Ghostly evidence: official and structural registers of voice, veracity, avarice, and violence in the “Rigoberta Mench´u controversy”1

The author traces the “ghostly evidence”1 and official and structural registers of voice underlying the “Rigoberta Mench´u” controversy, locating them in select recently declassified documents of the U.S. policy in Guatemala as evidenced in the Guatemalan Documentation Project and other files in the U.S. National Security Archives. The author situates her textual analysis of these official documents within their historical, political, material, and structural (e.g., economic, institutional, and transnational) contexts. She argues and provides evidence for an alternative way to read the controversy as an official attempt to alter the common sense of the wider public about official U.S. policy in Guatemala during the height of the state-sponsored terror and counter-insurgence. The article raises fundamental questions about the implications for democracy in Guatemala and the United States.