Around 1982, thousands of Guatemalan Mayas fled their villages and lands to escape the Ríos Montt scorched-earth policy implemented in rural areas. After more than a decade of exile, many of those refugees have returned to their homeland. This paper looks at the ways in which young Mayan refugees who have returned home after extended exile in Mexico appropriate and distance themselves from the collective project of going home. Two Mayan communities of retornados (returnees), whose paths into exile and home again differ slightly, are compared. Outside support from international organizations and cohesion in the refugee camps enabled the young people of La Victoria to see disclosure of the traumatic past from a position of strength and confrontation as the key to social change. In La Esperanza, the past is rebuilt by the youth around avoidance of recent history, and tradition appears as a bridge between past and future. The way the youth of the two communities construct their homecoming demonstrates how small changes in the migration experience may result in considerable differences in the choice of strategies, and raises important questions about assistance programs that might be developed for these populations.

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Ethnic Groups male ethnic group cultural anthropology female Guatemala Humans refugee memory decision making psychological aspect ethnology Article human adult Refugees Culture Adolescent