Genocide

Jessica Alzate
History of Genocide and Holocaust
Deborah Morison
Date: May 9, 2011
Machete Season
By
Jean Hatzfeld

Between April and July of 1994, around 800,000 Rwandans were killed by their own people. There were no gas chambers, or other distancing mechanisms in Rwanda. The killers killed their victims to death with machete. In Rwanda there was little real difference between thekillers (Hutus) and victims (Tutsis). Both groups are Catholic. The only difference between them is the ethnicity. In the past, the Tutsis had been the ruling class. Under Belgian rule after WWI, a strict caste system was established in which the Tutsis were given privileges, but the Hutus did not have such privileges. Hutus are mostly crop farmers, while Tutsis are known for their ability to raisecattle. Hutus did not know how to raise cattle, and the Tutsi herds would sometimes trample their crops. Furthermore, even though Tutsis are mostly indistinguishable from the Hutus in physical appearance, they were generally thought of as the taller, more handsome ethnic group. Ever since, identification cards have identified holders as Hutu or Tutsi. After Hutus uprising in 1959, a festering hatredsmoldered among the Hutus, exploding in the slaughter of the 800.000 Tutsis in 1994.
Unfortunately, little has been written about the Rwandan genocide in English. Most research and books about this Genocide is French, and much of what there is in English print is translated from French. “Machete Season” is not the exception. The words of this book, however, have been translated from Kinyarwanda(dialect of the Rwanda-Rundi language spoken by some 12 million people in Rwanda) to French, and then from French to English. The English translation was done by Linda Coverdale, who recently won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for her translating. However, this is not a lyrical novel. These are the words of thousands of killers, farmers with elementary school educations who spentone-hundred days killing their own people. “Machete Season” is a report by Jean Haztfeld. The journalist Haztfeld who conducted the interviews in French through an interpreter, met with and interviewed ten Hutu men who had been convicted for their roles in the killing and were incarcerated in a Rwandan prison- the names of the killers are: Fulgence, Pancrace, Alphonse, Jean-Baptiste,Pio, Ellie,Adalbert, Ignace, and Leopord.- The interviews are arranged into different chapters, covering several horrific topics: how the killing was organized, where it took place, how each man felt about the first time they killed someone, their family and neighborhood histories, and how their hatred toward the Tutsis developed.
The killers interviewed were ten men who all knew each other even before thekilling of the Tutsis, and formed gang that would drink together after working in the fields. All of them were in prison together at the time the interviews took place. All the men found it fairly easy to stop seeing the victims as acquaintances, or even as humans. They have some regrets for their actions, but one says, "In prison and on the hills, everyone is obviously sorry. But most of the killersare sorry they did not finish the job. They accuse themselves of negligence rather than wickedness." They fondly remember looting at the end of each day from the farms and homes of people they had killed. One says, "It was the rule to kill going out and to loot coming back. We killed in teams, but we looted every man for himself or in small groups of friends." They all mention that no one saidthey couldn't go kill people; one says, "All the important people turned their backs on our killings. The blue helmets [UN Peacekeepers, who were pulled out shortly after the genocide began], the Belgians, the white directors, the black presidents, the humanitarian people and the international cameramen, the priests and the bishops, and finally even God, we were abandoned by all words of rebuke."...