Machete Season
During spring break, I was able to read Jean Hatzfeld's Machete Season, translated from the original French. I was waiting to read this book for a long time beforehand because I was interested in hearing perspectives on the Rwandan genocide, one of the bloodiest events in recent years.
The Rwandan genocide and Machete Season struck me for how disturbing it was. Examining the other book I had recently read, The Rape of Nanking, which discussed another genocide, led me to see how the Rwandan genocide and Machete Season are distinct. Machete Season is a book written from the perspective of those that were involved in the killings, which is quite unusual for this kind of book. (I believe this to be so due to the incentives that killers who are now imprisoned see for their stories to be published and how recent the tragedy was.) The Rape of Nanking mostly highlights survivor accounts of the tragedy, while Machete Season explores the experiences of killers, their motives, and their goals and objectives post-Rwandan genocide.
The interconnectedness of the communities impacted by the killings make the Rwandan genocide uniquely disturbing among killings. I found the Tutsis and Hutus more similar than other groups involved in genocides. For example, Japanese and Chinese forces were pitted against each other during the second Sino-Japanese War so differences were more magnified. In Nazi Germany, actions were taken to magnify perceived differences between Jewish and non-Jewish through physical and personality traits. (It is worth mentioning that Tutsis had different physical features associated with them as opposed to Hutus and there was a long negative history between the groups, which establishes at least a motive for the killings.) However, Tutsis and Hutus lived together in close quarters and interacted intimately with each other. They lived on the same land and were part of the same communities. A killer describes in the book that everyone knew everybody, which makes the actions committed during the Rwandan genocide that much worse. Hutus who were acquaintances or even good friends of Tutsis were forced to kill or face repercussions for their actions.
The lack of coersion used by the organizers of the killings also struck me. At first, some were forced to kill, but gradually, rules on killings were lax because the killers would accomplish their task without command. This may be in part due to the economic incentive that killers had to eliminate the Tutsis (to gain farmland and valuables)*, but it is remarkable how quickly one can dehumanize themselves and kill those you know and even love, even more so with such a tool as a machete, which requires deliberate force and makes killings more personal than if firearms were used.
Jean Hatzfield also spends a significant amount of time discussing the process that went into creating this book, which I greatly appreciated. He enlightened his readers to the complexities that go into the difficult task of obtaining information from killers that therefore requires them to discuss their guilt. The fact that Hatzfield focused on interviewing a group of friends who participated in the Rwandan genocide complicates the issue further, as each member of the group responded differently to their role in the tragedy. Hatzfield also discusses the psychology of the killers when it comes to their forgiveness. Surprisingly, he notes that the killers were the least traumatized group of people in the conflict and that in some cases, they believe they are entitled to forgiveness. They lie and twist words when it comes to discussing killing, but ultimately agonize much less over the memories from that period than the survivors of the conflict despite being responsible. It seems that the common thread between the killers is that they desire a return to normalcy, a very different objective from the survivors.
Machete Season provides a view into the thoughts and motives of killers in the Rwandan genocide. Many commonalities between genocides ring true in this book, including the dehumanization of a group of people, creating games, and deriving amusement from death. However, despite Hatzfield's frequent references to the persecution of Jewish people in Germany, he creates a unique narrative and presents a perspective on a tragedy through a meta look at describing tragedy and a distinct look into the lives of killers.
*Hatzfield spends a significant amount of time discussing the place of looting in the tragedy.
The Rwandan genocide and Machete Season struck me for how disturbing it was. Examining the other book I had recently read, The Rape of Nanking, which discussed another genocide, led me to see how the Rwandan genocide and Machete Season are distinct. Machete Season is a book written from the perspective of those that were involved in the killings, which is quite unusual for this kind of book. (I believe this to be so due to the incentives that killers who are now imprisoned see for their stories to be published and how recent the tragedy was.) The Rape of Nanking mostly highlights survivor accounts of the tragedy, while Machete Season explores the experiences of killers, their motives, and their goals and objectives post-Rwandan genocide.
The interconnectedness of the communities impacted by the killings make the Rwandan genocide uniquely disturbing among killings. I found the Tutsis and Hutus more similar than other groups involved in genocides. For example, Japanese and Chinese forces were pitted against each other during the second Sino-Japanese War so differences were more magnified. In Nazi Germany, actions were taken to magnify perceived differences between Jewish and non-Jewish through physical and personality traits. (It is worth mentioning that Tutsis had different physical features associated with them as opposed to Hutus and there was a long negative history between the groups, which establishes at least a motive for the killings.) However, Tutsis and Hutus lived together in close quarters and interacted intimately with each other. They lived on the same land and were part of the same communities. A killer describes in the book that everyone knew everybody, which makes the actions committed during the Rwandan genocide that much worse. Hutus who were acquaintances or even good friends of Tutsis were forced to kill or face repercussions for their actions.
The lack of coersion used by the organizers of the killings also struck me. At first, some were forced to kill, but gradually, rules on killings were lax because the killers would accomplish their task without command. This may be in part due to the economic incentive that killers had to eliminate the Tutsis (to gain farmland and valuables)*, but it is remarkable how quickly one can dehumanize themselves and kill those you know and even love, even more so with such a tool as a machete, which requires deliberate force and makes killings more personal than if firearms were used.
Jean Hatzfield also spends a significant amount of time discussing the process that went into creating this book, which I greatly appreciated. He enlightened his readers to the complexities that go into the difficult task of obtaining information from killers that therefore requires them to discuss their guilt. The fact that Hatzfield focused on interviewing a group of friends who participated in the Rwandan genocide complicates the issue further, as each member of the group responded differently to their role in the tragedy. Hatzfield also discusses the psychology of the killers when it comes to their forgiveness. Surprisingly, he notes that the killers were the least traumatized group of people in the conflict and that in some cases, they believe they are entitled to forgiveness. They lie and twist words when it comes to discussing killing, but ultimately agonize much less over the memories from that period than the survivors of the conflict despite being responsible. It seems that the common thread between the killers is that they desire a return to normalcy, a very different objective from the survivors.
Machete Season provides a view into the thoughts and motives of killers in the Rwandan genocide. Many commonalities between genocides ring true in this book, including the dehumanization of a group of people, creating games, and deriving amusement from death. However, despite Hatzfield's frequent references to the persecution of Jewish people in Germany, he creates a unique narrative and presents a perspective on a tragedy through a meta look at describing tragedy and a distinct look into the lives of killers.
*Hatzfield spends a significant amount of time discussing the place of looting in the tragedy.
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