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In 2000, after two decades of civil war initiated by the Maoist rebels of the Shining Path, Peru became one out of many countries worldwide that chose to implement transitional justice. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up which formulated recommendations concerning reparations, exhumations of mass graves and institutional reform. This dissertation is a study of the international paradigm of transitional justice and the way in which this paradigm modeled Peru’s process of dealing with the legacies of the civil war. More precisely, it unravels how this process is shaped by the involvement of local, national and international actors and their respective ideas on and practices of coming to terms with the past. This involvement is studied by looking at two different clusters of actions. The first is the diffusion of transitional justice: how and by whom is the international paradigm of transitional justice propagated and put into practice? What kind of interactions and exchanges take place between the local, national and international level throughout these processes of diffusion? The second cluster of actions concerns the appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation of transitional justice: how do survivors engage with, resist or transform these (inter)national ideas and practices in function of specific aims and (political) struggles? By transcending the local versus global approach and emphasizing the multi-scale and multi- directional entanglement of local, national and international actors and ideas, this study aims to go against the presumption that ‘ideas’ and ‘politics’ (exclusively) belong to the global or international realm, and ‘experience’ and ‘culture’ to the local. The first part of the dissertation investigates the emergence of the paradigm of transitional justice (chapter one), its underlying normative ideas on memory, victimhood and time (chapter two) and its implementation in Peru (chapter three). The second part entails an in-depth empirical analysis of the diffusion and contestation of transitional justice by means of three different case studies from rural contexts in the Ayacucho region. In the village of Sacsamarca, the tension between involvement with and resistance against the Shining Path during the civil war resulted in a particular (post-)conflict dynamic between the public narrative on the past on the one hand, and the (open) secrets and silences that surround it on the other (chapter four). In the highland community of Hualla, the civil war and its aftermath are characterized by (the legacies of) one specific crime in particular: enforced disappearance (chapter five). In the valley of the Apurímac River (VRAEM), the Comités de Autodefensa Civil or civil self-defense committees played a key-role in defeating the Shining Path. The experience of self-defense shapes (post-)conflict identity and agency in this area of protracted conflict against narcoterroristas (chapter six). The common thread that runs through survivors’ contestations of transitional justice is the claim for citizenship and inclusion, which appears as the Achilles’ heel of Peru’s process of coming to terms with the legacies of the civil war. This study furthermore develops the notion of a ‘contemporary past’ to refer to survivors’ experience of ongoing and structural: violence that has happened in the past and is still happening in the present - albeit in different forms.
The findings of this dissertation entail three conceptual and methodological implications for the study of(post-)conflict dynamics and the implementation of transitional justice policies. The first implication relates to the conceptualization of agency of survivors in (post-)conflict settings and proposes the notion of a multi- layered survivor identity that goes beyond the opposition between victims and perpetrators and embraces the fact that victimhood, violation, resistance and heroism are no mutually exclusive features. The second recommendation relates to the study of violence and its aftermath and pleads for the integration of a historical approach that is more responsive to notions of structural violence. The third suggestion, finally, is an invitation to rethink the ‘local’ as more than a mere domain of reception of transitional justice policies by taking the entanglement of local, national and international actors and ideas into account

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Cover picture: Localizing a clandestine burial site in the highlands of Hualla, Ayacucho© Eva Willems, 2014All pictures in this book are © Eva Willems, unless mentioned otherwiseOPEN SECRETS & HIDDEN HEROESViolence, Citizenship and Transitional Justice in (Post-)Conflict PeruEva WillemsDissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in HistorySupervisor: Prof. Dr. Berber BevernageGhent University Faculty of Arts and PhilosophyAccepted December 2019Voor Sus en Suske Willems,en hun horizon die voor altijd van de Kempen tot de Andes reikt&Para Joaquin Iñigo Zamora Castellares,hijo de la nueva generación AyacuchanaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments 13Preface  17Map of Peru with departments 20Map of Ayacucho with provinces 21General Introduction The Shining Path and the Peruvian civil war  24A multi-scale and multidirectional approach to transitional justice               27A (post-)conflict setting: Ayacucho, Peru 34The semantics of war and (indigenous) identity 34Field settings 37Research collaboration 38An historian in the field    40The ethics of researching and representing violence 41Outline of the book 44 I Transitional Justice: The Emergence of a New Paradigm of Dealing with the Past   Introduction 521.1 The need to confront the past and the rise of ‘humanitarian government’   541.2 A genesis of international transitional justice 59Early Latin American Truth Commissions  61The Aspen Institute conference  63The Salzburg meeting 641.3 Between advocacy, policy and academy: blurred lines                    67 Transitional justice on the ground: grassroots and civil society practitioners                         68The institutionalization of transitional justice                        72Scholarly engagement with transitional justice 81The proliferation of transitional justice  84II Contesting Transitional Justice: Memory, Victimhood and Time           Introduction                           922.1 The duty to remember            95Prevention, redemption and recognition: Beneficial properties ascribed to memory                    95Silence, amnesia and amnesty: Questioning the duty to remember 1032.2 Constructing victims and perpetrators 108A trauma- and rights-based identity 108Victims, perpetrators and ‘implicated subjects’  111Stripping survivors’ agency 1152.3 “A time between times”  121Closing the past: Linear and teleological transitional time 121‘Haunting’ pasts: Non-linear memories of violence 124Contemporary pasts: Ongoing and structural violence 127III Clean Hands, Clean Slate: Peru’s (Post-)Conflict Policies  Introduction 1383.1 The human rights movement  140Human rights advocacy during wartime 141Links with international networks 144The creation of the TRC: A victory for the human rights movement                       1453.2 The TRC and its recommendations  150Truth through testimony 150Reparations for victims 153Forensic truth: Finding, exhuming and identifying the disappeared             157Peru as an international example  1613.3 “Las víctimas no nacen, se hacen”  162Clean hands doctrine vs. universalist approach 162Getting organized (or not) 1653.4 The state and its relationship with human rights, justice and citizenship    168Reconciling multiple Peru’s  168Persistent impunity  1723.5 Public narratives and memorialization  174Divergent truths  174Public memorialization: For and by whom? 176IV Open Secrets: Concealment and Coexistence in Sacsamarca  Introduction 184Forgetting, silence and secrecy 189Methodology and sources 193Fieldwork 193Additional sources on Sacsamarca 197The ethics of researching ‘silence’ 1994.1 ‘Village that breeds llamas with plenty of wool’ 2024.2 From collaboration to resistance: Sacsamarca and the Shining Path           209Education at colegio Los Andes   209Zona liberada: The rule of the popular committee         214Conspiracy and resistance 220The Shining Path takes revenge 225Between the devil and the deep blue sea: Living with the Sinchis                           2284.3 Diffusion of transitional justice 231Silence and suspicion: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission 231From ‘intimate enemies’ to innocent victims: The reparation program                              237(Un)covering open secrets: Exhumations of clandestine burial sites             2444.4 Appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation of transitional justice          251The public narrative: A memory of resistance  251Beneath the surface: Open secrets 265Concealment, coexistence and citizenship 272Conclusion: The microhistory of a struggle for survival and inclusion               276V Absent Bodies:The Contemporary Past of Enforced Disappearance in Hualla Introduction 284Methodology and sources  291Fieldwork 291Additional sources on Hualla 2955.1 ‘Capital of corn’               2975.2 Enforced disappearances in Hualla during the civil war  302Killings and enforced recruitment by the Shining Path 302Clandestine detention, torture, sexual violence and extrajudicial execution by the state forces           3085.3 Diffusion of transitional justice 316The construction of gendered survivor identities 316The desaparecidos at the intersection of local, national and international policy       3265.4 Appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation of transitional justice           341Adding insult to injury: The contemporary past of enforced disappearance          341From ‘mournable’ to ‘grievable’ lives? 350Conclusion: In search of the body politic 358VI Hidden Heroes:Citizenship Claims of the Comités de Autodefensa Civil in the Valley of the Apurímac River              Introduction 366Methodology and sources 3756.1 The self-defense committees in the VRAEM 383‘No-man’s land’: History and geography of the VRAEM 383The civil war in the valley of the Apurímac river 387The VRAEM and the self-defense committees today 4056.2 Diffusion of transitional justice  416Between “hero and villain” and “tribune and tribunal”  416The CADs in the blind spot of civilian participation in violence 4246.3 Appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation of transitional justice           435The law of the jungle?  Governance and social order           435Myths and machos: The (hidden) heroes of the pacification  450The VRAEM’s contemporary past 463“Esas armas son del Estado y ustedes son el Estado”       471Conclusion: Towards a multi-layered survivor identity 481General Conclusions The desire to understand: Violence and citizenship in Ayacucho                        488The will to transform: Implications for transitional justice   494Reconsidering (post-)conflict agency  496Rethinking (post-)conflict dynamics  499Redefining the ‘local’ in transitional justice 500Annexes List of abbreviations  504Glossary 509Sources & bibliography Interviews 514Fieldnotes and personal correspondence 518Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos (Lima)   521Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene (Pichiwillca)   522Sede del Comité de Autodefensa de Llochegua (Llochegua)                   523Archivo directiva comunal Sacsamarca (Sacsamarca)      523Legal documents 523Online sources 524Literature  530Resumen de la tesis doctoral  551Samenvatting van het doctoraat  554Abstract of the dissertation 55713AcknowledgmentsI am grateful to the many people who gave me opportunities to learn throughout this project. My gratitude goes in the first place to all the research participants who shared their often very intimate experiences which not only formed the basis of this book, but also transformed my worldview. Quiero manifestar un agradecimiento especial a Victor Zamora y Mama Flora Castellares, quienes se convirtieron en mis padres adoptivos en Malvinas; y a Ferrini Torres, Mama Gabina Mallma, Felipe Huamaní y Emiliana Auccasi por invitar a una gringacha como yo a compartir la vida comunitaria en Hualla y Sacsamarca. My supervisor Berber Bevernage is the one who encouraged me to undertake this project and gave me the opportunity to set it up with a BOF starting grant in 2014, which formed the basis for the PhD fellowship of the Research Foundation Flanders obtained in 2015. I am very grateful for this opportunity and for his open-mindedness and (intellectual) support throughout the entire process. I furthermore thank Stef Craps, Mijke de Waardt and Lieselotte Viaene, for their feedback throughout the different stages of the research. Mi trabajo de campo no hubiera sido posible sin la sinceridad y la experiencia de los ‘epafianos’ del Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense. Quiero agradecer a Percy Rojas y Gisela Ortiz, quienes me adoptaron como miembro del equipo, me dieron una entrada al Perú profundo y compartieron sus historias personales de violencia, desaparición y desplazamiento. Agradezco a José Pablo Baraybar por convencerme del hecho que la academia y el activismo no son irreconciliables; a Oscar Loyola, Valeska Martinez y Franco Mora por compartir sus conocimientos forenses; Yane Apcho por hacerme sentir en casa en Huamanga; y Jesús Peña por su amistad, su humor inteligente y el ‘piscoterapia’ que me mantuvo sana en circunstancias a veces insanas. Karina Barrientos, Alicia Noa y Gabriela Zamora trabajaron conmigo como colaboradoras de investigación y me brindaron su apoyo invaluable durante los momentos intensos en 14la sierra y la selva. Mucho más que un colega, Gabi se convirtió en una amiga especial y mi comadre. Si en algún momento obtuve un conocimiento básico del Quechua, fue gracias a la paciencia de mi amiga Rosa Méndez. Agradezco a mis amigos Elisabeth Bunselmeyer y Christoph Heuser por ser buenos compañeros de trabajo de campo en Ayacucho y el VRAEM. Entre otros, Ricardo Caro, Sofía Macher, Ponciano Del Pino, Elizabeth Salmón, Miguel Podestá, Rafael Salgado, Miguel Gutiérrez y Jefrey Gamarra conversaron conmigo sobre mis ideas de investigación. Les agradezco por sus comentarios perspicaces. Karina Fernández me guio a través de los archivos de la CVR en Lima, y Charo Narváez me brindó contactos e informaciones importantes en las primeras etapas de esta investigación. Tessa Brijs me dio la bienvenida una y otra vez a su casa en Lima, un necesario oasis de paz en la metrópoli, por lo que estoy muy agradecida. Tania Del Pilar Castañeda es la amiga quién me mostró cómo amar a Lima la gris. Un agradecimiento especial a Eduardo Loayza Díaz, por ser un maestro muy paciente y sobre todo un amigo excepcional. Agradezco también a Céline Drijkoningen, Ian Montauban y los otros ‘Belgayacuchanos’ en Huamanga quienes proporcionaron las distracciones necesarias del trabajo de campo en 2015. The History Department at Ghent University became the home base of this project, and I thank all the colleagues for bringing a sense of community to the rather solitary job of doing doctoral research. Lore Colaert was a mentor since the time I was still a bachelor student. I shared the ‘unbearable lightness’ of being a PhD with Carmen Van Praet, Rose Spijkerman, Barbara Deruytter, Giselle Nath, Jan Naert, Laura Nys, Dieter Bruneel, Martin Schoups, Tobit Vandamme, Babette Weyns, Amandine Thiry and Gertjan Leenders. Kenan Van De Mieroop, Katie Digan, Eline Mestdagh, Gisele Iecker de Almeida, Rafael Verbuyst, Egon Bauwelinck, Marie-Gabrielle Verbergt and Ramses Delafontaine accounted for fun times and a ‘safe space’ for discussions in Ghent and Treignes. Thanks to Davy Verbeke, Fien Danniau and Koen Aerts for good conversations and companionship; to Astrid Schoeters, Leen Verhoeye and Hilde De Baets for their administrative support and to Hans Blomme for his 15technical support. I thank my fellow encuentristas Hanne Cottyn, Sebastián De La Rosa-Carriazo, Maarten Geeroms, Joren Janssens, Rafael Pedemonte and Allan Souza Queiroz for sharing dedication to Latin America. At the Conflict and Development Department, I thank Steven Schoofs, Jolien Tegenbos, Maurizio Totaro, Robin Thiers, Julian Kuttig, Jeroen Cuvelier, David Mwambari, Emmanuel Akampurira and Mohammad Atique Rahman for setting up the (Silent) Voices research collective.My beloved parents Dirk Willems and Alma De Walsche already made me feel at home in the Andes before I had ever been there. It was always comforting to know that, once back home after fieldwork, at least they would be able to smell, hear and understand what was behind my pictures and save me from the frustrating experience of not finding the right words to explain. The love of my grand- and godmother Fanny Van Oeckel has raised two generations of globetrotters in our family. Together with my brothers Wies and Tomas, my sisters-in-law Kim Sys and Hanne Couckuyt, my little nephews Wannes and Lennert and the entire clan of the Doornlaan - Carmen Landuyt, Dries Landuyt, Evelien Scheelen and Ann Peeters - they make up a beautiful (extended) family for which I am grateful. Tessa Boeykens and I have now been through an exceptional form of symbiosis after more than fifteen years of sharing learning processes (from the first day of high school to the last day of our PhD) and most of all intense friendship. Our alliance is hard to describe in words, but let’s say I cannot imagine future horizons without you. Our soulmates Maud Seuntjens, Linde De Vroey, Ruth Aerts and Magalie Teunen have also proven to form a more than solid baasis (sic) for sharing the joys and growing pains of (young) adult life. I thank Melanie Van Bogaert, Nathan Wouters, Elena Moeremans and Mileen Christiaens for their long-lasting friendship, and Servaas Rumbaut for sharing an important part of this process with me. My final thanks belong to Johan Belaen, for sharpening all my senses, and for comforting me - to the sound of the Beach Boys - with the only words a PhD student needs to hear from time to time: “Don’t worry, baby, everything will turn out alright”.Claudia (left) & Emiliana (right) (2015)17Preface On the second of December 1989, the husbands of the two sisters Emiliana and Claudia Auccasi departed from their hometown Sacsamarca to buy corn in Colca. They left for several days of walking through the highlands, together with a cousin and a horse to carry the load. Three decades later, Emiliana and Claudia wished the horse could speak: their husbands never returned and until today, the cousin keeps silent on what happened to them. According to rumors, the two men were killed by members of the Shining Path, and their bodies dumped in a lagoon. Emiliana and Claudia went looking for them several times, but they never found any trace. When they denounced the disappearance before the police, they were mocked with racist insults; humiliated by those who were supposed to protect them. As a widow with seven children, Emiliana became a beneficiary of the reparation program in 2005. The program is one of the ways in which the Peruvian state tries to deal with the legacies of two decades of civil war. Nevertheless, Emiliana refuses to claim her reparation: she states that her dignity is not for sale. My first encounter with Emiliana in June 2014 left a deep impression: she was so strong yet fragile and showed a kind of deep indignation that I had rarely seen before. It was one out of many conversations to follow that made me feel out of place for being an academic historian in a precarious (post-)conflict environment. I had nothing to offer but a listening ear, an audio recorder and a notebook to capture stories. Back in Belgium, I struggled time and again with these stories and with the ‘distance’ I was supposed to take from the field. Throughout the years of this project, I tried to cope with my doubts by transforming the frustration over the limitations of my research into commitment to the people who shaped it, the questions they brought up, the places they took me to. While writing, I even started to appreciate the added value of ‘distance’ in order to come closer to the essence of problems. This book probably testifies to some of these personal struggles that took place in-between the vastness of 18Peru’s highlands and the confined bubble of Ghent, which is where I found myself for five years. If anything, I hope it bears witness to Emiliana and Claudia’s demand for a more inclusive nation. Their stories got under my skin and I will not be able to take them off.Map of Peru with departments (Source: González 2011)Map of Ayacucho with provinces (Source: González 2011)Carnaval in Huamanga (2015)GENERAL INTRODUCTION24General IntroductionThe Shining Path and the Peruvian civil war On the 18th of May 1980, the Peruvian president Francisco Morales Bermúdez convoked the first general elections in his country since 1963, after he had overthrown the left-wing military dictatorship of general Juan Velasco Alvarado in 1977. While several socialist and communist parties decided to join forces in the Izquierda Únida1 coalition, one political party decided to stick to its revolutionary principles and actively boycott the elections: the Partido Comunista del Perú - Sendero Luminoso (PCP-SL), also known as the Shining Path.2 On the eve of the elections, a group of five armed Shining Path militants stole the ballot-boxes and voting forms in Chuschi, a small village in the Ayacucho department, and burned them on the main square of the village. The attack in Chuschi, while mentioned only sideways in some national media the following day, marked the beginning of two decades of civil war violence.3 The Shining Path emerged as a radical splinter group of the Red Flag Maoist Communist Party of Peru and was led by Abimael Guzmán, a philosophy professor at the Universidad Nacional San Cristobal de Huamanga (UNSCH) in Ayacucho.4 Guzmán - nicknamed Camarada Gonzalo - became inspired by Maoism during several trips to China in the 1960s. After his return to Peru, he developed his own Pensamiento Gonzalo5, a mix of Marxist, Leninist and Maoist ideology. Under Guzmán’s influence, the UNSCH turned into an intellectual breeding ground of this ideology. Soon it became the base from which 1 United Left. A glossary with frequently used Spanish and Quechua terms as well as a list of abbreviations is included at the end of the book.2  Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path3  Carlos Iván Degregori, Qué Difícil Es Ser Dios El Partido Comunista Del Perú - Sendero Luminoso y El Conflicto Armado Interno En El Perú: 1980-1999 (IEP, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2013), 89.4  The Red Flag or Bandera Roja on its turn had split off from PCP - Unidad, which had been founded by José Carlos Mariátegui as the Peruvian Socialist Party in 1928. Degregori, 28.5 Gonzalo thought25General Introductiona growing network of militants emerged that started to disseminate the Pensamiento Gonzalo to the Quechua speaking peasant population in schools on the countryside (cfr. chapter 4).6 While the Shining Path was deemed a small and insignificant political phenomenon in the distant capital of Lima, the party gradually created support bases in communities in Ayacucho - the so-called zona liberada - where it recruited fighters for its ejército guerrillero popular7. The aim of Guzmán and his disciples was to overthrow the Peruvian state by initiating a violent people’s revolution desde el campo a la ciudad - from the countryside to the city. Both the limited presence of state institutions and the poor socio-economic conditions in the rural areas of Ayacucho provided a fertile soil for communist ideas on redistribution and social justice. However, the Shining Path’s violent and destructive methods - Guzmán was convinced that the revolution would not be reached without “crossing a river of blood” and that it would “cost a million dead” - rapidly generated repudiation among the population.8 When president Fernando Belaúnde decided to send the armed forces to restore order in the Ayacucho department in 1982, the situation further escalated into a complicated civil conflict marked by multidirectional violence, often perpetrated between ‘intimate enemies’.9 The brutal counter-revolutionary intervention of the state forces resulted in large-scale human rights violations against civilians.10 In some places, the latter started organizing themselves in civil self-defense patrols to 6 Antonio Zapata Velasco, Nelson Pereyra Chávez, and Rolando Rojas Rojas, Historia y cultura de Ayacucho (IEP, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2008), 193.7 Popular guerrilla army8 CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 2” (Lima, 2003).9 Kimberly Theidon uses this term in the context of the Peruvian civil war to stress the divisive dynamics generated by the Shining Path and to refer to violence between neighbors, families, villagers, i.e. former friends who became ‘intimate enemies’. I will borrow this term throughout the book. Kimberly Theidon, Intimate Enemies. Violence and Reconciliation in Peru, University of Pennsylvania Press, Pennsylvania, 2013, 461 p. 10 Degregori, 90.26General Introductioncope with the increasing insecurity generated by both the attacks of the Shining Path and the aggressive conduct of the military (cfr. chapter 6). In other parts of the country, the Marxist Leninist Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) started its own revolutionary struggle. During the government of Alan García (1985-1990) the country prolapsed in chaos as economic reforms provoked hyperinflation. The state forces did not succeed in containing the violence caused by the actions of the Shining Path, which raised its pressure on the capital by exploding car bombs and covering the city with darkness during frequent blackouts. In 1990, Alberto Fujimori, a political outsider, was elected to the presidency by promising economic recovery and the final defeat of the ‘terrorists’ of the Shining Path. Under the guise of the struggle against terrorism, Fujimori succeeded in getting the public opinion on his side, thereby legitimizing his growing authoritarianism and the violent repression by his paramilitary death squad Grupo Colina against suspected left-wing revolutionaries. On the 5th of April 1992, Fujimori committed an autocoup by dissolving the Congress, taking control of the judiciary and installing a dictatorship with the support of the armed forces. A few months later, in the night of 12 September 1992, Fujimori’s intelligence service captured Abimael Guzmán and two other prominent Shining Path leaders. By the end of the year, nineteen of the twenty-two members of the party’s Comité Central were jailed, leading to a rapid decline of their violent actions. The defeat of the Shining Path served the government’s propaganda machine well and for many Peruvians, Fujimori gained his place in history as the great pacifier of the country. After Fujimori’s fraudulent reelection in 1995, however, his regime faced growing protests from the political opposition and increasing international pressure to restore democracy. The turning point came on the 14th of September 2000, when Peruvians were confronted with the so-called vladivideos, video-recordings that were leaked from the archives of the National Intelligence Service, showing Alberto Fujimori’s spin doctor Vladimiro Montesinos bribing politicians of the opposition 27General Introductionand company owners in order to win their support for the regime. Only a few weeks earlier, Fujimori’s and Montesinos’ involvement in trading arms for drugs with the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) had come to light. While Fujimori still tried to keep up appearances, Montesinos chose to save his skin by fleeing the country. Two months later, Fujimori eventually cleared off to Japan and resigned from the presidency via fax. Awaiting new elections, Valentín Paniagua, a member of the opposition party Acción Popular (AP), was appointed as interim president.11 During the transitional government, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was erected which made recommendations for institutional reform, reparations and the search for the disappeared victims of the war. The final report of the TRC was published in 2003 and stated that around 69 000 Peruvians had been killed or disappeared between 1980 and 2000. The Shining Path was held accountable for 54% of the casualties and the state forces for 37%. Quechua or another indigenous language was the mother tongue of 75% of the victims. More than 40% of the victims fell in the rural department of Ayacucho, one of Peru’s poorest regions. These numbers made clear that socio-economic factors played a key role in the presence and dissemination of the violence.12 Now that two decades of civil war and Fujimorismo had come to an end, Peru faced a window of opportunity for political and societal change, provided that – following the logic of transitional justice - it could throw off the burden of the past.A multi-scale and multidirectional approach to transitional justiceThis book is a study of the international paradigm of transitional justice and the way in which this paradigm modeled Peru’s process of dealing with the legacies of the civil war. More precisely, it unravels 11  Jo-Marie Burt, Violencia y autoritarismo en el Perú bajo la sombra de Sendero y la dictadura de Fujimori (IEP, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2011).12  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 1” (Lima, 2003).28General Introductionhow this process is shaped by the involvement of local, national and international actors and their respective ideas on and practices of coming to terms with the past. I study this involvement by looking at two different clusters of actions. The first is the diffusion of transitional justice: how and by whom is the international paradigm of transitional justice propagated and put into practice? What kind of interactions and exchanges take place between the local, national and international level throughout these processes of diffusion? The second cluster of actions concerns the appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation of transitional justice: how do survivors engage with, resist or transform these international ideas and practices in function of specific aims and (political) struggles? Transitional justice can be broadly defined as “the ways countries emerging from periods of conflict and repression address large scale or systematic human rights violations so numerous and so serious that the normal justice system will not be able to provide an adequate response.”13 For the sake of analytical clarity, I distinguish between transitional justice as a concept and as a network. The concept of transitional justice is the set of ideas and practices that make up the international paradigm of transitional justice. Throughout this book, I identify three normative core ideas underlying this concept. The first one relates to memory and entails the conviction that remembering the atrocities of the past leads to prevention, redemption and recognition. The second one relates to victimhood and encompasses the presumption that innocent victims, whose identity is based on trauma and suffering, are and should be the main subjects of transitional justice policies. The third one relates to time and involves the conception of the present as a transitional moment between past and future; a delineated phase to come to terms with the wrongs of the past in order to build a more democratic future. The network of transitional justice, then, is the amalgam of institutions, practitioners and academics that shape and disseminate the concept. Due to the blurred lines between advocacy, policy and academy 13  https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice, consulted 14.03.2018.29General Introductionthat characterize the network, the actors who are in some way or another involved in transitional justice often change roles over time: scholars or policy makers become consultants, activists become or are scholars and vice versa, NGO-workers take leading positions in state-driven transitional justice mechanisms, etc. According to Zinaida Miller, transitional justice therefore lacks “fully external critics”, which is why “the role of international actors in the process of spreading the ideas and ideals of the ‘movement’ of transitional justice has not yet been fully explored in the literature.”14 Emilio Crenzel points out how particularly in Latin America “the object of study itself also determines the discipline” because of the remarkable entanglement of survivor groups, activists and scholars.15 These ‘insiders’ of the network of transitional justice are mostly ‘outsiders’ for the communities of survivors that are addressed through their policies. When talking about the diffusion and implementation of transitional justice in Peru, I will therefor refer to the broad range of actors involved in the network of transitional justice as ‘well-meaning outsiders’, a term that Elizabeth Jelin uses to refer to “the community of transitional justice political actors, researchers and practitioners.”16 I will use this term in a broad sense to point to those who defend the rights of a certain group of survivors without strictly belonging to this group. This relation between survivors and outsiders can be more complex and multi-layered than a binary opposition between the international and the national or local level, the First and the Third World, the Western and the non-Western or top-down and bottom-up processes. In Peru, for example, NGO workers from Lima are considered outsiders in local communities 14  Zinaida Miller, “Effects of Invisibility: In Search of the ‘Economic’ in Transitional Justice,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2, no. 3 (December 1, 2008): 290.15  Eugenia Allier Montaño and Emilio Crenzel, Las luchas por la memoria en América Latina: Historia reciente y violencia política (Bonilla Artigas Editores, 2015), 15.16  Elizabeth Jelin, “Silences, Visibility and Agency : Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Public Memorialization,” Research Brief (ICTJ, 2009), 2.30General Introductionin Ayacucho. Yet, these NGO workers or their families might also have been directly affected by the war, be it in a different fashion. The opposition then is between urban and rural experiences of the war, between Peruvians from the capital and the provinces, from the coast and the mountains or the jungle, or between those who migrated and those who stayed during the war. At the same time, an international or Western NGO worker or academic researcher might be considered more ‘local’ by the community than an NGO worker or academic coming from the capital simply because he or she is more familiar with the community. Or, survivor groups who are ‘insiders’ in their own country might become ‘well-meaning outsiders’ when their representatives travel to other countries to meet up with their counterparts and exchange experiences. Think, for example, of the relation between the Argentinean Madres de Plaza de Mayo and the Peruvian women of the Asociación Nacional de Familiares de Secuestrados, Detenidos y Desaparecidos del Perú17 (ANFASEP).18 Still, all of them remain outsiders for each other in the sense that they do not share the same experience of survival. The adjective well-meaning helps to distinguish between the negative outcomes of certain practices and the mostly good intentions in which they are rooted. The emergence of transitional justice as a new paradigm of dealing with the past has to be situated in the international expansion of human rights and memory discourse on the one hand, and the rise of what Didier Fassin has called ‘humanitarian government’ in the post-World War II period on the other (cfr. chapter 1).19 The enactment of the “imagery”20 of transitional justice is often 17  National Association of Family members of the Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared of Peru18  Bueno-Hansen, Feminist and Human Rights Struggles in Peru, 26.19  Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason (University of California Press, 2012).20  According to Hinton, “the transitional justice imaginary is normative (i.e., it is associated with certain truth claims and moral-laden assumptions), performative (i.e., through its enactment, people constitute an imagined community), and productive (i.e., the imaginary produces certain subject positions and types of being).” Alexander L Hinton, “Transitional Justice Time: Uncle San, Aunty Yan, 31General Introductiondescribed by critics in market terms as a globalized “industry” 21, an “enterprise” or a “moral economy” in which memory and victims have become “commodities”.22 This ‘industry’ is being criticized for exporting and imposing a one-size-fits-all model of dealing with the past that does not sufficiently take into account the specific cultural context in which it is applied. The top-down application of this model by an international transitional justice “elite” network is said to overlook the importance of local actors and hinder their genuine participation in the process.23 This book endorses the critique concerning the friction between the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ in transitional justice.24 Yet, a mere opposition between local and and Outreach at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal,” Genocide and Mass Atrocities in Asia : Legacies and Prevention, 2013, 87.21  According to Madlingozi, “this industry is made up of constantly mushrooming transitional justice academic centres and think tanks, (‘peer-reviewed’ and subscription-based) journals and books, mail listserves, blogs, newsletters, fellowships, workshops and conferences. Most of these are based in the First World but also include big, influential Third World transnational NGOs and local informants/‘point men’. A well-travelled international cadre of actors – what I have called transitional justice entrepreneurs – theorize the field; set the agenda; legitimize what constitute appropriate transitional justice norms and mechanisms; influence the flow of financial resources; assist governments in transition; invite, collaborate with and capacitate ‘relevant’ local NGOs and ‘grassroots organizations’; and ultimately not only represent and speak for victims but ‘produce’ the victim.” Madlingozi, “On Transitional Justice Entrepreneurs and the Production of Victims,” 225.22  Ksenija Bilbija and Leigh A Payne, “Introduction. Time Is Money: The Memory Market in Latin America,” in Accounting for Violence: Marketing Memory in Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011). 23  Gready and Robins therefore plead for a new model of intervention in post-conflict situations in which outsiders above all facilitate locally led transformation by providing the necessary material and intellectual resources. Paul Gready and Simon Robins, “From Transitional to Transformative Justice: A New Agenda for Practice,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 8, no. 3 (November 1, 2014): 342, 360.24  This debate within transitional justice studies draws upon the local-global debate in human rights. See, for example: Mark Goodale and Sally Engle Merry, 32General Introductionglobal falls short in thoroughly describing and understanding the multi-scale and multidirectional dynamics between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ involved in transitional justice. This study aims to unravel the entanglement of ideas and actors within these dynamics. As Alexander Hinton states, “transitional justice needs to more deeply grapple with the messiness of global and transnational involvements and the local, on-the-ground realities with which they intersect […]”25 Globalization is as much a process of proliferation of diversity as it is a process of homogenization, as Richard Wilson points out.26 The nexus between the rise of a transnational culture of human rights and memory, the emergence of a new paradigm of dealing with the past and its diffusion by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ has given several layered dimensions to contemporary processes of dealing with violent pasts that require further scrutiny through profound empirical research. According to Kimberly Theidon, “introducing a politics of scale” helps to reveal the “competing logics” that can exist between local, national and international aims and actors of transitional justice.27 While it holds true that the main ‘chain’ of ideas in transitional justice flows from the international to the local level, a politics of scale should transcend the opposition between top-down and bottom-up, or between the global and the local. This opposition too often results in an artificial conceptual divide, in which the local is characterized by “remoteness”, “marginality” and “absence (of modernity)”.28 Moreover, the dichotomy between local and global has often resulted in an underexposure of the dynamics between The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law between the Global and the Local (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).25  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 361.26  Richard Wilson, “Human Rights, Culture and Context: An Introduction,” in Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives (Londen: Pluto Press, 1997), 12.27  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 361.28  Rosalind Shaw, Lars Waldorf, and Pierre Hazan, Localizing Transitional Justice: Interventions and Priorities after Mass Violence (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010), 6.33General Introductionthe national and local level.29 By emphasizing the entanglement of local, national and international actors, ideas an practices, I aim to “disturb the dichotomy between the concrete and the conceptual” and go against the presumption that ‘ideas’ and ‘politics’ (exclusively) belong to the global or international realm, and ‘experience’ and ‘culture’ to the local. Therefore, only a multidirectional approach, i.e. an approach that integrates horizontal and vertical movements across the different scales, can uncover the processes of diffusion and contestation between local, national and international actors and ideas. The more the field expands, and the more transitional justice initiatives are being designed in diverging socio-economic and geographic contexts, the more multidirectional exchanges will take place, for example between so-called ‘South-South’ contexts. In addition, this multi-scale and multidirectional approach should be intersectional in order to clarify how structures of race, class and gender influence the processes of diffusion and contestation as well as to uncover the blind spots in research and practice created by these structures.30 This study thus attempts to identify some of the implications of the normative assumptions concerning memory, victimhood and time underlying transitional justice by adopting a multi-scale and multi-directional approach to processes of diffusion and contestation. This approach includes a fundamental critique of the paradigm of transitional justice, but it is not my intention to dismiss it. Rather, as Alexander Hinton states, “it is to engage in a ‘critical transitional justice studies’ that allows us to recognize the gaps within and shadows behind that which is assumed and naturalized.”3129  Paul Gready and Simon Robins, “From Transitional to Transformative Justice: A New Agenda for Practice,” 349.30  See: Eilish Rooney and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, “Transitional Justice from the Margins: Intersections of Identities, Power and Human Rights,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 12, no. 1 (March 1, 2018): 1–8. 