Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season: The Killers In Rwanda Speak trans. Linda Coverdale (New York, NY. Picador, 2000).
Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, by Jean Hatzfeld, is the second book that he composed about reports of the events of the Rwandan genocide that occurred in spring of 1994 in a small African country called Rwanda. The first book, Into the Quick Life: Stories from the Rwandan Marshes, Hatzfeld tells of the events that took place during the genocide but from the perspective of the Tutsi survivors. Machete Season, on the other hand, tells of the events from the Hutu killers’ perspective. The book is an organized collection of interviews conducted by Hatzfeld and ten Hutu men who were currently imprisoned for their participation …show more content…
The book, upfront and horrific, lays out the oral accounts of the Hutu killers’ perspective for readers to interpret. The Hutu killers reveal their histories as Rwanda residents and their relationship with fellow killers, and the Tutsi citizens they admit to murdering. It is hard for readers to understand how Hutu men can go from friendly, caring neighbors of Tutsi residents on April 10th, 1994, to slaughtering those same people the very next day, April 11th and continuing until May 14th, 1994. Hatzfeld poses the Hutu prisoners with questions during his interview that enable his readers to develop an ability to understand how such horrific events could take place, and why genocidal acts are not only politically organized and spearheaded, but encouraged from above for multiple reasons that include a primordial “ethnic hatred” as a sub-context, through the context of the prisoners’ …show more content…
In attempt to comprehend the acts of Hutus murdering the Tutsi, one must understand that two populations, at various points in the past, had conflicts with one another, one of which led to a smaller mass murdering of Tutsi 1959. The two groups had for many years been pitted against each other with fears of control and social status. In the beginning, the Tutsi monarchy controlled the government of the dependent Rwanda. In 1959, the last of the Tutsi monarchy died and the government was controlled by a combined leadership of Hutu and Tutsi leaders. However, in 1962 the time of Rwandan independence, the Hutu leaders put their developed social movement in action to secure all governmental power and forced the Tutsi out of all government positions. This rule was very invigorating for the Hutu citizens who had always been under the Tutsi monarchy. This new empowerment led the government to isolate and marginalize all Tutsi as, “scheming, treacherous speculators and parasites.” This was the beginning of the Hutu way of thinking of Tutsis that would be passed down to future
Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, by Jean Hatzfeld, is the second book that he composed about reports of the events of the Rwandan genocide that occurred in spring of 1994 in a small African country called Rwanda. The first book, Into the Quick Life: Stories from the Rwandan Marshes, Hatzfeld tells of the events that took place during the genocide but from the perspective of the Tutsi survivors. Machete Season, on the other hand, tells of the events from the Hutu killers’ perspective. The book is an organized collection of interviews conducted by Hatzfeld and ten Hutu men who were currently imprisoned for their participation …show more content…
The book, upfront and horrific, lays out the oral accounts of the Hutu killers’ perspective for readers to interpret. The Hutu killers reveal their histories as Rwanda residents and their relationship with fellow killers, and the Tutsi citizens they admit to murdering. It is hard for readers to understand how Hutu men can go from friendly, caring neighbors of Tutsi residents on April 10th, 1994, to slaughtering those same people the very next day, April 11th and continuing until May 14th, 1994. Hatzfeld poses the Hutu prisoners with questions during his interview that enable his readers to develop an ability to understand how such horrific events could take place, and why genocidal acts are not only politically organized and spearheaded, but encouraged from above for multiple reasons that include a primordial “ethnic hatred” as a sub-context, through the context of the prisoners’ …show more content…
In attempt to comprehend the acts of Hutus murdering the Tutsi, one must understand that two populations, at various points in the past, had conflicts with one another, one of which led to a smaller mass murdering of Tutsi 1959. The two groups had for many years been pitted against each other with fears of control and social status. In the beginning, the Tutsi monarchy controlled the government of the dependent Rwanda. In 1959, the last of the Tutsi monarchy died and the government was controlled by a combined leadership of Hutu and Tutsi leaders. However, in 1962 the time of Rwandan independence, the Hutu leaders put their developed social movement in action to secure all governmental power and forced the Tutsi out of all government positions. This rule was very invigorating for the Hutu citizens who had always been under the Tutsi monarchy. This new empowerment led the government to isolate and marginalize all Tutsi as, “scheming, treacherous speculators and parasites.” This was the beginning of the Hutu way of thinking of Tutsis that would be passed down to future