Art from a Fractured Past: Memory and Truth-Telling in Post-Shining Path Peru

Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission not only documented the political violence of the 1980s and 1990s but also gave Peruvians a unique opportunity to examine the causes and nature of that violence. In Art from a Fractured Past, scholars and artists expand on the commission's work, arguing for broadening the definition of the testimonial to include various forms of artistic production as documentary evidence. Their innovative focus on representation offers new and compelling perspectives on how Peruvians experienced those years and how they have attempted to come to terms with the memories and legacies of violence. Their findings about Peru offer insight into questions of art, memory, and truth that resonate throughout Latin America in the wake of "dirty wars" of the last half century. Exploring diverse works of art, including memorials, drawings, theater, film, songs, painted wooden retablos (three-dimensional boxes), and fiction, including an acclaimed graphic novel, the contributors show that art, not constrained by literal truth, can generate new opportunities for empathetic understanding and solidarity. Contributors. Ricardo Caro Cardenas, Jesus Cossio, Ponciano del Pino, Cynthia M. Garza, Edilberto Jimenez Quispe, Cynthia E. Milton, Jonathan Ritter, Luis Rossell, Steve J. Stern, Maria Eugenia Ulfe, Victor Vich, Alfredo Villar

Table of Contents:
Introduction. Art from Peru's Fractured Past / Cynthia E. Milton Part One. Visual Representations of Recent Pasts 1. Images of Truth: Rescuing Memories of Peru's Internal War through Testimonial Art / Cynthia E. Milton 2. Chungui: Ethnographic Drawings of Violence and Traces of Memory / Edilberto Jiménez Quispe 3. Narrating Stories, Representing Memories: Retablos and Violence in Peru / María Eugenia Ulfe Part Two. Telling Stories of Political Violence 4. Violence, Guilt, and Repetition: Alonso Cueto's Novel La Hora Azul / Víctor Vich 5. Rupay: (Hi)stories of Political Violence in Peru, 1980–1984 / Luis Rossell, Alfredo Villar, and Jesús Cossio 6. Ayacuchano Cinema and the Filming of Violence: Interview with Palito Ortega Matute / Ponciano del Pino Part Three. Performing a Fractured Past 7. Commemorative Paths in Sacsamarca / Ricardo Caro Cárdenas 8. Colliding with Memory: Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani's Sin Título, Técnica Mixta / Cynthia M. Garza 9. The "Voice of the Victims": Testimonial Songs in Rural Ayachucho / Jonathan Ritter Afterword. The Artist's Truth: The Post-Auschwitz Predicament after Latin America's Age of Dirty Wars / Steve J. Stern Bibliography Contributors Index

About the Author :
Cynthia E. Milton is Canada Research Chair and Associate Professor of Latin American History at the UniversitÉ de MontrÉal. She is the author of The Many Meanings of Poverty: Colonialism, Social Compacts, and Assistance in Eighteenth-Century Ecuador and a coeditor of Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places and The Art of Truth-Telling about Authoritarian Rule.

Review :
"Cynthia E. Milton's stunning, inter-disciplinary collection illuminates how art intervenes in the memory of politics and the politics of memory in post-civil conflict Peru." - Diana Taylor, author of The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas "This is a fascinating collection of essays about individual and collective memories in the aftermath of the violence that plagued Peru from 1980 until the mid-1990s. One of the richest collections available on the workings of memory in post-traumatic societies, it illuminates the complex and changing ways in which people recall and represent their experiences with violence, war, human rights violations, silencing, and exclusion." - Carlos Aguirre, author of The Criminals of Lima and Their Worlds: The Prison Experience, 1850-1935