ANXIOUS CITIZENSHIP: INSECURITY, APOCALYPSE AND WAR MEMORIES IN PERU'S ANDES ...

240 Pages·2007·14.01 MB·English

by  Caroline Yezer

ANXIOUS CITIZENSHIP:

INSECURITY, APOCALYPSE AND WAR MEMORIES IN PERU'S ANDES

by

Caroline Yezer

Department of Cultural Anthropology
Duke University

Date:______________________

Approved:

___________________________
Orin Starn, Supervisor

___________________________
Anne Allison

___________________________
Marisol De la Cadena

___________________________
Ralph Litzinger

___________________________
Diane Nelson

___________________________
Charles Piot

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy in the Department of
Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School
of Duke University
2007
ANXIOUS CITIZENSHIP:

INSECURITY, APOCALYPSE AND WAR MEMORIES IN PERU'S ANDES

by

Caroline Yezer

Department of Cultural Anthropology
Duke University

Date:______________________

Approved:

___________________________
Orin Starn, Supervisor

___________________________
Anne Allison

___________________________
Marisol De la Cadena

___________________________
Ralph Litzinger

___________________________
Diane Nelson

___________________________
Charles Piot

An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy in the Department of
Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School
of Duke University
2007
Copyright
Caroline Yezer
2007
ABSTRACT
The war between the Peruvian state and the Maoist Shining Path rebels
began in the Department of Ayacucho, an area with a majority of indigenous
Quechua- speaking peasant villages. After twenty years of violence (1980-2000),
this region of South America’s Andes began a critical period of demilitarization,
refugee resettlement, and reconciliation. In this transition, the rebuilding of villages
devastated by the war raises critical questions about indigenous autonomy,
citizenship, and the role of international human rights initiatives in local
reconciliation.
I examine the tensions between interventions by national and transnational
organizations, and the insecurities that continue to define everyday life in villages
like Wiracocha - a newly resurrected community that was in the heart of the war
zone.1 Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in this village and ten months of
comparative fieldwork in villages across the Ayacucho region and in the city of
Huamanga, my research shows that villagers were often at odds with the aid and
interventions offered to them from the outside. I focus on the complicated nature of
village war history, paying attention to the initial sympathy with Shining Path and
the village's later decision to join the counterinsurgency. In Ayacucho, memory has
itself become a site of struggle that reveals as much about present-day conflict,
ambivalences, and insecurities of neoliberal Peru as it does about the actual history

