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The Testimony of Space: Sites of Memory and Violence in Peru's

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The Testimony of Space: Sites of Memory and Violence in Peru's The Testimony of Space: Sites of Memory and Violence in Peru’s Internal Armed Conflict By Daniel Willis UCL Institute of the Americas A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy History and Latin American Studies I, Daniel Willis, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 1 Abstract This thesis seeks to contribute to knowledge on Peru’s internal armed conflict (1980- 2000), in which the insurgent group Shining Path attempted to destroy and replace the existing Peruvian state, by analysing the key themes of violence, culture and memory through the lens of space. By deploying this spatial analysis, the thesis demonstrates that insurgent and state violence were shaped by the politics and production of space, that cultural responses to the conflict have articulated spatialised understandings of violence and the Peruvian nation, and that commemorative sites exist within a broader geography of memory (or commemorative “city-text”) which can support or challenge memory narratives in unintended ways. Whereas previous literature on the Peruvian conflict, by Carlos Iván Degregori, Nelson Manrique and Peru’s Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, has emphasised the fundamentalist nature of Shining Path’s Maoist ideology, this thesis highlights the ways in which party militants interpreted this ideology in their own way and adapted it to local realities. I also argue that counterinsurgent violence was premised upon a spatialised understanding of Peruvian society which conflated indigeneity with Leftist radicalism. Using a broadly Foucauldian framework, I argue that the state created spaces of exception in order to eliminate political and biopolitical enemies. In approaching cultural responses to the conflict, I use the work of Butler on grievability to argue that the perceived non-grievability of insurgents and indigenous communities has been produced by the vast (and to some extent imagined) cultural distances which exist between Peru’s disparate communities. I also tie these issues of grievability to post-conflict memory practice, arguing that commemorative sites have not only been shaped by spatialised understanding of the conflict and by two distinct memory narratives in Peru, but also by the politics and production of urban space in which each of these sites has been created. 2 Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 2 List of figures .................................................................................................................... 6 List of abbreviations .......................................................................................................... 7 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... 8 The Testimony of Space: Sites of Memory and Violence in Peru’s Internal Armed Conflict ........................................................................................................................... 10 Contribution(s) to knowledge ...................................................................................... 14 Formulating a Lefebvrian spatial analysis ................................................................... 21 i) Spatial practice ................................................................................................. 23 ii) Representations of space .................................................................................. 27 iii) Spaces of representation ............................................................................... 30 Violence, culture and memory: a methodological approach ....................................... 39 Outline of thesis structure ............................................................................................ 45 Selection of case studies and objects of study ............................................................. 50 Chapter 1: Space and the Shining Path ...................................................................... 53 Space in Shining Path ideology ................................................................................... 58 A tradition of Andean radicalism? .............................................................................. 66 Case study: Lucanamarca ............................................................................................ 69 i) Lucanamarca .................................................................................................... 70 ii) New frontiers of violence: Shining Path in the selva ....................................... 75 iii) A “representative” history? ........................................................................... 79 iv) The geographies of Shining Path violence ................................................... 84 Shining Path’s cultural production .............................................................................. 87 Spaces for Remembering the Shining Path ................................................................. 97 The spatial aesthetics of Shining Path violence ........................................................ 105 Chapter 2: Space and the counterinsurgency operation ......................................... 110 A brief history of Peru’s armed forces ...................................................................... 113 The spatial logics of counterrevolutionary violence ................................................. 119 i) Space(s) of exception ..................................................................................... 124 ii) Extending the space of exception ................................................................... 128 iii) Geography, governmentality and sovereignty ............................................ 132 3 iv) Andeanist geograhies and race ................................................................... 135 The counterinsurgency operation in cultural production .......................................... 139 i) Space and the cultural frameworks of counterinsurgency.............................. 140 ii) Cinema and the counterinsurgency operation ................................................ 147 Commemorating the counterinsurgency operation ................................................... 153 i) Military memories in public space ................................................................. 154 ii) Countering military memories in spaces of violence ..................................... 159 iii) Invisible military violence in Huamanga’s city-text .................................. 164 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 168 Chapter 3: Violence in the capital ............................................................................. 172 Shining Path’s urban strategy .................................................................................... 179 The bombing of Calle Tarata..................................................................................... 189 The mythology of Tarata ........................................................................................... 192 Representations of violence in the city...................................................................... 197 Commemoration, as viewed from the capital ............................................................ 201 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 216 Chapter 4: The prison massacres at El Frontón and Lurigancho .......................... 219 Background ............................................................................................................... 223 Shining Path incarcerated .......................................................................................... 226 18 June 1986 .............................................................................................................. 230 Spaces and geographies of exception ........................................................................ 237 The prison massacres in Peruvian art ........................................................................ 247 i) Gladys Alvarado Jourde’s photographs of EL Frontón.................................. 249 ii) The memoirs of José Carlos Agüero .............................................................. 252 Between the nation and the landscape ....................................................................... 255 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 264 Chapter 5: Memory in Peru’s neoliberal order ....................................................... 268 Post-conflict? Peru, 1992-97 ..................................................................................... 273 Fujimorismo and post-1990 Peruvian neoliberalism................................................. 276 i) Peru’s neoliberal revolution ........................................................................... 279 ii) Free trade and sovereign power...................................................................... 281 iii) Geographies of neoliberalism and modernity ............................................. 285 Competing cultural memories
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