Resisting Erasure

Historical memory has so much more power. It has the ability to shape how the past is remembered and taught. For centuries it has been controlled by the same group of people. They have pushed this glossed over image and story of history. It has been impossible to go against this narrative because of the power they hold. But now those in the minority are finally able to tell their story. To tell the full truth. Now maybe a tide has turned, and people can know what has really happened throughout time. The truth
Julian Beaujeu-Dufour

Matewan

Prof. Green says she wanted her students to hear a first-hand account of how memories can grow powerful enough to shatter the silence. To do so, she took her students on a field trip to the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum in Matewan, which is about a four-hour drive from W&L’s campus in Lexington, Va. 

Prof. Green says she wanted her students to hear a first-hand account of how memories can grow powerful enough to shatter the silence. To do so, she took her students on a field trip to the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum in Matewan, which is about a four-hour drive from W&L’s campus in Lexington, Va. 

CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The decade-long Mine Wars began in 1911, when coal miners in West Virginia began demanding better working conditions. They wanted a 40-hour work week instead of a schedule determined by how many pounds of coal they could dig. They sought safer working conditions to protect them from explosions and mine shaft collapses. They asked to be paid in real money instead of “scrip,” which they could only use in mine company stores, where they were forced to buy food, clothing, and the equipment they needed to dig coal. Significantly, the miners wanted the right to unionize and to become part of the United Mine Workers of America. 

But the powerful coal companies and local politicians they controlled rejected the miners’ demands. 

In response, over 10,000 natives of Appalachia joined forces with African Americans and immigrants from Italy and Hungary to fight at Blair Mountain in 1921, making it the largest armed uprising in the United States since the Civil War. 

Machine guns were attached to the tops of trains and fired into the town of Matewan to intimidate strikers and protect the strikebreakers, or scabs as they were called, who were brought to work in place of the striking miners. Bullet holes, some with bullets still buried in the brick, can be seen today in the sides of buildings that face the railroad tracks in Matewan.

History is a fascination that leaves the earth scarred and the lives of those who experience it blazed with memories of the past that seep into everyday life
Elena Lee

Bobby Starnes, a member of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum board, says the story of the Mine Wars “was only kept alive around kitchen tables and on front porches” because local politicians and coal operators “actively worked hard to prevent this story from being told.”

“The absence of the Mine Wars and other industrial abuses of power in public discourse and classroom curriculum was no mere oversight but, rather, a deliberate coverup by state officials,” according to an exhibit in the museum. During the Great Depression, the governor threatened to thwart New Deal programs in West Virginia unless discussion of the Mine Wars was removed from federally funded state history books.

Wilma Steele, one of the museum’s founders, says she would have never found out about her hometown’s history unless she had conducted her own research. 

I think this explains adequately why the Battle of Blair Mountain and more greatly the Miners' Wars were erased from history, as it brings a terrible look on not only the U.S. capitalist project but also the government in how they treat their workers”
Blake Ramsey
One part of the exhibit that really stuck out to me was at the end where they showed examples over the decades where textbooks glossed over and ignored the mine wars and their impact on West Virginia’s history. I was shocked at the government’s ability to omit such an important event from the history books
Julian Beaujeu-Dufour
After walking through the exhibit and hearing the anecdotal stories from the descendants of victims, I was touched by the fact that this museum was organized by the community … The miners were able to put this collection of memories together with what little they had. This highlighted the importance of their memories and their work to combat the silencing that their families have faced since the West Virginia mine wars
Will Knight

Guatemala

Back in the classroom in Lexington, Prof. Green’s students connected their trip to Matewan with the plight of the Mayan people in Guatemala. Like the coal miners in West Virginia, the Mayans were exploited by corporate interests. Descendants of Spanish colonizers pushed Mayan people off their land and on to fincas, which were farms meant for growing cash crops to sell in international markets. On the fincas, indigenous people were forced to work long hours in unsafe conditions, and like the West Virginia miners, they were paid in scrip, which could only be spent in company stores.

By more or less forcing the indigenous people to work on the fincas, keeping them there, robbing them of their wages, and making sure any wages they did earn were spent back at the finca buying food and other necessities, the ladinos or the dominant class, were able to ensure that the indigenous people stayed at the finca”
Sam Wise

In a civil war that broke out in 1960, left-wing guerilla groups battled government military forces to overthrow the autocratic rule of Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes. In the 1970s, Mayan people began participating in the fight, demanding greater inclusion and recognition of their language and culture in the country.

