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. iv 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. v 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. vi 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 vii 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 viii 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. ix 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 x