Machete Season

Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak (2003), by French journalist Jean Hatzfeld, presents ten accounts of ordinary contributors to the Rwandan genocide, which killed 800,000 Tutsis in just two months in 1994. Each survivor is from the same relatively small city and goes into depth about the neighbors they murdered (or helped murder). The work was first translated into English by Linda Coverdale.

Its themes include personal responsibility, the horrors of groupthink, and mass dehumanization. The title comes from the “season” of killing, as well as the machetes, usually used for farming, that the Hutu used to kill the Tutsi, averaging 10,000 murders a day.

The nine men interviewed in-depth are from the majority Hutu population. When Hatzfeld spoke with them in 2001-2002, they were all in jail or reeducation camps, having been convicted of murder.

Like most in the town of Nyamata, they hated the minority Tutsi population and were dedicated to genocide. In just two months, the Hutu killed 50,000 Tutsis in this region, or about 85 percent of the total Tutsi population in the valley area.

Machete Season opens with Rose Kubwimana, an elderly Hutu woman, going through her morning routine the morning of what would become the Rwandan genocide. Her son, Adalbert Munzigura, will be one of the ten killers portrayed in the book; he was 23 when the genocide began.

On April 11, 1994, the President of Rwanda, Juvénal Habyarimana, was murdered when his plane exploded upon entry to the nation’s capital of Kigali. The Hutu population blamed the Tutsi people for what appeared to be an assassination attempt.

In some sections, Hatzfeld mixes the ten interviews together. This is often around a common action they performed, such as smashing in heads with various objects, or by timeline, like where they were when the genocide began or when they first killed someone they liked.

One of the men, Élie, describes how the Hutu felt that the Tutsi were no better than cockroaches; this sentiment had arisen decades and decades before and was supported by state-funded propaganda. Ignace says that after the plane crash of President Habyarimana, the Hutu were suddenly super patriotic and put aside all of their minor, intra-group quarrels.

In the chapter “The Three Hills,” Hatzfeld gives the backstory as to why the Tutsi and the Hutu hated each other. This conflict has been percolating since 1962. The next chapter, “The First Time,” is direct dialogue from the men themselves without any narrative context by the author. The men describe their first murders: some killed old women, some old men, and some killed mothers with their children. Most of their victims they did not know, but some did kill acquaintances, including people they went to church with.

After letting the men speak directly, Hatzfeld presents all of their backstories in the chapter, “A Gang.” All of the men were sons of farmers and not well-educated. All of the murderers were friends with each other before the genocide. None of the men admit to being particularly racist toward the Tutsi (one man even married a Tutsi), but after the patriotic fever of April 11, they felt it was their mission to better their country by murdering all Tutsi.

Hatzfeld continues with their verbatim testimonies. Many of the men claim that they had no choice but to assist with the murders. If they were unwilling to assist, they would have been killed. They note that the world at large cannot judge their actions because they never were in their overwhelming environment, where the choice was to kill or be killed.

The men also off-handedly mention that there were fiscal rewards to be had from killing Tutsi. After killing Tutsi in broad daylight, they could steal from their stores. This included robbing the Tutsi of alcohol, fruit, metals, and cows.

While none of the men seem to experience an overwhelming guilt about their actions, some admit to feeling remorse over the people they were assigned to kill. One man talks about having to kill a Tutsi soccer pal.

Hatzfeld looks at the unique conditions that made the Rwandan genocide. He also considers what factors most genocides have in common: they are often state-sponsored, one directional, and have been building up resentment through propagandistic literature for decades. The contributors of a genocide rarely view their actions as barbaric, as everyone around them was doing the same thing. They expect forgiveness, and are confused or angry when forgiveness isn’t granted.

He is especially interested in how group massacres occur once one group successfully portrays another as sub-human, and how they rationalize their murderous behavior by claiming they were simply following orders.

Hatzfeld admits some surprise that many of the murderers do not attempt to make peace with survivors. He took a photo of the ten men and presents it in the chapter, “The Killers.” Hatzfeld describes each man’s fate once the genocide was stopped by national and international powers. Most of the men served time in prison or in “reeducation” camps. Some were sentenced to be executed, but the punishment was usually changed to life in prison.