31  Alexander L Hinton, “Transitional Justice Time: Uncle San, Aunty Yan, and Outreach at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal,” 96.34General IntroductionA (post-)conflict setting: Ayacucho, PeruTo think, finally, that there is such a thing as a “Unity of the Third World,” to which one could address the new slogan in the era of decolonization “Natives of all underdeveloped countries unite!” (Sartre) is to repeat Marx’s worst illusions on a greatly enlarged scale and with considerably less justification. The Third World is not a reality but an ideolog y.32 The setting from which this study of transitional justice emerges is the Peruvian civil war and its aftermath. Each of the three case studies will be embedded in its historical and geographical context in order to create a rich body of empirical material that represents the complexity of the setting. This book is thus also a study of the micro-dynamics of violence that characterized the civil war and mark the process of coming to terms with it. These dynamics of violence and its aftermath can only be grasped through long-term empirical research.33 The research presented in this book is based on twenty months of field research in Peru conducted in 2014 (three months), 2015 (eleven months), 2017 (three months) and 2018 (three months). I will extensively introduce the context of the three different cases, as well as the specific methodology and empirical data used for each case in chapter four, five and six. However, some introductory notes on context, methodology, sources and research ethics are useful. The semantics of war and (indigenous) identityAs Stathis Kalyvas writes, “civil war is often the object of serious semantic contestation.”34 In Peru, positionality defines the terminology that is used to refer to the two decades during which the 32  Hannah Arendt, On Violence (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 19.33  Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 6.34  Kalyvas, 17.35General IntroductionShining Path tried to overthrow the government. The TRC coined the term ‘internal armed conflict’, which was rejected by the state forces as they feared this would turn captured Shining Path members into political prisoners who could invoke the right to amnesty under the Geneva Convention. The state forces use(d) the term ‘terrorism’ to refer to the actions of the Shining Path, hereby considering these actions as criminal activities rather than as political struggles.35 This term was also used by Fujimori’s government and is still very common in public opinion, especially in Lima. In Ayacucho, the war is mostly referred to as ‘the period of violence’ (‘la época de la violencia’), ‘political violence’, or ‘socio-political violence’. In Quechua, the term ‘sasachakuy tiempo’ (‘the difficult time’) is used. In order to avoid connotations or reductions, I will refer to the period of 1980-2000 with the term civil conflict or civil war as defined by Kalyvas: “armed combat within the boundaries of a recognized sovereign entity between parties subject to a common authority at the outset of the hostilities.”36 As Kalyvas proposes, I conceive the violence that characterized the civil war as a process rather than an outcome, in order to consider “the complex, and often invisible, nonviolent actions and mechanisms that precede and follow” it.37 The observation that both the civil war and its aftermath are characterized by mechanisms of structural violence, such as racism and socio-economic exclusion, runs as a common thread through this book. When referring to the aftermath of the war, I therefore use the term (post-)conflict, which alludes to the ongoing character of this structural violence and the social conflict that it provokes. By doing so, I aim to integrate the historical and socio-economic dimension into this study of Peru’s process of coming to terms 35  Lisa J. Laplante and Kimberly Theidon, “Commissioning Truth, Constructing Silences: The Peruvian Truth Commission and the Other Truths of ‘Terrorists,’” in Mirrors of Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 305.36  Kalyvas main analytical distinction is between “civil war” and “violence in civil war”; he does not distinguish between war and conflict. Kalyvas,20.37  Kalyvas, 21.36General Introductionwith the legacies of the civil war, as it is all too often neglected in transitional justice.38 The notion of structural socio-economic violence and social conflict moreover responds to the debates on the legacies of colonialism that are rooted in the Peruvian and Latin-American context.39This also brings us to the question of race and indigeneity, which cannot be neglected given the particular (post-)conflict setting on which this book focuses. This setting is the Ayacucho department, the region situated in the central Peruvian Andes which was most severely affected by the war. The capital of the Ayacucho department is the homonymous city of Ayacucho, also called Huamanga.40 According to the national census of 2017, 63,58% of the population of the Ayacucho department declares Quechua to be their mother tongue.41 This implies that they learned Spanish, the only official language of education and administration in Peru, as soon as they started to attend school. Indigenous ethnicity - this means outside of the categories white, criollo42, mestizo43, or afro descendant - is thus mostly defined by the indigenous language one speaks: Quechua, Aymara, Asháninka, etc. The same census makes clear that 81,2% of the population in Ayacucho identifies with ‘quechua’ as an ethnic category.44 That being said, they do not necessarily self-identify with the term indigenous (indígena) due to the long-time history of stigmatization and discrimination of indios in the Peruvian Andes. 38  Alexander L Hinton, “Transitional Justice Time: Uncle San, Aunty Yan, and Outreach at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal,” 96.39  See, for example: Aníbal Quijano, “Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina,” Journal of World-Systems Research VI, no. 2 (2000).40  In order to avoid confusion, I will use the name Huamaga to refer to the city and Ayacucho to refer to the department.41  INEI, “Ayacucho Resultados Definitivos, Tomo I” (Lima, 2017), 37.42  Term used to refer to white Peruvians from the coast43  Term used to refer to persons with combined European and indigenous American descent44  13,1% identifies as mestizo, 2% as white, 0,2% as aymara and 0,8% as afro descendant. INEI, “Ayacucho Resultados Definitivos, Tomo I” (Lima, 2017), 38.37General IntroductionTherefore, rural communities in Ayacucho mostly refer to themselves as comunidades campesinas45 and people primarily self-identify as campesinos or peasants. The debate on indigenous identity in Peru is, however, highly complex.46 As I will not engage with it explicitly, I will stick to the use of the terminology that was extended to me in the field and speak of peasant communities rather than indigenous communities.47 Moreover, by adopting this emic terminology, I want to avoid taking what Orin Starn has called an Andeanist approach, i.e. an essentialist, exotic and static view of the Peruvian peasantry. According to Starn, persistent cultural differences in Andean nations should be seen “not as the result of distance and separation, but as constructed within a history of continuous and multilayered connections.”48 Field settingsThroughout my stays in Peru, I moved between four different geographical settings: the capital city of Lima, the city of Huamanga, highland peasant communities in the provinces south of Huamanga, and jungle peasant communities in the Valley of the Apurímac River situated to the north of Huamanga. Lima is the place where most (inter)national NGOs have their headquarters and where the majority of Peru’s academic community is based. When in Lima, I spent most of my time attending activities such as seminars, 45  Peasant communities46  See: Maria Elena García, Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Education, and Multicultural Development in Peru, 1 edition (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005).47  On the organization and cosmovision of peasant communities in Ayacucho see chapter 8, “El mundo campesino” in: Antonio Zapata Velasco, Nelson Pereyra Chávez, and Rolando Rojas Rojas, Historia y cultura de Ayacucho, 259–90.48  Starn argues that the emergence of the Shining Path came as a complete suprise to anthropologists in Ayacucho precisely because they adopted this Andeanist approach. Orin Starn, “Missing the Revolution: Anthropologists and the War in Peru,” Cultural Anthropolog y, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Feb., 1991), Pp. 63-91, 85.38General Introductioncommemoration ceremonies or other cultural activities related to the legacy of the civil war. Huamanga was my main operating base during most of the time in the field; it is the place where I lived and from which I traveled back and forth to both the highland and jungle communities for trips of several days or weeks. Huamanga is a small highland city situated at 2.800 meters above main sea level (AMSL) with a population of around 180.000. The city grew significantly during the war due to the influx of refugees from the countryside. In the aftermath of the war, Huamanga became a hub for international human rights and development NGOs. Both the Belgian (BTC/Enabel) and German (DED/GIZ) development cooperation invested large amounts of money in, respectively, agricultural development projects and peacebuilding initiatives. These injections are gradually declining, however, as for most Western donor countries Peru is no longer a priority country for development aid. The UNSCH is one of Peru’s oldest and largest provincial universities but carries the stigma of being the cradle of the Shining Path, which is why conducting critical research about the civil war at the UNSCH is not self-evident. Research collaborationThe fact that this book is a single-authored piece conceals the reality that this research would not have been possible without the collaborations that emerged in the field. It was during the field research for my master dissertation in 2012 that I first established contact with the Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense49 (EPAF) in Lima. The EPAF, a Peruvian NGO dedicated to the search of missing persons, appealed to me as one of the few human rights organizations that was still doing fieldwork in remote highland communities in Ayacucho. Through my collaboration with the EPAF, I could establish my first contacts in Hualla and Sacsamarca and gain access to the network of NGO representatives in Lima 49  Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team39General Introductionand Huamanga. When in Lima, I spent most of my time working at the EPAF’s office, and hereby I got involved as a volunteer in some of the organization’s activities.  Also, I made several of the fieldtrips for this dissertation together with members of the EPAF (cfr. infra chapter 4 and 5). To conduct fieldwork independent of the EPAF, I furthermore worked together with three research collaborators: Karina Barrientos, Alicia Noa and Gabriela Zamora, who are graduates in respectively anthropology, community psychology and history. Karina, Alicia and Gabriela accompanied me in the field, helped me to establish contacts, provided translation from Quechua to Spanish where necessary, transcribed interviews and most of all were important sounding boards for a gringa50 lost in the contradictions of an unknown cultural reality. Many of my insights emerged through conversation with them. Despite the fact that ‘North-South’ research collaborations in academic fieldwork generate a lot of questions concerning power relations, ethics, security and precarity, they are all too often taken for granted and more often than not remain invisible in the research output of Western academics. Moreover, academics based at Western universities mostly have significantly more resources to conduct their research and get it published than their colleagues based at universities in the ‘global South’. On several occasions, I captured frustrations of academics at the UNSCH about the fact that foreign researchers like me come to extract data and ‘make a career’ on a conflict that is not ‘theirs’. In order to address these problems and inequalities, I believe there is an urgent need for an open and sincere dialogue on transnational collaborations in academic (field) research.5150  Term used in Latin America to refer to US citizens, and by extension also to (white) Europeans51  The research collective ‘(Silent)Voices from the Field’ is based at Ghent University and forms part of the Governance in Conflict Network. The collective integrates researchers from the field of development and (post-)conflict studies working in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europa who aim to put these questions on the agenda. See: https://www.gicnetwork.be/silent-voices-manifesto/.40General IntroductionAn historian in the fieldThis study methodologically balances between history and anthropology, two closely related disciplines. Over the course of my fieldwork in rural communities in both the highlands and the jungle of Ayacucho, I conducted around 185 semi-structured open interviews with survivors of the civil war and engaged in participant observation in activities such as commemorations, community meetings, exhumations of mass graves, etc. Fieldnotes and an extensive fieldwork diary as well as audiovisual recordings and photographs helped me to process the information gathered through participant observation. The majority of interviews was conducted in Spanish and recorded, transcribed and processed through open coding with the qualitative research software NVivo.52 The interviews in Quechua were conducted with translation by one of the research collaborators, recorded and subsequently transcribed in Spanish for coding in Nvivo. For privacy reasons, all names of interviewees referred to in this book are pseudonyms. I will refer to the position from which the interviewed persons speak to the extent that this does not make them identifiable. Interview citations 52  “Open coding refers to the initial phase of the coding process in the grounded theory approach to qualitative research (generating theory from data) espoused by Anslem Strauss and Juliet Corbin. They call this initial stage of data analysis open coding because they view the process as the ‘opening up’ of the text in order to uncover ideas and meanings it holds. The process of open coding begins with the collection of raw data (e.g., interviews, fieldnotes, art, reports, diaries). The intent of open coding is to break down the data into segments in order to interpret them. Detailed word-by-word and line-by-line analysis is conducted by researchers asking what is going on. The researcher discovers, names, defines, and develops as many ideas and concepts as possible without concern for how they will ultimately be used. How the issues and themes within the data relate must be systematically assessed, but such relationships can be discovered only once the multitude of ideas and concepts it holds have been uncovered.” “Open Coding,” in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, by Lisa Given (2455 Teller Road, Thousand Oaks California 91320 United States: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2008).41General Introductionare translated to English, but the Spanish original is included in the footnote. In case of interviews conducted in Quechua, the citation is translated from the Spanish transcription to English. Paige Arthur has noted that historians have been remarkably absent from the field of transitional justice because it was “presented as deeply enmeshed with political problems that were legal-institutional and, relatively, short-term in nature.”53 By combining fieldwork with the use of archival sources and by adopting a meta-historical approach, I incorporate this historical dimension in the study of transitional justice. Most noteworthy, in this respect, is the archive of the central headquarter of the self-defense committees of the valley of the Apurímac river that Gabriela and I stumbled upon in Pichiwillca and which provides a unique look into the historical reality of the civil war (cfr. infra chapter 6). Furthermore, for the cases of Hualla and Sacsamarca, I consulted the testimonies given by survivors to the TRC which are available for consultation in the Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos54 in the ombudsman office in Lima. The ethics of researching and representing violenceAccording to Fassin, the rise of ‘humanitarian government’ is mirrored by an epistemological shift, which implies an increased sensitivity of researchers and intellectuals “to the subjectivity of agents and to the experience of pain and affliction.”55 Integrating this subjectivity and sensitivity into academic research is, however, not self-evident. The process of working with survivors - both victims and perpetrators - of civil war violence raises several questions regarding research ethics, vulnerability, positionality and representation. It goes for all the fieldwork that I have conducted 53  Paige Arthur, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice,” Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. 2 (2009): 333.54  Information Center of Collective Memory and Human Rights55  Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason (University of California Press, 2012), 6.42General Introductionfor this dissertation that I have always prioritized the ‘do no harm’ principle and taken into account the guidelines concerning confidentiality, anonymity, informed consent and data protection prescribed in the ethical clearance given for this research by Ghent University and the Research Foundation Flanders. However, ethical clearance is an institutional starting point that does not necessarily provide answers to the series of questions and dilemmas that emerge when one is actually in the field. As Cheryl Lawther, Rachel Killean and Lauren Dempster state, “conducting sensitive fieldwork with often vulnerable individuals and communities demands a sensitivity to the challenges of empathy and expectation [my emphasis].”56 To manage the challenge of expectations generated by my presence as a foreign researcher, I tried, in first instance, to be clear and modest.57 To respond to expectations, I often switched between two roles. As a researcher, and particularly as an historian, I could react to the request of sharing the research participant’s story ‘in my country’ and granting it legitimacy by giving it a place in historiography. During my fieldwork, I put the act of sharing stories in practice by writing a blog illustrated with photographs which was published on the website of the Belgian magazine MO*.58 In my position as a volunteer or NGO worker - which I unavoidably became on some occasions through my affiliation with the EPAF - I responded as much as possible to the requests for support by providing answers and information regarding the procedures of inscription in the victim register, the follow-up of the reparation program, or the legal procedures concerning the search for the disappeared, and by directing or accompanying survivors to the corresponding institutions in Huamanga and Lima. The challenge of empathy is a tricky one in sensitive (post-)conflict 56  Cheryl Lawther, Rachel Killean, and Lauren Dempster, “Working with Others: Reflections on Fieldwork in Postconflict Societies,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 13, no. 2 (2019): 389.57  Lawther, Killean, and Dempster, 390.58  See: https://www.mo.be/auteur/eva-willems43General Introductionsettings and the question of reliving experiences of violence by recounting them should be taken seriously in light of the ‘do no harm’ principle. Moreover, in addition to being survivors of war, the majority of research participants live in precarious socio-economic conditions, which increases their vulnerability. While my research focuses on the aftermath rather than on the war itself, it soon turned out during conversations that the two were inseparable and that people would share their experiences of the war even if I did not explicitly ask for it. If at some initial point I still believed that I could stick to a set of questions, I realized very soon that it was not just me who set the course of the conversation. As Elizabeth Jelin states, those who talk and those who listen co-produce testimony.59 Mostly, I ended up on the listening side. Interviews always started out from what people wanted to share rather than from what I wanted to know, and I never insisted on talking. When I felt that conversations got too emotionally charged, I mostly switched the topic to daily affairs, the customs and culture of the village or recent events in local or national politics. I did my best not to awaken the ghosts of the past against people’s will, although I am very aware of the fact that the latter is partly out of my control as one can never fully predict the effect of research on its participants. For the researcher, listening to stories of survival but also perpetration of violence, including detailed descriptions of torture, sexual violence and homicide, can become emotionally charged. As I re-read interview transcripts and re-lived parts of my fieldwork throughout the process of writing this dissertation, I struggled with the ways in which I could or should textually represent the testimonies provided by research participants. I am wary of reducing conversations to citations, which are but a selective representation of the wide range of thoughts expressed by research participants. Especially when dealing with testimonies of violence, the balance between omission and representation requires careful consideration. 59  Elizabeth Jelin, Los trabajos de la memoria (Lima: IEP, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2012), 116.44General IntroductionI consider the vivid descriptions of violence that these citations sometimes contain as crucial information for understanding the dynamics of war and violence. While I have done my best to balance this aim of understanding the dynamics of violence and safeguarding the dignity of those who helped me to come closer to this understanding by providing their intimate stories, I am fully aware of the limitations of my representations of their experiences.Outline of the bookThis book can be roughly divided into two parts. The first part investigates the emergence of the paradigm of transitional justice (chapter one), its underlying ideas (chapter two) and its implementation in Peru (chapter three) through an analysis of the existing debates. The second part entails an in-depth empirical analysis of the diffusion and contestation of transitional justice by means of three different case studies from rural contexts in the Ayacucho region (chapter four, five and six). Chapter one is a genesis of the origins and expansion of international transitional justice, a paradigm that emerged from the dilemma of how to achieve both justice and reconciliation in a limited time span in the wake of large-scale human rights violations. I take the last phase of the Cold War as a starting point for writing a genesis of transitional justice, with the political transition in Argentina in 1983 as a benchmark. I will first explore the ways in which the idea of post-war or post-dictatorship transition to liberal democracy is Western in its origins and closely linked to post-Cold War discourse on human rights and humanitarianism. Subsequently, the origins of international transitional justice will be examined by identifying a range of key initiatives and processes that gave rise to the concept. I will then elaborate on the establishment of international transitional justice as a distinctive network shaped by a blend of institutions, practitioners and academics. The chapter concludes by sketching the proliferation and expansion of the concept and network of 45General Introductiontransitional justice, resulting in a wide range of critical and alternative views in which this study is also embedded.Chapter two investigates three normative ideas concerning memory, victimhood and time underlying international transitional justice. By doing so, the aim of this chapter is to provide the necessary conceptual background for the analysis of the case studies in chapter four, five and six. First, I will explore the idea of the memory duty: the conviction that the violent past must be actively remembered and should not be forgotten. This idea on its turn contains three underlying assumptions: the assumption that the past will repeat itself if it is not remembered, that remembering can have a redemptive potential for survivors, and that memory is a moral duty of society towards the victims of human rights violations. I will describe the origins of this idea of a duty to remember and show how it became and remains an essential feature of transitional justice, despite many criticisms. In the second part of chapter two, I will elaborate on how and why transitional justice puts victims and their stories of suffering at the heart of the process of dealing with the past. I argue that transitional justice tends to strip survivors from their agency by backgrounding active narratives of perpetration on the one hand and producing ‘ideal’ victims whose identity is grounded in innocence on the other. By doing so, stories of violence risk to be taken out of their political, cultural and historical context. The last part of chapter two deals with the temporal assumptions underpinning transitional justice, and more specifically with the idea of a transition that draws clear lines between past and future and uses the present as a delimited time to make the change from conflict to post-conflict and achieve ‘closure’ of the past. I will challenge this notion of closure by elaborating on the notion of a ‘contemporary past’: a concept to describe the condition in which the presence of the past does not take the shape of a memory of violence that has happened in the past but is perceived by survivors as violence that has happened in the past and is still happening in the present. This idea of a ‘contemporary’ past helps us to relate recent human rights violations to longer historical process of injustice 46General Introductionthat have not yet concluded and therefore potentially spark new outbreaks of social conflict and violence.Chapter three provides a bridge between the first two chapters and the latter three. This chapter presents a general overview of the dissemination and implementation of transitional justice in Peru by looking at various actors and mechanisms that shaped the (post-)conflict process. The main actors that will be discussed are the human rights movement, the survivors and the state. As for the mechanisms, the analysis focuses on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and two of its recommendations: the reparation plan and the plan for the search of the disappeared. The emphasis in this chapter lies on the interaction between international, national and local actors and ideas in shaping the (post-)conflict process. A brief sketch of public narratives on the civil war as they are verbalized and materialized in public opinion and space furthermore gives an impression of the turbulent landscape in which the process of dealing with the legacies of the past takes place in Peru.In the second part of the book, I turn to three different case-studies from the Ayacucho region in order to scrutinize processes of diffusion and contestation of transitional justice. The approach of the analysis in chapters four, five and six slightly differs per case. Chapter four focuses on a specific place and is a microhistory of Sacsamarca that takes the particularities of one spatial context and the historical events in which it is embedded as a starting point. The emphasis in chapter five lies on a specific phenomenon - that of (the aftermath of) enforced disappearance - which I study from the angle of the village of Hualla. Chapter six, then, deals with a specific phenomenon in a specific place, namely the self-defense committees in the Valley of the Apurímac River, and therefore takes a regional and multi-sited spatial approach. Chapter four analyzes the process of dealing with the legacies of the civil war in Sacsamarca, a village in which the Shining Path’s revolutionary struggle got entangled with existing power imbalances and slumbering conflicts over land and resources. The tension 47General Introductionbetween involvement with and resistance against the Shining Path which marked Sacsamarca’s position during the civil war resulted in a particular (post-)conflict dynamic between the public narrative on the past on the one hand, and the (open) secrets and silences that surround it on the other. The work of the TRC, the implementation of the reparation program and the exhumation of clandestine burial sites in Sacsamarca were all intersected by the tense coexistence between ‘intimate enemies’ and at first sight seem to have fomented confrontation rather than reconciliation or unity among the villagers. Nevertheless, the Sacsamarquinos appropriated their own space within the transitional justice process to create a heroic narrative in which their resistance against the Shining Path stands center-stage. Putting forward this narrative of resistance allows the villagers to shift their (post-)conflict identity on the axis between victimhood and heroism in function of their claims for recognition and reparations directed to the state and the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ of transitional justice. Chapter five addresses the problem of dealing with the desaparecidos60 of the civil war. The scenery of this chapter is Hualla, a village in the middle of the Shining Path’s zona liberada in which the violence of the civil war was characterized by enforced disappearance, and the crimes of torture and sexual violence that are closely related to it. I will first demonstrate how survivors appropriated an identity based on disempowering characteristics which was offered to them by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ as a precondition to claim certain rights. Then, I will show how the search for the disappeared has stranded in a deadlock because of the tension between legal and humanitarian purposes on the one hand, and the bureaucracy of the judicial apparatus on the other. The relation between state representatives and survivors throughout the process of searching, identifying and restituting the bodies of the disappeared is moreover intersected by racism and discrimination against rural indigenous peasants, which adds insult to injury for the survivors: new non-physical violence is inflicted upon those who seek redress, who are hereby 60  Disappeared persons48General Introductionreminded of the mechanisms of structural violence that underlie the crimes of the past and still characterize the present. I point to this phenomenon as the contemporary past of enforced disappearance. Taking this contemporary past into account, I argue that, while exhumation and restitution can provide important contributions to recognition as well as to justice, the narrow focus on bodies as the main starting point for addressing the problem of the disappeared can result to be highly problematic. Therefore, I suggest shifting the emphasis from ‘how can we find the bodies of the disappeared?’ to ‘how can we achieve recognition and citizenship for the relatives of the disappeared in absence of the bodies?’. Chapter six turns to the valley of the Apurímac River (VRAEM), where the Comités de Autodefensa Civil61 (CADs) played a key-role in defeating the Shining Path during the civil war. Because of the ongoing struggle against ‘narcoterrorism’, the VRAEM is declared in state of emergency and is the most militarized area of the country. The process of dealing with the past in the VRAEM is therefore intersected by (the perception of) ongoing conflict which thwarts future perspectives for progress and development. First, by analyzing how the CADs were dealt with by the TRC and the reparation program, I argue that the agency of the CADs corresponds to a blind spot in the transitional justice process which is a result from the typical categorization of survivors that emerges at the intersection of trauma and human rights discourse. In order to sketch a more comprehensive image of the CADs, I will demonstrate how they became important providers of local governance and social order during the war in the VRAEM. Then, I will turn to the heroic memory fostered by the CADs, which conflicts with the kind of commemorative discourse and practice that stands center-stage in transitional justice. The memory of the CADs stands in function of the recognition of their contribution to the defeat of the Shining Path and identifies heroes rather than victims. I argue, however, that the lacking conceptualization of the agency of the peasantry 61  Civil self-defense committees49General Introductionresulted in a failure to recognize their contribution. Consequently, the transitional justice process missed an important opportunity to strengthen the citizenship of an historically excluded population group.In the conclusions, finally, I will first reflect upon the common thread that runs through survivors’ contestations of transitional justice: the claim for citizenship and inclusion, which appears as the Achilles’ heel of Peru’s process of coming to terms with the legacies of the civil war. Lastly, I will formulate three conceptual and methodological implications of this dissertation for the study of (post-)conflict dynamics and the implementation of transitional justice policies. The first implication relates to the conceptualization of agency of survivors in (post-)conflict settings and proposes the notion of a multi-layered survivor identity that goes beyond the opposition between victims and perpetrators and embraces the fact that victimhood, violation, resistance and heroism are no mutually exclusive features. The second recommendation relates to the study of violence and its aftermath and pleads for the integration of a historical approach that is more responsive to notions of structural violence. The third suggestion, finally, is an invitation to rethink the ‘local’ as more than a mere domain of reception of transitional justice policies by taking the entanglement of local, national and international actors and ideas into account.Relatives of La Cantuta case demonstrating in Cieneguilla (2014)I TRANSITIONAL JUSTICEThe Emergence of a New Paradigm of Dealing with the Past52I Transitional JusticeThe road to the future has come to run through the catastrophes of the past.1 IntroductionThis first chapter gives an overview of the origins and the expansion of international transitional justice. Transitional justice is an amalgam of theory and practice that is shaped by the interplay between institutions, practitioners and academics dealing with the question of coming to terms with a violent past on a societal level since the end of the 20th century. According to the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), “Transitional justice refers to the ways countries emerging from periods of conflict and repression address large scale or systematic human rights violations so numerous and so serious that the normal justice system will not be able to provide an adequate response.”2 Jon Elster goes as far back as to the trials and purges in ancient Athens to trace the origins of transitional justice3, while Ruti Teitel on her turn identifies the Nuremberg Tribunal as a defining moment in what she calls the first phase of transitional justice.4 As Paige Arthur, however, points out, ascribing the term a posteriori to phenomena that were not defined as such by contemporaries holds the danger of anachronism. She rightly notes that such an anachronistic view does not enhance our conceptual understanding of how current-day transitional justice emerged.5 My starting point for writing a genesis of transitional justice will therefore be the last phase of the Cold War and the so-called third 1  John Torpey, “An Avalanche of History: The ‘Collapse of the Future’ and the Rise of Reparation Politics.,” in Historical Justice in International Perspective. How Societies Are Trying to Right the Wrongs of the Past., 2009, 29.  2  https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice, consulted 14.03.2018.3  Jon Elster, Closing the Books : Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 4  Ruti G. Teitel, “Transitional Justice Genealogy,” Harvard Human Rights Journal 16 (2003).5  Paige Arthur, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice,” Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. 2 (2009): 328.53I Transitional Justicewave of democratization, with the political transition in Argentina in 1983 as a benchmark.6 Within this historical context, the idea took shape that emerging democracies should apply a set of tailor-made measures when handling their violent past. Imposing these measures, including prosecutions, truth-telling, institutional reform and reparations, was believed to provide for a successful transition.7 This response to past human rights violations arose, thus Arthur, from a conception of justice based on two normative goals: achieving justice for victims and establishing a more just democratic order to prevent recurrence.8 “ ‘Transition’ - and, more specifically, ‘transition to democracy’ – was the dominant normative lens through which political change was viewed at this time,” states Arthur.9 The dilemma of how to achieve both justice (punishment for crimes of the past) and reconciliation (durable peace in the present) in a limited time span came to stand center stage in the debates of the human rights movement and gave birth to a new little sister: transitional justice.10 In this search for a midway ‘between vengeance and forgiveness’, as Martha Minow has described the dilemma of finding a path between too much memory and too much forgetting when addressing a violent past, truth-telling arose as a means of achieving reconciliation.11 Reflections about the triangular relation between justice, truth and reconciliation became the substantive foundation of the new field of transitional justice. Why, however, did transitional justice emerge when it did? Which shift in thinking caused the emergence of a new paradigm of dealing with violent pasts? What are the guiding principles behind it? Where 6  Samuel P Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman ; London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998). 7  Arthur, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice,”355. 