Alejandro Manuel Flores-Aguilar

ALEJANDRO AGUILAR, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, was awarded a Fejos Postdoctoral Fellowship in Ethnographic Film to aid research and editing of “Raised Gaze in Ixil Time: Towards a Minor History of War.” This project embarked on an extensive, collaborative exploration of the oral histories of former Maya-Ixil guerrilla fighters through the development of a comprehensive video archive and a documentary series. The endeavor delved into the complexities of Guatemala’s history of violence, collective memory, and social imaginaries of the civil war. The oral histories were carefully compiled into a diverse collection of video-portraits, where the participants shared their own experiences and instigated a critical conversation that questioned the prevailing trends of representation of Ixil subjectivity during the Cold War. This project was developed in close partnership with the Maya-Ixil ancestral authorities and Ixil University, and adopted a methodology that promoted community engagement, fostering a strong sense of collaboration. By bridging the gaps between academia, visual anthropology, and local indigenous knowledge, this project also served as a valuable tool for local intergenerational pedagogical processes. By providing an alternative perspective that emphasized the richness and complexity of the Ixil experience of the Cold War, the project aimed to broaden the hegemonic understanding of the conflict and its impact on the Ixil community, encouraging critical reflection on dominant representations of history.