51 pages • 1 hour read
Jean HatzfeldMachete Season
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 8-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “Taste and Distaste”
As the days of the genocide went on, Élie recalls, the killers were forced to set aside kindness because the Tutsis were no longer human in their eyes; they are savages. Meanwhile, the killers were content in their daily life of blood and murder. As killing became casual, almost boring, torturing Tutsis occurred with the twisted logic that it was the Tutsi who forced the Hutu to kill them.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Going Into Action”
Hatzfeld revisits the historical context surrounding the Rwandan genocide. Like the Nazis, the Hutus started to target the Tutsis in Rwanda after taking power in 1962. The Hutu majority government seized Tutsi property to break the Tutsi aristocracy, targeting all Tutsis as “treacherous speculators and parasites” in a country that was overpopulated (54). In the 1970s, Hutu President Habyrarimana’s government enshrined anti-Tutsi sentiment into state law, banning mixed marriages. By 1990, Tutsi rebel forces in Uganda attacked the Rwandan Army, triggering a civil war.
With the onset of the war, the rule of law was suspended. By 1991, Hutu leaders were openly calling for genocide. Public radio hosts like Milles Collines called the Tutsi “cockroaches,” and Innocent notes that when leading comedians made jokes about killing, even Tutsis laughed. Anti-Tutsi sentiment was normalized. So too was killing. Élie says that when Hutu farmers killed Tutsis in 1959 without consequences, it planted a seed.
In Nyamata, by December 1993, about twenty Hutu leaders knew the plan for genocide. In March 1994, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), the organization charged with negotiating a peace plan between the RPF and Habyarimana’s government, was briefed on the genocide plan; by then, about 60 people knew the genocide was decided.
Like in Nazi Germany, when the decision was made to start the killing, Rwanda’s people and institutions were ready to execute it. Élie says they targeted groups of Tutsis to kill long before the genocide.
Chapter 11 Summary: “A Neighborhood Genocide”
Hatzfeld compares and contrasts the Rwandan genocide with the Holocaust.
The Holocaust proceeded in four stages: the identification and disenfranchisement of Jews; deportation; confinement in concentration camps; and elimination. In Rwanda, since Hutu and Tutsi lived together in rural areas, the genocide only went through stages one and four. Unlike in Nazi Germany, the killers knew the Tutsi intimately, and the Tutsis “gathered themselves” when they fled into the churches and marshes (68).
Another way the Rwandan genocide differs from the Holocaust is that it largely transpired in rural agricultural communities with little access to the latest military technology. Rather than gas chambers and firing squads, the Hutus used machetes. The killers understood manual labor, so the killing in the marshes was also manual and done at the pace of the “seasonal culture” (69).
Finally, with 800,000 killed in twelve weeks, the Hutus killed at a faster rate than the Nazis did anywhere in its occupied territories, at any time.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Punishment”
The gang explains the different forms of punishment for not killing or breaking the rules. At six a.m., everyone was to report on the hill. If someone was absent, often a neighbor turned them in or asked for a bribe to keep quiet. Those who failed to show in the morning were subject to a fine of up to 2,000 francs. Some Hutus successfully avoided killing through bribes. According to survivor Marie-Chantal, the famers were usually too poor to buy their way out, but others sent their servants to kill for them. Some were beaten for not killing. Each evening, when they reported their kills, those with a small number were ridiculed. Not killing at all could lead to that person’s death. But the worst crime was showing any sort of sympathy toward a Tutsi.
Chapters 8-12 Analysis
In these chapters, Hatzfeld discusses the many reasons the Hutu had to keep killing. He identifies a shift in the mentality of the killers. Even though many had no grudges against the Tutsi, once they began killing they no longer saw them as human beings. As the killers put it, killing became mechanical; their arms killed without a second thought.
In Chapter 9, the readers learn a second reason why the killers kept killing: they were well prepared by the media and the government. Starting in at least 1959, when Rwanda was still a colony, anti-Tutsi violence went unpunished. A year after independence, it was even encouraged. By the 1970s, when Habyarimana’s dictatorship was established, anti-Tutsi sentiment was enshrined into state law. By the 1990s, when the RPF responded and the country became embroiled in civil war, the Hutu and the Tutsi were already desensitized to the anti-Tutsi propaganda, threats and jokes. While few Tutsis or Hutus anticipated full-on extermination, the plan was in place by spring 1994. Through his examination of the roots of the Rwandan genocide, Hatzfeld outlines a blueprint of escalation and dehumanization that makes the unthinkable a reality. The shocking scale and speed of the killings may cause some to view the Rwandan genocide as a period of mass insanity. Yet like with many periods of unspeakable atrocity, it was the consequence of careful planning by institutions and individuals in power.
In Chapter 10, a third reason the genocide persisted is that the killers profited from it. They enjoyed their lives as killers because doing so dramatically increased their standard of living. When they grew bored with the killing, the killers still enjoyed the material fruits of their plunder. As such, both Hatzfeld and the killers themselves frame the genocide as a form of work: tedious at times, yet ultimately necessary for their economic wellbeing.
Hatzfeld argues that the Rwandan genocide was a local, agricultural genocide as opposed to the high-tech, centrally-coordinated killing of the Holocaust. Part of his argument stems from the fact that the method for killing—primarily the machete—echoed daily farm life, rendering the genocide into a form of manual labor.
The argument also provides another understanding of why the killers kept killing. Part of what helped them to kill is that they did not kill as individuals but as people who belonged to neighborhoods. Moreover, a form of community policing arose organically to address those who refused to kill.
Along with the larger group identity of Hutu and the smaller group identity of the gang, the men belonged to this middle group: the neighborhood. The neighborhood was also critical to the killing in other ways. In such a small rural setting, it was difficult to blend into the background and avoid killing. Moreover, the group pressure to kill was intense.