8  Arthur, 357.9  Arthur, 325.10  Arthur, 323.11  Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Boston: Beacon Press, 1998)54I Transitional Justicedid international transitional justice take shape? In this chapter, I will first explore the ways in which the idea of post-war or post-dictatorship transition to liberal democracy, relying on a society’s capacity to come to terms with its violent past, is – despite the Argentinean benchmark – Western in its origins and closely linked to post-Cold War discourse on human rights and humanitarianism. Subsequently, the origins of international transitional justice will be examined by identifying a range of key initiatives and processes that gave rise to the concept. I will then elaborate on the establishment of international transitional justice as a distinctive network shaped by a blend of institutions, practitioners and academics. I refer to the concept of transitional justice to address the set of ideas and practices that it entails, and to the network to indicate the amalgam of people that shape it. The latter distinguishes transitional justice from being a movement, which I consider to be more activist – such as for example the human rights or environmental movement –, or a disciplinary field, which leans more closely to academia. This does not mean, however, that transitional justice has no characteristics similar to those of a movement or a disciplinary field. Naturally, the concept and network of transitional justice are in reality often inseparable, but I differentiate here for the sake of analytical clarity. The chapter concludes by sketching the proliferation and expansion of the concept and network of transitional justice, resulting in a wide range of critical and alternative views in which this study is also embedded.1.1 The need to confront the past and the rise of ‘humanitarian government’ The end of the Cold War and the culmination of processes of decolonization in the global South has been typically conceived as a turning point for the intensified preoccupation with the past and the need to confront it in order to build a democratic future. The breakthrough of human rights discourse in Western politics – from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and 55I Transitional Justicethe Genocide Convention in 1948, over the anti-Vietnam war movement in 1964 and the foundation of Helsinki Watch (the precursor of Human Rights Watch, HRW12) in 1978 – significantly changed our relationship with the past.13 Historian John Torpey has used the metaphor of an ‘avalanche of history’ to talk about a shift in the temporal horizon of politics from future- to past-oriented at the end of the 20th century. The optimistic belief in progress that characterized the foregoing centuries was overshadowed by experiences of economic crisis, war and genocide.14 In The Empire of Trauma, Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman likewise identify a change in how societies relate to their violent pasts that marked the last decades of the 20th century. According to the authors, this “new relationship to time and memory, to mourning and obligations, to misfortune and the misfortunate” is characterized by a shift in focus from the heroic histories of the victors to the tragic histories of the victims.15 Fassin coins the term ‘humanitarian government’ to describe the use of moral sentiments – defined as “the emotions that direct our attention to the suffering of others and make us want to remedy them” – in contemporary politics.16 ‘Humanity’ hereby refers both to the concept of universality of all human beings considered as equal, as to the underlying ‘humane’ sentiments of empathy and compassion as motives for action. The 12  Helsinki Watch was founded in 1978, Americas Watch in 1981. In 1988, Human Rights Watch was founded as the umbrella of ‘the watch committees’, including also Asia Watch (1985), Africa Watch (1988), and Middle East Watch (1989). See: https://www.hrw.org/our-history, consulted 14.03.2018. The Ford Foundation inverted 6 million dollars in the foundation and operationalization of HRW. See: Rowen, 27. 13  Samuel Moyn, Human Rights and the Uses of History (New York: Verso Books, 2014), 72.14  Torpey, “An Avalanche of History: The ‘Collapse of the Future’ and the Rise of Reparation Politics.,” 28. 15  Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman, The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry Into the Condition of Victimhood (Princeton University Press, 2009), 275. 16  Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, 1. 56I Transitional Justiceterm ‘government’ is used in a broad sense, meaning the set of interventions adopted by various institutional bodies (ranging from local to international administrations) that “manage, regulate, and support the existence of human beings.”17 According to Fassin, these moral sentiments first appeared in the eighteenth century, when abolitionist movements organized themselves in Britain, France and the United States. The culmination point of this development came in the last two decades of the 20th century, with the emergence of humanitarian organizations providing assistance to vulnerable societal groups which they deemed vulnerable (such as the homeless, the poor, refugees, immigrants, etc).18 It is not the nature of conflict and oppression that has radically changed, thus Fassin, but rather the way in which we give meaning to it. The shift which he discerns is that conflicts are increasingly being described as humanitarian crises.19 By adopting the vocabulary of moral sentiments, social scientists provide legitimation for politicians who propagate the idea and practice of humanitarian government. Although the idea of humanitarian government may have become self-evident in the eyes of many, it inhibits a fundamental paradox: on the one hand, humanitarian government acknowledges that war and conflict take a central place in politics, but at the same time it seems to strip the origins and consequences of these events from their political nature. In the vocabulary of humanitarian government “inequality is replaced by exclusion, domination is transformed into misfortune, injustice is articulated as suffering, violence is expressed in terms of trauma”.20 Fassin identifies the rise of humanitarian government as a Western phenomenon, partly because its key developments21 took place in 17  Fassin, 1.18  Fassin, 5.19  Fassin, 7.20  Fassin, 6.21  Fassin chronologically lists the international key developments that he identifies on a timeline at the end of the book (Humanitarian Reason, 259-262), starting with the International Committee of the Red Cross Nobel Peace Prize in 1944 and ending with the earthquake in Haiti and floods in Pakistan in 2010.57I Transitional JusticeEurope and the United States, but also because of its close link to Christian ideas such as the sacralization of life, and the valorization of suffering as a precondition for redemption.22 Notwithstanding the process of secularization in Western democracies, religious expression is thus still present in humanitarian government. What is more, since humanitarian government recognizes life as the highest of all values, it is perceived by some as a “form of political theology”.23 Similarly, Robert Meister speaks of human rights as a “global secular religion” that developed at the end of the Cold War.24 The sacredness of human life as one of the core values of human rights discourse25 has, according to Meister, led to a predominance of ethics over politics, hereby providing the logic for a kind of human rights interventionism that paradoxically supports war in order to secure peace.26 Paige Arthur points to the self-criticism of social movements after failed experiments and deceptions in, among other countries, the Soviet Union and Cuba, leading to a global decline of the radical Left and a turn from a political ideology based on class warfare towards the moral framework of human rights in the 1970s.27 As a change occurred from silence to speaking out about past injustices and demanding recognition for harm suffered in the public sphere, thus Torpey, “the narrative structure of emancipation appears to have shifted”.28 Or, as stated by Samuel Moyn, it is at 22  Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, 248.  Notwithstanding the link with Christianity, Fassin recognizes the existence of traditions of compassion and charity in other religions such as Islam or Buddhism. 23  Fassin, 249 and 251. 24  Robert Meister, “Human Rights and the Politics of Victimhood,” Ethics & International Affairs 16, no. 2 (2002): 91. 25  Meister understands human rights discourse as “the mainstream version of human rights advocacy”. Meister, 92.26  Robert Meister, After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 41. 27  Arthur, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice,”339. 28  Torpey, “An Avalanche of History: The ‘Collapse of the Future’ and the Rise of 58I Transitional Justicethispoint in history that “ ‘ideology’ died and the phrase ‘human rights’ entered common parlance.”29It is the context of this historical shift in thinking that the concept of transitional justice emerged as a means to transform a war-torn community into a free and egalitarian society with equal opportunities for all.30 Transitional justice thus has clear roots in Western liberal legality and is closely related to human rights discourse and practice.31 Meister points out how the concern with the responsibility of perpetrators of human rights violations lies at the heart of the project of liberal human rights discourse.32 The idea of punishment and accountability was indeed central to the human rights movement from the very beginning.33 The human rights movement’s focus on international criminal law incited heated discussions between HRW and the ICTJ at the time of its foundation in 2001. The ICTJ was believed to promote a model of justice that did not prioritize punishment and – keeping in mind the experience of the South-African Truth and Reconciliation Commission – even took a flexible stance towards amnesty.34 According to José Zalaquett, a Chilean human rights lawyer who was part of the transitional justice network since its earliest days, the big change for the significance of the human rights movement in the context of political transitions involved a shift in temporality. The former concern with present violations moved to a focus on dealing with past abuses in hindsight and preventing recurrence in Reparation Politics,” 28. 29  Moyn, Human Rights and the Uses of History, 83. 30  Kora Andrieu, “Political Liberalism after Mass Violence: John Rawls and a ‘Theory’ of Transitional Justice,” Transitional Justice Theories, 2015, 86. 31  Jamie Rowen, Searching for Truth in the Transitional Justice Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2017), 160.32  Meister, “Human Rights and the Politics of Victimhood,” 107. 33  Aryeh Neier, The International Human Rights Movement: A History, Reprint edition (Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013), 258.34  Rowen, Searching for Truth in the Transitional Justice Movement, 44. 59I Transitional Justicethe future.35 Yet, as was explained by HRW staff during interviews with Jamie Rowen in 2009, the goals and strategies of the human rights movement and of the transitional justice network remain very similar – even though both groups often use a different vocabulary to articulate them.36 In his book The International Human Rights Movement: A History, co-founder of HRW Aryeh Neier regards the ICTJ as the most recent significant player in the arena of the worldwide human rights movement. 37 In its first annual report 2001-2002, then-president of the ICTJ Alex Boraine refers to “the development of a human rights culture” as one of the principal goals of transitional justice.38 Indeed, despite initial skepticism among human rights scholars and activists, the concept of transitional justice quickly gained ground.39 The newly emerging network of transitional justice scholars and practitioners soon started to influence existing disciplinary fields, such as conflict resolution and peacebuilding. More generally, the vocabulary of transitional justice gradually became predominant in issues related to dealing with the past as more and more human rights organizations started framing their work in these terms.401.2 A genesis of international transitional justiceA concept as broad and malleable as transitional justice did not, however, arise all of a sudden. As pointed out by Thomas Carothers, the democratic acceleration in Southern and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and some parts of Asia and Africa during the last 35  José Zalaquett, cited in: Arthur, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice,” 336. 36  Rowen, Searching for Truth in the Transitional Justice Movement, 44. 37  Neier, The International Human Rights Movement, 242.”38  International Center for Transitional Justice, “Annual Report 2001-2002,” 2002, 3. 39  Neier,242.International Center for Transitional Justice, 3.40  Rowen, 43. 60I Transitional Justicedecades of the 20th century was applauded by the democracy-promotion community in the United States, which he defines as “an active array of governmental, quasi-governmental, and nongovernmental organizations”. According to Carothers, “this new democracy-promotion community had a pressing need for an analytic framework to conceptualize and respond to the ongoing political events”.41 In this light, several initiatives and processes can be identified that contributed directly to the birth of the term transitional justice. A research project on transitions was set up at the Woodrow Wilson center for scholars by, among others, the Argentine political scientist Guillermo O’Donnell and the American political scientist Philippe Schmitter in 1978, resulting in the publication of the four-part series Transitions from Authoritarian Rule in 1986.42 The normative assumption underpinning this project was that the installation of democracy should be the end goal of political transitions, which also was the core idea of the newly emerging academic field of ‘transitology’.43 The transitions project attached importance to political choices made by elites rather than to structural socio-economic factors as conditions for democracy.44 Paige Arthur points to the Aspen Institute conference in 1988 (cfr. infra) as the place where important conceptual underpinnings took shape, while Ruti Teitel describes how she coined the term during a consultancy on newly democratized societies in 1991.45 Guillaume Mouralis, on his turn, points to the inaugural meeting of the Project 41  Thomas Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” Journal of Democracy, 2002, 6.42  Guillermo A O’Donnell, Philippe C Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). 43  Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” 6.44  Arthur, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice,”346. 45  Rowen, Searching for Truth in the Transitional Justice Movement, 25. Ruti Teitel, “Editorial Note-Transitional Justice Globalized,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2, no. 1 (March 1, 2008): 1–4. 61I Transitional Justiceon Justice in Times of Transition (PJTT) in Salzburg (cfr. infra) in 1992 as the catalyst for transitional justice.46 The 1994 ‘Dealing with the Past’ conference in South-Africa organized by the Institute for Democracy and the PJTT, which contributed to the creation of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission inspired on the model of Argentina and Chile, also was an important foundational moment for the transitional justice network.47  Although there was a difference in the countries represented at the meetings in Aspen, Salzburg and Somerset West, a number of participants attended two of the three meetings and some influential key figures can be identified.48 Early Latin American Truth Commissions The catalysts for all of these intellectual efforts were, in the first place, the events that had been taking place in Latin America during the last phase of the Cold War. In that period, political change was on hand for the military dictatorships supported by the United States in, most notably, Chile and Argentina, but also Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Guatemala and El Salvador. Already before the phrase transitional justice was born, efforts were made to set up truth commissions in order to ‘reveal the secrets’ which these regimes had been hiding successfully for decades.49 Putting human 46  Guillaume Mouralis, “The Invention of ‘Transitional Justice’ in the 1990s,” in Dealing with Wars and Dictatorships (T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague, 2014), 83–100.47  Arthur, 325. 48  Alice Henkin (Aspen Institute), Jaime Malamud-Goti (University of Buenos Aires), Juan Méndez (Americas Watch), Adam Michnik (Member of the Polish Parliament), Aryeh Neier (HRW), Diane Orentlicher (Columbia University), Andras Sajo (advisor of Hungarian president Arpad Gönz), and José Zalaquett (Chilean human rights lawyer) attended two of the three meetings; Lawrence Weschler, journalist of The New Yorker, attended all three meetings. See: Arthur, 364.49  For a detailed account of the role of truth commissions in transitional justice, and the application of truth-telling in post-conflict settings all over the world, 62I Transitional Justicerights high on its agenda since 1981, the Ford Foundation started financing these efforts, particularly in Argentina, where president Raúl Alfonsín replaced General Reynaldo Bignone in 1983. This led to the creation of the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) that investigated the disappearance of tens of thousands of political prisoners during the regime of the military junta. 50 The report of the commission, with the telling title Nunca Más51, was published in 1984 and became a bestseller of which more than 300 000 copies were sold.52 The Madres, mothers of the disappeared who demanded information about the whereabouts of their sons while holding their pictures and walking around the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, became a worldwide icon of activism against enforced disappearance. Directly inspired by the Argentinean transition with the CONADEP and the trials against the junta commanders, the Chilean president Patricio Aylwin, who had taken over from General Augusto Pinochet in 1985 after seventeen years of dictatorial rule, created the National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation in 1990.53 The Chapultepec peace agreements brokered by the UN, which ended the civil war between the army and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front in El Salvador in 1991, provided for the creation of the Commission on the Truth in order “to contribute to the reconciliation of Salvadorian society”.54see: Priscilla Hayner, “Fifteen Truth Commissions--1974 to 1994,” Human Rights Quarterly 4, no. 16 (1994): 597–655 and Priscilla B Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions (New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2011). 50  Rowen, Searching for Truth in the Transitional Justice Movement, 27. 51  Never again52  Antonius C.G.M Robben, “Testimonies, Truths, and Transitions of Justice in Argentina and Chile,” in Transitional Justice : Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence, 2010, 191. 53  Robben, 191.54  UN General Assembly Security Council, The Situation in Central America: Threats to international peace and security and peace initiatives, 30.01.1992, 63I Transitional JusticeThe Aspen Institute conferenceThe 1988 Aspen Institute55 conference in particular was a direct response to the developments in the human rights movement since the start of the transition in Argentina in 1983: Alice Henkin took the initiative for the meeting after hearing a talk of Julio Raffo of the Argentine human rights organization Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS).56 Henkin, who was the director of the Justice and Society Program at that same institute, received funds from the Ford Foundation in order to organize the event.57 Argentina was represented by Carlos Nino and Jaime Malamud-Goti, the principal advisors of president Raúl Alfonsín, and José Zalaquett shared the Chilean experience. The rest of the participants of the conference were mostly US-based academics and activists from South Africa, Brazil, Uruguay, Korea, Guatemala, Uganda and Haiti, among whom the Africanist Mahmood Mamdani, philosopher Thomas Nagel, law scholar Diane Orentlicher, Juan Méndez of Americas Watch and Aryeh Neier of HRW.58 According to Henkin, the aim of the conference was “[…] to discuss the moral, political and jurisprudential issues that arise when a government that has engaged in gross violations of human rights is succeeded by a regime more inclined to respect those rights.”59 In the discussions on pardons versus accountability, Arthur describes that there were some disagreements between, on the one hand, Zalaquett and Malamud-Goti who pointed to the importance of the political context in ht tps://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/f i les/SV_920116_ChapultepecAgreement.pdf, consulted 19.03.2018.55  The Aspen Institute is a “nonpartisan forum for values-based leadership and the exchange of ideas”, founded by Chicago businessman Walter Paepcke in 1949. https://www.aspeninstitute.org/about/heritage/, consulted 14.03.2018.56  Arthur, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice,”349. 57  Arthur, 322.58  Arthur, 350.59  Henkin cited in: Arthur, 352.64I Transitional Justicedeveloping justice policies, and, on the other hand, Neier and Méndez who stated that political concerns should in no way limit justice.60 As already mentioned in 3.1, this would be a recurring discussion between Neier’s HRW and the ICTJ, and it probably reflects the core of what distinguished transitional justice from the already existing human rights movement, namely pursuing justice and reconciliation not only to right the wrongs for individual victims, but in function of democracy building.The Salzburg meetingThe inaugural meeting of the PJTT took place in Salzburg in 1992, with, among others, George Soros (philanthropist and founder of the Open Society Institute), Neil Kritz (United States Institute of Peace, USIP), Ruti Teitel (law professor at New York University) and the principal initiators Timothy Phillips and Wendy Luers (co-founders of the PJTT).61 Other than the Aspen Institute Conference, which was a direct response to the Latin American experience, the Salzburg meeting was centered around the transitions taking place in countries of the former Soviet Union. More specifically, the aim was to establish connections between leaders from Central and Eastern European and Latin American countries dealing with political transitions and “to provide perspective, guidance and direction to the decision-makers currently grappling with the grave and complicated issues connected with transitional justice”. To 60  Arthur, 353.61  Tim Phillips, “The Project on Justice in Times of Transition,” in The New Humanitarians: Inspiration, Innovations, and Blueprints for Visionaries, vol. 3, The New Humanitarians: Inspiration, Innovations, and Blueprints for Visionaries (Praeger, 2009), 8. The meeting received financial support from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros’ Open Society Fund, the Rockefeller Family & Associates and the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Charter 77 Foundation - a New York based nonprofit founded by Wendy Luers that was dedicated to building democracy in Czechoslovakia and is now known as The Foundation for a Civil Society.  65I Transitional Justicedo so, the invited political leaders were joined by social scientists, legal scholars, journalists and human rights activists from Western Europe and the United States.62 The representation of the various geographical groups was remarkably unbalanced, as 42 Westerners (of whom 30 were US-based), 34 Eastern and Central Europeans and only eight Latin Americans participated in the meeting.63 Still, one of the principal reasons behind the organization of this meeting, thus Timothy Phillips, was the belief that the new leaders of the post-communist states could learn from the transitional experiences of their Latin American counterparts.64 Indeed, despite the numerical underrepresentation of Latin American countries, their presence was influential. The report of the meeting mentions that “the Europeans in particular learned some important lessons from the Latin American experience with transitional justice.”65 The idea of inciting a learning process – the so-called ‘methodology of shared experience’ – was based on the intuitive universalist belief that “on a biological, emotional and psychological level, humans have many of the same response mechanisms to the formative experiences of their lives”. Phillips and Luers were convinced that, despite cultural differences, “how people respond to the terrifying, humiliating and dehumanizing experience of life under dictatorship 62  Mary Albon, “Project on Justice in Times of Transition. Inaugural Meeting, Salzburg, Austria, March 7-10, 1992” (Project on Justice in Times of Transition, 1992), 1. 63  Beyond Conflict, “Beyond Conflict – Justice in Times of Transition,” accessed March 7, 2018, http://www.beyondconflictint.org/initiatives/geographic-programming/eastern-europebalkans-focused-programs/justice-in-times-of-transition/. The representatives for Latin America were Raul Alcondo, Raúl Alfonsín, Jaime Malamud-Goti (Argentina); Claudio Grossman, Roberto Garreton Merrino (Chile); Francisco Diaz Rodríguez, Leonel Gomez (El Salvador), Rafael Michelin (Uruguay), most of them being (former) government officials.  64  Phillips, “The Project on Justice in Times of Transition,” 8. 65  Albon, “Project on Justice in Times of Transition. Inaugural Meeting, Salzburg, Austria, March 7-10, 1992,” 18.  66I Transitional Justiceor during civil war is fundamentally the same around the world”.66 In addition to this belief in a psychologically universal humankind, the second principle underpinning the methodology of the Salzburg meeting, and of the following meetings of the PJTT, was the conviction that, even in war-torn societies, everyone can change their world view and leaders will eventually understand the benefit of making compromises, seeing this as a capacity of strength rather than as a weakness or humiliation.67The fundamental topic of the Salzburg meeting was the question of responsibility “which emerging democracies must address in order to allow society to move forward”. Both acknowledgment (the issue of remembrance) and accountability (the issue of prosecution) were identified as the two key issues regarding this central question.68 In the discussion on acknowledgement, the participants came to the conclusion that telling the truth about the past brings about justice for the victims and restores their dignity. They also concluded that truth facilitates national reconciliation and prevents further violations from occurring. Thus their adage: “memory is the ultimate form of justice”.69 The meeting resulted in the institutionalization of the PJTT and the foundation of a separate program within the Charter 77 Foundation-New York consisting of an international advisory board of which, among others, Nelson Mandela, Václav Havel, Árpád Göncz, Mikhail Gorbachev, Óscar Arias and Jose Zalaquett 66  Phillips, “The Project on Justice in Times of Transition,” 9. For a more thorough analysis of the shared experience methodology, see Phillips and Taffel, The Project on Justice in Times of Transition’s “Shared Experience Methodology” of Conflict Resolution, 2013. In this publication, Phillips and Taffel embed their methodology in the field of conflict resolution and the already existing methodologies, such as the human needs approach and the interest based approach, and they present some evidence from neuroscience for the effectivity of the shared experience methodology.  67  Phillips, 15.68  Albon, “Project on Justice in Times of Transition. Inaugural Meeting, Salzburg, Austria, March 7-10, 1992,” 1.  69  Albon, 3.67I Transitional Justiceformed part.70 The PJTT started organizing meetings and programs in countries all over the world, such as El Salvador71, South Africa72, Nicaragua73, Northern Ireland74, Hungary75 and Colombia76.77 Neil Kritz from the USIP edited a three-volume series on transitional justice in 1995, which was directly inspired by the meeting and boosted the proliferation of the concept.78 1.3 Between advocacy, policy and academy: blurred linesAs the above descriptions of the Aspen Institute Conference and the Salzburg meeting make clear, the rise of the concept of transitional justice was shaped by a mix of scholarship, policy making and advocacy. According to Rowen, the distinct actors involved in transitional justice – institutions, practitioners and scholars – do not really consider themselves as part of a movement, contrary to human rights activists. This has to do as much with the fact that the concept and the network are still young and in search of a well-established identity, thus Rowen, as well as with the intrinsic malleability of transitional justice.79 In the same way, Arthur stresses that the term 70  Phillips, “The Project on Justice in Times of Transition,” 11. 71  ‘Reconciliation in Times of Transition’, 1993.72  ‘Dealing with the Past’, 1994.73  ‘Reflections on Transition’, 1994.74  ‘Reconciliation and Community’, 1995.75  ‘Conference on Missing Persons for Family Members in the Former Yugoslavia’, 1997.76  ‘Negotiating from Conflict to Peace’, 2007.77  Phillips, “The Project on Justice in Times of Transition,” 18. 78  Rowen, Searching for Truth in the Transitional Justice Movement, 26. Neil J Kritz, Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995). The series includes contributions from, among others, Luc Huyse, Raúl Alfonsín, Guillermo O’Donnell, Ruti Teitel, José Zalaquett, Jaime Malamud-Goti, Samuel Huntington, Priscilla Hayner and Diane Orentlicher.    79  Rowen, 50. 68I Transitional Justicetransitional justice has no fixed meaning and is constantly evolving due to its rapid proliferation and expansion around the globe. She argues nonetheless that there is an internal coherence based on common concepts, distinctive practical aims and shared beliefs.80 The network is loosely tied together by the shared commitment to find ways of dealing with the legacies of a violent past.81 Understanding the interplay between institutions, practitioners and academics, and the way in which these move across the blurred lines of policy, advocacy and academy, is therefore crucial to apprehend the way in which transitional justice processes take shape, generate impact and circulate between the local, national and international level. Both on-the-ground practitioners at the grassroots and civil society level, as well as international institutions play their part in influencing national government policies on transitional justice. At the same time, approaches and interests of various actors might differ according to variables such as time frames, mandates, methodology and funding. Transitional justice on the ground: grassroots and civil society practitioners On-the-ground experiences of dealing with the past in post-conflict or post-dictatorial societies form the point of departure of transitional justice. As stated above, the central scenery for the development of the concept and network of transitional justice was late Cold War Latin America, and in particular its political landslides. Actors from civil society, such as grassroots victim-organizations and human rights advocacy groups, played a key-role in instigating these transitions by pressuring national governments and connecting with international institutions. A substantive part of the transitional justice practitioners (i.e. actors that are involved 80  Arthur, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice,”359. 81  J.R. Quinn, “The Development of Transitional Justice,” in Research Handbook on Transitional Justice (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017), 33. 69I Transitional Justicein the practice of transitional justice) are thus situated at the local and national level of grassroots movements and civil society NGOs. Especially in societies where governments and (democratic) state institutions are weak or associated with human rights violations, bottom-up processes of mobilization, advocacy and monitoring can be crucial in defining and evaluating the course of transitional justice measures.82 Think, for example, of the Argentinean Madres, the Hijos por la Identidad y la Justica contra el Olvido y el Silencio (H.I.J.O.S.) in Argentina and Guatemala83, the women of ANFASEP in Ayacucho84 or the Peruvian Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (APRODEH)85, to name but a few Latin American examples. The expansion of the concept of transitional justice – from a narrow focus on accountability and the rule of law to a broader engagement with, among others, peacebuilding, reconciliation, trauma and development – has encouraged the proliferation of civil society and community actors involved.86 Hugo van der Merwe and Maya 82  Kieran McEvoy and Lorna McGregor, Transitional Justice from below: Grassroots Activism and the Struggle for Change (Oxford; Portland, Or.: Hart Pub., 2008), 5. 83  Sons and daughters for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence. H.I.J.O.S Argentina was founded in 1995, its Guatemalan counterpart in 1999. H.I.J.O.S. Argentina and Guatemala are activist groups consisting of children of the disappeared who raise public-awareness on the crimes of the military, for example by public shaming. See: http://www.hijos-capital.org.ar/?option=com_content&view=article&id=19&Itemid=400 and http://hijosguate.blogspot.be/, accessed April 3, 2018. 84  National Association of Family members of the Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared of Peru. ANFASEP, Peru’s most emblematic association of victims of the civil war, was founded in 1983 by (mostly Quechua speaking) women and mothers of the disappeared in Ayacucho.85  Association for Human Rights. APRODEH was founded in 1983 by, among others, Francisco Soberón and played a leading role in providing legal support to victims, human rights advocacy and the creation of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Since 1990, APRODEH is part of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). See: http://www.aprodeh.org.pe/nosotros/historia/, accessed April 3, 2018.86  Hugo Van der Merwe and Maya Schkolne, “The Role of Local Civil Society 70I Transitional JusticeSchkolne differentiate between eight categories of civil society actors that commit themselves to implementing transitional justice: religious organizations, human rights NGOs, peacebuilding NGOs, psycho/medical NGOs, gender justice NGOs, victim organizations, social movements and coalitions (i.e. collaborative efforts of multiple NGOs).87 Development NGOs focusing on subjects such as food security and sustainable economy can also play their part, for example in the light of reparation policies. Historic socio-economic inequality and poverty, “leading to a blurring of past and present injustices and patterns of structural and physical violence”, are often identified by civil society as root causes of conflict and oppression.88 A very specific type of actor that engages with addressing the legacies of the past is the group of forensic NGOs specialized in the exhumation of mass graves and the identification of victims. This network started out in Argentina with the Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense (EAAF)89, and now has its counterparts in, among others, Peru (EPAF) Guatemala (Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala, FAFG)90, Bosnia and Herzegovina (International Commission on Missing Persons, ICMP)91 and Mexico (Equipo Mexicano de Antropología Forense, EMAF)92. Furthermore, civil society actors are important facilitators of (alternative) initiatives of truth telling, in Transitional Justice,” in Research Handbook on Transitional Justice (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017), 222. 87  Hugo Van der Merwe and Maya Schkolne, “The Role of Local Civil Society in Transitional Justice,” in Research Handbook on Transitional Justice (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017), 226.Van der Merwe and Schkolne, 226.88  Van der Merwe and Schkolne, 238. 89  Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. See: http://eaaf.typepad.com/eaaf__sp/, accessed April 4, 2018.90  Foundation of Forensic Anthropology of Guatemala. See: https://www.fafg.org/, accessed April 4, 2018.91  See: “ICMP History,” accessed September 2, 2019, https://www.icmp.int/about-us/history/.92  Mexican Forensic Anthropology Team. See: http://emaf.org.mx/, accessed April 4, 2018. 71I Transitional Justicecommemoration and memorialization that go beyond the restricted time frames and mandates of formal transitional justice processes, which “inexorably limit the type of stories told and the format through which these stories can be shared.”93 Murals, for example, are but one typical Latin American example of memorialization in the form of art. Despite its image of impartiality, especially in contrast with (often fragile or corrupt) governments, the role of civil society should be evaluated carefully. Funding streams, mostly provided by international donors such as foreign governments and (Western) institutions, play a crucial role in defining the agenda of civil society organizations. Therefore, “professional NGOs usually come with agendas that unsurprisingly match very closely international human rights frameworks and Western justice priorities.”94 As transitional justice has become the subject of huge amounts of funding worldwide, it has also become an arena in which NGOs – regardless of whether they are really specialized in transitional justice or not – try to get a piece of the pie.95 Moreover, relations between different groups of civil society are complex and interests might be opposed on some issues. For instance, there often is a gap between victim-survivors and NGOs that (claim to) represent them since it is difficult to combine real bottom-up participatory processes with a funding-driven agenda that formulates a priori goals.96 At the same time, certain groups of civil society might of course also oppose instead of support transitional justice. Think, for example, of veterans and family members of soldiers, but also of certain religious groups which believe that victims should resign to their fate and leave the past behind instead of confronting it.97 93  Van der Merwe and Schkolne, “The Role of Local Civil Society in Transitional Justice,” 239. 94  Van der Merwe and Schkolne, 239.95  Van der Merwe and Schkolne, 239.96  Van der Merwe and Schkolne, 240.97  Van der Merwe and Schkolne, 224. In Ayacucho, evangelical churches often 72I Transitional JusticeAs great amounts of money have been invested in transitional justice projects and mechanisms, the pressure from donors to evaluate impact has generated a considerable amount of research that measures the failures and successes of transitional justice initiatives.98 That said, Van der Merwe and Schkolne note that academic research on the impact and effectiveness of civil society actors in transitional justice processes is still scarce.99 Their role on the ground and their interaction with national governments and international institutions is, however, of paramount importance to transitional justice. The institutionalization of transitional justice The on-the-ground experiences with truth commissions in Latin-America and the subsequent intellectual efforts that gave rise to the concept of transitional justice, resulted in the creation of several (inter- and supra)national institutions that started undertaking and promoting transitional justice work, as well as the anchoring of transitional justice frameworks in already existing institutions. The concept of transitional justice was rapidly institutionalized in an international network of non-governmental organizations, think thanks and policy bodies throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. As stated above, the Salzburg meeting led to the institutionalization of the PJTT in 1992, which currently operates under the name Beyond Conflict. The objective of this institution is “to promote peace and reconciliation by connecting, inspiring, and empowering diverse communities and leaders.”100 Since its foundation, Beyond Conflict has been part of over 75 initiatives in more than 50 oppose exhumations of mass graves by stating that the death should be left in peace and victims should close the past. Fieldnotes, 25.06.2014, Hualla, Peru. 98  See, for example: Tricia D Olsen, Leigh A Payne, and Andrew G Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 2010). 99  Van der Merwe and Schkolne, 243.100  Beyond Conflict, “Beyond Conflict – About Us,” accessed March 23, 2018, http://www.beyondconflictint.org/about-us/. 73I Transitional Justicecountries all over the world with a broad range of approaches related to transitional justice and peace building.101 One of their most recent projects (set up in 2011) for example, examines the role of neuroscience in understanding practices of conflict resolution, reconciliation and diplomacy.102 The USIP, an independent national institution founded and funded by American Congress at the initiative of World War II veterans in 1984, played an important role in the institutionalization of transitional justice, starting with the publication of Neil Kritz’s three-volume series on transitional justice in 1995 (in the wake of the Salzburg meeting).103 USIP works on several transitional justice issues in (post-)conflict societies, such as reconciliation, democracy and governance, justice and rule of law.104 It defines transitional justice as “efforts to address a legacy of large-scale human rights abuses that cannot be fully addressed by existing judicial and non-judicial structures.”105 The USIP has published extensively on transitional justice and has issued several publications that focus on measuring impact, such as Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy, which was the result of an extensive research project carried out by Leigh Payne, Tricia Olsen and Andrew Reiter.106 The USIP also awards grants and 101  Beyond Conflict, “Beyond Conflict – Initiatives,” accessed March 23, 2018, http://www.beyondconflictint.org/initiatives/. 102  Beyond Conflict, “Beyond Conflict – Neuroscience and Social Conflict Initiative,” accessed March 23, 2018, http://www.beyondconflictint.org/neuroscience-and-social-conflict-initiatives/.103  USIP, “USIP Timeline,” United States Institute of Peace, accessed March 29, 2018, https://www.usip.org/about-us/usip-timeline. 104  USIP, “Issue Areas,” United States Institute of Peace, accessed March 29, 2018, https://www.usip.org/issue-areas. 105  USIP, “Transitional Justice,” United States Institute of Peace, accessed March 29, 2018, https://www.usip.org/glossary/transitional-justice. 