1 Wiracocha is a pseudonym that I am using in order to maintain subject
confidentiality.
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of the war. Villagers sometimes oppose official memory projects and humanitarian
initiatives - including Peru's Truth Commission - that that they see at odds with their
own visions and agendas. Finally, I examine the less predictable ways that villagers
have redefined what it means to be Andean, including: the maintenance of village
militarization, a return to hard-handed customary justice and the adoption of born-
again Christianity as a new form of moral order and social solidarity.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have been extremely lucky to have supportive friends and academic
committee members at Duke, as well as in Peru that have helped me on my long
road to finishing this dissertation. I owe my intellectual development to my
mentors, especially to my advisor Orin Starn, to his partner, writer and human rights
advocate Robin Kirk and the strong support and time of my Diane Nelson, Anne
Allison, Charles Piot, Marisol de la Cadena and Ralph Litzinger as well as to the
rest of the Cultural Anthropology department at Duke. Before Duke I was also
lucky to have the advice and support of the Anthropology Department Master’s
program at The George Washington University, including my advisor Richard
Grinker and professor Catherine Allen, both of whom have given me support far
beyond my M.A. I could not have conducted my research in Ayacucho without my
Quechua teachers Gina at the Centro de Estudios Bartolomé de las Casas in Cusco,
Peru and Irma Flores in Huamanga. My fellow researchers in Peru, Adam Warren,
Alan “Inca Kola” Durston, Luis Uzategui, Tanya Vasquez, Jon Beasley Murray,
Rocio Motta, Leigh Campoamor, Rocio Trinidad, Wendy Coxshall; Ayacucho
historian Ponciano del Pino, Huantino anthropologists Jose Coronel, and Ludwig
Huber, Jefrey Gamarra, IPAZ, Victor Belleza and Kimberly Theidon. I thank my
friend Alejandro “Chan” Coronado who was my guide and translator on numerous
trips, his wife Neva and their family, and to my friend Rómula who accompanied
me on trips villages around Huamanga.
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Thank you to my colleagues and housemates in Huamanga Arthur Scaritt,
Jaymie Heilman and Jonathan Ritter, and our times with Bacho at the Magica
Negra. My graduate school colleagues and friends Nilgun Uygen, Margot Weiss,
Jack Friedman, Susan McDonic, Julie London, Jenny Prough, Kimberly Wright, Jan
French, Daniel Levinson Wilk, Ivonne Wallace Fuentes, Amy Mortensen and Jason
Middleton for commenting on my work and support. I owe a lot to my Durham
friends, Zareen Kapadia, Hannah Rogers, Rebecca Gimenez and Megan Golonka
for their feminist solidarity; and to my long term DC friends Andra Vilas Simon and
Jamie, Joanne Hoff, Caroleene Paul, Sandra Yuen and Jenny Lee. Thank you to my
best Chicago friend and fellow ABD, Alexis Avery and her family for moving to
Santa Fe and offering much needed dissertation writing advice and support at the
Aztec Cafe. Thank you to my family: Bobbie West, Anthony Yezer, Claire and Ben
Yezer, Tim and Valerie West and my grandparents Robert and Dorothy West.
Thank you to the doctor who helped me get along with everyone, Philip Spiro.
My deepest thanks for helping me with the difficulty of being away from
home for my research are owed to Rayda and Adela. I am deeply indebted to
Rayda, a caring teacher and very helpful translator and friend - Raydacha linda
ancha debachkani. Finally, there is no way this degree or dissertation could have
been done without the help of the Adela Lopez Antay my best friend, and her family
Cipriano Mendoza, and Pati Mendoza Lopez.
Many of these chapters have benefited from colloquium discussions. I am
grateful to the staff of the School of American Research and for the scholarly advice
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of the my fellow researchers and friends, including Rebecca Allahyari, Tammy
Bray, James Brooks, Catherine “Cam” Cocks, Jean Langford, Sharon Kaylen,
Micaela di Leonardo, Rosamel Millaman Reinao, Nancy Owen Lewis, and Bill
Saturno.
Several institutions advised me on my research in Peru and I owe them great
thanks: the Instituto de Defensa Legal, the Defensoria del Pueblo, and the many
other institutions dedicated to human rights in Peru; and to the US based Human
Rights Watch. My research into the local land history was done at the PETT
Archivo de Titulación de Tierras, Ministerio de Agricultura, of the department of
Ayacucho. I thank Sr. Cipriano Lugan, Sr. Abogado Hugo de la Torre Toscano, Sr.
Braudio Matos and Sr. Faustino Medina for all of their help in locating the
documents. In Lima I was affiliated with the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, I
especially thank Victoria Gonzalez and Carlos Ivan Degregori.
My research and write-up was supported by generous grants and fellowships
from the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, the Wenner
Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Consortium for Latin American
Studies at Duke and University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, US Foreign
Language and Area Study Fellowship, the United States Institute for Peace, the
Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the Weatherhead Fellowship at the
School for American Research.
Although I cannot thank them individually here, I owe the greatest debt and
thanks to the villagers of Wiracocha, especially the five families with whom I
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became a comadre. This dissertation is dedicated to them and to the memories of
two deceased mentors: the late anthropologist and performance studies professor
Dwight Conquergood, whose ethnographic research on Hmong shamanism and
Chicago’s Latin Kings inspired Northwestern University undergraduates like
myself. Finally I dedicate this study to my grandfather, Robert H. West, who passed
away on April 28th, 2007.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE

LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………………...xi

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………..1

CHAPTER

1. Children of the Deceived: Teachers and Shining Path
Intermediaries in Rural Ayacucho……………………………..………30

2. From Revolution to Revelation: Evangelical Christianity
in the Andes…………………………………..………………………..67

3. Truth, Rumor and the End Times: Understanding Peasant
Opposition to the Truth Commission in “Post-conflict” Peru………..90

4. Military Drag and the "Right to Have Rights": Soldiers,
Cholos and Citizenship in Ayacucho ……………………………….122

5. The Return of the Leaf: Narco-terrorists, Culture -talk and
Reparations……………………………………………………….…174

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………..209

BIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………….229

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