The 36-year long conflict was characterized by abductions and violence, and over 200,000 Guatemalans were killed or went missing. Eighty-three percent of the victims killed in the war were Mayan, according to The Center for Justice and Accountability, a nonprofit foundation based in San Francisco that seeks to bring human rights abusers to justice.

In what world do we live in now that simply eradicating a people, rather than reaching an agreement with or somehow relocating the communities, is the answer to obtaining the land that is desired? This is the colonial present.
Elena Lee
The Guatemalan government’s lack of actually admitting to this action has aided in rewriting the historical memory of their attempted genocide, even with the affair being called in colloquia the ‘Guatemalan Civil War,’ instead of something like ‘the Guatemalan Mayan Genocide’
Blake Ramsey

One indigenous woman, Rigoberta Menchú, helped her community resist erasure by dictating her story to an interviewer. The autobiography, “I, Rigoberta Menchú,” published in 1983, is a testimonial of her first 23 years of life. It also documents the atrocities that her family and others with indigenous ancestry endured during the civil war.

Rigoberta fought for the perspective of the victims, and it allows us to now learn about that, and move forward with that information in mind
Jack Johnson
On page one she notes that her story is not only representative of one individual but many. Her telling of such an intense narrative through the oral remembrance of her life is evidence of her understanding that undying memories are power that can be exercised over oppressors
Patrick France
The rage that only centuries of underhanded tricks can [accumulate] in a population is taken and transformed into the organized movements against systematic oppression that Menchú and her community collectively produce and embody. The colonial narrative of general inferiority is taken, spun, and hurled back against the government as a projectile force that is ready to defend its traditions and cultural practices
Elena Lee
Violeta Parra was an influential singer and songwriter in Chile. Source: Felvalen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

New Song Movement

During the 1950s, the Nueva Canción (New Song) Movement swept through Chile as singer and songwriter Violeta Parra revitalized traditional folk music. At the time, the country was undergoing the processes of urbanization and modernization, and rural poor Chileans felt ignored and left behind. 

One of Parra’s songs, “Arriba Quemando el Sol” (which means And Above, the Sun is Burning in English), depicts the daily struggles of the working class in a poor mining town in Chile.

Music has the inherent power to change a narrative of an entire group of people and shed light on the stories pushed into the background of the greater picture
Evan Clark

“When I saw the miners inside their rooms I told myself: I think the snail has better living quarters
Or in the shadows of the law, the refined thief
While above, the sun kept burning
The rows of the small shanty homes, one in front of the other, yes, sir
The line of women, one in front of the other each with a bucket using the only washing basin
While above, the sun keeps burning”
—Violeta Parra, translation from “Arriba Quemando el Sol”

Just as the sun's light is a constant in everyday life, injustice became a regular occurrence for the Chilean people
Will Knight

Another song, “Yo Canto a la Diferencia” (which means I Sing With A Difference in English) reflects how indigenous people had to grapple with their hatred toward colonizers while still maintaining a love for their homeland.

The lyric ‘the people love the nation / what a terrible match’ demonstrates how even though one might love their country, the reality is that the government likely cares little for their needs
Caleb Franklin
She entices me to imagine a relaxing day with the wind making the tree sway. However, this laid-back sentiment does not extend to her lyrics, where she depicts the scene where the Europeans and Christians arrived and brought with them an aura of dread and clouds that block the sun
Evan Clark

Students made connections between Parra’s “Arauco Tiene una Pena” (which means Arauco is Filled with Sadness in English) and their previous lessons on the erasure of the Mapuche people of Chile.

“Arauco is filled with sadness
And I cannot keep silent
This is the injustice carried out through centuries
Which have been openly seen and
Yet! Nobody has tried to change
Being able to do so! Rise up!”
—Violetta Parra, translation from “Arauco Tiene una Pena”

One powerful line of the song is when Parra says she cannot be silent … She must speak out on behalf of the Mapuche
Jake Winston
Not all instances of variation in historical memory are built from top-down power structures. Some carry a far greater bottom-up perspective, echoing from the personal spheres up through the national, and into the global spheres of memory
Elena Lee