106  USIP, “Transitional Justice in Balance,” United States Institute of Peace, accessed March 29, 2018, https://www.usip.org/publications/2010/06/transitional-justice-balance. For this project, they developed the Transitional Justice Database containing over 900 mechanisms (trials, truth commissions, reparations, amnesties and lustrations) used from 1970-2007. The database can be consulted at http://74I Transitional Justicefellowships to NGOs, research institutions and scholars to instigate transitional justice research and practice.107 In 2001, the International Center for Transitional Justice was founded as a non-governmental organization by Priscilla Hayner, expert on truth commissions, and Alex Boraine, deputy chair of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with the financial support of the Ford Foundation.108 The Latin-American experiences once again served as a model, as the foundation of the ICTJ was the result of a meeting on ‘historical memories’ in Chile in 1999, which in turn was a continuation of a project launched by the Ford Foundation on ‘historical memory’ in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay in 1996-1997.109 At the moment when the plan was conceived to create an international center for transitional justice as a means of streamlining the Ford Foundation’s funding flow, some disagreements between the key figures of the emerging field arose. These differing opinions were expressed during a second meeting organized in April 2000. While the future leaders of the ICTJ, including Boraine and Paul Van Zyl, were excited about the idea of creating an international hub of expertise, Neil Kritz of the USIP and Graeme Simpson of the South African Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) – another grantee of the Ford Foundation, erected in 1989 – were concerned about reinforcing existing power dynamics by focusing on a US-based elite and neglecting the already existing local and regional efforts. One of www.tjdbproject.com/, and there is also a bibliography available at https://sites.google.com/site/transitionaljusticedatabase/. Another publication of the USIP on impact is: Hugo Van der Merwe, Victoria Baxter, and Audrey R Chapman, Assessing the Impact of Transitional Justice: Challenges for Empirical Research (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2008). 107  USIP, “Grants & Fellowships,” United States Institute of Peace, accessed March 29, 2018, https://www.usip.org/grants-fellowships. 108  Sara Dezalay, “The Role of International NGOs in the Emergence of Transitional Justice: A Case Study of the International Center for Transitional Justice,” in Research Handbook on Transitional Justice, 203. 109  Dezalay, 210. 75I Transitional Justicethe core incentives for the Ford Foundation to support the creation of the ICTJ was indeed to foster the emergence of a network of elites – acquainted with US know-how and values – across transitional societies around the globe.110 Also, while the discussion was mostly centered around truth and accountability, Kritz advocated for the inclusion of reintegration and development issues in transitional justice.111 Discussions on local vs. global approaches and the preponderance of retributive vs. social and distributive justice, that lie at the root of the expansion of the field (cfr. infra 3.4), were thus present from the outset.The ICTJ, which rapidly became the leading NGO in the field, has its headquarters in New York but works with regional offices in Abidjan, Beirut, Bogotá, Brussels, Goma, The Hague, Kampala, Kathmandu, Nairobi and Tunis and has intervened in more than 30 countries all over the world.112 Its work consists of providing assistance “in countries that have endured massive human rights abuses under repression and in conflict” to “ensure redress for victims and to help prevent atrocities from happening again”.113 The six ‘transitional justice issues’ around which its work – from supporting activist victims groups to policy advisement, training for local organizations and research – is centered, are criminal justice, reparations, truth and memory, institutional reform, children and youth, and gender justice.114 Similar to the methodology of 110  Dezalay, “The Role of International NGOs in the Emergence of Transitional Justice: A Case Study of the International Center for Transitional Justice,” 206. Dezalay also describes how, in the same line, the South-African Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) and the Argentinean Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) were founded with a grant of the Ford Foundation in respectively 1978 and 1981.111  Rowen, Searching for Truth in the Transitional Justice Movement, 35. 112  ICTJ, “Contact,” International Center for Transitional Justice, accessed March 26, 2018, https://www.ictj.org/about/contact. 113  ICTJ, “About the International Center for Transitional Justice,” International Center for Transitional Justice, February 15, 2011, https://www.ictj.org/about. 114  ICTJ, “Our Work,” International Center for Transitional Justice, February 15, 76I Transitional Justiceshared experience of the PJTT described above, the approach of the ICTJ is based on exchanging experiences from various post-conflict settings. While recognizing that “no two transitional justice projects are the same”, it is at the same time believed that “each new endeavor yields a fresh set of lessons and best practices”.115 These best practices are stored in what is called the transitional justice toolkit that provides responses to massive human rights abuses in the form of prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations, institutional reform and reconciliation initiatives.116 Despite the development of this toolkit, which seems to imply the existence of a set of ready-made solutions, the ICTJ states in its first annual report 2001-2002 as part of its core principles that “the Center will undertake each assignment with a focused assessment of local conditions and relevant international circumstances, rather than approaching its work with prior blueprints or rigid guidelines that pre-determine options.”117 In the course of the years, the idea that addressing the injustices of the past is a necessary precondition for building more just and peaceful societies in the present was also picked up by the United Nations (UN).118 The UN working group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances was already addressing important challenges in (pre-)transitional societies since the 1980s, by undertaking country visits to investigate disappearances in Latin American countries such as Chile, Argentina, Brasil, Guatemala, Peru, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Mexico, Uruguay and El Salvador.119 In 2004, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan issued a report for the UN 2011, https://www.ictj.org/our-work. 115  International Center for Transitional Justice, “Annual Report 2001-2002,” 5.116  International Center for Transitional Justice, “Annual Report 2001-2002,” 9. 117  International Center for Transitional Justice, 33.118  Alison Davidian and Emily Kenney, “The United Nations and Transitional Justice,” in Research Handbook on Transitional Justice, 201. 119  United Nations, “OHCHR | Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances,” accessed March 28, 2018, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Disappearances/Pages/DisappearancesIndex.aspx. 77I Transitional JusticeSecurity Council on The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies in which he highlights the importance of addressing large-scale past abuses in order to (re-)establish the rule of law, thereby stressing the need to articulate “a common language of justice” among the international community. UN interventions should, thus Annan, at all times be based on the “universally applicable standards” formulated by international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law and international refugee law. Despite this focus on international norms and standards, he also stated that it is the role of the UN to “eschew one-size-fits-all formulas and the importation of foreign models” and reinforce national structures and assist domestic processes instead.120 Since the 2004 report, transitional justice has become an essential component of the UN’s peacebuilding missions and post-conflict agenda. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is the coordinating entity for transitional justice within the UN, although it works closely with other entities such as the UN Development Program (UNDP), UN Women and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).121 The international standards underpinning the UN’s transitional justice work were further elaborated in guidelines such as the Updated Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights through Action to Combat Impunity and the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law in 2005.122 The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance was adopted in 2006 and set out the right to truth. This right would be further established with a resolution 120  United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, “The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies,” 2001, 4, http://www.unrol.org/doc.aspx?d=3096. 121  Davidian and Kenney, “The United Nations and Transitional Justice,” 186, 190. 122  Davidian and Kenney, 189.78I Transitional Justiceadopted by the Human Rights Council in 2009 that “recognizes the importance of respecting and ensuring the right to the truth so as to contribute to ending impunity and to promote and protect human rights.”123Most importantly, a guidance note on transitional justice containing ten guiding principles was issued by the UN in 2010. In this note, transitional justice is defined as “the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society’s attempt to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation.” In addition to the centrality of victims (principle six) and special attention for women’s and children’s rights (principle four and five), the guidance note puts emphasis on adopting “an approach that strives to take account of the root causes of conflict or repressive rule and addresses the related violations of all rights”; on possible mutual reinforcements between transitional justice and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR); and on the inclusion of social, economic and cultural rights.124 A plea for the latter was already made by then United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour in 2006.125 Pablo de Greiff, research director of the ICTJ from 2001 to 2014, was appointed as UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence in 2011.126  The ‘toolkit’ offered by the UN is similar to that of the ICTJ as it entails prosecutions, truth-telling, reparations, institutional 123  UN, A/RES/61/177, 12 January 2007 and UN, A/HRC/RES/12/12, 12 October 2009. 124  United Nations, “Guidance Note of the Secretary-General. United Nations Approach to TJ,” 2010, 2, http://www.unrol.org/files/TJ_Guidance_Note_March_2010FINAL.pdf.  125  Louise Arbour, “Economic and Social Justice for Societies in Transition,” New York University Journal of International Law & Politics 40, no. 1 (2007): 1. 126  United Nations, “OHCHR | SR on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence,” accessed March 28, 2018, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/TruthJusticeReparation/Pages/Index.aspx. 79I Transitional Justicereform and national consultations.127 The UN has promoted several important transitional justice mechanisms, including (hybrid128) international criminal courts and tribunals such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY, 1993-2017)129, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR, 1994-2015)130, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC, 2001)131 and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL, 2002-2013)132. The European Union (EU) adopted a policy framework in support of transitional justice as part of the EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy 2015-2019, which is closely related to the UN’s framework. In its framework, the EU states that there is “no ‘one-size-fit-for-all’ approach” and engages to stimulate “a context specific combination of measures promoting truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence, i.e. ensuring transitional justice”. The framework emphasizes the importance of a comprehensive approach that combines several mechanisms. The EU applies a rights-based approach to transitional justice, which means that it “integrates the achievement and fulfilment of human rights in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all development policies and programs”, the first principle being the legality, universality and indivisibility of human rights. It also recognizes the importance of “identifying and dealing with root 127  United Nations, “Guidance Note of the Secretary-General. United Nations Approach to Transitional Justice,” 9. 128  A hybrid court is an ‘internationalized’ court consisting of a mix of domestic and international instruments.129  ICTY, “International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia | United Nations,” accessed March 29, 2018, http://www.icty.org/. 130  UN, “The ICTR in Brief | United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda,” accessed March 29, 2018, http://unictr.unmict.org/en/tribunal. 131  ECCC, “About ECCC,” accessed March 29, 2018, https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/about-eccc. 132  RSCL, “The Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Residual Special Court for Sierra Leone,” accessed March 29, 2018, http://www.rscsl.org/. 80I Transitional Justicecauses of conflict and violence that may reside in discrimination, marginalization or violation of social, economic and cultural rights.” The EU has an informal network of experts on transitional justice that exchanges information and best practices with, among others, the UN OHCHR and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence. 133 Like the UN, the EU strongly supports the International Criminal Court (ICC), which came into being in 2002 as part of the implementation of the Rome Statute.134In Latin-America, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS) played a key-role in the development of transitional justice.135 By setting precedents with rulings on enforced disappearances and amnesty laws, the Inter-American Court reinforced survivors’ and human rights organizations’ demands for domestic investigations.136 Peru hereby played an exemplary role with the cases Barrios Altos vs. Peru (2001) and La Cantuta vs. Peru (2006) that ruled against Fujimori’s amnesty law. Although the Inter-American Court  encourages the work of truth commissions, it pressures governments to pursue truth through judicial proceedings.137 The inter-American model of human rights litigation and the continent’s “groundbreaking shift 133  EU, “The EU’s Policy Framework on Support to Transitional Justice,” 2015. 134  ICC, “About,” accessed March 29, 2018, https://www.icc-cpi.int/about. 135  The IACHR (based in Washington DC) and the Court (based in San José, Costa Rica) were founded in, respectively, 1959 and 1978 by the OAS. OAS, “OAS - Organization of American States: Democracy for Peace, Security, and Development,” accessed April 2, 2018, http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/mandate/what.asp.Security.136  Jasmina Brankovic and Naomi Roht-Arriaza, “African Union Transitional Justice Policy Framework in Practice: Implementing Accountability Measures” (Cape Town: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 2013), 2. 137  Carolina de Campos Melo, “Transitional Justice in South America: The Role of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights,” Revista Cejil: Debates Sobre Derechos Humanos Y El Sistema Interamericano IV, no. 5 (2009): 88.  81I Transitional Justicetowards accountability” in the 1990s and 2000s directly inspired the African Union Transitional Justice Policy Framework, which was designed in collaboration with the CSVR in 2012.138 Scholarly engagement with transitional justiceDespite the fact that the foundational academic texts on transitional justice mostly stem from the field of law (‘justice’) (Orentlicher 1991, Hayner 1994, Kritz 1995, Minow 1998, Teitel 2002) and political science (‘transition’) (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986, Elster 2004), the proliferation of the concept and network during the early 2000s has led to the involvement of scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists and historians engage in academic research on the theory and practice of transitional justice.139 The remarkable involvement of academics in transitional justice – a result of the close link between international institutions such as the USIP and the ICTJ and academia – has contributed significantly to the concept’s theorization and to its legitimation as the dominant paradigm for dealing with the past in (post-)conflict societies.140 At the same time, scholarly engagement with transitional justice is characterized by competing ideas on both the goals of transitional justice and the understanding of the notions ‘transition’ and ‘justice’.141 138  Brankovic and Roht-Arriaza, “African Union Transitional Justice Policy Framework in Practice: Implementing Accountability Measures.”  The policy framework states to be “anchored on African conceptions of justice” and wants to consolidate “Africa’s contribution to the field of transitional justice and international law by incorporating African dispute resolution and reconciliation approaches.” African Union, “African Union Transitional Justice Framework (ATJF),” 2012, 6, https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/bcdc97/pdf/. 139  Christine Bell, “Transitional Justice, Interdisciplinarity and the State of the ‘Field’ or ‘Non-Field,’” International Journal of Transitional Justice 3, no. 1 (March 1, 2009): 9.140  Mouralis, “The Invention of ‘Transitional Justice’ in the 1990s,” 89. 141  Bell, “Transitional Justice, Interdisciplinarity and the State of the ‘Field’ or ‘Non-Field,’” 26.82I Transitional JusticeAccording to Hinton, anthropologists only hesitantly found a way to the study of transitional justice because of the normative associations that come with it. He thus states that “the very term ‘transitional justice’ suggests a hierarchy and teleology, with an implicitly more ‘backward’ or ‘barbaric’ society using the tools of liberalism to ‘develop’ into a more modern, ‘civilized’, liberal, democratic state.”142 This perspective explains the close involvement of anthropologists in critical transitional justice studies, a strand of scholarship that questions the end goals of transitional justice and points to the importance of including the complexities of local realities. Arthur on her turn points to the absence of historians in the forty-two texts of Kritz’ 1995 three-part volume – an absence that is remarkable given the centrality of the past in transitional justice.143 Mouralis similarly notes that “for its proponents, ‘transitional justice’ has no history, neither the promoted measures to which it refers, nor the phrase or ‘concept’ itself. Thus, its theorists think in terms of (almost) national ‘cases’ which are comparable whatever their historical, geographical, or social context might be.”144 In his metahistorical approach to transitional justice, Berber Bevernage points out that historicizing discourse, however, is often used in transitional justice “in order to symbolically delimit the borders between past and present”. This, he argues, can have strong ethical implications like the denial of ongoing injustices from the past in the present (cfr. infra chapter 2).145 The variety of disciplines involved in transitional justice studies, 142  Alexander Laban Hinton, Transitional Justice Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence, 6.143  Arthur, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice,” 333. 144  Mouralis, “The Invention of ‘Transitional Justice’ in the 1990s,” 84. 145  Berber Bevernage, “Transitional Justice and Historiography: Challenges, Dilemmas and Possibilities,” Macquarie Law Journal 13 (2014), 1. The present study responds to the remarks of Arthur, Mouralis and Bevernage by engaging with the “historical complexities” of the processes of dealing with the past from an ethnographical and metahistorical perspective.  83I Transitional Justiceand the diversity of approaches and methodologies which it entails, have challenged the search for a common language to exchange knowledge and experiences. Journals such as the International Journal of Transitional Justice (IJTJ) claim to provide a forum to do so.146 Even though transitional justice is mostly considered as an (inter)disciplinary field driven by shared questions and concerns, this common language is often still missing. The main cause for this is the concept’s malleability and incredibly rapid expansion.147 Christine Bell points to the political implications of narrating transitional justice as a coherent interdisciplinary field. Talking of a field as a consistent unity, she argues, implies covering up the variety of actors – stemming from distinct contexts and in pursuit of diverse goals – and the different normative and political implications of their engagement with transitional justice. The call for interdisciplinarity, in its turn, is therefore “not a romantic and innocent call to intellectual interchange” but functions as a legitimation for transitional justice as a field.148 At the same time, it is a call to cut free from the legal roots of transitional justice as it enables a “mutual project of (de)colonization and resistance” by other disciplines.149 Moreover, Bell argues that justice, democracy, rule of law and reconciliation are essentially contested concepts. Only by 146  IJTJ, “About | International Journal of Transitional Justice | Oxford Academic,” accessed April 9, 2018, https://academic.oup.com/ijtj/pages/About. 147  For example, the Transitional Justice Review, a peer-reviewed journal on transitional justice, defines transitional justice both as a field and a discipline: “Transitional Justice Review seeks to publish high-quality, peer reviewed scholarly articles in the field of transitional justice and post-conflict reconstruction. It provides an outlet for original research and commentary arising from the emerging discipline of transitional justice.” See:  “Transitional Justice Review - Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction - Western University,” accessed April 9, 2018, http://tjcentre.uwo.ca/journals/transitional_justice_review.html. 148  Bell, “Transitional Justice, Interdisciplinarity and the State of the ‘Field’ or ‘Non-Field,’” 24. 149  Bell, 22.84I Transitional Justiceengaging in the battlefield of negotiation and compromise over what these concepts mean, instead of just applying the transitional justice toolkit, academics and practitioners can engage with the “deeper justice project”. This involves the acceptance of the incoherence rather than the coherence of transitional justice, thus Bell.150The proliferation of transitional justiceJamie Rowen states that, given the malleability of the concept, “transitional justice has become a black box into which actors can throw situations ranging from colonial violence to civil war, where the goals are everything from restorative to procedural to retributive to economic to social justice.”151 From the outset, transitional justice was indeed meant to be broad, ambiguous and ambitious, and the concept and network have expanded quickly.  According to Ruti Teitel, transitional justice has moved “from the exception to the norm to become a paradigm of rule of law” since the end of the 20th century.152 For example, in an interview with the New York Times in the wake of the #MeToo movement, the British actress Minnie Driver made a plea for using the model of truth and reconciliation to combat sexual assault. Through speaking out and being heard, there will be justice and eventually healing, she argued.153 Furthermore, truth and reconciliation commissions have been set up in Australia and Canada in order to deal with legacies of oppression and abuse. Similarly, transitional justice was being widely discussed in Colombia long before the signing of the peace agreement between the government and the FARC in 2016. In sum, the ‘mainstreaming’ 150  Bell, 27.151  Jamie Rowen, Searching for Truth in the Transitional Justice Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2017), 156. 152  Teitel calls this the third or “steady-state phase” of transitional justice. Teitel, “Transitional Justice Genealogy,” 71.153  “Minnie Driver Calls for ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ Model to Combat Sexual Assault,” The New York Times, sec. World, accessed April 10, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/world/europe/minnie-driver-metoo.html.  85I Transitional Justiceof transitional justice has brought about expansions of the concept that mostly result from critiques of either the strictly legal approach to justice, or the narrow political understanding of transition to liberal democracy. The debate on how to take into account the local specificities of various contexts when applying a framework that takes universality as a starting point is one of the most important critiques of transitional justice.154 Desmond Tutu’s plea for a South African response in which restorative justice – in the spirit of ubuntu – instead of ‘Western’ retributive justice should stand center stage, is probably the most well-known call to ‘localize’ transitional justice.155 Studies on the micro-politics that are at stake in post-conflict societies have shown that the international network of transitional justice and the local contexts in which the concept is applied are often miles apart.156 Alexander Hinton therefore proposes an ‘anthropology of transitional justice’ that takes into account the ‘messiness’ of the intersection between the international, national and local level, that pays attention to vernacular understandings of justice, and that is wary of the way certain groups and their perspectives are fore- or backgrounded by transitional justice and the interests and structures of power that drive it.157 My study is embedded in this debate and aims to respond to Hinton’s call for ‘messiness’ by emphasizing the multi-scale entanglement of ideas and practices of transitional justice rather than taking an approach either ‘from below’ or ‘from above’.The focus on accountability and civil and political rights has 154  Lieselotte Viaene and Eva Brems, “Transitional Justice and Cultural Contexts: Learning from the Universality Debate,” Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 28, no. 2 (2010): 199–224. 155  Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999). 156  See for example: Kimberly Susan Theidon, Intimate Enemies, and: Rosalind Shaw, “Memory Frictions: Localizing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 1, no. 2 ( July 1, 2007): 183–207. 157  Hinton, Transitional Justice Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence, 1–22.  86I Transitional Justicebroadened up to a conception of dealing with the past involving restorative and distributive justice, including economic, social and cultural rights. The link between transitional justice and development has become one of the pet subjects of UN special rapporteur Pablo de Greiff and Roger Duthie, current director of research of the ICTJ. It is also a main focus of the EU’s approach to transitional justice.158 Next to its original ‘toolkit’ of mechanisms – criminal justice, reparations, truth and memory, institutional reform – the ICTJ now has a gender justice and children and youth program, which demonstrates the increased concern with certain vulnerable groups in post-conflict societies.159 The broadening of the notion of accountability has also led to new perspectives on human rights violations, such as the complicity of corporations and how they should be held accountable.160 Furthermore, ‘transition’ is no longer exclusively interpreted as the change from conflict or dictatorship to democracy. It is alternatively described as a process of transformation taking place within a consolidated democracy, or in societies still in conflict or under dictatorship.161 As an answer to the question whether transitional 158  See: Roger Duthie, “Toward a Development-Sensitive Approach to Transitional Justice,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2, no. 3 (2008): 292–309 and: Pablo De Greiff, Roger Duthie, and International Center for Transitional Justice Social Science Research Council (U.S.), Transitional Justice and Development: Making Connections (New York: Social Science Research Council, 2009). For the EU’s approach to transitional justice see: EU, “The EU’s Policy Framework on Support to Transitional Justice.” 159  ICTJ, “Gender Justice - Accountability for Gender-Based Atrocities | ICTJ,” International Center for Transitional Justice, accessed April 11, 2018, https://www.ictj.org/our-work/transitional-justice-issues/gender-justice. ICTJ, “Children and Youth - Adapting Transitional Justice Tools | ICTJ,” International Center for Transitional Justice, accessed April 11, 2018, https://www.ictj.org/our-work/transitional-justice-issues/children-and-youth. 160  Sabine Michalowski, ed., Corporate Accountability in the Context of Transitional Justice (London: Routledge, 2016).161  Luke Moffett and Cheryl Lawther, Research Handbook on Transitional Justice (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017), 32. 87I Transitional Justicejustice requires a transition, the ICTJ states on its website that “[…] there can sometimes be unnecessary confusion about whether a country is in a period of ‘transition’ or not, but practically speaking it is not that complicated. The question is whether an opportunity has emerged to address massive violations, even if it is a limited opportunity.”162 At the same time, the call for including socio-economic and cultural rights is a plea for a more transformative approach to transition that takes into account patterns of violence predating the conflict and continuing in the post-conflict time, such as long-term exclusion, oppression or racism.163Transitional justice has, in sum, been criticized for its limitations and challenged to adopt a more intersectional approach (i.e. interweaving a class-, race- and gender-based analysis) “to interrogate the present dominant frameworks for the lives they ignore, the injustice they fail to see and the patriarchal and racialized power structures that remain intact and unexamined.”164 As Bell writes, transitional justice has been subject of “a dramatically compressed trajectory of fieldhood” as the normal track from establishment over acceptance to expansion and (self-)critique has taken place at an incredible speed. Indeed, the field has simultaneously been pushed to be broad and inclusive as well as to open up to critique.165 So to speak, it has been deconstructed even before it was properly established. This has led to numerous identity crises and efforts to rethink the nature and future of transitional justice. For example, Kora Andrieu has suggested to consider transitional justice not as a content provider but as a method of promoting deliberative democracy and solidarity, 162  ICTJ, “What Is Transitional Justice?,” International Center for Transitional Justice, accessed January 29, 2019, https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice.163  Paul Gready and Simon Robins, “From Transitional to Transformative Justice: A New Agenda for Practice,” 339–61. 164  Eilish Rooney and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, “Transitional Justice from the Margins: Intersections of Identities, Power and Human Rights,” 1–8.  165  Bell, “Transitional Justice, Interdisciplinarity and the State of the ‘Field’ or ‘Non-Field,’” 7, 13.88I Transitional Justice“a way of looking at the past that would authorize discussion and disagreement.”166 In her analysis of the Peruvian TRC’s way of dealing with gender-based violence, Pascha Bueno-Hansen aims at decolonizing transitional justice by combining an intersectional sensibility with a decolonial feminist approach. The limits of the temporality of transitional justice, which aims at separating the injustices from the past from those of the present, come to the fore by studying “the spatial and temporal manifestations of the legacy of colonialism in Peru”. 167 Addressing the tension between transitional justice’s goal of rupture with the past on the one hand, and the reality of ongoing structural injustices that date back to colonialism on the other hand, demands contextualization and historicization.168One should also ask the question, however, how far these expansions and critiques reach beyond the walls of academia or international institutions and to what extent they influence the practice of (new) transitional justice initiatives. The actors moving across policy, advocacy and academy, thus constituting the network of transitional justice, do not necessarily have a shared approach nor epistemology. Crossing the borders between theory and practice often means to be confronted with solidified normative ideas, but also to stumble upon the limits of time frames, mandates, methodology and funding. Last but not least, the influence of the revival of nationalism and the rise of post-truth politics on universalist human rights discourse and humanitarian government globally remains to be seen. The democratic election of leaders such as Donald Trump in the United States, Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Jaír Bolsonaro in Brazil, who openly attack human rights and its defenders, represents a remarkable shift in global politics as we enter the second decade of 166  Kora Andrieu, “Transitional Justice: A New Discipline in Human Rights,” Mass Violence and Resistance (MV&R), 2010, s.p. 167  Pascha Bueno-Hansen, Feminist and Human Rights Struggles in Peru: Decolonizing Transitional Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2015), 15, 21.168  Bueno-Hansen, 19.89I Transitional Justicethe 21st century. Will the concept of transitional justice survive the changes of the 21st century after the survivors of WWII will have passed away and the memories of the Cold War will have faded? Or, keeping in mind the recent #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo activist movements, will human rights discourse be overruled by the struggle against structural injustice and transformed into discourses of redistribution and decolonization? Samuel Moyn argues that the international human rights regime will prove inadequate to address problems of redistribution: “To the man with a hammer, it is said, everything looks like a nail. Now that Trump is in power, in the train of a series of other populists, hammering away with human rights alone is to neglect the desperate need for other tools.”169 Mark Philip Bradly agrees that “[…] human rights is losing some of its moral power to instruct in an era when structural arguments about economics and race are displacing other kinds of oppositional political discourses.”170 At the same time, he argues that “the language of human rights is still there for the taking” and that “recovering the moral power of human rights may in fact become an unintended consequence of Donald Trump’s presidency.”171  In any case, if transitional justice evolves as quickly in the following decades as it has since its emergence, then new shifts in the concept and network undoubtedly are on the horizon. 169  Samuel Moyn, “Donald Trump and the Irrelevance of Human Rights,” in Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 390.170  Mark Philip Bradley, “The United States and the Global Human Rights Order,” in Chaos in the Liberal Order: The Trump Presidency and International Politics in the Twenty-First Century, 383.171  Bradley, 385.Mural in Huanta, Ayacucho (2014)II CONTESTING TRANSITIONAL JUSTICEMemory, Victimhood and Time92II Contesting Transitional JusticeThe cost of achieving a moral consensus that the past was evil is to reach a political consensus that the evil is past.1 Introduction After having described the genesis of the concept and the network of transitional justice in the foregoing chapter, I will now delve further into the core of transitional justice’s way of dealing with violent pasts. In doing so, I will identify three normative ideas underpinning the concept of transitional justice. The first idea relates to memory and entails the conviction that remembering the atrocities of the past leads to prevention, redemption and recognition. The second one relates to victimhood and encompasses the presumption that innocent victims, whose identity is based on trauma and suffering, are the main subjects of transitional justice policies. The third one relates to time and involves the idea that the transitional moment provides clear ruptures between the violent past, the transitional present and the democratic future. By reflecting upon these three ideas and their implications, this chapter aims to provide the necessary conceptual background for the analysis of the case studies in chapter four, five and six.First, I will explore the idea of the devoir de mémoire or memory duty: the idea that the violent past must be actively remembered and should not be forgotten. To clarify what ‘memory’ means in this context, I will follow Michael Rothberg’s interpretation of Richard Terdiman’s definition: “memory is the past made present”.2 According to Rothberg, this definition implies firstly “that memory is a contemporary phenomenon, something that, while concerned 1  Robert Meister, After Evil a Politics of Human Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 25.2  Richard Terdiman, Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018), cited in: Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 3.93II Contesting Transitional Justicewith the past, happens in the present” and secondly that “memory is a form of work, working through, labor, or action.”3 The idea of a duty to remember in transitional justice discourse is based on three underlying assumptions. The first is that if the past is not remembered it will inevitably repeat itself. Closely linked with this is the idea that the legacies of mass-violence can serve as a learning process for the future. The second assumption is that remembering, for instance in the form of testimonies in a truth commission, can have a liberating potential. According to this reasoning, memory can release survivors from ‘the weight of the past’, thereby leading to a ‘catharsis of the mind’. The third and final assumption is that memory is an essential step in recognizing the suffering of victims of human rights violations. This assumption is often connected with the conviction that remembering is a moral duty of society towards these victims. The beneficial properties assigned to memory – prevention, redemption and recognition – are verbalized in transitional justice processes all over the world in slogans such as ‘Revealing is healing’ (South-Africa), ‘Never again’ (Argentina, Brazil) or ‘So it does not repeat’ (Peru). I will describe the origins of this idea of a duty to remember and show how it became (and remains) an essential feature of transitional justice, despite many criticisms. In the second part of the chapter, I will elaborate on how and why transitional justice puts victims and their stories of suffering at the heart of the process of dealing with the past. I will first go back to Fassin and Rechtman’s “Empire of Trauma” (cfr. supra 1.1) to investigate the emergence of the psychological language of trauma and suffering to narrate histories of violence since the last decades of the 20th century. I will argue that, because of this shift, the condition of victimhood based on trauma and suffering has become central to defining (post-)conflict agency and identity. Subsequently, and building on the foregoing, I will examine how transitional justice tends to reduce the agency of survivors to the categories of victims 3  Rothberg, 3.94II Contesting Transitional Justiceand perpetrators and to the (often unintended) consequences of this twofold categorization. I will apply the term survivor not as a mere reference to surviving victims (as it is mostly used), but to refer to “all those who continue to be blessed with life in the aftermath of civil war”. Hereby I attempt to “transcend the bipolar notions of victim and perpetrator”.4 I do not state, however, that no such situations exist in which clear victims and perpetrators can be defined. What I do mean is that a reduction of (post-)conflict agency to these two diametrically opposed roles fails to grasp the complexity of violence. In concrete terms, I argue that this reduction overlooks both the existence of additional roles such as bystanders or beneficiaries and the fluidity that characterizes these roles. Subsequently, I will analyze how transitional justice tends to strip survivors from their agency by backgrounding active narratives of perpetration on the one hand and producing ‘ideal’ victims whose identity is grounded in innocence on the other. By doing so, stories of violence risk to be taken out of their political, cultural and historical context.The third part of the chapter revolves around the temporal assumptions underpinning transitional justice. Especially in comparison with the overload of studies that deal with memory and victimhood, the issue of time and temporality in transitional justice processes has, as Natascha Mueller-Hirth and Sandra Rios Oyola point out, received relatively little scholarly attention.5 The central subject of investigation in this paragraph will be the idea of a transition that draws clear lines between past and future and uses the present as a delimited time to make the change from conflict to post-conflict and achieve ‘closure’ of the past. First, I will investigate the concept of transition and its linear and teleological underpinnings. Then, I will problematize this linearity and teleology by challenging the idea of closure. In doing so, I will touch upon two 4  Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001), 272.5  Natascha Mueller-Hirth and Sandra Rios Oyola, “Introduction,” in Time and Temporality in Transitional and Post-Conflict Societies (New York: Routledge, 2018), 1.95II Contesting Transitional Justicenotions that describe a certain ‘presence of the past’. The first one is that of a ‘haunting’ past which returns to the present in the form of non-linear memories of violence. While the time of transition has a clear beginning and ending, the temporality of memories of violence mostly follows a less predictable trajectory. How does this influence the way survivors and society in general will be able to ‘keep up’ with the pace of the transition? The second notion refers to what happens when the presence of the past does not take the shape of a memory of violence that has happened in the past but is perceived by survivors as violence that has happened in the past and is still happening in the present. This idea of a ‘contemporary’ past helps us to relate recent human rights violations to long-lasting historical processes of injustice that have not yet concluded and therefore potentially spark new outbreaks of social conflict and violence.2.1 The duty to rememberPrevention, redemption and recognition: Beneficial properties ascribed to memory As one could go back to ancient Athens to trace the origins of transitional justice, one could go back to ancient Rome to find Cicero’s reflections on history as a magistra vitae.6 It is indeed an age-old idea7 that the (study of the) past contains lessons for the future and that – in the famous words of George Santayana – “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.8 This idea especially gains strength when it comes to learning lessons from 6  Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cicero. De oratore. Book II. A translation. (London: W.B. Clive & Co., 1889).7  For a more detailed reflexion on this idea see “2. Historia magistra vitae” in: Reinhart Koselleck, Futuro pasado: para una semántica de los tiempos históricos (Barcelona: Paidos, 1993).8  George Santayana, The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense, Volume VII, Book One., ed. Marianne S Wokeck and Martin A Coleman, 2011, 172, 5.96II Contesting Transitional Justicethe dark side of history and recollecting the wrongs of the past. In Western Europe for instance, the phrase ‘lest we forget’, originally taken from a poem written by Rudyard Kipling for Queen Victoria in 1897, became the refrain of the commemoration of the Great War.9 The political transition in Argentina in 1983 again marks an important starting point for the proliferation of the duty to remember in the context of the emergence of transitional justice. The famous Argentinean writer Ernesto Sábato presided the CONADEP and authored its Nunca Más report published in 1984. In the prologue of this unambiguously titled report, Sabato writes: “[…] the great calamities are always instructive, and without a doubt the most terrible drama that the Nation suffered in its entire history during the period of the military dictatorship that began in March 1976 will serve to make us understand that only democracy is capable of preserving a people of such horror, that only democracy can maintain and save the sacred and essential rights of the human creature. Only then can we be sure that NEVER AGAIN in our homeland facts will be repeated that have made us tragically famous in the civilized world.”10 9  The poem is entitled “Recessional” and contains five stanzas, four of which end with the exclamation “Lest we forget – lest we forget!”