The Violent AndesCrisis and Cultural Difference

in Narratives of Peru’s Internal Armed Conflict

Background

• Fujimori pacification myth

• Collusion between Fujimori government and major TV outlets and tabloid newspapers (la prensa chicha)

• TV reports with caged Guzmán, captured senderistas

• Media focus on Andean culprits and urban victims

• Challenging the official version of events “tantamount to subversion” (Burt, 1998)

Methodology

• Study of film and literature – media largely created by and produced for Peru’s middle class - “myths about marginalised sectors as a means of conveying their fears” (Sánchez-Prado, 2006)

• Shares themes with reconstructions of violence in the prensa sensacionalista, largely viewed as a medium for the “atomized” poor (Boas, 2005).

• “Coded aesthetic of political critique” - a common language of symbols and motifs in modes of cultural production (Reber, 2010)

Framework

• Mass media focuses on subjective violence and hides systemic inequality (Žižek, 2009)

• Systemic objective violence apparent in Peru’s “ethnic dualism” (Mariátegui, 1927)

• “If violence was expressive of structural problems intrinsic to Peruvian society then it follows that…the responsibility for the violence lies with Peruvian society… this does not justify violence but rather inserts [its] censure within a broader censure of society” (Drinot, 2009)

Mario Vargas Llosa

• Born in coastal town Piura, lived in Magdalena del Sur, a prosperous suburb of Lima.

• Educated in Madrid

• Accused of being part of the “izquierda caviar”, or Peru’s creole, conservative elite

• Represents indigenous cultures as “anachronistic, naïve fictions and dangerous ideologies” (López-Calvo, 2010)

Mario Vargas Llosa, Lituma en los Andes (Barcelona, 1993).

• A soldier from Piura is sent to the Andean town Naccos (as punishment) to investigate disappearances

• Similarities to Vargas Llosa’s investigation into Uchuraccay murders – “no tienen explicación racional”

• Use of Classic symbolism – Dionisio (Dionysus) and Adriana (Ariadne), Naccos as the Labyrinth

• Andean characters appear to act viciously, as a drunken mob and with “savage, prehistoric instinct” (Kokotovic, 2007)

Mario Vargas Llosa, Historia de Mayta (Barcelona, 1984).

• Two intertwined narratives revolving around Jauja insurrection in 1959 (?) and Shining Path violence of the 1980s

• Follows Leftist splinter groups – Revolutionary Workers’ Party (Trotskyist)

• Depicts older members as feeble and doctrinaire, young members strong headed and bloodthirsty

• Draws direct link between Leftist politics of the past and revolutionary violence in the present.

• “Historical cause and effect are short circuited” (Cohn, 2000)

Alonso Cueto, La hora azul (Barcelona, 2005).

• Follows affluent Limeño lawyer Adrián Ormache whose father was an army general at Huamanga

• Ormache suffers outbursts of guilt and rage

• His friends and colleagues are lazy, gluttonous, corrupt and greedy

• Andean migrants represented as thrifty, hard-working, industrious and entrepreneurial

• “It is obvious I will do nothing to rectify this injustice which is ingrained in our society, there’s nothing I can do. I cannot help them and I don’t really want to”

Santiago Roncagliolo, Abril rojo (Barcelona, 2009).

• Follows Ayacuchan Felix Chacaltana Saldívar, not recognised as local because of his bureaucratic manner

• Violence is ever-present in the sierra, whilst coastal bureaucrats are adamant that Fujimori has created peace

• Mild-mannered Chacltana becomes increasingly aggressive as guilty, violent memories re-emerge

• Sendero attacks orchestrated by military

• Chacltana accused of “having a mania for distinguishing between terrorists and innocents, as if this were heads or tails”

Bajo la piel, dir. by Francisco Lombardi (Inca Films S.A., 1996).

Bajo la piel, dir. by Francisco Lombardi (Inca Films S.A., 1996).

• Human sacrifice and suicide are key motifs

• Catalino Pinto who is arrested for decapitating and gouging out the eyes of several victims with a tumi

• Through Pinto blood-letting is portrayed as necessary for the maintenance of social order

• Bajo la piel illuminates exoticised fears of indigenous culture in a moralistic narrative which establishes violent agents as enemies of modernity and civilisation

La teta asustada, dir. by Claudia Llosa (Oberón Cinematográfica, 2009).

La teta asustada, dir. by Claudia Llosa (Oberón Cinematográfica, 2009).

• Fausta suffers from a disease called the “milk of sorrow”, transmitted by the breast milk of women who were raped or abused during the conflict.

• Quiet with long silences, often punctuated by laments sung in Quechua

• Highlights the ethno-social dimension of the violence

• Huge critical acclaim, winner of the Golden Bear Award

• Llosa illustrates that Peru’s systemic inequalities and memories of violence will continue to cause damage unless they are talked about and compensated for

Vidas paralelas, dir. by Rocío Lladó (Universidad Alas Peruanas, 2008).

Vidas paralelas, dir. by Rocío Lladó (Universidad Alas Peruanas, 2008).

• Similar plot to Zola’s La débâcle – separated brothers fighting on either side of the conflict

• “quasi-denialist rewriting of the war years” which tries to counteract the international reception of La teta asustada (Milton, 2008)

• Senderistas are characterised as depraved, hedonistic sex addicts whilst the military are represented as heroes

Conflict Narratives in Public Discourse

• “La perro del hortelano”

• Although CVR has opened up space for alternative narratives to appear, the narrative of a “violent Andes” and a violent Left in Peru continue to influence public discourse (El Ojo Que Llora controversy)

• CVR’s conclusions highlight disproportionate violence suffered by indigenous communities but its recommendations have been ignored

• “Really existing Peruvians” (Drinot)

Conclusion

• Violence often represented as a repetition of the past or as a resurgence of old violence inherent to certain sectors of society

• Many representations of the internal armed conflict act as a justification for the elimination of peripheral socioeconomic groups –through violent repression or through mestizaje

• In the post-Fujimori era, symbols and narratives have fed into different projects for remembering the conflict - Humala and Garcia

• Whilst cinema and literature have seen a shift towards reconciliation based narratives, it is still highly controversial to suggest that there are forces outside of Sendero Luminoso which may have been responsible for the conflict