Book Summary: In April-May 1994, 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis were massacred
by their Hutu fellow citizens--about 10,000 a day, mostly being hacked to death
by machete. In Machete Season, the veteran foreign correspondent Jean
Hatzfeld reports on the results of his interviews with nine of the Hutu
killers. They were all friends who came from a single region where they helped
to kill 50,000 out of their 59,000 Tutsi neighbors, and all of them are now in
prison, some awaiting execution. It is usually presumed that killers will not
tell the truth about their brutal actions, but Hatzfeld elicited extraordinary
testimony from these men about the genocide they had perpetrated. He rightly
sees that their account raises as many questions as it answers.
Adabert, Alphonse, Ignace, and the others (most of them farmers)
told Hatzfeld how the work was given to them, what they thought about it, how
they did it, and what their responses were to the bloodbath. "Killing is
easier than farming," one says. "I got into it, no problem,"
says another. Each describes what it was like the first time he killed someone,
what he felt like when he killed a mother and child, how he reacted when he
killed a cordial acquaintance, how 'cutting' a person with a machete differed
from 'cutting' a calf or a sugarcane. And they had plenty of time to tell
Hatzfeld, too, about whether and why they had reconsidered their motives, their
moral responsibility, their guilt, remorse, or indifference to the crimes.
Hatzfeld's
meditation on the banal, horrific testimony of the genocidaires and what it
means is lucid, humane, and wise: he relates the Rwanda horror to war crimes
and to other genocidal episodes in human history. Especially since the
Holocaust, it has been conventional to presume that only depraved and monstrous
evil incarnate could perpetrate such crimes, but it may be, he suggests, that
such actions are within the realm of ordinary human conduct. To read this
disturbing, enlightening and very brave book is to consider in a new light the
foundation of human morality and ethics.
(From goodreads.com)
My Review:
I’ve been fascinated with the Jewish Holocaust for as long as I can
remember: with the timelines, with trying to comprehend the hows and the whys,
with the absence of humanity in the history.
I had the opportunity to visit a small concentration camp in Austria,
and it is one of the most singularly haunting experiences of my life. My husband has never fully understood my need
to read everything (and watch every documentary) on the subject, but he has a
similar desire to understand the Rwandan Holocaust of 1994. Although the outside world (read: Western
civilization and most of Europe) didn’t know what was going on, the magnitude
of that genocide is shocking – in a short few months, what the perpetuators
have deemed the Machete Season, five of every six Tutsis were massacred by
their neighbors.
When I saw this book on my library’s “Check
it Out” shelf, I knew my husband (a true Afriphile) would be interested, and
grabbed it, along with the other piles of books waiting for me. Once I got out to the car, my poor husband
was shocked when I handed him his own book to read. He handed it back, told me to read it to see
if it was worthwhile, and he’d get to it.
I was so intrigued with the concept – let’s ask the perpetrators
themselves what they were thinking – that I beat him to the punch.
Hatzfield has interviewed nine men,
neighbors, all Hutu, who had formed a gang during the Machete Season. The book switches between the statements of
the men, of Hatzfield’s observations and research, and of some supplemental
interviews he conducted with the survivors of the marshes. Hatzfield is very clear about the admission
of “zigzags”, slight to total untruths the men told him, whether to save their
own face or assuage their own guilt he was unable to determine. He also writes of the collective mindset …
when he asks “What did you (singular) do that first day?” the answer he
received was one of coercion and reluctance, but if he asks “What did you (plural)
do that first day?” a more realistic and vivid picture was painted.
Hatzfield asked nearly everything, from
whether they saw this coming, to how their wives responded to their actions, to
what on earth compelled them do to what they did. He writes candidly of his initial disgust of
the men—of anticipating to sit across from nothing but a monster—to his getting
to know the men, never fully losing his distrust of them, but of being so
curious that he pressed forward with the interviews. One man, Pio, answered the question how, how
they were capable of doing such things in such a poignant way, I immediately
typed it out.
Not only had we become criminals, we had become a ferocious
species in a barbarous world. This truth
is not believable to someone who has not lived it in his muscles. Our daily life was unnatural and bloody, and
that suited us.
For my part, I offer you an explanation: it is as if I had let another individual take
on my own living appearance, and the habits of my heart, without a single pang
in my soul. This killer was indeed me,
as to the offense he committed and the blood he shed, but he is a stranger to
me in his ferocity. I admit and
recognize my obedience at that time, my victims, my fault, but I fail to
recognize the wickedness of the one who raced through the marshes on my legs,
carrying my machete. That wickedness
seems to belong to another self with a heavy heart. The most serious changes in my body were my
invisible parts, such as the soul or the feelings that go with it. Therefore I alone do not recognize myself in
that man. But perhaps someone outside
this situation, like you, cannot have an inkling of that strangeness of mind.
-Pio,
page 48
This book put me through the emotional
ringer. It was horrifying in the
extreme, to hear some of these men that talked so nonchalantly, so impudently
of what they had done, and to hear how flippantly they expected
forgiveness. A few of the men seemed to
understand that forgiveness may never be granted by the survivors in this life
to them, others really didn’t care one way or another. It ripped me apart every time I picked it up,
but I was so compelled to keep reading I couldn’t put it down. The men talked about how their hatred of the
Tutsis stemmed from long held slurs, like that the Tutsi women are too delicate
and weak to work, that their husbands have to be so wealthy to show off their
wives’ height. The men also fully
admitted that such slurs were a joke … that working in the marshes, the Tutsi
women worked just as hard and just as steadfastly as any Hutu. Thanks to Don Cheadle in Hotel Rwanda, nearly
everyone is familiar with the references to “Tutsi cockroaches and snakes”, the
dehumanizing of the race to make the genocide easier to swallow (something very
backed up by these interviews), and it shocked me to see much of our own
culture in the Rwanda leading up to the assassination of their president.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that
Americans will ever achieve a level of hatred that fierce, that dividing, and
so inflammatory, but how many times do we take the names of the “corporate
suits” in vain? They’re no longer human,
they’re just “suits”. Or the cross-party
banter, from both sides: “Liberals never work, they just want everything given
to them” to “Republicans just want to get rich off our sweat, they’re so
greedy.” Let’s be honest, people,
neither statement is really true, but if we sink to such derogatory statements
(and much, much worse), we’re dooming ourselves as assuredly as the Hutus and
the Tutsis, and that realization, as a proclaimed political nut, scared me.
Someone once said, “Those who do not know
history are condemned to repeat it”, and this is a chapter in the world’s
recent history that many would prefer to forget. Hatzfield has done a phenomenal job focusing
an intense beam of light onto a dark, dank period of the 90s, and it makes me
determined to learn from it.
My Rating: 4 Stars
For the Sensitive Reader: This makes Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy look like Dick and Jane. Nothing is off limits, from the massacres,
the hunting, brief mentions are made of brutalizing women and husband/wife
relations (although both are just mentioned).
Given the nature of the book, it is definitely violent.
Sum it Up:
A unique, sometimes disturbing, in-depth look into the minds of the
perpetrators of one of the worst genocides in history.