art from a fractured past ART FROM A FRACTURED PAST memory and truth-telling in post–shining path peru cynthia e. milton | editor afterword | steve j. stern Duke University Press | Durham and London | 2014 © 2014 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞ Typeset in Whitman by Copperline Book Services, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Art from a fractured past : memory and truth-telling in post–Shining Path Peru / Cynthia E. Milton, editor. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8223-5515-1 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-5530-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Arts—Political aspects—Peru. 2. Collective memory in art. 3. Peru—Politics and government—1980– I. Milton, Cynthia E. nx180.p64a89 2013 700.985'09048 — dc23 2013025658 Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Research Chair in Latin American History at the Université de Montréal, which provided funds toward the publication of this book. Para Carlos Iván Degregori, nuestro querido maestro sabio, siempre presente contents Acknowledgments ix introduction | cynthia e. milton Art from Peru’s Fractured Past 1 part one visual representations of recent pasts one | cynthia e. milton Images of Truth: Rescuing Memories of Peru’s Internal War through Testimonial Art 37 two | edilberto jiménez quispe Chungui: Ethnographic Drawings of Violence and Traces of Memory 75 three | maría eugenia ulfe Narrating Stories, Representing Memories: Retablos and Violence in Peru 103 part two telling stories of political violence four | víctor vich Violence, Guilt, and Repetition: Alonso Cueto’s Novel La Hora Azul 127 viii | contents five | luis rossell, alfredo villar, and jesús cossio Rupay: (Hi)stories of Political Violence in Peru, 1980–1984 139 six | ponciano del pino Ayacuchano Cinema and the Filming of Violence: Interview with Palito Ortega Matute 153 part three performing a fractured past seven | ricardo caro cárdenas Commemorative Paths in Sacsamarca 179 eight | cynthia m. garza Colliding with Memory: Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani’s Sin Título, Técnica Mixta 197 nine | jonathan ritter The “Voice of the Victims”: Testimonial Songs in Rural Ayacucho 217 afterword | steve j. stern The Artist’s Truth: The Post-Auschwitz Predicament after Latin America’s Age of Dirty Wars 255 Bibliography 277 Contributors 293 Index 297 acknowledgments This project started ten years ago, almost to the day, when I wandered through Ayacucho’s central plaza on the late afternoon prior to the Peruvian Truth Com- mission’s arrival the next day to submit their Final Report. Colorful carpets (al- fombras) made by schoolchildren and local groups from flower petals, chalk, and other materials surrounded the plaza, posterboards displayed images of the con- flict and visitors’ comments about them, in the corner stood an enormous stage in a style of a wooden triptych retablo. Nearby, an exhibition displayed some of the entries for an art contest on memories of the internal conflict. On this day, and those that followed, I was struck by how visually rich the conflict was and its aftermath as Peruvians engaged with their recent fractured past. As an his - torian, I wondered what stories and memories emerged from these representa- tions. A few of us were pondering similar questions at the time, Olga González, Jonathan Ritter, María Eugenia (Makena) Ulfe, and Víctor Vich, among others. Soon it became clear that the range and array needed a cooperative and collec- tive approach to begin to understand the myriad of cultural responses to the conflict. This edited volume is the result. However, the work is far from com- plete. A whole new generation of Peruvians and Peruvianists are continuing to ask about the cultural impact and means of broaching Peru’s conflict. The intellectual origins of this book also trace back to a workshop held on Robben Island, organized by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Legacies of Authoritarianism (loa) Research Circle. With its infamous history as a former leper colony, holding spot for immigrants, and later apartheid prison, the island has since transformed into a memory museum and education center. Here in June 2000, activists, artists, practitioners, former and future truth commission- ers, academics, journalists, and students from around the world came together to reflect on the dark heritage of authoritarian rule. Over the course of those few x | acknowledgments days, both art as a medium for truth-telling and the creative practices necessary for transition away from authoritarian regimes came to the fore. One result of our conversations was a book that tried to visually lay out the possibilities of artistic engagement with difficult pasts, The Art of Truth-Telling about Authori- tarian Rule. I thank Leigh A. Payne, Ksenija Bilbija, and Jo Ellen Fair for this experience, and Louis Bickford as well for bringing me into the larger project. Another root of this book lay