Power movement, led by Colonel Bagasora(also the head of Habyarimana's Presidential Guard began to exercise unprecedented power within the politics of early 1990s Rwanda. During this time, anti-Tutsi ideologies were actively propagated, fears of"Tutsi power were revived and nurtured, and massacres against Tutsis began to be organized and implemented on a sporad basis across the country. Using the tutsis as a convenient scapegoat both for the heightening political threats and also for growing economic decline, political leaders effectively mobilized the Rwandan population against an ethnically-defined Tutsi threat. It was in this context that the 1994 genocide began, and that Rwandans of Tutsi ethnicity, as well as politically moderate Hutu individuals and their families were murdered en masse 14 Although planned, organized and implemented at the highest levels of government, the genocide was nonetheless carried out by hundreds of thousands of ordinary Rwandans who used machetes and other small arms to torture rape and kill their victims. Scholars speculate about whether this mass participation was supported by fear of the consequences of refusing to engage in the slaughter, by hopes of personal gain, by a culture in which obedience to authority was both culturally mandated and deeply instilled, or simply by raw ethnic prejudice. Whether this mass participation can be attributed to any one of these factors or whether it must instead be understood as a combination of all of them, the fact remains that this killing was, for the most part, structured around ethnicity, and that it was fueled by a discourse of ethnic prejudice Ethnicity and Power in Rwanda: a Brief History Both as an ascriptive category and as a historical process, ethnicity in Rwanda is ridden with uncertainties. Although generally considered within academic scholarship to be a category that denotes cultural difference, ethnicity in Rwanda is not in fact a cultural marker, for the different ethnic groups in this country share the same language, the same customs, and the same For a full discussion of the political background to the genocide, see Des Forges, 47-93: Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers. 185-233 5 Mamdani. When Victims Become Killers.196 Ibid. 200: Prunier. 242-2485 Power movement, led by Colonel Bagasora (also the head of Habyarimana’s Presidential Guard), began to exercise unprecedented power within the politics of early 1990s Rwanda. During this time, anti-Tutsi ideologies were actively propagated, fears of “Tutsi power” were revived and nurtured, and massacres against Tutsis began to be organized and implemented on a sporadic basis across the country. Using the Tutsis as a convenient scapegoat both for the heightening political threats and also for growing economic decline, political leaders effectively mobilized the Rwandan population against an ethnically-defined Tutsi threat. It was in this context that the 1994 genocide began, and that Rwandans of Tutsi ethnicity, as well as politically moderate Hutu individuals and their families, were murdered en masse. 14 Although planned, organized and implemented at the highest levels of government, the genocide was nonetheless carried out by hundreds of thousands of ordinary Rwandans who used machetes and other small arms to torture, rape and kill their victims.15 Scholars speculate about whether this mass participation was supported by fear of the consequences of refusing to engage in the slaughter, by hopes of personal gain, by a culture in which obedience to authority was both culturally mandated and deeply instilled, or simply by raw ethnic prejudice.16 Whether this mass participation can be attributed to any one of these factors or whether it must instead be understood as a combination of all of them, the fact remains that this killing was, for the most part, structured around ethnicity, and that it was fueled by a discourse of ethnic prejudice. Ethnicity and Power in Rwanda: a Brief History Both as an ascriptive category and as a historical process, ethnicity in Rwanda is ridden with uncertainties. Although generally considered within academic scholarship to be a category that denotes cultural difference, ethnicity in Rwanda is not in fact a cultural marker, for the different ethnic groups in this country share the same language, the same customs, and the same 14 For a full discussion of the political background to the genocide, see Des Forges, 47-93; Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 185-233. 15 Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 196. 16 Ibid., 200; Prunier, 242-248