tattoos Archives - Not Even Past

Sitting in a humble home in Huehuetenango, Manuel Alvarez told me the story of his near execution at the hands of the Guatemalan military. It was 1982 when the soldiers, under the direction of a Pentecostal dictator, first shoved his helpless body to the pavement and then placed an ice-cold muzzle against his back. “They told me that I better believe in Jesus,” he said softly, “because only Dios could save me from their bullets.” While Alvarez miraculously survived this encounter, he returned home that night deeply disturbed by the soldiers’ threats. He knew that his country’s military frequently killed, mutilated, and disappeared civilians. Yet he never before experienced how swiftly his body could be seized without repercussions or retribution. If he were to die on that pavement, he imagined, his family was unlikely to identify him and they would be forever haunted by not knowing what happened. In the wake of this terror, Alvarez called his brother Felipe to his bedroom and asked him to tattoo both his arms, to identify his body if need be.

As Alvarez rolled up his tee-shirt sleeves, his brother cautioned him that marking his arms was “not going to be good.” Nobody carried tattoos during those days and Felipe worried that his older brother would be judged harshly at church that Sunday. Despite this warning, Alvarez pressed his younger sibling to gather a pen, black ink, and a needle from the kitchen. Felipe listened, returned, and hesitantly began to sketch a blurry outline of a bear on his brother’s left arm. At that moment, Alvarez did not care what the tattoo was of, he simply implored his brother to “just do something here.” After the first tattoo was finished, Alvarez thought about what other indelible ink could identify him in the event of his death. He considered his childhood nickname, “canche,” which his friends lovingly called him because of his unusually light hair. He remembered the American missionaries he befriended in the 1970s who called him “blondy,” canche’s English variant. Following the soldiers’ threats to his body, it was this name that Alvarez felt could best distinguish him if he were discovered dead on the streets of Huehuetenango.

Manuel Alvarez Tattoo by Jana Wallace. March 22nd, 2020. Los Angeles, CA

After this haunting evening, Alvarez’s brother also went on to tattoo a small circle on one of his own bare knuckles. His best friend Alberto, who was similarly menaced by the Guatemalan military, came over later to ask Felipe to brand his body. The young man requested an image of a wolf, or lobo in Spanish, which was his nickname throughout the town. During a time of ever-present violence in Guatemala’s western highlands, all three Huehuetecos decided to tattoo their own bodies.

In voicing this history, Alvarez prompts us not only to reassess our understanding of Guatemala’s bloody Civil War, but authoritarianism writ large. For one, his story lays bare the immense corporeal costs of the Guatemalan military’s counterinsurgency strategy. In deploying terror tactics to pacify the population, the ejercito (army) not only murdered thousands of civilians but prompted men like Alvarez to mark their own bodies. In this way, one may interpret Alvarez’s tattoo as participation in his own discipline, as the physical embodiment of the fear the government sought to instill. Alvarez even suggests this at the end of his testimony when he states that, looking back, “it was not really my choice because I just did it out of fear.”

Manuel Alvarez Tattoo by Jana Wallace. March 22nd, 2020. Los Angeles, CA

However, if we understand Alvarez’s decision to tattoo as a direct response to the soldiers’ threats, his story elucidates the limits of state power. Where death squads in Guatemala repeatedly executed civilians and deprived their families of closure, Alvarez’s tattoo might have thwarted such efforts had he died. If the army killed him, or Felipe, or Alberto, their markings might have rendered them more recognizable to their families regardless of the military’s brutality. Their mothers and fathers could then recite the Lord’s Prayer and give them a proper burial. In this sense, Alvarez’s tattoo embodies rebellion against the Guatemalan government’s authority to deprive families of the ability to grieve. His indelible ink, even in death, may have prevented the state from terrorizing his people and denying them this right. By sharing his story, Alvarez not only reveals these bodily costs of war, but illuminates the power of a few, defiant marks.

Citations And Further Readings:

Interview with Manuel Alvarez, December 28th, 2019, Huehuetenango
Manuel Alvarez Tattoo, Photos by Jana Wallace. March 22nd, 2020. Los Angeles, CA
Garrard, Virginia. Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala Under General Efraín Ríos Montt, 1982-1983. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

Not Even Past asked the UT Austin History faculty to recommend great books for Women’s History Month. The response was overwhelming so we will be posting their suggestions throughout the month. Here are some terrific book recommendations on women and gender in the United States.

Penne Restad recommends:

Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014).