deeply in the Social Sciences Research Council (ssrc) training and research project led by the faculty scholars Elizabeth Jelin, Carlos Iván Degregori, Eric Hershberg, Steve J. Stern, among others. While I was only indirectly involved in this ssrc project (via the loa Research Circle) and only one contributor to this book, Ponciano del Pino, had an official role in it, it created a whole generation of Latin and North American scholars dedicated to studying the aftermath of dictatorships in Peru and the Southern Cone. This ssrc project inflects this book, and many of us have benefited from the energy and dynamism that continues to be felt in the region. Many, many people have contributed to this book in conversation and pub- lic presentations (in particular at a panel on this topic held at Latin American Studies Association meeting in Montreal in 2007 and at the 2008 conference in Lima coorganized by the iep and idehpucp five years after the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission). Just to name only some people who have par- ticipated in discussions leading to this book: Carlos Aguirre, Claudio Barrien- tos, Karen Bernedo, Ralph Buchenhorst, Jo-Marie Burt, Gisela Cánepa, Peter Dietsch, Eduardo González, Olga González, Elizabeth Jelin, Richard Kerna- ghan, Catherine LeGrand, Erica Lehrer, Salomón Lerner, Lika Mutal, Nelly Plaza, Félix Reátegui, José Luis Rénique, Javier Torres, Alberto Vergara, María Inez Vásquez, and Markus Weissert. Others are acknowledged in the follow- ing chapters. I express my gratitude to all the artists whose works are included here, and to the different organizations that have granted permission for their inclusion, especially the Servicios Educativos Rurales. I heartily acknowledge as well those people who have helped with the tricky mechanics of putting this mélange of languages, texts, and images together: Jen Akers, Elizabeth Becker, Jane Remick, and Katherine Saunders-Hastings for their assistance in various stages of translation; Andrea García, Socorro Naveda, Vera Lucía Ríos, and Sofia Vera for information that they helped gather; Bill Nelson for the maps; and acknowledgments | xi Lori Curley for the index. Thanks to Geneviève Dorais, Marc Drouin, Marie- Christine Dugal, Steve Lamarche, Tuong-Vi Nguyen, Louis Otis, Nicolás Rodrí- guez, Hélène Rompré, and Guillaume Tremblay for their comments inside and outside the classroom. Monica Eileen Patterson (another loa connection) and Camille Boutron have also commented on earlier drafts, for which I am grate- ful. I thank Raúl Hernández Asencio and Pati Zárate for their friendship and for overseeing this project since its early stage as a loose idea. Stephan Rinke at the Latin American Institute at the Freie Universität and Barbara Göbel at the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institute in Berlin provided me with an ideal setting in which to complete this manuscript. I am fortunate to have had such dedicated external readers for this project, one anonymous, the other Paulo Drinot. They both provided very insightful comments and more examples to consider. Paulo continued to participate in this project until the final version and thus deserves special recognition for his hand in this book. Many thanks to Valerie Millhol- land, who heard of this project many years back and showed enthusiasm for it, and to Gisela Fosado, Jessica Ryan, and Martha Ramsey for their help to bring it to fruition. My gratitude to the many funding organizations that have contributed to this book and to the larger research projects on alternative truth-telling and art in the aftermath of violence of which this book is a part: the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture, the Canada Research Chairs Program, the Faculté des arts et des sciences at the Université de Montréal, and the Alexander Von Hum- boldt Foundation. This book is dedicated to Carlos Iván Degregori, who has been a mentor with- out borders for many of us and an inspiration to all. He understood the impor - tance of the intersection between academia and public obligation. Through his compassion and intellect, Carlos Iván shows us how with one life it is possible to touch many, to listen, to learn, and to share with others. introduction | cynthia e. milton art from peru’s fractured past n Adiós Ayacucho [Farewell Ayacucho] Julio Ortega recounts from the perspec- tive of Alfonso Cánepa, a community leader from the department of Aya cucho, Ithe travails of finding postmortem justice in a country that offers little justice for the living. When he was accused of being a terrorist — rather than a peasant leader — the military mutilated his body and threw what was left of it into a pit, leaving out many of his bones and thus denying him the possibility of a proper burial and eternal peace. Since his death Cánepa has worked to reconstruct his body, trying to get a sympathetic hearing from the president of the Republic in the hope that the head of state will return his bones to him.