. The Poetry Foundation, “Recessional by Rudyard Kipling,” accessed January 8, 2019, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46780/recessional.10  My translation of Spanish citation: “Las grandes calamidades son siempre aleccionadoras, y sin duda el más terrible drama que en toda su historia sufrió la Nación durante el periodo que duró la dictadura militarar iniciada en marzo de 1976 servirá para hacernos comprender que únicamente la democracia es capaz de preservar a un pueblo de semejante horror, que solo ella puede mantener y salvar los sagrados y esenciales derechos de la criatura humana. Unicamente así podremos estar seguros de que NUNCA MÁS en nuestra patria se repetirán hechos que nos han hecho trágicamente famosos en el mundo civilizado.” CONADEP, “Nunca Más: Prólogo,” accessed January 8, 2019, http://www.desaparecidos.org/arg/conadep/nuncamas/7.html.97II Contesting Transitional JusticeStarting from the CONADEP, the spread of the model of the truth commission throughout Latin America (cfr. 1.1) went hand in hand with the diffusion of the ‘never again’ idea.11 In this context of coming to terms with the legacies of repressive dictatorial regimes, truth seeking and memory became important tools to counterbalance the systematic denial and erasure of evidence of human rights violations that characterized these regimes.12 The mandate of the truth commissions that were set up in different countries and contexts, in Latin America and beyond, was to gather experiences and evidence on past human rights violations in order to keep the memory of the past alive. These memories would in some cases turn into evidence for the purpose of criminal justice, but in many other cases the search for truth in function of the establishment of historical memory (i.e. with the aim of preserving the past) was a goal in itself. As Elizabeth Jelin states, “‘remember, so as not to repeat’ began to emerge as a message and as a cultural imperative.”13 Looking back to the past and actively remembering it became an essential cornerstone of a more democratic society.14 At the same time, democracy was assumed to be the safeguard of a memory that prevents history from repeating itself, as the above citation from the Nunca Más report illustrates. The notion of pursuing truth, justice and eventually democracy 11  The title Nunca Má(i)s was also used for the reports of the Brazilian and the Uruguayan TRC. Elizabeth Jelin, “The Past in the Present: Memories of State Violence in Contemporary Latin America,” in Memory in a Global Age: Discourses, Practices and Trajectories, ed. Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad, Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2010), 69.12  Allier Montaño and Crenzel, Las luchas por la memoria en América Latina: Historia reciente y violencia política, 25.13  Jelin, 69.14  Ruti Teitel refers to “the normative claim about history’s relation to democracy” as something that is characteristic of what she calls “poetic justice”, i.e. a narrative of transition that contains certain “poetic leaps” that rest on non-proven assumptions such as the redemptive power of truth. Ruti G Teitel, Transitional Justice (Oxford: Oxford university press, 2002), 109-111.98II Contesting Transitional Justicethrough the act of memory in the first place suggests the potential of remembering (the horrors of the past) for bringing about a certain political order (in the present or future). Furthermore, on a more personal and psychological level, memory is often assigned therapeutic properties. This therapeutic notion, which is widely studied in the fields of psychoanalysis and literary studies15, is omnipresent in transitional justice discourse and practice. Truth telling is then seen as a precondition for redemption, and speaking out about the past, in the form of testimony, is deemed necessary in order to be able to deal with it.16 The slogan ‘revealing is healing’ used by the South African TRC on posters announcing the public hearings is a literal expression of this idea.17 Moreover, these therapeutic properties of remembrance are often metaphorically extrapolated from the individual to the collective level, in the sense of an entire nation that needs to heal its traumas, as Alex Boraine suggested for South Africa.18 The underlying idea here is that a ‘healthy’ democracy is one that actively deals with the past. According to Boraine, who was one of the key figures in spreading the concept of transitional justice worldwide, “it is as bad for nations as it is for individual people 15  Andreas Huyssen criticizes the fact that, especially in the 1990s, trauma has become a central category of analysis in memory studies: “But to collapse memory into trauma, I think, would unduly confine our understanding of memory, marking it too exclusively in terms of pain, suffering, and loss. It would deny human agency and lock us into compulsive repetition. Memory, whether individual or generational, political or pub lic, is always more than only the prison house of the past.” Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford, Calif: Stanford Univ. Press, 2009), 8.16  Jack Volpe Rotondi and Nir Eisikovits, “Forgetting after War: A Qualified Defense,” in Theorizing Transitional Justice, ed. Nir Eisikovits and Claudio Corradetti (Ashgate, 2017), 17.17  The full text on the poster is: “Revealing is healing. Come and listen as people tell their stories. Truth. The road to reconciliation.” Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “Revealing Is Healing,” South African History Online, accessed January 9, 2019, https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/revealing-is-healing.18  Alex Boraine et al., eds., The Healing of a Nation? (Rondebosch, Cape Town, South Africa; Johannesburg: Justice in Transition, 1995), xiv.99II Contesting Transitional Justiceto suppress the memory of evil or mournful experience” and “to remember is the secret of redemption”.19Next, in the context of coming to terms with the legacies of mass human rights violations, memory is often considered to be a moral duty of society towards the victims of these violations, as an act of recognition of their suffering.20 Memory as recognition is even believed by some to constitute a form of justice in itself. Jefrey Blustein states, for example, that “this duty of remembrance […] is also a duty of justice, justice of a particular kind. Modes of remembrance […] are instances of a type of historical redress or reparation for the harms caused by the wrongs of the past.”21 Andreas Huyssen agrees with this moral duty of remembrance towards the victims, “all the more so since it was the express aim of the masters of genocide to obliterate all memory of their victims.”22The role of memory in society has indeed gained increasing attention since the emergence of humanitarian government (cfr. 1.1). Despite the fact that the rise of human rights culture and the proliferation of memory discourses in the last decades of the 20th century are often implicitly linked to each other, Andreas Huyssen is one of the few scholars who investigates this link. As Huyssen states, both phenomena arose in the wake of World War II and spread during the wave of democratization in Latin America, Eastern Europe and South Africa.23 In the first place, Huyssen states that “one could argue 19  Nanci Adler, ed., Genocide and Accountability: Three Public Lectures by Simone Veil, Geoffrey Nice and Alex Boraine (Amsterdam: Vossiuspers UvA, 2004), 39.20  Elizabeth Jelin, Los trabajos de la memoria (Lima: IEP, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2012), 18.21  Jefrey Blustein, “How the Past Matters: On the Foundations of an Ethics of Remembrance,” in Historical Justice and Memory, ed. Klaus Neumann and Janna Thompson, Critical Human Rights (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015), 75.22  Andreas Huyssen, “Memory Culture and Human Rights. A New Constellation,” in Historical Justice and Memory, ed. Janna Thompson and Klaus Neumann, Critical Human Rights (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015), 34.23  Huyssen, 29.100II Contesting Transitional Justicethat only the memory of rights violations can nurture the future of human rights in the world, thus providing a substantive link between past and future.”24 According to Huyssen, contemporary human rights activism is thus highly related to “the depth and breadth of memory discourses in the public media” as its concern with the future is based on the recognition of the past.25 Blustein similarly points out that memory is a necessary precondition for restitution because one can simply not address the wrongs of the past if they are not remembered.26 On the other hand, Huyssen argues, if memory, “and especially traumatic memory”, is not linked to human rights and justice, it runs the risk of “becoming a vacuous exercise feeding parasitically on itself.”27 Memory and human rights are thus believed to be mutually reinforcing.Indeed, the beneficial properties ascribed to memory – the potential of prevention, redemption and recognition – have made it a very popular ‘tool’ in the task of coming to terms with a violent past and establishing a future culture of human rights. The duty to remember therefore occupies a central space in transitional justice discourse.28 On its website, the ICTJ states that “victims of human rights abuses cannot forget, and states have a duty to preserve the memory of such crimes. For this, architectural memorials, museums, and commemorative activities are indispensable educational initiatives to establish a historical public record that is beyond denial — and to help prevent repetition.” Moreover, it is stated that truth-seeking, which according to the ICTJ is fundamentally connected to the memory duty, “enables proper mourning practices, essential to most cultures, helping to achieve personal and communal healing.” When it comes to the potential of recognition, UN Special Rapporteur on 24  Huyssen, 28.25  Huyssen, Present Pasts Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, 95.26  Blustein, “How the Past Matters: On the Foundations of an Ethics of Remembrance,” 79.27  Huyssen, “Memory Culture and Human Rights. A New Constellation,” 28.28  Andrieu, “Transitional Justice.”101II Contesting Transitional Justicethe Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparations and Guarantees of Non-Repetition Pablo De Greiff puts forward that “persisting in the refusal to acknowledge great harms in itself generates new harms”. 29 The ICTJ thus clearly endorses the beneficial properties of memory. The practice of transitional justice indeed involves a wide range of memory initiatives. Some of them have a particular focus in space or time, such as memorial sites and commemoration dates. Others take a broader scope and try to cover a wide range of events of the past by representing them in for example a museum exhibition or an art project. Memory practices widely differ in scale as they can take place on a national level on the initiative of governments or non-governmental institutions, but they can also be initiated on a micro-level by smaller groups of community members. For the sake of analytical clarity, this amalgam of memory discourses and practices in transitional justice can be roughly subdivided into two branches which each have a particular way of perceiving the structure and goals of memory. Despite the fact that these two branches seem adverse, they coexist or are even intertwined in most transitional contexts. They have in common that they depart from the beneficial properties of memory.The first branch is centered around the idea of creating one shared collective memory in the form of a consensus or master-narrative about the past. This narrative denounces the human rights violations of the past, identifies clear victims, heroes and villains, and stands in function of building a liberal, democratic future. It is thus a linear and teleological narrative that serves the final purpose of transitional justice. Alex Boraine represents this branch when he states about the South African TRC that “the Truth and Reconciliation Commission can make an important contribution to healing and reconciliation. South Africans desperately need to create a common memory that can be acknowledged by those who 29  ICTJ, “Truth-Seeking, Memory, and Memorials,” International Center for Transitional Justice, February 25, 2011, https://www.ictj.org/our-work/transitional-justice-issues/truth-and-memory.102II Contesting Transitional Justicecreated and implemented the apartheid system, by those who fought against it and by the many more who were in the middle and claimed not to know what was happening in their own country.”30 The final report of truth commissions often reflects this attempt to compile diverging narratives of past violence into a single story that aims to foment a renewed national identity.31 The second branch focuses on the idea of a plurality or heterogeneity of memories that can be contradictory but nevertheless coexist in a kind of patchwork. This idea is often called upon to counter the belief in a monolithic master-narrative. The increasing stress on multi-perspectivity in initiatives concerned with so-called ‘historical dialogue’, ‘shared narratives’ or ‘shared history’ in post-conflict societies, which are often part of or closely linked to transitional justice initiatives, is an example hereof.32 According to Felix Reátegui, Peruvian sociologist and former senior associate at the ICTJ, “the idea of heterogeneous memories must be taken seriously” because it “is accelerating another form of democratization in Latin American societies, an opening of symbolic systems – analogous to the openings of political systems that put an end to oligarchies.” 33 30  Boraine et al., The Healing of a Nation?, xvi. 31  Ruti G Teitel, Transitional Justice (Oxford: Oxford university press, 2002), 110; Lars Waldorf, “Ex-Combatants and Truth Commissions,” in Disarming the Past: Transitional Justice and Ex-Combatants, ed. Ana Cutter Patel, Pablo De Greiff, and Lars Waldorf (New York: ICTJ, 2009).32  According to Bevernage, the focus on multi-perspectivity marks a recent qualitative shift in the nature of these initiatives, that no longer solely focus on the notion of objective truth. This shift is clearer in some initiatives than in other: “Due to new evolutions in the thinking about the relation between history and reconciliation, current discourses and practices seem to revolve around an ambiguous conceptual mix of neopositivist and postmodernist (or post-postmodernist) concepts – with some projects leaning much more to one or the other side.” Berber Bevernage, “Narrating Pasts for Peace? A Critical Analysis of Some Recent Initiatives of Historical Reconciliation through ‘Historical Dialogue’ and ‘Shared History,’” in The Ethos of History : Time and Responsibility (Berghahn Books, 2017), 75 .33  Félix Reátegui Carrillo, “The Victims Remember. Notes on the Social Practice 103II Contesting Transitional JusticeIn that view, it is the pluralistic instead of the monolithic nature of memory that serves the purpose of a democratic future. In a similar vein, Elizabeth Jelin proposes a non-linear approach to memory that takes into account the plurality of voices that give meaning to the past and incorporates the way in which these meanings can change according to their historical and cultural context or their ideological and political purpose.34 Michael Rothberg’s concept of memory as multidirectional, or “as subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing”, can also be situated in this branch.35 According to Rothberg, “pursuing memory’s multidirectionality encourages us to think of the public sphere as a malleable discursive space in which groups (…) come into being through their dialogical interactions with others”.36 In addition to the (analytical) difference highlighted here between ‘monolithic memory’ and ‘patchwork memory’, other – though sometimes parallel – demarcations can be made by assigning all kinds of properties to different types of memory discourses and practices, often resulting in oppositions such as macro-micro, official-unofficial, top-down – bottom-up, static-dynamic, closed-open, and so forth. Silence, amnesia and amnesty: Questioning the duty to rememberThe increasing attention for memory after mass-violence has led to a so-called memory-boom.37 This term is often used to describe the rapid expansion of the field of memory studies, which according to Andreas Huyssen has even led to a certain degree of “memory of Memory,” in Transitional Justice Handbook for Latin America, ed. Félix Reátegui Carrillo (Brasilia/New York: Brazilian Amnesty Commission of the Ministry of Justice/International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), 2011), 341.34  Jelin, Los trabajos de la memoria, 17.35  Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 3.36  Rothberg, 5.37  Rothberg, 315.104II Contesting Transitional Justicefatigue”.38 As a reaction to this memory-boom, the beneficial properties of memory and the normative character of the duty to remember have been widely questioned. These explorations have taken diverse forms ranging from re-examinations and nuances to fundamental critiques, but they have in common that they go against the normative character of the memory duty.A first fundamental critique directly questions the link between remembering the past and establishing a more democratic future. For example, in the prologue of the second edition of Los trabajos de la memoria published in 2012, Elizabeth Jelin points to the fact that she is not sure anymore whether an active politics of memory is a necessary precondition for democracy-building. It is high time, she states, to investigate the precise relationship between memory and democracy. What seemed a self-evident postulate in the context of fighting the repression and denial by military dictatorships, does not necessarily find a solid base anymore in the present, thus Jelin.39 It is probably the preventive potential of memory that has resulted most questionable from this inquiry into the relation between memory and democracy. According to Huyssen, “the belief that memory of genocide as a crime against humanity might prevent further genocides from happening broke down at the moment that the world confronted new forms of genocide, state massacres, and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur.”40 Even Jefrey Blustein, who aims at developing an ethics in favor of remembrance, has to admit “the existence of frustratingly little evidence” to support the claim that remembrance prevents history from repeating itself.41 The therapeutic, redemptive power of memory in the form of testimony is contradicted by the notion of re-traumatization. Holocaust survivor Primo Levi explicitly refers to this in his 38  Huyssen, Present Pasts Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, 3.39  Jelin, Los trabajos de la memoria, 27.40  Huyssen, “Memory Culture and Human Rights. A New Constellation,” 36.41  Blustein, “How the Past Matters: On the Foundations of an Ethics of Remembrance,” 79.105II Contesting Transitional Justicereflections on memory in his book The Drowned and the Saved: “The memory of a trauma suffered or inflicted is itself traumatic because recalling it is painful or at least disturbing […] Once again, it must be observed, mournfully, that the injury cannot be healed.” In the same paragraph Levi refers to the Jewish resistance fighter Jean Améry, who stated about his experience of torture by the Nazi’s that “anyone who has been tortured remains tortured. […] Faith in humanity, already cracked by the first slap in the face, then demolished by torture, is never acquired again.”42Another set of explorations investigates the potential of silence and forgetting as strategies of dealing with the past that oppose or at least nuance the duty to remember. Spain with its so-called ‘pact of silence’ is the most well-known example of a transition from dictatorship to democracy during which this strategy was applied.43 The most common argument made in favor of forgetting is that too much memory sparks revenge and gives rise to new conflicts.44 In their respective typology of forms of forgetting, memory scholars 42  Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (London: Abacus, 2013), 12. Primo Levi nevertheless believed in a duty to bear witness and share his memories of the camps. Both Primo Levi and Jean Améry suffered from serious depression and committed suicide, respectively in 1987 and 1978.43  Moreover, the example of Spain was often used to demonstrate that memory was not a necessary prerequisite for a smooth transition to democracy. Nevertheless, according to Lore Colaert, this has shifted with the relatively recent rise of memory movements and their claims for historical justice in Spain: “Spain has turned from an example of the viability of amnesty and amnesia to an example of the dysfunction of the politics of forgetting. The case is now used as a case in defence of a strategy of working through a painful past to put it to rest.” Lore Colaert, “History from the Grave. Politics of Memory in Exhumations of Mass Graves from the Spanish Civil War” (Ghent University, 2015), 15.44  For an extensive debate on this question, see: Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness.” The same argument is made in favor of amnesty as an alternative to punishment. 106II Contesting Transitional JusticePaul Connerton45 and Aleida Assmann46 indeed do not only define repressive or destructive forms of forgetting, they also identify forms of “constructive and therapeutic forgetting” (Assmann) and “forgetting that is constitutive in the formation of a new identity” (Connerton). In the same way, Nir Eisikovits and Jack Volpe Rotondi identify several situations in which a case for forgetting can be made, such as post-conflict contexts characterized by a complicated division of responsibility or an extreme political volatility.47 Transitional justice scholars such as Buckley-Zistel, Theidon and Eastmond and Selimovic have pointed to the role which silence and amnesia can play in post-conflict coexistence and processes of reconciliation on a micro-level (cfr. chapter 4).48 In 2016, the publication of David Rieff’s slightly controversial book In Praise of Forgetting. Historical Memory and its Ironies49 triggered an online debate on the website of the ICTJ between Rieff and UN Special Rapporteur Pablo de Greiff, entitled Does Collective Remembrance of a Troubled Past Impede Reconciliation?. 50 In a nutshell, Rieff argues that it is impossible to distinguish between the uses and abuses of memory. He cites the Balkan wars as an example of how conflict can be sparked by the misuse of memory. De Greiff does not deny that these abuses exist but maintains faith in the duty to remember as a way of fostering a culture of human rights and 45  Paul Connerton, “Seven Types of Forgetting,” Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (2008): 59–71.46  Aleida Assmann, “Forms of Forgetting”, Lecture Dr. A. H. Heinekenprijs for historical sciences, (Amsterdam, October 1, 2014).47  Rotondi and Eisikovits, “Forgetting after War.”48  See, for example: Theidon, Intimate Enemies; M. Eastmond and J. Mannergren Selimovic, “Silence as Possibility in Postwar Everyday Life,” International Journal of Transitional Justice, vol. 6 no. 3 (2012): 502-524; Susanne Buckley-Zistel, “Remembering to Forget: Chosen Amnesia as a Strategy for Local Coexistence in Post-Genocide Rwanda,” Africa : Journal of the International African Institute Africa / International African Institute 76, no. 2 (2006): 131–50.49  David Rieff, In Praise of Forgetting (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2016).50  ICTJ, “The Duty to Remember,” International Center for Transitional Justice, accessed January 18, 2019, https://www.ictj.org/debate/article/duty-remember.107II Contesting Transitional Justicerecognizing victimhood and suffering. In fact, De Greiff objects, it is the failure to acknowledge violations of the past that facilitates instrumentalization.51 For Rieff, the potential of recognition of victimhood is the only justification of memory that is left because he agrees that “people who suffered have the right to have their suffering acknowledged”.52 On the other hand, the potential of memory in the struggle for recognition has been unmistakably questioned by survivors themselves. Especially in contexts of deeply rooted socio-economic inequality, the symbolic value of recognition in the form of memory is often deemed unsatisfactory. Alex Boraine acknowledges this tension when he states that “economic justice and the restoration of the moral order must be seen as twin goals.”53 Or, as it was once clearly articulated to me by a research participant during fieldwork: “you can’t eat memory”.54Notwithstanding the above critiques and nuances, the tendency in favor of remembrance remains well-established in both the concept and the network of transitional justice.55 The discussions on silence and forgetting often rather mirror than fundamentally contradict the duty to remember. Among transitional justice scholars and practitioners few will be found that go along with a plea against remembrance in the style of David Rieff. In other words, the idea that the past must actively be dealt with and that memory is an elementary component of this process still remains an essential feature of transitional justice. 51  ICTJ, “The Duty to Remember,” International Center for Transitional Justice, accessed January 18, 2019, https://www.ictj.org/debate/article/duty-remember.52  David Rieff, “In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies” (April 8, 2017).53  Boraine et al., The Healing of a Nation?, xvii.54  My translation of original citation: “No se puede comer la memoria.” Fieldnotes, Sacsamarca, 29.06.2014.55  Kimberly Theidon, “Editorial Note,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 3, no. 3 (November 1, 2009): 295–300.108II Contesting Transitional Justice2.2 Constructing victims and perpetratorsA trauma- and rights-based identityThe shift in focus from the heroic histories of the victors to the tragic histories of the victims characterizes a change in how societies relate to their violent pasts which emerged at the end of the 20th century (cfr. 1.1).56 Whereas the post-WWI ‘lest we forget’ still appealed primarily to remembering the honor and sacrifice of the fallen heroes, the grief and agony of the tormented victims has become the main subject of ‘never again’. The emergence of this new focus on victims and victim identity is closely related to the rise of the concepts of psychological trauma and human rights. In fact, it is exactly the nexus between trauma and human rights discourse that is constitutive of the kind of victim identity that is at stake here. Fassin and Rechtman point out how the language of psychological trauma is used to narrate histories of violence from this new perspective.57 They state that the introduction of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a diagnostic category by the DSM-III in 198058 resulted in the universalization of the effects of suffering: 56  Fassin and Rechtman, The Empire of Trauma, 275.57  Fassin and Rechtman, 281.58  The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the standard handbook for psychiatric diagnosis worldwide. The first edition was published in 1952, the second in 1968. The first and second edition do not yet define PTSD (nor the related concentration camp syndrome). In DSM-III, post-traumatic stress disorder is defined as an anxiety disorder in the following way: “The essential feature is the development of characteristic symptoms following a psychologically traumatic event that is generally outside the range of usual human experience. The characteristic symptoms involve reexperiencing the traumatic event; numbing of responsiveness to, or reduced involvement with, the external world; and a variety of autonomic, dysphoric, or cognitive symptoms. The stressor producing this syndrome would evoke significant symptoms of distress in most people, and is generally outside the range of such common experiences as simple bereavement, chronic illness, business losses, or marital conflict. The trauma may be experienced alone (rape or assault) or in the company of groups of people (military combat). 109II Contesting Transitional Justice“Survivors of disasters or war wounded, victims of plane crashes or sexual abuse, Vietnamese civilians or US soldiers, all shared the same symptoms and thus the same clinical diagnosis.”59 While earlier definitions of traumatic neurosis were based on the assumption of a weak personality, the definition of PTSD as an event-based disorder marked an important shift: “It effectively affirmed that any normal individual might suffer from such distress if he or she were exposed to an event deemed traumatic. […] the event alone was sufficient to produce the distress. The sincerity of the victim of trauma was no longer in doubt: he or she was a priori credible.”60Moreover, according to Fassin and Rechtman, this universal acknowledgment of suffering as trauma goes beyond mere clinical diagnosis. It is a form of social recognition as it expresses a moral judgment on who has the right to be considered a legitimate victim by identifying “complaints as justified and causes as just”.61 Drawing on the work of Fassin and Rechtman, Michael Humphrey sees a clear link between the trauma lens and the human rights lens as both produce universalizing discourses that are used in transitional Stressors producing this disorder include natural disasters (floods, earthquakes), accidental man-made disasters (car accidents with serious physical injury, airplane crashes, large fires), or deliberate man-made disasters (bombing, torture, death camps). Some stressors frequently produce the disorder (e.g., torture) and others produce it only occasionally (e.g., car accidents). Frequently there is a concomitant physical component to the trauma which may even involve direct damage to the central nervous system (e.g., malnutrition, head trauma). The disorder is apparently more severe and longer lasting when the stressor is of human design.” American Psychiatric Association, DSM-III (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Third Edition) (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1980), 236.59  Fassin and Rechtman, The Empire of Trauma, 214. Detailed historiographic accounts of the evolution in thinking about trauma before the emergence of PTSD are provided throughout the first part of the book, such as for example in the paragraph “The Birth of Trauma” (p. 30) or in Chapter Three “The Intimate Confession” (p. 70). Chapter Four “An End to Suspicion” (p. 77) gives a detailed account of the emergence of PTSD. 60  Fassin and Rechtman, 77.61  Fassin and Rechtman, 284. 110II Contesting Transitional Justicecontexts to define who is to be recognized as a victim of violation of rights. The universalization of trauma, he argues, is based on our shared bodily ability to feel pain and suffering while the universalization of human rights is based on our shared humanity that allows us to be part of the same community of rights. The trauma lens is used as a tool to morally recognize those who form part of the community of rights.62 In other words, the traumatized subject will only turn into a victim if his or her trauma is embedded in a discourse of rights.63 Trauma has thus become the fundament of a victim identity, that can be transmitted from the individual to the collective level, for example by identifying with other victims.64 John Torpey identifies a similar shift from trauma as an individual experience to victimhood as a fundament of public identity.65 According to Humphrey, this victim identity is reinforced by human rights discourse because in this discourse, the position of the victim (i.e. the rights holder) is placed in opposition to that of the perpetrator (i.e. the rights violator).66 The Holocaust and its aftermath again played a crucial role in the development of this concept of victimhood.67 In line with Fassin and Rechtman’s study, which draws on ethnographic and psychiatric 62  Michael Humphrey, “The Politics of Trauma,” Arts: The Journal of the Sydney University Arts Association 32 ( January 27, 2012): 40.63  Or, as Michael Rothberg puts it: “The categories of victim and perpetrator derive from either a legal or a moral discourse, but the concept of trauma emerges from a diagnostic realm that lies beyond guilt and innocence or good and evil”. Multidirectional Memory, 90, cited in: Stef Craps, Postcolonial Witnessing (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013), 15. 64  Humphrey, 39.65  Torpey, “An Avalanche of History: The ‘Collapse of the Future’ and the Rise of Reparation Politics.,” 24.66  Humphrey, “The Politics of Trauma,” 39.67  Fassin and Rechtman state that “with the survivors of the camps, testimony to trauma […] was gradually recognized as offering ultimate truth about the human condition. It is in relation to this unprecedented perspective that we can now consider the universalization of victim status in the last three decades.” Fassin and Rechtman, The Empire of Trauma, 73.111II Contesting Transitional Justiceresearch, Stef Craps has argued from his point of view as a literature scholar how trauma theory, despite its claim of universality, suffers from a Western bias.68 The obsessive focus on the Holocaust has, thus Craps, resulted in Eurocentrism.69 The claim that human rights discourse is primarily rooted in Western culture (cfr. 1.1) can be extended to the kind of victim identity that has emerged at the crossroads of trauma theory and human rights discourse. In addition to the universalization of the effects of suffering, I argue that, in line with the event-based model of PTSD, it is now assumed that certain events will almost automatically lead to trauma. The nexus between human rights and trauma thus instigates a kind of chain reaction: one becomes traumatized because one’s human rights were violated, and by becoming a traumatized victim of human rights violations, one becomes entitled to a new set of rights: that of the victim. Victims, perpetrators and ‘implicated subjects’ The website of the ICTJ states that “transitional justice is rooted in accountability and redress for victims” and that it puts “victims and their dignity first”.70 On the same website, an attendee of the ICTJ’s intensive Course on Truth Commissions comments that “they taught us that transitional justice can only be successful when it is centered on victims.”71 As transitional justice expert Lars Waldorf puts it: 68  Craps, Postcolonial Witnessing.69  Craps, 3. Torpey contradicts this claim. He agrees that “the Holocaust gets a disproportionate share of the attention given to past injustices” but still believes that “the Holocaust template” has “inspired a massive upsurge of concern for other historical injustices” because it “has provided a whole armamentarium that others have been able to use to highlight experiences that were, or at least could be said to be, “Holocaust-like.” By making this statement, however, I believe he does exactly what Craps criticizes, as he takes the Holocaust as a universal touchstone for suffering worldwide. Torpey, “An Avalanche of History: The ‘Collapse of the Future’ and the Rise of Reparation Politics.,” 25.70  ICTJ, “What Is Transitional Justice?”71  “ICTJ - International Center for Transitional Justice,” accessed September 18, 112II Contesting Transitional Justice“What unites all transitional justice mechanisms —in theory, if not always in practice —is that they are victim-centered. At bottom, the legitimacy of transitional justice mechanisms depends on how much they serve victims’ needs and aspirations.”72 The notion of victimhood is indeed central to transitional justice as it defines the identity of those who should be actively addressed by its mechanisms and under what conditions rights can be claimed by survivors. Similarly, as ideas on victimhood began to crystalize, a definition of those who should be unable to claim victim identity took shape as well. The result of these reflections was the belief in a symmetric distinction between victims and perpetrators. This desire to separate the guilty from the innocent is closely linked to transitional justice’s strive for accountability.73 At the same time, it relates to the concept of monolithic memory described above: the master-narrative creates a clear distinction between victims and perpetrators, or the other way around, the construction of victims and perpetrators serves the master-narrative. Michael Humphrey warns that this reasoning entails the risk of cherry picking, in such a way that only the experiences which fit the consensus will be selected as part of the narrative.74 As Luc Huyse notes, however, “guilt is a many-headed monster”.75 Without denying the need for accountability, many scholars who investigate post-conflict situations have remarked that representing violence through the binary opposition between victims and perpetrators mostly results in a simplification of reality.76 It fails 2017, http://www.ictj.org/our-work/transitional-justice-issues/truth-and-memory.72  Lars Waldorf, “Introduction,” in Disarming the Past: Transitional Justice and Ex-Combatants, ed. Ana Cutter Patel, Pablo De Greiff, and Lars Waldorf (New York: ICTJ, 2009), 22.73  Erica Bouris, Complex Political Victims (Kumarian Press, 2007), 19.74  Humphrey, “The Politics of Trauma,” 43.75  Luc Huyse, All Things Pass, except the Past (Amsterdam: AWEPA, 2009).76  See, for example: Hinton, Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence, 8; Theidon, Intimate Enemies. This does of course not mean that these scholars deny that victims and perpetrators can exist. 113II Contesting Transitional Justiceto fully recognize additional conceptualizations of agency, such as passive witnesses of human rights violations (bystanders) or those who have not directly perpetrated human rights violations but have benefited from them or continue to do so (beneficiaries). Michael Rothberg coins the term ‘implicated subjects’ to refer to “the manifold indirect, structural, and collective forms of agency that enable injury, exploitation, and domination but that frequently remain in the shadows”.77 The fact that both bystanders and beneficiaries are not directly addressed by transitional justice policies has, according to Robert Meister, two reasons. The first concerns transitional justice’s search for reconciliation: “[…] the general exoneration of all nonperpetrators might be more conducive to national ‘healing’ than an inculpation of those whose interests were served.” The second relates to the fact that addressing the persistent injustices in which bystanders and beneficiaries might have their share, for example through redistributive justice, is beyond the scope of most transitional justice projects.78 I will return to this second reason in 2.3. Despite the fact that the problem of bystanders and beneficiaries is indeed not explicitly included in transitional justice’s search for accountability, they are indirectly addressed through the ‘never again’ idea. Raising awareness and promoting a general culture of human rights is believed to prevent indifference and create citizens that will take an ethical stance against future violations. As a result of this, the group of potential bystanders or beneficiaries is supposedly diminished.79 Of course, this idea of prevention is primarily forward- instead of backward-looking.Furthermore, the binary opposition between victims and perpetrators ignores the fluidity and obscurity of roles in (post-)conflict situations: how they might be combined in one person and 77  Michael Rothberg, The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, 1st edition (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2019), 1. I will borrow this term throughout the dissertation. 