Machete Season: THe Rwandan Genocide

640 Words2 Pages

In the case of genocides, there are many factors that motivate the perpetrators to kill. In the Rwandan genocide there are many reasons why the Hutus would be motivated to kill the Tutsis. There were reasons, of long standing hatred toward Tutsis, fear of authority and repercussion, economic and many other motivating factors. In the book, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, Jean Hatzfeld explores these many reasons for genocide through interviews with killers. Even though were many motivating factors for the Rwandan genocide, the main motivation for the perpetrators were for economic reasons.
The main reason the Hutus killed Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide was for economic reasons. The Tutsis began to benefit greatly from killing Tutsis by looting them and gaining things like money, land, and cattle. The looting of Tutsis became a means of income to the Hutus. The Hutus neglected their fields in favor of killing so they could loot for better food and goods. As Jean Baptiste states, “Why dig in the dirt when we were harvesting without working, eating our fill without growing a thing?”(Hatzfeld, 60) The Hutus mind set of being farmers shifts to being killers who can benefit more from that, than from their regular jobs of harvesting. As stated by Adalbert, “…we didn’t care about what we accomplished in the marshes, only about what was important to us for comfort.” (Hatzfeld, 83) This shows how the men became more concerned with looting and profiting from the killing than actually being concerned with killing people. So in a sense, the job of killing became a means for the men to do their more comfortable job of looting. One can begin to enter the Hutu mind set and see how, by killing other people, people they may have a...

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...he Hutus being to care more about the benefits than thinking of the consequences of what they were actually doing. Ultimately, Machete Season, allows the killers to speak, and within their own words, we’re able to see what could really drive one to kill and commit genocide. Narrowing the reasons for the Rwandan genocide down to economic reasons may seem overly simplistic, but through killing their neighbors and thus looting them, the Hutus are able to deal with their underlying jealousy toward the Tutsis and take what they believe is theirs and that they deserve. This idea of the Hutus committing mass genocide of the Tutsis for economic reasons, and to get ahead in life seems scary in how simple it is. In a sense, one can begin to imagine how others could be driven to do whatever it takes to get ahead in life and get what they want; even it means they have to kill.

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