Andrew Bentley

Traversing the Zones, Transcending the Nonhuman: Urban Ecologies
in Postwar Guatemala

Michigan State University, EE.UU.
bentle94@msu.edu

 

Departing from environmental developments and their relationship to modern urbanization, this article explores the ways in which nonhuman activity plays a role in the evolving identity of the city in postwar Guatemala. The article argues that Guatemalan urban space can be imagined not only through anthropocentric perspectives, but also in consideration of the environment to understand the city through a lens that defies a purely manmade context. This thesis is developed through a close analysis of the conditions of the Historical Archives of the National Police (AHPN) upon its July 2005 discovery and the recent development of sinkholes across Guatemala City’s zones throughout the first decades of the 21st Century, both of which generate diverse responses and posit new directions for postwar cultural criticism beyond the humano.

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