78  Meister, “Human Rights and the Politics of Victimhood,” 97.79  Meister, 96.114II Contesting Transitional Justicethe way they change over time. This obscurity has been famously described by Primo Levi as ‘the grey zone’. Levi uses this term specifically to refer to ‘privileged’ concentration camp prisoners who in some way or another collaborated with the Nazi’s to obtain a slight improvement of their living conditions.80 According to Levi, “the network of human relationships inside the Lagers was not simple: it could not be reduced to the two blocs of victims and persecutors. […] it did not conform to any model, the enemy was all around but also inside, the ‘we’ lost its limits, the contenders were not two, one could not discern a single frontier but rather many confused, perhaps innumerable frontiers, which stretched between each of us.”81 In his account of the Rwandan genocide, Mahmood Mamdani traces the historical legacies of colonialism and postcolonial politics to analyze how “victims become killers”. He hereby stresses the importance of understanding the dynamic nature of “Hutu and Tutsi as political identities that have changed from one historical period to another”.82 The case of Dominic Ongwen, a former child soldier of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda who is currently on trial at the ICC for war crimes, is another example of the fluidity of roles that characterizes (post-)conflict.83Paradoxically enough, the failure to recognize the existence of ‘implicated subjects’ and the possible fluidity of roles might at some point collide with the idea of universality and lead to a selective entitlement to human rights based on a delineated and 80  Levi describes it as follows: ““Let us confine ourselves to the Lager which (even in its Soviet version) can be considered an excellent ‘laboratory’: the hybrid class of the prisoner-functionary constitutes its armature and at the same time its most disquieting feature. It is a grey zone, with ill-defined outlines which both separate and join the two camps of masters and servants.” Levi mentions the Sonderkommandos of Auschwitz as one of the extreme examples hereof. Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 27.81  Levi, 23.82  Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 15.83  Erin K. Baines, “Complex Political Perpetrators: Reflections on Dominic Ongwen,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 47, no. 2 ( June 2009): 163–91.115II Contesting Transitional Justicestatic condition of victimhood. Kimberly Theidon has warned for example that the binary logic of victims versus perpetrators can lead to situations in which only the innocent have rights.84 In chapter 3.3 I will further illustrate how this is indeed the case for the Peruvian reparation program. Stripping survivors’ agencyTwo additional critiques can be formulated in relation to transitional justice’s inclination to describe the reality of (post-)conflict in terms of victims and perpetrators. Both relate to the way in which the agency of the respective roles is being dealt with.  Firstly, as Michael Humphrey states, the centrality of a victimhood based on trauma and suffering leads to a focus on the effects rather than on the causes of violence.85 Especially in truth politics, the question of responsibility is often subordinate to the final goal of achieving a consensus about the past in order to obtain reconciliation and eventually closure. The (passive) narratives of undergoing violence embodied by the victims stand center-stage in this process. At the same time, the perpetrators’ (active) narratives of inflicting violence disappear to the background.86 On the rare occasions that perpetrators are put to the fore, for example in court, they are mostly represented as isolated individuals. South Africa’s Amnesty Committee is one of the few transitional justice mechanisms that directly gave a voice to the perpetrators and their narratives. Nevertheless, the scope of the committee was rather limited in comparison with that of the Human Rights Violations Committee.87 Moreover, one could argue that more than the desire to understand 84  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 389.85  Humphrey, “The Politics of Trauma,” 43.86  Humphrey, 42.87  The Amnesty Committee received 7.116 requests for amnesty of which 1.167 were granted. The Human Rights Violations Committee filed more than 21.000 statements. Huyse, All Things Pass, except the Past.116II Contesting Transitional Justicethe perpetrator’s motive, it was still the victim’s right to truth that was the central motivation behind the Amnesty Committee, as amnesty for the perpetrators was granted in exchange for truth for the victims. The reconciliatory purpose of the Amnesty Committee ultimately also depended on the victims, as only they could decide whether or not to forgive the perpetrators. Mahmood Mamdani points out how the taboo on the narrative of the perpetrator has, in the case of the Rwandan genocide, resulted in obfuscating the agency of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans who directly participated in the killings. The stress on the design of the genocide by state functionaries fails to explain the massive participation from below that eventually made it happen, thus Mamdani.88The second critique concerns the way in which groups of survivors are represented as ‘ideal’ victims by ‘well-meaning outsiders’. Nils Christie coined the concept ‘ideal victim’ to refer to “a person or a category of individuals who – when hit by crime – most readily are given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim.”89 This idea of an ‘ideal’ victim can help us to understand how, in the context of transitional justice, survivors tend to be reduced to certain characteristics that make up their victim identity and how these properties accordingly become preconditions to claim certain rights. By relating victimhood to human rights discourse, Erica Bouris identifies innocence, and by extension purity, lack of responsibility, the absence of guilt and moral superiority as key characteristics of the 88  Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 8, 185. It must be noted that Mamdani’s work predates the installation of the Gacaca courts in 2002. More than a million cases were tried through confessions of perpetrators in these community-based courts. Nevertheless, the Gacaca courts have resulted to be highly problematic and it is questionable whether in the end they contributed to a better understanding of the massive participation from below, as many confessions proved to contain lies, judges were bribed, etc. See for example: Susanne Buckley-Zistel, “‘The Truth Heals’? Gacaca Jurisdictions and the Consolidation of Peace in Rwanda,” Die Friedens-Warte 80, no. 1/2 (2005): 113–29.89  Nils Christie, “The Ideal Victim,” in From Crime Policy to Victim Policy: Reorienting the Justice System, ed. Ezzar A Fattah (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1986), 18.117II Contesting Transitional Justice‘ideal’ victim.90 This focus on innocence and the moral separation between good and evil, she argues, is typical of a human rights-based approach. The image of the innocent victim contrasted with the vicious perpetrator facilitates empathy with the former and his or her claim for justice.91 In addition to that, it provides a counterweight against victim-blaming.92 Despite the fact that human rights activists and NGOs are often aware of the fact that this binary opposition is a simplification of conflict reality, they pragmatically chose to instrumentalize it in communication and fundraising campaigns in order to raise support for their advocacy work.93 Moreover, similar to the chain reaction caused by the nexus between human rights and trauma that I have mentioned above, Bouris suggests that becoming a victim of human rights violations in many cases also means to be automatically assigned the characteristics of innocence, purity, etc; and accordingly become an ‘ideal’ victim.94 In his application of Christie’s concept of the ‘ideal’ victim to international crimes, Joris Van Wijk points to the lack of empirical research on the lived experiences of this kind of categorization of victims.95 The existing empirical studies on the direct implications of the existence of ‘ideal’ victims for transitional justice policies show that this categorization highly influences the ways in which survivors can claim rights in the aftermath of violence. Tshepo Madlingozi, a South-African law scholar and member of the victim organization Khulumani Support Group that brings together victims of Apartheid, criticizes the disempowering effects of what he calls the ‘production’ of ‘ideal’ victims: “Despite all the talk about victim empowerment then, the victim produced by 90  Bouris, Complex Political Victims, 35.91  Bouris, 27.92  Bouris, 49.93  Bouris, 27.94  Bouris, 48.95  Joris van Wijk, “Who Is the ‘Little Old Lady’ of International Crimes? Nils Christie’s Concept of the Ideal Victim Reinterpreted,” International Review of Victimolog y 19, no. 2 (2013): 175.118II Contesting Transitional Justicetransitional justice NGOs and others in the international human rights movement is a hapless, passive victim dependent on NGOs and others to speak for her and argue her case.”96 Mijke de Waardt’s work on victims’ associations in Peru demonstrates how this production of ‘ideal’ victims by well-meaning outsiders influences self-identification processes of survivor groups. She shows how the extent to which these associations can find legal, political and social recognition is a result of the interplay between internal and external identification with the condition of victimhood.97 This allows me to clarify that the lack of agency that I want to point at here does not necessarily or exclusively lie in the assignment of an identity from above by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ who speak for the survivors, for this would prevent us from seeing how this ‘passive’ identity is in many cases also actively appropriated by survivors to make claims. More precisely, the lack of agency that is at stake resides in the characteristics of the kind of ‘ideal’ victim identity that is both assigned by outsiders and appropriated by survivors and becomes the predominant perspective from which stories of violence are being told in the aftermath. At the same time, the diffusion of this passive victim identity reinforces the idea that others should speak on behalf of the victim and thus entails the risk of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, through this process of appropriation from below, this initial passive victim identity can in some cases also be transformed into a tool for empowerment, as Madlingozi also points out for the Khulumani Support Group, which according to him has moved “from dependency to agency” by “taking responsibility for their own stories and how they should be used”.98 96  Madlingozi, “On Transitional Justice Entrepreneurs and the Production of Victims,” Journal of Human Rights Practice 2, no. 2 ( January 7, 2010): 213.97  Mijke de Waardt, “Naming and Shaming Victims: The Semantics of Victimhood,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 10, no. 3 (November 1, 2016): 432–50.98  Madlingozi, “On Transitional Justice Entrepreneurs and the Production of Victims,” 221.119II Contesting Transitional JusticeIn the case studies, I will emphasize mutual processes of diffusion and contestation of victimhood between ‘well-meaning outsiders’ and survivors and their implications.The critique of speaking on behalf of the victims instead of letting victims speak for themselves has led to increasing efforts to organize genuine victim participation in transitional justice processes.99 As Tine Destrooper has pointed out, however, the methodological and conceptual framework for the successful implementation of such participation is still lacking.100 According to Gready and Robins, victim participation in mechanisms such as truth commissions and trials is mostly limited to “victims as performers” which offers them “little or no agency in challenging power relations or in determining what mechanisms occur or how they are implemented.”101 This was also the case for the Peruvian TRC, as will become clear in the following chapters. Indeed, victim participation should not be confused with victim-centeredness. In order to achieve a more horizontal approach that leads to genuine participation and ownership of victims in transitional justice mechanisms, Mijke de Waardt and Sanne Weber advocate for the mobilization of already existing forms of participation and organization by including local and regional networks of victims’ associations.102The lack of attention for the perpetrator’s narrative of inflicting violence and the production of ‘ideal’, innocent victims by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ can be seen as two sides of the same coin: 99  For an overview of the trajectory of the role of victims in transitional justice mechanisms such as trials and truth commissions, see chapter 1 in: Thorsten Bonacker and Christoph Safferling, eds., Victims of International Crimes: An Interdisciplinary Discourse (T.M.C. Asser Press, 2013).100  Tine Destrooper, “Righting Victim Participation in Transitional Justice,” Human Rights Centre (blog), accessed January 31, 2019, https://hrc.ugent.be/research/righting-victim-participation-transitional-justice/.101  Gready and Robins, “From Transitional to Transformative Justice,” 357.102  Mijke de Waardt and Sanne Weber, “Beyond Victims’ Mere Presence: An Empirical Analysis of Victim Participation in Transitional Justice in Colombia,” Journal of Human Rights Practice 11, no. 1 (February 1, 2019): 223.120II Contesting Transitional Justiceboth attest to the way in which transitional justice tends to strip survivors and their stories of agency. Consequently, histories of violence risk to be taken out of their political, cultural and historical context. Fassin and Rechtman argue that the terminology of trauma produces “histories without history”, as all suffering is homogenized and decontextualized.103 Kimberly Theidon has demonstrated for the Peruvian case how specific complexities and meanings that survivors give to violence and suffering got lost in translation as the TRC coded testimonies with the terminology of trauma. Quechua speaking survivors talk about the disease of susto (fear), about llaki’s (painful thoughts and memories that can take over your body) or about la teta asustada (literally ‘the frightened breast’, the idea that women will give their painful memories to their children through breastfeeding). However, in the testimonies that were recorded and transcribed by the Peruvian TRC, most of these specific references to mental health problems were left out and replaced by the notion of trauma. By using the diagnostic category of PTSD, the original vocabulary used to express violence and suffering was taken away and the aftermath of the conflict got ‘Westernized’.104 Elizabeth Jelin has pointed out how the Argentinean Nunca Más report silenced the social and political struggles of survivors by focusing on their victimhood. She explains that therefore “within the new and evolving human rights framework, a depoliticized image of conflict prevails […]”.105 Mamdani on his turn warns that an analysis that excludes the “popular character” of the Rwandan genocide “tends to reduce the violence to a set of meaningless outbursts, ritualistic and bizarre, like some ancient primordial twitch come to life.”106 According to Stathis Kalyvas, an analysis of violence that does not take into account the before and after “assumes (and further propagates) a dichotomous world populated only by victims and 103  Fassin and Rechtman, The Empire of Trauma, 214.104  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 28.105  Jelin, “The Past in the Present,” 70.106  Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 8.121II Contesting Transitional Justiceperpetrators, combined with the flawed perception that victimhood and guilt are mutually exclusive categories – hence victims cannot be guilty.”107 In the case of Peru, the criminalization of the Shining Path as, in first instance, a terrorist organization has led to a complete taboo on talking about the motives for their armed struggle. In combination with the focus on innocent victims this has created a serious blind spot in understanding the history of the conflict by obfuscating civil participation in the violence. Furthermore, the vocabulary of victimhood and perpetration proves insufficient to conceptualize these forms of civil participation, such as resistance and self-defense. I will further elaborate on this blind spot in chapter six by taking a closer look at the ambiguous role of the self-defense committees in the Valley of the Apurímac River. To summarize, describing the (post-)conflict world exclusively in terms of victims and perpetrators thus risks to result in fragmented, ahistorical and individualized accounts of war, in which political violence is framed as an evil and meaningless aberration from normal life and civil participation in violence is obfuscated. Moreover, once the transition takes off, survivors have to let go off all possible ambiguity in their identity. In this way, they are able to be ‘on the right side of history’ and thus claim their victimhood. The binary logic is in other words reinforced throughout the process as survivors are stimulated (either intrinsically or by others) to identify with these roles. 2.3 “A time between times” 108Closing the past: Linear and teleological transitional timeAccording to the ICTJ, “massive atrocities are a tragic indication of the collapse of the rule of law in a very real sense. Transitional justice 107  Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 21.108  Meister, After Evil a Politics of Human Rights, 10.122II Contesting Transitional Justiceis about helping to restore trust in the rule of law.”109 It “signals the way forward for a renewed commitment to make sure ordinary citizens are safe in their own countries – safe from the abuses of their own authorities and effectively protected from violations by others”.110 In the previous chapter I already pointed to the teleological nature of transitional justice, which resides in its aim of establishing a liberal democracy based on human rights. Democratization and liberalization are the end goals of every transition and are assumed to bring about “an open society where no one is excluded because of their ethnicity or beliefs, where citizens can pursue their own happiness and abide the pursuits of their peers, where there is both liberty and opportunity for all”.111 Thomas Carothers identifies this teleological aspect as the core assumption of what he has called “the transition paradigm”: moving away from conflict or dictatorial rule is automatically assumed to be moving towards democracy.112 To reach this goal, the past must be actively addressed, worked through and eventually closed. Only then will post-conflict societies be able to move on to the future. Such an attitude implies a constant balancing between retrospective (i.e. truth and justice) and prospective policies (i.e. democracy, peace and reconciliation).113 The ideal innocent and morally superior victim described above holds the key for achieving closure as he or she is expected to transcend feelings of vengeance and reconcile with the wrongdoers. Moreover, these aims of peace, democracy, reconciliation and closure need to be established within a certain timeframe: the transitional period. The concept of ‘transition’ in transitional justice implies a linear temporality: it delineates a period in time that has a clear beginning and end point. In his 109  ICTJ, “Rule of Law,” International Center for Transitional Justice, accessed February 5, 2019, https://www.ictj.org/gallery-items/rule-law.110  ICTJ, “What Is Transitional Justice?”111  Andrieu, “Political Liberalism after Mass Violence,” 86.112  Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” 6.113  Alexandra Barahona De Brito, Carmen Gonzalez Enriquez, and Paloma Aguilar, The Politics of Memory and Democratization : Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies (OUP Oxford, 2001), 151.123II Contesting Transitional Justicebook After Evil114, Robert Meister describes this time of transition as “a time between times, when evil has ended but before justice has begun” or a moment “not still in the past, not yet in the future”.115 He argues that in transitional justice, clear lines are drawn between past and future so that the present can be conceived as a delimited time to make the transition from evil to good.116 The evil is put in the past to demonstrate that the time of violence is over and will not come back.117 This discourse implies an idea of moral progress from bad to good.118 Consequently, the monolithic memory created by certain transitional justice mechanisms reproduces this linearity and teleology in its narratives, as I have discussed in chapter 2.1. As Ruti Teitel explains, these transitional narratives follow a structure that starts with the history of suffering but have “a happy ending of peace and reconciliation”.119 According to Kimberly Theidon, “the seductive language of ‘transition’ performs temporalizing functions, serving to mark discontinuities, invoking a before-and-after narrative of change.”120 Alexander Hinton refers to transitional justice time as “a kind of ‘zero time’ by which past and present are foreshortened and reframed.”121 In consonance with Meister, Hinton states that the teleology of transitional justice also implies a moral hierarchy since “barbaric” societies are believed to transform into “civilized” societies through liberalization and democratization.122 Already in 2002, Thomas Carothers has pointed to the limitations of 114  This book is, as Meister calls it himself, “a critique of the dark side of the particular version of human rights that followed from U.S. global dominance”. Meister, After Evil a Politics of Human Rights, VII.115  Meister, 10.116  Meister, 31.117  Meister, 25.118  Meister, 14.119  Teitel, Transitional Justice, 109.120  Theidon, “Editorial Note,” 295.121  Hinton, Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence, 7.122  Hinton, 6. 124II Contesting Transitional Justicethe linearity and the teleology of “the transition paradigm” as many “transitional” countries fail to establish well-functioning democracy and end up in what he calls a “political gray zone” which despite significant efforts to establish political change is characterized by serious democratic deficits.123 In other words, reality has shown that most transitions do not neatly follow the linear model of transitional justice and that the ‘evil of the past’ can be persistent. By now, most transitional justice institutions and practitioners are fully aware of these limitations and complications. As I have pointed out in chapter 1.3, the ICTJ has broadened up its notion of transition to a time, any time, in which “an opportunity has emerged to address massive violations, even if it is a limited opportunity.”124 Nevertheless, in the variety of transitional justice measures that are realized during these differing windows of opportunity – whether they occur during peace processes, at the moment of regime change, or within Carothers’ “political gray zone” – the linearity and teleology stay present within the normative claims about what kind of change should take place and when it should happen. Broadening up the notion of transition does thus not necessarily involve a shift in its linear and teleological underpinnings. ‘Haunting’ pasts: Non-linear memories of violenceIn transitional justice, the present is conceived as a new time “in which the evil is remembered rather than repeated”.125 The duty to remember in transitional justice is based on the assumed beneficial properties of prevention, redemption and recognition that are assigned to memory, as I have argued in chapter 2.1. The transition thus opens up a space for memory in the present, a time to give a certain meaning to the events of the past in order to stimulate the process of coming to terms with that past. What happens, however, 123  Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” 9.124  ICTJ, “What Is Transitional Justice?”125  Meister, After Evil a Politics of Human Rights, 25.125II Contesting Transitional Justicewhen memory seems to impede closure instead of favoring it? Transitional justice’s linear approach to dealing with the past often collides with the temporality that characterizes memories of violence and the way they are dealt with by survivors. While its final project seems linear, teleological and future-oriented, the focus on testimony and the notion of trauma causes a constant evocation of the past into the present. This present is “a space where past experiences and the yet-to-be or not yet experienced future converge.”126 While the time of transition has a clear beginning and end point, the temporality of memories of violence mostly follows a less predictable trajectory. How does this influence the way survivors and society in general will be able to ‘keep up’ with the linear and teleological pace of the transition? Several scholars concerned with history and memory after mass human rights violations have highlighted this tension by examining the presence of the violent past and the temporality of memories in post-conflict or post-dictatorial societies. Berber Bevernage has pointed out that post-conflict societies are sometimes characterized by a perception of time that is not necessarily linear and irreversible. In these cases, the violent history returns to the present in bits and pieces in the form of a ‘haunting’ past: “the past in post-conflict situations somehow gets stuck in the present and refuses to go.” Bevernage relates this phenomenon to the “relatively recent loss of confidence in time as a force that heals all wounds” which, according to John Torpey, has occurred since the end of the Cold War.127 The increasing claims for justice for past violence by human rights defenders and survivors of mass atrocities lead to a questioning of the irreversible nature of time and a focus on the irrevocable nature of the harm suffered. In this way, they challenge “the clear delineation between past and present that lies at the root of the modern consciousness of time and modern historiography”.128 126  Jelin, “The Past in the Present,” 62.127  Berber Bevernage, History, Memory, and State-Sponsored Violence: Time and Justice (New York: Routledge, 2012), 13.128  Bevernage, 14.126II Contesting Transitional JusticeThese kind of survivors who cannot or do not want to follow the pace of the transition can therefore be considered saboteurs of the “construction of national simultaneity”, namely the process of peacebuilding, nation building and reconciliation.129 According to Ponciano Del Pino, the defined temporality of transitional justice does indeed not take into account the “multiple layers of memories and temporalities” that characterize the historical process of violence and its aftermath.130 Similarly, Elizabeth Jelin remarks that “the temporality of memories is not linear, chronological or rational”.131 “When it comes to trauma”, Aleida Assmann states that “there is no divide between the realm of experience and the horizon of expectations; on the contrary, past, present and future are fused in various ways.”132 According to Alexandra Barahona de Brito,  post-conflict societies are characterized by  “the existence of a parallel world of shadows” and “’irruptions of memory’ occur unexpectedly, holding people to the past.”133 Indeed, the (uncontrolled) reliving of memories characterizes the aftermath for many survivors of violence. Magdalena Zolkos speaks in that case of “the temporal distortion of inner life (living in the present as if it were the past)”.134 According to Danielle Granville, “because of 129  Bevernage, 16.130  Ponciano Del Pino, ““En El Nombre Del Gobierno”: Políticas Locales, Memoria y Violencia En El Perú Del Siglo XX,” in Las Formas Del Recuerdo. Etnografías de La Violencia Política En El Perú, ed. Ponciano Del Pino and Caroline Yezer (Lima: IEP, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2013), 30.131  Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Labors of Memory (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 55.132  Aleida Assmann, “Transformations of the Modern Time Regime,” in Breaking up Time. Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future, ed. Berber Bevernage and Chris Lorenz (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 53.133  Alexandra Barahona de Brito, “Truth, Justice, Memory, and Democratization in the Southern Cone,” in The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies, ed. Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Carmen González-Enríquez, and Paloma Aguilar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 156.134  Magdalena Zólkos, “Redressive Politics and the Nexus of Trauma, Transitional Justice and Reconciliation,” in Transitional Justice Theories, ed. Susanne Buckley-Zistel 127II Contesting Transitional Justicesuch teleology in transitional justice’s approaches to memory, the field still lacks a conceptual framework that can cope with the lack of linearity in certain countries’ approaches to their pasts.” 135 This is especially the case when speaking of the kind of master-narrative created by monolithic memory as described in 2.1. The idea of patchwork memory or multi-directionality provides more space for the integration of non-linear memories of violence, although it mostly still relies on the assumed beneficial properties of memory. It fails to take into account the paradox many survivors face: to feel the desire to close of the past, but to encounter oneself unable to do so because of haunting memories. Survivors can, for diverging reasons, experience the constant confrontation with the past as something painful which causes additional harm. In chapter 4, we will see how the pragmatic need for coexistence motivates the desire to silence instead of actively remember certain aspects of the past. The often poor and disappointing results which the constant confrontation with the past has brought about strengthens some survivors in the will to ‘forget’.Contemporary pasts: Ongoing and structural violenceThe temporality of transitional justice thus situates itself in an “ambiguous context of a fragile modernity and a shaky belief in the possibility of a strict demarcation of past and present”.136 On the one hand, it tries to tell a linear story with the aim of ‘putting the past in its place’ and turning to the future. On the other, this linear story needs to be built upon non-linear memories of violence that constantly challenge the boundaries of what used to be the past, should be the present and could be the future. According to Bevernage, transitional (New York: Routledge, 2015), 164.135  Danielle Granville, “Self-Inflicted Genocide and State- and Nation-Building in Post-Soviet,” in Critical Perspectives in Transitional Justice, ed. Nicola Frances Palmer (Cambridge: Intersentia, 2012), 377.136  Bevernage, History, Memory, and State-Sponsored Violence, 15.128II Contesting Transitional Justicejustice mechanisms such as truth commissions try to manage this tension between “two conflicting ways of remembering that are driven by contrary temporal features” precisely by turning non-linear memories of violence into history.137 But what happens then, when the presence of the past does not take the shape of a memory of violence that has happened in the past but is perceived by survivors as violence that has happened in the past and is still happening in the present? The way in which the violent past is evoked in the present requires an analysis that goes beyond the notion of traumatic memory. As Andreas Huyssen states, “this approach to history as trauma […] does not help much to understand the political layers of memory discourse in our time”.138 Indeed, Bevernage points out that the manner in which the relation between past, present and future is represented, actively constituted and regulated in transitional justice can have certain political and ethical implications.139 The linear progress from conflict to post-conflict can easily be conceived as an emancipatory process characterized by the struggle for a future of justice. But what more does the strict divide between past, present and future pursued by transitional justice entail? While delineating the time of transition in the present, transitional justice also delineates the past: the part of history that will be actively addressed during the transition. Alexander Hinton remarks that during the transition, “long, complicated histories are reduced to an immediate past of conflict; future horizons are delimited by the promised end of the transition, an idyllic state of civilized democracy.”140 According to Robert Meister, this attempt to separate the injustices of the past from those of the present and future implies that “evil is no longer widely understood to be a system of 137  Bevernage, 15.138  Huyssen, Present Pasts Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, 9.139  Bevernage, “Transitional Justice and Historiography: Challenges, Dilemmas and Possibilities,” 23.140  Hinton, Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence, 7.129II Contesting Transitional Justicesocial injustice that can have ongoing structural effects” but that it is conceived as “a time that is past – or can be put in the past.”141 This contrasts sharply with the idea of processes of historical injustice and structural violence that are not easily demarcated in time. The danger thus exists that the moment of transition will be seized as an opportunity to ‘clean up’ only the recent past without addressing the fundamental historical causes of conflict that might persist and cause cycles of violence. In line with the findings of Meister, Ponciano Del Pino argues that transitional justice imposes a defined temporality in which the violent past is conceived as an exception.142 This idea of an exception implies the notion of violence as a coincidental mistake and fails to acknowledge that outbreaks of violence are mostly rooted in larger historical processes that are not easily delimited in time, and that are not exceptional or coincidental. Considering violence as an outcome rather than as a process results in a “focus on instances of violence rather than the complex, and often invisible, nonviolent actions and mechanisms that precede and follow them.”143 Mahmood Mamdani argues that the lack of historical perspective in most accounts of the Rwandan genocide results in an analysis of the genocide as “an anthropological oddity.”144 He argues that the logic of colonialism is a crucial element in understanding the “violence of victims-turned-perpetrators” as a genocidal impulse.145 In his analysis of memories of 141  Meister, “Human Rights and the Politics of Victimhood,” 96.142  Ponciano Del Pino, “Introducción: Etnografías e Historias de La Violencia,” in Las Formas Del Recuerdo. Etnografías de La Violencia Política En El Perú, ed. Ponciano Del Pino and Caroline Yezer (Lima: IEP, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2013), 21.143  To clarify: Kalyvas uses the term “nonviolent” here in opposition to the kind of violence to which his study is dedicated, i.e. physical violence (more specifically homicide) against non-fulltime combatants. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, 21.144  “For Africans, it turns into a Rwandan oddity; and for non-Africans, the aberration is Africa. For both, the temptation is to dismiss Rwanda as exceptional”, thus Mamdani. Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 7.145  Mamdani, 10.130II Contesting Transitional Justicethe civil war in local communities in the Peruvian Andes, Ponciano del Pino notes how memories of recent violence are inscribed by the local population in historical narratives of structural injustice and oppression. This larger political and historical context is absent in many studies that stick to the universal language of human rights when describing the conflict and its aftermath, he argues.146 In the Colombian case, Felix Reátegui observes how memory initiatives of the Afro-Colombian population strive for the recognition of the continuity between contemporary violence and their history of slavery and exclusion.147 Integrating a broader historical dimension which exceeds the strict delineation of the past proposed by transitional justice thus seems to be useful for understanding the dynamics of violence and its consequences for survivors. If not, transitional justice mechanisms once again risk to produce “histories without history”.148However, transitional justice’s aim to ‘put the past in its place’ does not merely lead to hollow ahistorical accounts of past violence. The attempt to differentiate the time of violence from the present can also result in denial of ongoing structural violence and engender, as Bevernage states,  “a moral relativism and an incapacity for ethical judgment”.149 Zinaida Miller points out that “the notion of transition as a dramatic break from a ‘bad’ to a ‘good’ regime, inherently narrows the possibilities for imagining redistribution.”150 Transitional justice as a limited time for change can therefore also imply the danger that it will be used to cover up longer historical 146  Del Pino, ““En El Nombre Del Gobierno”: Políticas Locales, Memoria y Violencia En El Perú Del Siglo XX,” 29.147  Reátegui Carrillo, “The Victims Remember. Notes on the Social Practice of Memory,” 349.148  Fassin and Rechtman, The Empire of Trauma, 214.149  Bevernage, “Transitional Justice and Historiography: Challenges, Dilemmas and Possibilities,” 20.150  Zinaida Miller, “Effects of Invisibility: In Search of the ‘Economic’ in Transitional Justice,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2, no. 3 (December 1, 2008): 291.131II Contesting Transitional Justiceprocesses of injustice that were present before and will last after the time of transition. For example, Martha-Cecilia Dietrich concludes from her analysis of memory discourses in (post-)conflict Peru that “if we continue to situate the conflict in the past, we run the risk of […] mistakenly considering the sociopolitical problems from which they arose as resolved.”151 In addition, structural inequality is likely to provoke a self-maintaining system of structural violence or injustice.152 Beneficiaries of past violence often play a crucial role in upholding these structures, as is stressed by Meister.153 Survivors who keep on contesting the enduring injustice of the past on their turn risk to be blamed for being ‘stuck in the past’ and resisting to move forward. After all, the ‘ideal’ innocent and morally superior victim is expected to reconciliate without fostering vengeance. Stef Craps warns how the hegemonic trauma discourse, which isolates single events as exceptional, can become “a political palliative to the socially disempowered.”154 In this sense, transitional justice will not have an emancipatory potential, but it will, on the contrary, run the risk of depoliticizing and weakening the struggle for distributive justice. Meister argues that, viewed from a political perspective, taking a stance between vengeance and forgiveness forces survivors to reach for a moral compromise while distracting them from “the temptation to engage in a political analysis that might open the question of whether that evil has finally been defeated.” Justice for recent human rights violations comes, thus Meister, at the expense of long-term distributive justice.155 In addition to the notion of a returning or ‘haunting’ past described above, it thus seems useful here to introduce the notion 151  Martha-Cecilia Dietrich Ortega, “Discourses of Violence or Violent Discourses? An Audio-Visual Ethnography into the Experience of Memory in Postconflict Peru” (University of Manchester, 2015), 125.152  Nevin Aiken, “Rethinking Reconciliation in Divided Societies,” in Transitional Justice Theories, ed. Susanne Buckley-Zistel (New York: Routledge, 2014), 54.153  Meister, “Human Rights and the Politics of Victimhood,” 95.154  Craps, Postcolonial Witnessing, 28.155  Meister, After Evil a Politics of Human Rights, 323.132II Contesting Transitional Justiceof a continuous or ‘contemporary’ past that challenges the linear temporality of transitional justice.156 This second notion of ‘presence’ of the past helps us to relate recent human rights violations to longer historical processes of injustice that have not yet concluded and therefore potentially spark new outbreaks of social conflict and violence which may take different shapes but essentially have the same roots. In chapter five, we will see how encounters between the state and survivors in the context of searching for the disappeared is shaped by historically rooted socio-economic discrimination against the Andean population. Last but not least, it is necessary to ask how the critique of the specific temporality of transitional justice relates to what transitional justice does or pretends to do. On the eve of the establishment of South Africa’s TRC, Alex Boraine was fully aware of the fact that “economic justice and the restoration of the moral order must be seen as twin goals. The attempt to narrow the gap between the dispossessed, disadvantaged majority and the privileged few and the attempt to restore the moral order cannot be separated: the healing of the nation will require absolute commitment to both.”157 Today, as an answer to the question “What is transitional justice not?”, the ICTJ states that “it is not the way to fix everything that is wrong with society. The long-term social and political struggles for justice and equal opportunities might be assisted by measure of transitional justice but not solved by it.”158The core idea behind ‘transitology’ was a technocratic believe in institutions and political choices made by elites rather than in structural socio-economic factors as conditions for democracy, as I have pointed out in chapter 1.2.159 Paige Arthur explains how the 156  I borrow the expression of a ‘contemporary past’ from Jose Pablo Baraybar, director of the EPAF who used it to refer to the persistence of the past in Peru. Fieldnotes, Sacsamarca, 29.06.2014. 