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.
Themes
The Complex Motivations to Kill
Hatzfeld interviewed the killers so that they could tell their side of the story and explain why they participated in the Rwandan Genocide. Even though the answer might seem obvious—they killed because they hated the Tutsis—the theme that emerges is that the motivations for killing were complex. As the book unfolds, a number of possible motivations emerge.
One possible motivation was self-preservation. The killers, most of whom were Hutu peasant farmers, were only following orders. Failure to do so could result in punishment. Some killers saw the order in starker terms: they had to kill or be killed. Yet the fact that no Hutus were reportedly arrested for refusing to participate in the genocide casts doubt on this premise.
Another motivation was glory in the end result. Since 1959, the Hutus openly resented the Tutsis and engaged in episodic violent clashes. After independence, and particularly with the rise of the Habyarimana’s dictatorship in the 1970s, hatred toward Tutsis turned into state policies of murder, separation, and discrimination. By the early 1990s, the rise of a Tutsi rebel force and its attacks on Rwanda’s army led to constant calls for the extermination of the Tutsis. This led to a plan for genocide with the eventual goal of removing all Tutsis from Rwanda. The idea of killing the very last Tutsi and securing a final solution to the problems that attended the Tutsi-Hutu relationship was thus a likely motivation to kill.
The killers also sought the Tutsis’ land. A recurring theme in Hutu–Tutsi relations had been Rwanda’s high population density. Land was scarce. If the killers were to remove the Tutsis from the area, their cows would no longer threaten Hutu crops and they could take the land for their own banana plantations. This idea of their right to the land was supported by the stereotype that Hutus were superior farmers.
Additionally, the killers relished the ease of life during the killing season. It was easier to kill every day than to farm. Unlike when farming, the killers no longer had to worry about failed crops, unhappy wives, or hunger. After they were done with the day’s killings, they could go for drinks or celebrate without the many anxieties that come with maintaining a farm.
The killers were also driven by greed. They wanted to loot and enrich themselves, so the killing became a means to that end. The genocide yielded bicycles, metal, radios, food, and more money in their pockets than some of the killers had ever known. Some would only show up for the killings so that they could start the looting afterwards. A few were so focused on looting that they would not bother to finish off victims; instead, they would leave injured Tutsis in pain and suffering.
There was also a cyclical nature to the killing. As the killers got better at it, they wanted to kill more. They could also use the killing as a cover to seek revenge on people they wanted to kill.
Finally, the killers feared living once again under Tutsi rule, this time under the inkotanyi. Given their memories of forced, unpaid labor and other humiliations during the reign of the Tutsi monarchs, fear of the RFP was also a motivation to kill.
The Successful Planning and Execution of the Genocide
On April 7, 1994, the killing started in Rwanda. The first victims of the genocide were Hutu political moderates. By April 11, 1994, the genocide had arrived in Nyamata. Hatzfeld shows, however, that the idea to kill Tutsis, long the target of jokes, threats, and propaganda, dates to the early 1990s. During that period, anti-Tutsi actions intensified under the cover of civil war, and by winter 1993, the planning to kill Tutsi leaders and the educated was underway. Whether the plan was to kill all Tutsis before Habrayimana’s plane was shot down is still the subject of some debate. But the plans for a genocide were in place by March 1994.
Part of the planning, as Hatzfeld details largely in comparison to the Holocaust, happened years before the genocide began. The Hutu public—farmers and other civilians—were mentally prepared to kill if asked. They were, in some senses, expecting to kill, since they had done so earlier to push back the advancing inkotanyi. Indeed, when the killings started in the cities after Habyarimana’s plane crashed, the gang of killers sat in their homes, awaiting the signal to kill. Impatiently, many headed out on patrols to start the killing ahead of their orders.
The genocide’s roots, according to the Hatzfeld, go back to 1959, with the death of the last Tutsi monarch. Once the Hutu took power in 1962, and then furthered their power and control over society with Habyarimana’s dictatorship, they could plan to exterminate the Tutsis without risk of any domestic political opposition. They normalized anti-Tutsi propaganda and violence. Like during the Holocaust, the removal of Tutsis’ political rights, state-sponsored violence to ensure the citizens would kill if asked, and the use of militias to incite the public, were calculated to set the stage for the genocide.
The planning in the final stages was also obvious: In the three months prior, for example, Joseph-Désiré checked houses for machetes; the radios broadcasted the propaganda, day and night; and lists of who to kill were drawn up. The decision was made to kill political opponents first. The UNAMIR leadership knew of the plan by March 1994; it was no longer a secret. To rid Rwanda of all international oversight, they killed Belgian peacekeepers. Next, they started to kill Hutu political moderates. Thus, the people and the domestic institutions were ready to proceed when the order was given to kill Tutsi leaders and their family members.
The Group Dynamics of Violence
Hatzfeld deliberately chose to interview a gang of killers, a group of men who had grown up together, killed together, fled together, and were imprisoned together. Unlike the Hutus in the hills who would not talk, the gang members’ identity and support system gave them the protection to tell Hatzfeld of their involvement in the genocide.
Throughout the book, Hatzfeld also shows how the gang identity prepared them to kill. They might have been a bunch of ordinary farmers and low-level civil servants, who were members of an informal gang, but their gang was the first to the marshes, a point of pride for the members. They killed together from the first day of the genocide to its very last.
The group dynamics of the gang also reinforced stereotypes about the Tutsis and the Hutu, like that Hutus should work the fields since they were the better farmers, and that Tutsi women could not work hard. Anti-Tutsi sentiment was thus woven into the fabric of the gang’s identity. They insulted Tutsis long before the genocide and made threats to kill them, even though the only member who had killed before was Élie. Witnesses remarked that they became increasingly cruel in their taunting of Tutsi neighbors.
The gang was also integrated into the interahamwe. Thus, its members were part of the larger Hutu identity that was distinct from and at war with the Tutsis. Adalbert, their leader, was known for his cruelty even before the genocide. He had a knack for getting into arguments and egging on his opposition without losing his cool. He was the leader of the interahamwe for Kibungo municipality, having belonged to the group since he was a teenager. He was sly, mean, and calculating. Two other members of the group belonged to the interahamwe: Joseph-Désiré and Léopord. These leaders drove the others to kill during the genocide.
The gang members also helped each other kill together. They killed as a group and always helped one another in the marshes. They were comrades who had each other’s back. When one killer could not do something or was absent, they would cover for them. When one could not kill an acquaintance or kill well, they would patiently kill for them or offer instructions. And when one was not killing enough, they would jeer and make it so that the gang’s taunting would be harder to bear than the killing itself.
