetzal is the end of a long process of movement that started in the late 1960s and early 1970s when thousands of poor peasants from different parts of the Guatema-lan highlands moved to the almost uninhabited tropical lowlands of Ixcán and the Petén regions in search for land. This move was part of a colonization programme led by the Catholic Church and supported by the Guatemalan government to reduce the pressure on land reform in the highlands (Morrissey 1978; Dennis et al. 1988). A few years after the relocation to the tropical areas, the peasants were on the move again. Caught in the middle of gunfire between guerrilla forces and the army, the peasants initially tried to adapt to the situation of terror and violence whil