A lively, often surprising, narrative history that chronicles the adventures of Wonder Woman, the comic strip devoted to her prowess, and Marston, the man who imagined her, in the center of the struggle for women’s rights in the U.S.

Erika Bsumek recommends:

Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman (2011).

In 1851, the 13 year old Oatman was part of a Mormon family traveling west. She was captured by the Yavapai Indians and then traded to the Mohave, who adopted her. The book tells her story and provides some valuable context on the various Mormon sects, the tensions and troubles faced by American Indians in the face of American expansion, and how one young woman experienced it all.

Laurie Green recommends:

Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. (2013)

Think you know who Rosa Parks was? Jeanne Theoharis’s biography will change your understanding of the woman who became famous for triggering the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 when she was “too tired” to relinquish her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. The book tells you the real story of Parks’s militant activism from the 1930s to the 1990s and her frustration with being recognized as a symbol, not a leader.

Emilio Zamora recommends:

Cynthia E. Orozco, No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed; The Rise of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement (2009)

The book is a re-examination of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the longest running Mexican American civil rights organizations. Orozco is a well-known historian who incorporates women and gender in her histories of Mexican Americans. In this instance, women are placed at center stage in the cause for equal rights and dignity.

Jackie Jones recommends:

Ellen Fitzpatrick, The Highest Glass Ceiling: Women’s Quest for the American Presidency (2016).

A great read and couldn’t be more timely! The book focuses on three women candidates for the presidency: Victoria Woodhull (ran in 1872), Margaret Chase Smith (1964), and Shirley Chisholm (1972).

Daina Berry recommends:

Talitha LeFlouria, Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South (2016)

From the UNC Press website:

In 1868, the state of Georgia began to make its rapidly growing population of prisoners available for hire. The resulting convict leasing system ensnared not only men but also African American women, who were forced to labor in camps and factories to make profits for private investors. In this vivid work of history, Talitha L. LeFlouria draws from a rich array of primary sources to piece together the stories of these women, recounting what they endured in Georgia’s prison system and what their labor accomplished. LeFlouria argues that African American women’s presence within the convict lease and chain-gang systems of Georgia helped to modernize the South by creating a new and dynamic set of skills for black women. At the same time, female inmates struggled to resist physical and sexual exploitation and to preserve their human dignity within a hostile climate of terror. This revealing history redefines the social context of black women’s lives and labor in the New South and allows their stories to be told for the first time.

Charlotte Canning recommends:

Jayna Brown, Babylon Girls: Black Women Performers and the Shaping of the Modern (2008)

An award-winning cultural history of the African American women who were variety performers on chorus lines, in burlesques, cabarets, and vaudeville from 1890 to 1945. Despite the oppression they experienced, these women shaped an emerging urban popular culture. They pioneered social dances like the cakewalk and the Charleston. It is an ambitious view of popular culture and the ways in which women were integral to its definition.

Bruce Hunt and Megan Raby recommend:

Kimberly Hamlin, From Eve to Evolution: Darwin, Science, and Women’s Rights in Gilded Age America (2014)

While there is an enormous literature on the reception of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, this is the first book to examine the responses of women. This book is a lively account of how ideas about human evolution figured in debates over women’s rights in the late 19th century, by a recent UT American Studies PhD.

Megan Seaholm recommends:

Jennifer Nelson, More Than Medicine: A History of the Feminist Women’s Health Movement (2015)

Nelson provides an excellent addition to the growing literature about the women’s health movement that began in the 1960s. She concentrates on reproductive health and reproductive rights from abortion referral services organized before Roe v. Wade through the National Black Women’s Health Project organized in 1984. This is a good read and an important contribution.

Mark Lawrence recommends:

Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (1990)

Elaine Tyler May examines the resurgence of traditional gender roles in the years after the Second World War, arguing that a desire to enjoy postwar prosperity and to escape the dangers of the nuclear age drove Americans back to conventional norms. The book brilliantly blends women’s, social, political, and international history.

Judith Coffin recommends:

Nancy Cott, Public Vows : A History of Marriage and the Nation (2000)

The changing stakes of marriage for the nation and for men and women — gay and straight. Readable, smart, and connected to the present. Nancy Cott helped write several amicus (friend-of-the-court) briefs in the marriage cases before the Supreme Court.

For more books on Women’s History:

Great Books (Europe)

Great Books (Crossing Borders)

Indrani Chatterjee, On Women and Nation in India

Our 2013 list of recommendations: New Books on Women’s History

Indelibly Inked: Bodies, Tattoos, and Violence during Guatemala’s Civil War

Great Books on Women’s History: United States

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