Machete Season

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.

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.