157  Boraine et al., The Healing of a Nation?, xvii.158  ICTJ, “What Is Transitional Justice?”159  Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” 8.133II Contesting Transitional Justiceconcept of ‘transition’ was originally recycled from the discourse of social transformation and gradually remolded to describe a change at the legal-institutional level. One of the reasons for this appropriation of the concept of transition for the purpose of democratization is, according to Arthur, “the global decline of the radical Left during the 1970s and a concomitant ideological shift in favor of human rights.” In Latin America, this decline of the radical Left is linked with, among others, the death of Che Guevara and the outcomes of the Cuban revolution.160 As Arthur explains, it is in this context that “many on the Left abandoned the language of class warfare to describe state violence in favor of the language of human rights.”161 Or, as Boaventura De Sousa Santos states: “human rights talk was separated from the revolutionary tradition and began to be conceived of as a grammar of depoliticized social change […].”162The struggle for social justice was thus never the primary point of departure of transitional justice. Nevertheless, discussions on the inclusion of social, cultural and economic rights next to civil and political rights were present from the outset and caused an immediate proliferation of the original narrow legal-political conception of transitional justice. Yet, the existing attempts to integrate socio-economic rights and development into transitional justice “have been thin on conceptual inspiration and had only modest impact on practice.”163 Paul Gready and Simon Robins therefore propose an approach to justice in post-conflict situations which they call transformative rather than transitional. The authors define transformative justice as “transformative change that emphasizes local agency and resources, the prioritization of process rather than preconceived outcomes and the challenging of unequal 160  Paige Arthur, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice,” 339.161  Arthur, 340.162  Boaventura De Sousa Santos, If God Were a Human Rights Activist (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), 4.163  Gready and Robins, “From Transitional to Transformative Justice,” 346.134II Contesting Transitional Justiceand intersecting power relationships and structures of exclusion at both the local and the global level.”164 Indeed, other scholars in the field have also made increasing efforts to bring an intersectional approach to the study of transitional justice in an attempt to engage with “the conditions that have produced systematic and sustained human rights violations in transitional societies.”165 Others suggest, however, that we should be modest and realistic about the aims and potential of transitional justice. Roger Duthie, whose research focuses on the nexus between transitional justice and development, states that transitional justice cannot be expected to be transformative. He argues that “transitional justice efforts make up but one set of tools for effecting social change in a particular context, one that on its own can make an important contribution to but will not bring about a radical transformation of society.”166 A modest approach to the transformative potential of transitional justice should, however, not get in the way of an analysis of the implications of the specific temporality of the paradigm and its implications for post-conflict policies. 164  Gready and Robins, 340.165  Rooney and Aoláin, “Transitional Justice from the Margins,” 1.166  Roger Duthie, “Afterword,” in Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence, ed. Alexander Laban Hinton (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 256.Vigil of the ANFASEP for the victims of the Cayara massacre, Huamanga (2015)III CLEAN HANDS, CLEAN SLATEPeru’s (Post-)Conflict Policies138III Clean Hands, Clean SlateLa justicia es como las serpientes: sólo muerde a los descalzos.1 IntroductionIt was almost as if it was written in the stars that Peru, after Fujimori’s exit to Japan in 2000, would follow the example of its Latin-American neighbors by erecting a truth commission The Peruvian case was, however, fundamentally different in that it did not follow the expected ruptures of (post-)Cold-War historiography. After all, the Shining Path started its revolutionary struggle only in 1980, when the international success of communist ideology was already declining. Nevertheless, apart from the Colombian FARC no other subversive group inspired by communist ideology ever was as powerful and deadly in Latin America as the Shining Path. The magnitude of the bloodbath caused by the followers of camarada Gonzalo in its turn made it easier for the successive governments to legitimize their excessive use of violence during the counteroffensive, despite the rise of international human rights discourse and humanitarian government during the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to that, socio-economic patterns in the violence during that period made clear that Peru was a country of many worlds that were not only separated by mountain ranges and rainforest, but also by different mentalities and structural patterns of exclusion and racism. In contrast to for example Argentina and Chile, it was the rural population that was mostly involved in and affected by the violence. The exercise of retributive justice was thus from the outset inseparably connected to the challenge of bridging the divides between Peruvians from the coast and those of the Andes and Amazon on the one hand, and between citizens and a state that failed to protect them on the other.1  My translation of original citation: “Justice is like a snake, it only bites those who are barefoot.” The origin of this quote is not entirely clear. It is mostly ascribed to Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, but sometimes also to archbishop Óscar Romero from El Salvador. 139III Clean Hands, Clean SlateWhat happened to the ‘success recipe’ of transitional justice once applied to the Peruvian context? How did the concept and network of transitional justice arrive to Peru in the first place? How was the international discourse on justice, truth and reconciliation – which was widespread throughout Latin America by 20002 – implemented, appropriated and transformed in the Peruvian context after Fujimori’s exit? And, vice versa, how did the Peruvian experience change international transitional justice? This chapter provides an overview of the dissemination and implementation of transitional justice in Peru by looking at various actors and mechanisms that shaped the (post-)conflict process which, as recent developments have shown, is still ongoing. The main actors that will be discussed are the human rights movement, the survivors and the state. As for the mechanisms, the analysis will focus on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and two of its recommendations, namely the reparation plan and the plan for the search for the disappeared.3 The aim here is not to give an exhaustive overview of all the different steps in the process, but to focus on the interaction between international, national and local actors and ideas in forming the (post-)conflict process. The chapter concludes with a brief sketch of public narratives on the civil war as they are verbalized and materialized in public opinion and space. This gives an impression of the turbulent landscape in which the process of dealing with the legacies of the past takes place in Peru. 2  Lutz and Sikkink use the term “justice cascade” to refer to the proliferation of human rights law in Latin America at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century and state that this phenomenon is part of a “larger human rights norms cascade in Latin America”. Ellen Lutz and Kathryn Sikkink, “The Justice Cascade: The Evolution and Impact of Foreign Human Rights Trials in Latin America,” Chicago Journal of Internaitonal Law 2, no. 1 (2001): 1–34. 3  I will focus on these two because they are directly related to the survivors and therefore are most present in my research. The third general recommendation of the TRC was institutional reform. Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación Perú, “Informe Final” (Lima, 2003), TOMO IX.140III Clean Hands, Clean Slate3.1 The human rights movement Putting truth and accountability on the agenda of the transitional government of Valentin Paniagua was above all the merit of civil society groups and their tireless struggle for justice. The reason why civil society groups played a decisive role during the transition is that political parties were rather weak by the end of Fujimori’s government.4 Coletta Youngers situates the birth of the Peruvian human rights movement in 1977, when the military government of Francisco Morales Bermúdez adopted drastic economic reforms that caused a dramatic price increase of 45% for foodstuff. Progressive political parties, syndicates and a wide range of civil society organizations set up a national strike against rising poverty levels and increasingly severe government repression. Peru being the cradle of liberation theology, the progressive sector of the Catholic Church played a crucial role in the struggle for the improvement of the Peruvian poor’s socio-economic rights.5 The Comisión Episcopal de Acción Social (CEAS)6 opened the first human rights office to receive denunciations of abuses by the military and grant legal and economic support to victims. In the footsteps of CEAS, local human rights committees were founded all over the country. Despite the fact that left-wing political parties were reluctant to adopt the human rights discourse, considering it something ‘bourgeois’ and Western, they shared the interest in the fight against poverty and inequality.7 In 4  According to Degregori, the creation of the TRC would have been impossible if the traditional political parties would have played a significant role during the transition, as this would have meant that Acción Popular and APRA would bring their own presidents, respectively Fernando Belaúnde (1980-1985 AP) and Alan García (1985 -1990, APRA) under scrutiny. Carlos Iván Degregori, Qué Difícil Es Ser Dios El Partido Comunista Del Perú - Sendero Luminoso Y El Conflicto Armado Interno En El Perú: 1980-1999, 2013, 278. .5  Coletta Youngers, “La Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos Del Perú Un Estudio de Caso de Construcción de Una Coalición” (WOLA, 2002), 2. 6  English translation: Episcopal Commission for Social Action. 7  Youngers, 3. 141III Clean Hands, Clean Slatea first attempt to combine forces on a national level, the Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CONADEH) was founded in 1979, which evolved from a coalition of smaller local groups to a new organization that was renamed as the Comisión de Derechos Humanos (COMISEDH)8 in 1988.9Human rights advocacy during wartimeThe beginning of the civil war in 1980 announced important but difficult times for the development of the human rights movement as it had to maintain a firm and credible stance against the various actors involved in the violence. The focus shifted from the struggle for labor and socio-economic rights to denouncing the human rights violations and war crimes perpetuated by both the Shining Path and the state. Gradually, claiming the rights of the detained, disappeared and displaced victims of the civil war became the movement’s central cause. Organizations focusing on legal support for victims, such as the Instituto de Defensa Legal (IDL)10, the Comisión Andina de Juristas (CAJ)11 and APRODEH, played a prominent role in this process. The Peruvian branch of Amnesty International was reactivated by the international secretariat and was one of the first organizations to denounce human rights violations in Ayacucho on an international level.12 The women of the disappeared in Ayacucho organized themselves in the ANFASEP from 1983 onward, hereby 8  Human Rights Commission9  Youngers, “La Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos Del Perú Un Estudio de Caso de Construcción de Una Coalición,” 4.10  Institute for Legal Defense. 11  Andean Commission of Jurists. The Andean Commission of Jurists was originally founded as a regional office of the International Commission of Jurists and has its headquarters in Lima. José Zalaquett and Diego García-Sayán, among others, form part of the general assembly of the CAJ. CAJ, “Comisión Andina de Juristas,” accessed May 22, 2018, http://www.cajpe.org.pe/index.html.12  Youngers, “La Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos Del Perú Un Estudio de Caso de Construcción de Una Coalición,” 6. 142III Clean Hands, Clean Slaterepresenting the rural victims of the war on a regional and national level, while the human rights movement mainly had its headquarters in Lima.13 The work of ANFASEP was very risky, since repression against human rights activists and survivor groups by the military and the conservative branch of the Catholic Church was severe in the war’s emergency zones (the departments of Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Apurímac). As a result, they could often only operate underground.14 On a national level, however, the human rights movement was strengthened by the civil war. In 1985, more than fifty Peruvian human rights organizations decided to unite in an umbrella organization, named the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDDHH)15, which soon became known as one of Latin America’s strongest human rights advocacy networks.16 The CNDDHH was in rotation supervised by CEAS, APRODEH and the COMISEDH and operated – and continues to do so – independently from political organizations or the Catholic Church. This independence was important in the context of growing distrust and changeable alliances caused by the civil war.17 By spearheading 13  ANFASEP, “La Historia de ANFASEP – ANFASEP,” accessed May 22, 2018, http://anfasep.org.pe/anfasep/historia-de-anfasep/. 14  Youngers, “La Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos Del Perú Un Estudio de Caso de Construcción de Una Coalición,” 8. 15  National Human Rights Coordinator 16  Root, Transitional Justice in Peru, 45. The precursor of the CNDDHH was the Comité de Solidaridad “Mártires de Uchuraccay” (Solidarity Committee martyrs of Uchuraccay) that was founded in the aftermath of the assassination of nine journalists in the village of Uchuraccay, Ayacucho, in 1983, a case that moved national public opinion. Novelist and public intellectual Mario Vargas Llosa chaired the committee of inquiry that was erected by the government of president Fernando Belaúnde to investigate the massacre. Interview with Sofía Macher, ex-commissioner of the TRC, Lima, 24.05.2017. For an extensive overview of the history of the CNDDHH, see: Coletta Youngers, Violencia política y sociedad civil en el Perú: historia de la Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2003). 17  Youngers describes how sympathizers of the Shining Path were present at the foundational meeting of the Coordinadora, accusing the organizers of trading 143III Clean Hands, Clean Slatethe advocacy for peace, democracy and human rights, the CNDDHH managed to maintain an autonomous position. In contrast to other Latin-American countries, where civil society focused on human rights violations perpetuated by the state, the CNDDHH also documented the violations of international humanitarian law committed by the Shining Path and other actors in the conflict. Despite the fact that the movement defended the rights of suspects during their imprisonment, human rights lawyers did not take up the defense for suspects of terrorism in lawsuits.18 Nevertheless, human rights NGOs and victim associations such as ANFASEP were – and still are – often associated with left-wing politics and therefore accused of supporting the Shining Path and impeding the army’s counter-offensive by denouncing the abuses of the military.19 This stigmatization reached its peak during Fujimori’s government, who infamously referred to the human rights movement as “the legal arms of terrorism”.20 The Shining Path in turn considered human rights NGOs as products of Western capitalism and committed attacks directed against activists and community leaders.21“the rights of the people” (“los derechos del pueblo”) for human rights. After a conflict over the condemnation of the violence inflicted by the Shining Path against civilians, pro-Shining Path participants left the meeting.  Youngers, 10, 11. During the second general meeting in 1987, the rotating supervision was replaced by a separate general secretariat and Pilar Coll was assigned as the first president of the CNDDHH. Youngers, 15.  18  Youngers, 20.19  Youngers, 5. Root points to the international context for understanding the stigmatization of the human rights movement: “Because human rights movements in other Latin American countries tended to focus on abuses by the state, they were more easily targeted as enemies of the state and could be more easily depicted as rebel sympathizers to the public.” Root, Transitional Justice in Peru, 46. 20  Burt, Violencia y autoritarismo en el Perú bajo la sombra de Sendero y la dictadura de Fujimori, 335.   21  Youngers, “La Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos Del Perú Un Estudio de Caso de Construcción de Una Coalición,” 12. 144III Clean Hands, Clean SlateLinks with international networksIn the heat of war during the 1980s, and throughout Fujimori’s increasingly authoritarian government in the 1990s, the Peruvian network of human rights NGOs and survivor groups established strong links with international players such as Americas Watch, Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)22 and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).23 The ever more repressive national context, under the first governments of Alan García (1985-1990) and  Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) made these international connections of vital importance to exert pressure on a domestic level. The CNDDHH regularly sent delegations and reports to the OAS and the UN to inform these organizations about the Peruvian situation.24 Especially after Fujimori’s autocoup in 1992, international attention increasingly turned to the deteriorating democratic context. Assistance money from the US state department, for example, was redirected from state institutions to civil society.25 When the administration of US president Bill Clinton visited Peru in 1994, they met with representatives of the CNDDHH before talking to Fujimori.26 Furthermore, the CNDDHH established 22  Juan Méndez, ex-president of Americas Watch and of the ICTJ, is one of the members of the ICJ. ICJ, “Commissioners from the Americas | ICJ,” accessed May 22, 2018, https://www.icj.org/commission/commissioners-from-the-americas/. 23  Root, Transitional Justice in Peru, 49. 24  Youngers, “La Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos Del Perú Un Estudio de Caso de Construcción de Una Coalición,” 21. 25  Root, 50. In 1995, however, elections were organized, and Fujimori was re-elected, after which international attention decreased again despite the fact that the elections were fraudulent, and that Fujimori continued consolidating his authoritarian government. For example, in 1995 congress approved a law that granted amnesty to all the military personnel involved in human rights violations since the beginning of the civil war in 1980. The design and approval of the law happened overnight, impeding any kind of public debate. Youngers, “La Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos Del Perú Un Estudio de Caso de Construcción de Una Coalición,” 23, 24. 26  Youngers, 21. 145III Clean Hands, Clean Slateclose relations with North American, Latin American and European advocacy networks, including the US-based Peru Peace Network, the London-based Peru Support Group, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)  and the Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional (CEJIL)27.28 In 1990, the Permanent People’s Tribunal, the Bologna-based successor of the Russel Tribunals, was invited by the CNDDHH to hold a session in Lima and concluded that crimes against humanity were being committed both by the state and by the subversive groups in an environment of impunity.29 This entanglement of the national human rights movement with international players, which was strengthened by their opposition against Fujimori, was going to play an important role in the implementation of the transitional justice agenda during the transitional government.  The creation of the TRC: A victory for the human rights movement The capture of Abimael Guzmán – a second landmark event of the year 1992, next to Fujimori’s autocoup – caused the gradual collapse of the Shining Path and a significant decrease in the number of human rights violations in the following years. This made the CNDDHH shift its agenda from human rights advocacy to a focus on democracy building, especially under the presidency of Sofía Macher, who took up the mandate in 1997.30 In the run up to the general elections in 2000, a plan with 44 recommendations for a “basic human rights platform in Perú” was drawn up in order to raise awareness among the electorate. Even tough this plan did not contain any concrete 27  Center for Justice and International Law. CEJIL is an inter-American organization with headquarters in Buenos Aires, Río de Janeiro, San José and Washington D.C. “CEJIL,” accessed May 24, 2018, https://www.cejil.org/en/cejils-offices-0.28  Youngers, “La Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos Del Perú Un Estudio de Caso de Construcción de Una Coalición,” 35. 29  Youngers, 19.30  Youngers, 28.146III Clean Hands, Clean Slateidea for establishing a truth commission, it included demands for historical clarification about the conflict, the liberation of political prisoners and the reintegration of Peru into the Interamerican Court.31 After the fraudulent reelection of Fujimori in 1995, the OAS set up a dialogue (Mesa de Diálogo) with eighteen participants, including officials of the Fujimori administration, members of the political opposition and representatives of civil society in order to exert pressure on the government to implement reforms. The human rights movement was headed by, among others, Sofia Macher, Susana Villarán de la Puente and human rights ombudsman Jorge Santistevan de Noriega.32 When the Fujimori regime collapsed only a few months later, the human rights representatives at the Mesa de Diálogo were capable of defining the agenda of the transitional government of Paniagua and some of them even acquired offices in the new administration.33 Most importantly, Diego García Sayán was appointed as Minister of Justice. He had previously directed the CAJ and had participated in UN peace missions in Guatemala and El Salvador. Furthermore, Susana Villarán de la Puente became Minister of Women’s Promotion and Social Development, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was assigned to Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, who served as a secretary general of the UN from 1982 to 1991.34 According to Sofía Macher, Villarán and Pérez de Cuéllar brought up the idea of establishing a truth commission based on the examples of Chile, Argentina and El Salvador.35 Historian Carlos Iván Degregori, who together with Macher would become one of the commissioners, also points to the international contexts of the Southern Cone and Central America as important examples. As Degregori writes, “by 2000, truth commissions were part of the options menu in countries where democratic transitions took 31  Interview with Sofía Macher, ex-commissioner of the TRC, Lima, 24.05.2017.32  Root, Transitional Justice in Peru, 51. 33  Root, 52.34  Root, 52.35  Interview with Sofía Macher.147III Clean Hands, Clean Slateplace after internal armed conflicts.”36 Macher adds, however, that they had no clue what a truth commission really entailed. Thus, an inter-institutional working group was set up which designed the Supreme Decree, a constitutional text that defined the objectives of the future truth commission. In order to learn from international experiences, a seminar was organized together with the nascent ICTJ represented by Priscila Hayner (cfr. 1.3) in which members of the human rights movement participated, as well as representatives of the military and the police.37 José Zalaquett, a personal friend of Sofía Macher, brought the South-African experience into the debate, which had resonated broadly in international media and was also well-known in Peru.38 There was a lot of discussion on the different shapes which the truth commissions could take: a ‘light’ commission limited to research by experts, or an open commission with public hearings where victims could testify. Macher was a fervent advocate of the full option with public hearings. Another difficult point of discussion was the question of amnesty for perpetrators in exchange for confessions of crimes, as in the South-African TRC. The topic of amnesties was, however, fiercely opposed by the human rights movement, which stood united in its struggle against Fujimori’s amnesty law for the military personnel. Amnesty International even entirely rejected the idea of establishing a truth commission, fearing that it might be used to avoid prosecutions.39 36  My translation of Spanish original: “Para el año 2000, las comisiones de la verdad eran parte del menu de opciones en los países donde se producían transiciones democráticas luego de conflictos armados internos.” Degregori, Qué Difícil Es Ser Dios El Partido Comunista Del Perú - Sendero Luminoso Y El Conflicto Armado Interno En El Perú: 1980-1999, 279. 37  The ICTJ was officially founded in March 2001, while the inter-institutional working group was created on December 9, 2000.  38  Zalaquett, commissioner of the Chilean National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, had been a consultant for the South-African TRC. Albie Sachs, “Meeting the Man Who Organised a Bomb in My Car,” The Limits of Transition: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission 20 Years on, 2017, 28. 39  Interview with Sofía Macher, ex-commissioner of the TRC, Lima, 24.05.2017.148III Clean Hands, Clean SlateDespite the fact that Minister of Justice García Sayán, who had a background in international diplomacy, emphasized the importance of reconciliation and restorative justice, the inter-institutional working group agreed that the truth commission should focus on accountability by paving the way for trials.40 The working group made a draft design of the Supreme Decree, which was sent to Priscila Hayner for revision. The ICTJ eventually standardized and systematized the set-up of the commission.41 Interim president Paniagua was hesitant to establish the truth commission during his term, stating that he had no mandate to do so. In the meantime, however, elections were coming up in which former president Alan García would run against Alejandro Toledo. Afraid that the momentum would be lost after the elections, especially in case of a victory for García, the human rights movement led by Sofía Macher pressured the government to establish the truth commission at once. Their persistence was successful, and in the last weeks of his presidency Paniagua officially appointed the seven members of the Truth Commission.42 Salomón Lerner, rector of the Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP)43, was assigned to chair the commission. The other commissioners included (mostly left-wing) intellectuals, representatives of the Catholic Church and the National Evangelical Council, a general of the army and representatives of the human rights movement, including Sofía Macher who took charge of the public hearings.44 The presidential elections were narrowly 40  Root, Transitional Justice in Peru, 55. Macher also states that the CAJ, which is directed by García Sayán, in general took a more diplomatic stance (calling them“los activistas de corbata” – “the activists with tie”) within the Peruvian human rights movement and did not form part of the CNDDHH because they considered it too political. Interview with Sofía Macher, ex-commissioner of the TRC, Lima, 24.05.2017. 41  Interview with Sofía Macher. The ICTJ would also send consultants to work with the TRC later on. Root, Transitional Justice in Peru, 75.42  Root, 57. 43  Pontifical Catholic University of Peru44  According to Macher, the choice for Lerner as president of the commission 149III Clean Hands, Clean Slatewon by Toledo, who controversially rebaptized the commission into Truth and Reconciliation Commission as soon as he assumed the presidency, and extended its workforce with five extra commissioners.45 While the decision to rename the commission was inspired by the South-African model as well as by proposals of Peruvian church leaders, opponents of the TRC – such as the army, that feared accusations – seized this moment to bring up the discussion on amnesties again and accused the commission of wanting to leave the Shining Path unpunished. The commissioners in turn argued that the intended reconciliation was to be understood as a way of bringing together the rural populations of el Perú profundo46 and the elites of the capital.47 The Supreme Decree that created the TRC equipped it with an eighteen-month mandate to “clarify the process, the facts and responsibilities of the terrorist violence and the violations of human rights that occurred between May 1980 and November 2000, attributable to both terrorist organizations and State agents, as well as to propose initiatives to consolidate peace and harmony among Peruvians.” The concrete aims of the TRC were to analyze the historical context that gave rise to the conflict, to assign responsibilities for human rights violations, to propose strategies for reparations, to recommend institutional, legal and educational reform and to establish mechanisms for the follow-up of its recommendations.48 The TRC possessed a staff of more was much to the dismay of the students of the PUCP due to the case of the disappearance by police forces of student Ernesto Castillo Páez in 1990, which according to the students was not met with adecuate action by Lerner, who then was vice-rector of the PUCP. Interview with Sofía Macher, ex-commissioner of the TRC, Lima, 24.05.2017. 45  Degregori, Qué Difícil Es Ser Dios El Partido Comunista Del Perú - Sendero Luminoso Y El Conflicto Armado Interno En El Perú: 1980-1999, 275. 46  The deep Peru, term used to refer to Peru’s rural areas in opposition to Lima47  Root, Transitional Justice in Peru, 74; Interview with Sofía Macher.48  My translation of Spanish original: “Créase la Comisión de la Verdad encargada de esclarecer el proceso, los hechos y responsabilidades de la violencia terrorista y de la violación a los derechos humanos producidos desde mayo de 1980 hasta 150III Clean Hands, Clean Slatethan five hundred people at its peak, and disposed of a budget of over thirteen million US dollars, of which approximately two thirds were provided by the government and one third by the international community.49 The creation of a TRC with so many resources and such an extensive mandate marked an historical momentum and meant, at that point, a great victory for the human rights movement. 3.2 The TRC and its recommendations Truth through testimonyDespite the establishment of a state supported TRC being a big achievement for the human rights movement, the project of truth-telling took off in an adverse context. Fujimorismo was (and is) still deeply rooted in Peruvian society. Fujimori’s defeat of the Shining Path and the absence of a negotiated peace fostered a victor’s history, broadly adopted by the public, according to which state abuses were a necessary evil to beat ‘terrorism’. By contrast, the domestic human rights movement and their international partners condemned both the violence by state actors and that of the Shining Path and other armed groups. Their view was based on universal human rights discourse, in which the voice of the ‘innocent’ victims was deemed noviembre de 2000, imputables tanto a las organizaciones terroristas como a los agentes del Estado, así como proponer iniciativas destinadas a afirmar la paz y la concordia entre los peruanos.” Decreto Supremo N° 065-2001-PCM, Lima, 04.06.2001.49  Priscilla B Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Transitional Justice and the Challenge of Truth Commissions (New York, N.Y.: Routledge, 2011), 36. The entire budget, also the domestic part, was put in a fund managed by the UNDP. International donors included, among others, USAID, the Ford Foundation, the EU, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the governments of Belgium, Canada, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. CVR, “Información Financiera,” accessed September 5, 2018, http://www.cverdad.org.pe/lacomision/ifinanciera/financiamiento.php.151III Clean Hands, Clean Slateessential for establishing the truth.50 By appealing to the so-called impartiality of the victim’s voices in order to go around the complex and adverse domestic context, the movement adopted the (highly contested) model of truth finding through testimony.  The TRC’s pursuit of truth through testimony became a massive undertaking. The Peruvian TRC was the first in Latin America to hold hearings that were open to the public and broadcasted on television.51 The TRC thus broadened its outreach by providing the opportunity to testify as a witness, as well as to be a witness of the testimonies.52 Apart from the eight public hearings (which were held in different parts of the country), testimonies were registered in regional offices. Furthermore, mobile teams of the TRC visited 509 districts in order to collect additional testimonies. In total, 15.220 Peruvians testified before the TRC.53 By applying a victim-centered and testimony-based model, Peru responded to the (by then internationally well-established) idea that revealing the truth about the past was beneficial for the future of post-conflict societies. The model was believed to bring about justice for the victims, while at the 50  This choice to focus on ‘innocent’ victims was in fact already clear before the start of the TRC, with the campaign “In name of the Innocent” (“En nombre de los inocentes”) that was set up by the CNDDHH as a protest against Fujimori’s amnesty law in 1995. Coletta Youngers, Violencia política y sociedad civil en el Perú: historia de la Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos, 25.51  International Center for Transitional Justice, “Annual Report 2001-2002,” 20. The public hearings were broadcasted on the state channel TV Perú and on the cable channel Canal N. CVR, “El Impacto de Las Audiencias Públicas En Los Participantes,” accessed September 4, 2018, http://www.cverdad.org.pe/apublicas/audiencias/impacto.php.  52  Silvia Rodríguez Maeso, “Testimonios, Discurso Experto Y Comisiones de La Verdad: El Contexto de La Denuncia,” Política y Sociedad (2011): 589.53  The TRC held eight public hearings with victims, five thematic public hearings, seven public assemblies and fifteen ‘dialogues’ (diálogos y encuentros ciudadanos). In total, 422 people testified during these public events and 9.500 people attended. CVR, “Informe Sobre Las Actividades Realizadas Por La Comisión de La Verad Y Reconciliación Y Convocatoria Al País,” accessed September 4, 2018, http://www.cverdad.org.pe/lacomision/balance/index.php. 152III Clean Hands, Clean Slatesame time restoring their dignity, facilitating national reconciliation and preventing further violations (cfr. 1.2). This conception of truth goes beyond the forensic aspect of documenting crimes in order to collect juridical evidence that can be used in court, as it implies a notion of truth as already being a form of justice in itself and therefore a right that victims can appeal to.54 Promoting this right to truth is one of the main goals of international transitional justice institutions such as the ICTJ.55  Within this paradigm, the mere act of testifying publicly and breaking the silence is considered to be a form of symbolic reparation, provoking a liberating catharsis for the victims. Finding truth through testimony then gains importance over the pursuit of some kind of reconciliation between the witnesses and the audience, or the pursuit of criminal justice.56 The Supreme Decree that established the TRC followed this trend by underscoring that “the State should guarantee society’s right to truth”.57 In his inaugural speech of the public hearings, TRC president Salomón Lerner stated that the public hearings “will not be a stage for the debate of ideas or for the confrontation of versions. […] They are moments for respectful and compassionate listening and, above all, for the dignification of the victims […].”58 Reflecting on the public hearings, commissioner Carlos Iván Degregori wrote 54  For a discussion on ‘truth as acknowledgment’ see: Berber Bevernage, History, Memory, and State-Sponsored Violence: Time and Justice (New York: Routledge, 2012), 10. 55  “ICTJ Program Report: Truth and Memory,” accessed September 23, 2014, http://ictj.org/news/ictj-program-report-truth-and-memory.56  For a discussion on historical vs. juridical truth in the Peruvian TRC, see: Rodríguez Maeso, “Testimonios, Discurso Experto Y Comisiones de La Verdad: El Contexto de La Denuncia,” 593 a.f. 57  My translation of original citation: “[…] el Estado debe garantizar el derecho de la Sociedad a la verdad.” Decreto Supremo N° 065-2001-PCM, Lima, 04.06.2001.58  My translation of original citation: “No serán estas audiencias un escenario para el debate de ideas ni para la confrontación de versiones. [...] Son momentos para la escucha respetuosa y compasiva y, sobre todo, para la dignificación de las víctimas […]”. CVR, “Inauguración de Las Audiencias Públicas. Palabras Del Presidente de La CVR,” accessed June 1, 2018, http://www.cverdad.org.pe/apublicas/audiencias/inaugura.php.153III Clean Hands, Clean Slatethat the very act of daring to speak gave agency to the survivors and therefore constituted a symbolic reparation.59 The choice for a testimony-based model was thus a very conscious one inspired by the international paradigm of transitional justice. Reparations for victimsThe recommendations of the TRC resulted in the opening of the Registro Único de Víctimas (RUV)60 and the creation of the Programa Integral de Reparaciones (PIR)61 monitored by the Comisión Multisectorial de Alto Nivel (CMAN)62 and the Consejo de Reparaciones63, institutions created within the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights.64 The final design of the reparation plan was based on a proposal prepared by the ICTJ and APRODEH, in dialogue with several national and regional victims’ associations. The parameters put forward in the proposal are based on four objectives: bringing justice to the victims, recognizing the pain and suffering experienced by victims, reestablishing civic trust amongst citizens and contributing to social solidarity with the victims.65 In its pursuit of integrality, the reparation plan consists of no less than six different categories of reparation: restoration of citizens’ rights, reparations in education, reparations in health, individual economic reparations, collective 59  Degregori, Qué Difícil Es Ser Dios El Partido Comunista Del Perú - Sendero Luminoso Y El Conflicto Armado Interno En El Perú: 1980-1999, 282. 60  Unique Victim Register61  Integral Reparation Program62  High-Level Multisector Commission63  Reparations Council 64  The CMAN was created in 2004, the law that established the reparation plan was approved in 2005 and the reparation council was installed in 2006. Elisabeth Bunselmeyer, “Trust Repaired? The Impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Reparation Program on Social Cohesion in Post-Conflict Communities of Peru” (Philipps-Universität Marburg, 2017), 112. 65  ICTJ and APRODEH, “Design Parameters for a Reparations Program in Peru,” 2002.154III Clean Hands, Clean Slatereparations and symbolic reparations.66 The Peruvian reparation plan thus clearly reflects the ICTJ’s vision that “reparations should be based on a process of listening to victims” and that it should combine “measures that are symbolic, material, individual, and collective”.67 Eligible beneficiaries of the reparation plan are defined as “all the persons or groups of persons who because of the internal armed conflict […] have suffered acts or omissions that violate norms of international human rights law”.68 The plan thus seems to take a universal approach towards the notion of victim by explicitly mentioning that the notion of violation is independent of any previous conduct of the victim, following international standards based on the principle of non-discrimination and equality before the law. In the next paragraph, however, one crucial exception is made as it is stated that “taking into account the nature of the violence in Peru, the TRC considers that those persons who have been injured or killed during armed confrontations and who at that moment belonged to a subversive terrorist organization cannot be considered victims.” 69 The commission hence distinguishes between state forces and self-defense committees who are included in the universe of victims in case of having suffered human rights violations, and 66  Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación Perú, “Informe Final” (Lima, 2003), Anexo 6: Plan Integral de Reparaciones. 67  ICTJ, “Reparations & Transitional Justice,” International Center for Transitional Justice, February 25, 2011, https://www.ictj.org/our-work/transitional-justice-issues/reparations.68  Ten different categories of violations are defined in the PIR: enforced disappearance, kidnapping, extrajudicial execution, murder, forced displacement, arbitrary detention and violation of due process, forced recruitment, torture, rape, and injuries or death in attacks violating international humanitarian law. Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación Perú, “Informe Final,” Tomo IX, 149. The RUV was closed for a while in 2011 by the Garcia administration but was later reopened and is still open for registration. By 2017, 223.000 people were registered in the RUV. Bunselmeyer, “Trust Repaired? The Impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Reparation Program on Social Cohesion in Post-Conflict Communities of Peru”, 116. 69  CVR, Tomo IX, 149.155III Clean Hands, Clean Slatemembers of the Shining Path and the MRTA that can under no circumstances benefit from any category of the reparation plan.70 The different types of violation moreover give access to different categories of the reparation plan. Individual economic reparations, for example, are limited to family members of victims who died or disappeared, victims with mental or physical disabilities as a consequence of (sexual) violence or torture, victims of wrongful imprisonment, victims of rape and children born from rape. 71  Although comprehensive in its design, the implementation of the plan has been facing many problems.72 The registration procedure confronts potential beneficiaries with an overly bureaucratic process that is mostly only accessible in Spanish. On top of that come severe logistical problems such as the journey from a remote place to the central registration offices. Not only does this involve significant expenses (for travel and accommodation) but also a loss of valuable 70  This goes against the criteria formulated in the draft design of the ICTJ and APRODEH, where it is stated that “the program should satisfy the principles of nondiscrimination and equal treatment. […] Regarding these principles, international law rejects the notion that in order to receive reparations, the victims of human rights violations or international humanitarian law violations must have ‘clean hands’.” ICTJ and APRODEH, “Design Parameters for a Reparations Program in Peru,” 3. For an analysis of the implications of this “clean hands doctrine” for the Peruvian reparation plan, see: Lisa LaPlante, “The Law of Remedies and the Clean Hands Doctrine: Exclusionary Reparation Policies in Peru’s Political Transition,” American University International Law Review 23, no. 1 ( January 1, 2007).71  Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación Perú, “Informe Final” (Lima, 2003), Anexo 6: Plan Integral de Reparaciones. In the case of individual economic reparation for deceased or disappeared family members, the amount (10.000 PEN or €2.500) is divided between the family members, regardless of the numbers of persons in the family. 72  For an extensive evaluation of the different aspects of the reparation program and the expectations of beneficiaries see: Bunselmeyer, “Trust Repaired? The Impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Reparation Program on Social Cohesion in Post-Conflict Communities of Peru” and Mijke De Waardt, “Are Peruvian Victims Being Mocked?: Politicization of Victimhood and Victims’ Motivations for Reparations,” Human Rights Quarterly 35, no. 4 (2013): 830–49.156III Clean Hands, Clean Slateworktime. Next, there is a whole range of perception problems. As the majority of beneficiaries live in conditions of extreme poverty, some aspects of the plan that are set up as collective reparations – for instance health insurance or community projects – are not perceived by survivors as compensations for damage suffered during the conflict, but are instead interpreted as ‘regular’ assistance from the state or NGOs.73 Until today, most progress has been made in paying individual economic reparations, but the level of dissatisfaction among beneficiaries is very high because of the low amounts of money.74 Conflicts sometimes arise within communities or families over reparation claims.75 Cases of corruption committed by clerks of the National Bank that are in charge of the reimbursements have also been reported.76 In the most remote areas, disinformation and ignorance concerning the reparation plan impedes potential beneficiaries from subscribing to the victim register and making a claim.77 Former truth commissioners also criticize the poor implementation of the reparation program. Sofía Macher, ex-73  For example, the reparations in healthcare include insurance for victims by the Integral Healthcare System (Sistema Integral de Salud, SIS) of the state, but SIS already applies automatically to Peruvians living in extreme poverty. Mental health care is in most cases completely absent, notwithstanding the fact that there is a lot of demand. 74  Also, the payments only started in 2011, ten years after the start of the TRC. At that time, 3.200 registered beneficiaries had already died. By 2017, 83.600 beneficiaries had received individual economic reparations. Bunselmeyer, “Trust Repaired? The Impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Reparation Program on Social Cohesion in Post-Conflict Communities of Peru,” 115.75  A recurring example is women accusing each other of giving false declarations about rape in order to receive reparations.76  “Extrabajador del Banco de la Nación acusado de robo a víctima de la violencia política,” accessed September 18, 2018, https://redaccion.lamula.pe/2014/10/28/extrabajador-del-banco-de-la-nacion-acusado-de-robo-a-victima-de-la-violencia-politica/elenachavez/; Bunselmeyer, 116.77  This was most notable during my fieldwork in the VRAEM region and in the more remote annexes of districts in the highlands of Ayacucho. 157III Clean Hands, Clean Slatecommissioner and the first president of the Reparations Council, particularly refers to the poor training of the state personnel involved in the reparation process as being a huge problem.78Forensic truth: Finding, exhuming and identifying the disappearedAlready during the conflict, the human rights movement and victims’ organizations such as the ANFASEP put the search for the disappeared high on their agenda (cfr. 3.1). According to Macher, finding the disappeared was therefore one of the main raisons d’être of the TRC.79 The commission did indeed not only conclude that the actual number of victims was a lot higher than generally expected. It also found that many of these victims were buried in clandestine graves – which means that they lack a death certificate – and/or were disappeared – in the sense that their final resting place is unknown.80 The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the COMISEDH, the Public Ministry and the EPAF estimate that the number of persons that are still missing today fluctuates between 13.000 and 16.000.81 The TRC therefore elaborated a Registro Nacional de Sitios de Entierro82 containing 4.644 presumed burial sites and designed the Plan Nacional de 78  Interview with Sofía Macher, ex-commissioner of the TRC, Lima, 24.05.2017.79  Interview with Sofía Macher, 24.05.2017.80  Law N°30470 on the search of persons who disappeared during the period of violence 1980-2000, approved by Peruvian congress in June 2016, defines a “disappeared person” as “any person whose whereabouts are unknown by his relatives or of whom there is no legal certainty of their location, as a consequence of the period of violence 1980-2000”. See: Ley n°30470, Ley de búsqueda de personas desaparecidas durante el período de violencia 1980-2000, <http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treat ies/CED/Shared%20Documents/PER/INT_CED_ADR_PER_25074_S.pdf>, last consulted 15.03.2017.81  All these institutions manage different lists with diverging numbers which are based on the work of the TRC on the one hand, and post-TRC advancements in the search for the disappeared by different institutions involved in the process on the other. 82  National Register of Burial Sites158III Clean Hands, Clean SlateInvestigaciones Antropológico Forsenses (PNIAF)83 as part of its recommendations.84 Furthermore, the TRC participated in the exhumation of the mass graves of three so-called emblematic cases: Chuschi, Totos and Lucanamarca.85 The search for the disappeared was also integrated in the reparation program under the category symbolic reparations, in the form of reburial ceremonies and restitution of the legal status of people without death certificate.86 In case of the three exhumations carried out during the mandate of the TRC, the process of restitution and reburial of the remains was indeed performed during highly symbolical public ceremonies which were well-attended by representatives of the state and the TRC.The importance given in Peru to the process of finding the disappeared should be seen against the international background of “forensic human rights investigations”, as Adam Rosenblatt describes it. Scholars like Elisabeth Anstett and Lore Colaert have referred to this tendency as the “forensic turn” in transitional justice.87 As explained in chapter one, this international ‘forensic turn’ is represented by an international network of forensic NGOs specialized in the exhumation of mass graves and the identification of victims. This network has its roots in Argentina but was further 83  National Plan for Forensic Anthropological Investigations84  Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación Perú, “Informe Final,” Tomo IX, 209. 85  On the process of exhumation and reburial in these three cases, see: Isaias Rojas-Perez, Mourning Remains: State Atrocity, Exhumations, and Governing the Disappeared in Peru’s Postwar Andes, 1 edition (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2017), 41–49.86  Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación Perú, “Informe Final” (Lima, 2003), Anexo 6: Plan Integral de Reparaciones.87  Elisabeth Anstett and Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Destruction and Human Remains. Disposal and Concealment in Genocide and Mass Violence, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014).; Adam Rosenblatt, Digging the Disappeared: Forensic Science after Atrocity (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2015); Lore Colaert, “History from the Grave. Politics of Memory in Exhumations of Mass Graves from the Spanish Civil War” (Ghent University, 2015).159III Clean Hands, Clean Slatedeveloped in the aftermath of the ex-Yugoslavian and Rwandan conflicts. According to Colaert, the increasing application of forensic exhumations of mass graves in post-conflict settings is closely related to the right to truth, and more specifically to the idea that “truth can be straightforwardly found on the victim’s body”.88 Indeed, as Isaias Rojas-Perez states while writing about the Peruvian context, the problem of the disappeared embodied the TRC’s concern with both legal and historical truth, responding to the “needs of society at large for healing and reconciliation” by focusing on “patterns of human rights violations [...] within a broader narrative of violence and injustice.”89Despite the initial strong engagement with the search for the disappeared, the execution of the National Plan faced serious difficulties from the outset. A pertinent problem was the disagreement between the involved human rights institutions over the specific methodologies and aims that were to be followed.90 Also, ever since the mandate of the TRC ended, the Equipo Forense Especializado (EFE)91 of the Public Ministry has been the only institution allowed to carry out exhumations. This “ill-conceived autonomy” has significantly restrained the possibility for partnership between specialized civil society organizations and the state in carrying out the immense and complex task of exhuming the graves and identifying the victims.  The result is a Kafkaesque situation in which the state and civil society organizations work parallel to each other instead of exchanging experience and expertise.92 Finally, since 88  Lore Colaert, “History from the Grave. Politics of Memory in Exhumations of Mass Graves from the Spanish Civil War” (Ghent University, 2015), 34.  89  Rojas-Perez, Mourning Remains, 38.90  The actors involved were the EPAF, the COMISEDH, the CNDDHH, the Centro Andino de Investigaciones Antropológico Forenses (CENIA) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC-CICR). Interview with Sofía Macher, ex-commissioner of the TRC, Lima, 24.05.2017.91  Specialized Forensic Team92  COMISEDH, Los Muertos de Ayacucho. Violencia Y Sitios de Entierro Clandestinos (Lima, 2012), 22.160III Clean Hands, Clean Slatethe Public Ministry focuses on criminal justice it requires relatives to open (an often overly bureaucratic and slow) judicial process. In the past two years, however, several measures have been taken that might bring a new dynamic to the search for the disappeared. The persistent lobby work of human rights NGOs has resulted in a new legal framework that aims to tackle the principal obstacles to the process. On the 26th of June 2016, in the last month of government of president Ollanta Humala, the Law On the Search for Persons Who Disappeared During the Period of Violence 1980-2000 was approved by the congress.93 By December 2016, under the new government of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the law resulted in the design of a national plan for the search for the disappeared, coordinated by the Dirección General de Búsqueda de Personas Desaparecidas (DGBPD)94 of the Ministry of Justice. Both the law and the plan focus on the humanitarian aspect of the search for the disappeared by putting the rights of the relatives center stage. The plan states that “all the teams that are involved in the process of finding missing persons must first and foremost ensure that no further harm is done to the victims.” Following a humanitarian approach is understood as “to orient the process of search in a way that it has a reparative effect for the families, without this implying encouraging or hindering the determination of criminal responsibility.”95 Finding the appropriate balance between the humanitarian approach and the focus on criminal justice is indeed one of the major challenges characterizing the search for the disappeared. The new legal framework furthermore resulted in the creation of a genetic databank through a legislative 93  Ley n°30470, Ley de búsqueda de personas desaparecidas durante el período de violencia 1980-2000, <http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CED/Shared%20Documents/PER/INT_CED_ADR_PER_25074_S.pdf>, last consulted 15.03.2017.94  General Directorate of Search for Disappeared Persons 95  Plan nacional para la búsqueda de personas desaparecidas (1980-2000), p. 9, <https://www.minjus.gob.pe/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Plan__busqueda_personas_desaparecidas.pdf>, last consulted 13.02.2017.161III Clean Hands, Clean Slatedecree approved on August 29th 2018.96 This instrument should facilitate the identification process by contrasting DNA samples of relatives with the profiles of recovered remains. Despite the fact that the new legal framework represents an important step forward on a theoretical level, in practice it might be too little too late. Many valuable years have passed, crucial information has gone lost and foremost, the state may have missed an important momentum for recognition towards the survivors. I will further elaborate on the search for the disappeared in chapter five.Peru as an international example Inspired by, most notably, the Argentinian and South-African experience, the Peruvian transitional justice process was clearly a product of the international discourse on justice, truth and reconciliation in post-conflict settings. As described above, the entanglement of the national human rights movement with international players was decisive in shaping the Peruvian transitional justice project. Regardless of the failure of the Peruvian state to properly follow-up on the recommendations made by the TRC, the Peruvian experience did set a landmark for transitional justice in that it is internationally seen as a successful example of dealing with the past. There are a number of elements that explain this positive perception. First of all, no other country has filed as many complaints with the Inter-American Court as Peru and the rulings have had an important ripple effect on the region.97 Cases such as Castillo Páez v. Peru (1997), Barrios Altos v. Peru (2001) and La Cantuta v. Peru (2006) were important international precedents 96  “Consejo de Ministros aprueba Decreto Legislativo que crea el Banco de Datos Genéticos,” accessed September 25, 2018, https://www.gob.pe/institucion/minjus/noticias/18416-consejo-de-ministros-aprueba-decreto-legislativo-que-crea-el-banco-de-datos-geneticos.97  Root, Transitional Justice in Peru, 62.162III Clean Hands, Clean Slatein establishing the right to truth.98 Second, Priscilla Hayner, co-founder of the ICTJ and expert on truth commissions, counts the Peruvian TRC as one of the five most ‘successful’ worldwide due to its large staff, high budget, broad mandate and extensive recommendations.99 The Peruvian TRC was also the first in Latin America to hold public hearings and to explicitly pay attention to gender and sexual violence.100 Furthermore, the Peruvian case was an important breeding ground for UN Special Rapporteur Pablo De Greiff’s ideas on reparations.101 These ideas were presented for the first time in the draft design of the Peruvian reparation plan by the ICTJ and APRODEH and were firmly established as an international paradigm in subsequent publications of the ICTJ.102 The Peruvian experience was thus not only shaped by the international network and concept of transitional justice, it also significantly influenced it. 3.3 “Las víctimas no nacen, se hacen”103Clean hands doctrine vs. universalist approachAs stated above, ‘innocent’ victims became the main subjects of Peru’s transitional justice project. The TRC played a crucial role in defining this particular subject position of survivors in the aftermath of the war. The TRCs model of truth through testimony 98  Dermot Groome, “The Right to Truth in the Fight Against Impunity,” Berkeley Journal of International Law 29, no. 1 (2011): 183.99  Hayner, Unspeakable Truths, 35, 274. The criteria of ‘succes’ used by Hayner seem to be rather quantitative and are not based on factors such as the level of satisfaction of survivors. 100  Bueno-Hansen, Feminist and Human Rights Struggles in Peru, 53.101  Pablo De Greiff was UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence from 2011 to 2018. 102  Pablo De Greiff and International Center for Transnational Justice, The Handbook of Reparations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 472.103  Quote by Jose Pablo Baraybar, director of the EPAF, lit. translation: “Victims are not born, they are made”, fieldnotes, Huamanga, 14.03.2015.163III Clean Hands, Clean Slatehas been criticized for promoting a victim identity that responds to certain stereotypical criteria (e.g. passive, indigenous, poor, Quechua speaking, female) and stimulated survivors to reproduce narratives of violence that fit a prefixed structure.104 Pascha Bueno-Hansen has pointed out, for example, how the agency of the survivors during the public hearings was limited by the fact that translation was only provided from Quechua to Spanish (i.e. from the survivors to the commissioners) but not vice versa. According to Bueno-Hansen, “this unidirectionality reflects an economy of emotion in which the historically marginalized produce testimonies that conform to dominant linguistic and temporal frames for mainstream consumption.”105 Nelson Pereyra, professor of History at the UNSCH, speaks of a “subalternizing discourse of transitional justice that creates passive victims that are easy to dominate”.106 Furthermore, Laplante and Theidon have pointed out how the victim-centeredness of the TRC left no space for the “other truths” of subversive perpetrators. By constructing a narrative of citizens caught between two fires, it did not succeed in providing insight in why so many Peruvians sympathized with or participated in the Shining Path.107 Both the domestic context of criminalization and stigmatization of the Shining Path and the international context of a 104  Rodríguez Maeso, “Testimonios, Discurso Experto y Comisiones de La Verdad: El Contexto de La Denuncia,” 596.105  Bueno-Hansen, Feminist and Human Rights Struggles in Peru, 96.106  Nelson Pereyra during a seminar in the SER (Asociación Servicios Educativos Rurales), fieldnotes, Huamanga, 19.11.2015.107  The authors also rightly point out how this is related to the context in which the commission took shape: the Shining Path was defeated by the government, there was no negotiated peace which fostered the demonization of Shining Path members as “terrorists”. “As a result, despite the country’s massive effort to present a collective truth of its internal armed conflict, there is scant political or discursive space in Peru to explore why so many people joined SL and MRTA and remained sympathetic to the movements even under military repression.” Lisa J. Laplante and Kimberly Theidon, “Commissioning Truth, Constructing Silences: The Peruvian Truth  Commission and the Other Truths of ‘Terrorists,’” in Mirrors of Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 305. 164III Clean Hands, Clean Slatevictim-centered human rights discourse left little room for including the voices of ‘difficult’ actors. More ambiguous roles, such as those of the self-defense committees, clearly do not really fit the dominant narrative of the TRC and are therefore generally disregarded (as we will see in chapter 6). Notwithstanding the fact that the TRC also took a stance against the violence committed by state actors, the idea of a necessary evil is dominant in public opinion and the Shining Path is generally blamed as the one and only real perpetrator.108 This has created a (post-)conflict landscape in which there is an extreme “victimización del afectado” (“victimization of the affected”) on the one hand, and a persistent exclusion of anyone associated with the Shining Path or the MRTA on the other.109 The discussion on the reintegration of former combatants, for example, has been a persistent taboo, even for human rights defenders.110The construction of the particular subject position of survivors, initiated by the TRC, was firmly anchored by the opening of the victim register and the implementation of the reparation plan. As described above, the definition of victim applied by the reparation program is contradictory in the sense that it combines a universalist human rights approach with the exclusive clean hands doctrine.111 108  The TRC’s criticism on the state is often dismissed as ‘left wing propaganda’ and the TRC has been constantly accused, mostly by Fujimorista’s, of supporting ‘the terrorists’.109  In Spanish, there is a slight difference in meaning between people ‘affected’ by the conflict (afectados) or victims (víctimas). The term afectados sounds more objective, while the term víctimas implies appropriating a certain identity. Javier Torres, “Tan Lejos de La Transición, Tan Cerca de La Postguerra,” Revista Argumentos (blog), accessed October 16, 2015, http://revistaargumentos.iep.org.pe/articulos/tan-lejos-de-la-trasncision-tan-cerca-de-la-postguerra/.110  Torres.111  Lisa LaPlante, “The Law of Remedies and the Clean Hands Doctrine: Exclusionary Reparation Policies in Peru’s Political Transition,” American University International Law Review 23, no. 1 ( January 1, 2007).165III Clean Hands, Clean SlateGetting organized (or not)Even though organizations of internally displaced persons (IDPs or desplazados) and family members of disappeared persons, such as the ANFASEP, were already well-organized during the conflict, the TRC and the reparation plan had a huge effect on the emergence of (all kinds of) grassroots victims’ associations. Giving a testimony to the TRC was for many survivors closely related to the expectation of receiving something in return. Through the TRC and the reparation program, survivors were stimulated to identify with the proposed victim categories in order to claim their rights. For communities who wanted to claim collective reparations, organizing themselves in a victims’ association was a precondition for making this claim. According to Root, more than 200 of these associations existed by the end of the mandate of the TRC. 112 De Waardt considers the large number of associations in Peru exceptional in comparison with other post-conflict contexts and directly links it to the longer tradition of grassroots organizations that started in the 1970s.113 Although the majority of the victims’ associations emerged from bottom-up initiatives, national and international NGOs played or play a crucial role in supporting victims’ associations and pressuring the implementation of the recommendations of the TRC.114 Even small rural villages in Ayacucho mostly have (or had) such a victims’ association. As these local organizations mainly focus on obtaining individual economic reparations, survivors who do not fit the categories of beneficiaries of individual economic reparations generally are not a member or do not actively participate. The Regional and National Coordinator of Organizations of Persons 112  Root, Transitional Justice in Peru, 91. This number increased in the following years with the opening of the RUV and the start of individual reparations payments. 113  Mijke de Waardt, “Do Victims Only Cry? Victim-Survivors and Their Grassroots Organizations in Peru,” 2012, 64.114  De Waardt mentions a report by Oxfam (2002) that states that 90% of the victims associations received support from NGOs or churches. De Waardt, 72, 74.166III Clean Hands, Clean SlateAffected by the Political Violence (CORAVIP115 and CONAVIP116 respectively) function as umbrella organizations for the local associations. The organization of victims’ associations is marked by a strong difference between rural and urban contexts. Rural associations, of which most members are peasants who are tied to their work on the land, typically have limited time and resources. Traveling to Huamanga or Lima to participate in the activities of the CORAVIP or CONAVIP implies spending money and time. Urban associations generally have more access to resources and have more contact with national or international NGOs and politicians. In Lima, associations of victims of emblematic cases have great visibility, such as for example the relatives of the disappeared students of La Cantuta. Furthermore, the voice of survivors is often appropriated by human rights organizations and activists who claim to speak on behalf of the victims.117 In Huamanga, the ANFASEP is the main defender of the rights of victims. The ANFASEP started out as a grassroots association of women searching for their disappeared sons and husbands but was quickly supported and influenced by human rights (I)NGOs and international victim associations such as the Latin American Federation of the disappeared (FEDEFAM) and the Argentine Madres de Plaza de Mayo.118 ANFASEP’s mottos ‘para que no se repita’ and ‘verdad y justicia’ reflect the international discourse on human rights and transitional justice. During a meeting on the construction of a memorial site at La Hoyada, the mass grave next to the military base of Los Cabitos in Huamanga, the president of 115  Coordinadora Regional de Organizaciones de Afectados por la Violencia Política Ayacucho 116  Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones de Afectados por la Violencia Política117  Elizabeth Jelin, “Silences, Visibility and Agency : Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Public Memorialization,” 2009, 212.  118  Youngers, “La Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos Del Perú Un Estudio de Caso de Construcción de Una Coalición,” 8; Elizabeth Jelin, “Silences, Visibility and Agency : Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Public Memorialization,” 2009, 212; Interview with Sofía Macher, ex-commissioner of the TRC, Lima, 24.05.2017.167III Clean Hands, Clean SlateANFASEP stated that it should become “Peru’s Auschwitz”.119 The (post-)conflict human rights community in Huamanga is characterized by a ‘scramble’ for the women of ANFASEP, and by extension a scramble for the victims in general.120 The victim identity of survivors is often appropriated by these ‘well-meaning’ outsiders who translate their needs into human rights language and, in many cases, make it fit the agenda of international donors. In this process, not only their authenticity as a victim is cultivated but often also their ‘cultural authenticity’ as indigenous Quechua speaking peasants. For example, during a meeting in Huamanga dealing with the commemorative activities regarding the massacre of Cayara, an NGO representative rejected the name ‘santuario’ (‘sanctuary’) which the survivors wanted to give to the memorial, and stated that they should come up with “something more original, something in Quechua, something authentic linked to the cultural theme”. Whereas the local representatives from Cayara wanted to seize the occasion to denounce the defective water supply in their village in front of the government officials attending the ceremony, the NGO representative stressed the importance of official apologies and the presence of the national press instead.121 The fact that NGOs all fish in the same pond in order to pursue money for projects often stimulates conflict rather than collaboration. In the last couple of years, Peruvian human rights NGOs have experienced a dramatic decrease in funds for transitional justice related projects. The focus of many organizations has therefore shifted to other ‘hot’ topics such as women’s rights and the social and environmental impact of the extraction of natural resources.119  Fieldnotes, Reunión ANFASEP y Centro Loyola sobre la Hoyada, Huamanga, 10.03.2015. 120  This community consists of national NGOs with offices in Huamanga, such as COMISEDH or APRODEH, local NGOs supported by religious groups, such as Paz y Esperanza and Centro Loyola Ayacucho, local NGOs supported by international agencies, such as Apoyo para la Paz, or local offices of INGOs, such as the ICRC.121  Fieldnotes, Reunión autoridades de Cayara con APRODEH, Huamanga, 28.02.2015. 168III Clean Hands, Clean Slate3.4 The state and its relationship with human rights, justice and citizenshipReconciling multiple Peru’s In the direct aftermath of the so-called Baguazo in June 2009 – a violent confrontation between the police and indigenous protesters standing up against oil exploitation, which left 33 people killed in the Amazon town of Bagua – president Alan García declared that the protesters were no “first class citizens” and that “4000 natives cannot say to 28 million Peruvians: you don’t have the right to come here”.122 The existence of ‘multiple Peru’s’, with ‘first’ and ‘second class’ citizens separated by historically rooted socio-economic divisions and power imbalances, was identified by the TRC as one of the root causes for the escalation of violence. During two decades of civil war, the Peruvian state did not only fail to protect its citizens, it also committed large scale human rights violations against its own population under the guise of the ‘war on terror’. Salomón Lerner highlighted in his speech when presenting the final report that “much violence could have been prevented had it not been for the indifference, passivity, or simple ineptitude of those who occupied the highest public offices in this land.”123 As Rodríguez Maeso rightly points out, the TRC was created by the state but it was mostly perceived by the public as a human rights NGO and had limited authority to speak on behalf of the state.124 Moreover, the favorable environment for the defense of human rights during the transitional government of Paniagua was exceptional compared 122  Redacción LR, “Conozca las ‘patinadas’ verbales de Alan García,” July 3, 2011, https://larepublica.pe/politica/553595-conozca-las-patinadas-verbales-de-alan-garcia.123  Orin Starn, Carlos Iván Degregori, and Robin Kirk, The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 404.124  Rodríguez Maeso, “Testimonios, Discurso Experto y Comisiones de La Verdad: El Contexto de La Denuncia,” 599.169III Clean Hands, Clean Slateto the established political order that preceded and followed it. Nevertheless, through its work, the commission aimed at reconciling the state and its citizens as well as bridging the gaps between the ‘multiple Peru’s’. The concept of reconciliation was borrowed from the South-African model but was understood differently in Peru, as its emphasis was primarily on nation-building.125 As the final report states “the TRC understands by ‘reconciliation’ the beginning of a process of re-establishment and re-foundation of the fundamental bonds among Peruvians, bonds voluntarily destroyed or damaged by the outbreak of a violent conflict initiated by the Shining Path during the last decades, and in which the whole society was involved.” The involvement of the entire society refers to the “silent complicity” of the bystanders that “contributed in their own way to the destruction of our social coexistence”.126 Instead of focusing on reconciling victims and perpetrators, the Peruvian reconciliation project was thus in the first place about restoring the social contract between the state and its citizens and a renewed acquaintance of society with itself, a project in which every Peruvian was expected to be involved.127 The public hearings of the TRC were conceived as 125  Interview with Sofía Macher, ex-commissioner of the TRC, Lima, 24.05.2017.126  My translation of original citation: “La CVR entiende por “reconciliación” la puesta en marcha de un proceso de restablecimiento y refundación de los vínculos fundamentales entre los peruanos, vínculos voluntariamente destruidos o deteriorados por el estallido de un conflicto violento iniciado por el PCP Sendero Luminoso en las últimas décadas, y en el que la sociedad entera se vio involucrada. […] No solo la acción directa de las protagonistas, sino también la complicidad silenciosa o la desidia de muchos han contribuido a su manera a promover la destrucción de nuestra convivencia social.” CVR, “Informe Final,” TOMO IX, 13. 127  The TRC differentiates between three levels of reconciliation: 1) the political level (State-society), 2) the social level (institutions-society), 3) the interpersonal level (within communities or institutions). It also differentiates between reconciliation and forgiveness: “Reconciliation is the beginning of a process that seeks to re-establish the fundamental links between the members of a community, after having overcome the conflict that destroyed them -even if this conflict is initiated by one of the parties. Meanwhile, forgiveness is the gratuitous, asymmetric and unique act of absolving from payment and allowing the victim (occasionally the ruler, on behalf of the nation) to relive the past - however painful it may be - 170III Clean Hands, Clean Slatean important encounter between the victims and the state listening to their stries.128 This aim of restoring the social contract was, of course, very ambitious. A rhetorical question frequently raised by victims and human rights defenders in Peru is how there can ever be reconciliation if there never even was conciliation? Instead of asserting that the the civil war destroyed the social contract, one should wonder whether it was not a symptom of a society that was already historically divided and never really had such a social contract. As Jo-Marie Burt concludes in her analysis of state formation in Peru during the 20th century, “the historical process of state formation in Peru culminated in a weak state that failed to integrate all its members into the nation and grant them citizenship.”129 The institutional reform recommended by the TRC aimed at touching upon a series of fundamental responsibilities left unfulfilled by the state, which had contributed to the outbreak of the civil war. In order to prevent such outbreaks from recurring in the future, thus the TRC, reforms were needed in the justice administration, the educational system, the army, the police and the intelligence service.130 Furthermore, civil participation in the construction of the state, decentralization of the state and the overcoming of poverty were formulated as recommendations for institutional reform in function of reconciliation.131 The persistence of profound power imbalances in Peruvian society today painfully shows the lack of political will to follow up on these recommendations. Since the release of the final report, no government has taken significant steps to overcome it.” [My translation from Spanish original.] Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación Perú, TOMO IX, 14, 25.128  Degregori, Qué Difícil Es Ser Dios El Partido Comunista Del Perú - Sendero Luminoso y El Conflicto Armado Interno En El Perú: 1980-1999, 284.129  My translation of original citation: “El proceso histórico de formación del Estado en el Perú culminó en un Estado débil que fracasó en integrar a la nación a todos sus miembros y en otorgarles ciudadanía.” Burt, Violencia y autoritarismo en el Perú bajo la sombra de Sendero y la dictadura de Fujimori, 84.130  CVR, “Informe Final,” TOMO IX, 112.131  CVR, IX 87.171III Clean Hands, Clean Slateto realize profound reforms.132 According to Sofía Macher’s analysis in 2014, ten years after the final report, there has been no advance whatsoever in the recommendations for institutional reform related to securing greater civil participation in the political system, nor in the recommendations for the fight against poverty.133The state has thus conceived its role in the transitional justice process mainly as a duty to ‘do something for the victims’, rather than structurally reforming state institutions. The ways in which both the reparation plan and the plan for the search of the disappeared are being executed are clear examples hereof. During inauguration ceremonies of collective reparation projects or ceremonies of restitution of exhumed and identified remains of disappeared persons, the presence of the state is often merely symbolic and very superficial. At the same time, the state uses the discourse of ‘doing something for the victims’ to frame interventions that in fact have nothing to do with the reparation plan, especially in Ayacucho. For example, when president Ollanta Humala visited the province capital of Huancasancos to inaugurate a new network of paved roads in 2015, he explicitly linked this realization to the reparation program and the history of the war while in fact these were just regular infrastructural works.134 As stated above, the TRC was more closely associated with the human rights movement than with the state since the early days of its existence. The fact that the former takes the lead in defending the rights of survivors, and not the state, has become self-evident in the eyes of many. As structural reforms remained unaccomplished, the window of opportunity that was created after the fall of Fujimori and in which the TRC saw the light, was quickly overshadowed by the resurgence of traditional politics 132  Salomón Lerner Febres, “Paz y Reconciliación En Perú,” ReVista Harvard Review of Latin America, 2014, https://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/book/paz-y-reconciliaci%C3%B3n-en-per%C3%BA.133  Sofía Macher, ¿Hemos avanzado?: a 10 años de las recomendaciones de la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2014), 19.134  Field recordings, Visita Ollanta Humala, Huancasancos, 27.03.2015.172III Clean Hands, Clean Slatecharacterized by corruption and clientelism. Due to the legacy of the Shining Path and the persistent framing of left-wing politics as ‘terrorist’, the struggle for social justice has become a political blind spot in Peruvian politics. Ironically, the TRC may have contributed to the further stigmatization of the left as it excluded ex-Shining Path and MRTA militants from testifying, hereby delegitimizing not only their violent methods but also their political struggle for social justice.135 The narrative of the TRC contributed to the (post-)conflict polarization between victims and perpetrators rather than providing insight into the political motivations of those who decided to take up arms.136 Persistent impunity The TRC’s conception of reconciliation leaned heavily on justice as both a precondition for and a result of reconciliation. Truth, in its turn, was conceived as the necessary precondition for justice, and therefore also for reconciliation. The human rights movement thus took a strong stance in favor of justice through truth-telling. At the end of its mandate, the TRC presented 43 cases of human rights violations to the Public Ministry in which there was clear evidence against the perpetrators. When presenting the final report, president of the TRC Salomón Lerner underscored that “impunity is incompatible with the dignity of any democratic nation.”137 The progress of the trials has, nonetheless, been very slow. In 2014, 135  Laplante and Theidon, “Commissioning Truth, Constructing Silences,” 306.136  I agree here with Laplante and Theidon when they state that “selective truths create a social memory […] that can also ingrain stereotypes, prejudices, and rifts between social groups. Social memories of political violence may solidify distances between the heroes and villains, eliminating understanding of their overlap. […] Breaking down stereotypes and rigid adherence to categories may allow people and societies to move beyond the polarizing effects of winners and losers, victims and perpetrators. Yet, in Peru, the exact opposite seems to be occurring.” Laplante and Theidon, 309.137  Starn, Degregori, and Kirk, The Peru Reader, 403.173III Clean Hands, Clean Slatesentences were pronounced in only thirteen cases, three of which were sentences absolving the perpetrators.138 Furthermore, the TRC made a list of officials of the military and police who were involved in human rights violations with the aim of purging these institutions. Instead of fulfilling this recommendation, the Ministry of Defense designed a norm guaranteeing legal support for members of the army and police involved in judicial processes.139 According to Rights Peru, a research project set up by professor of political science Jo-Marie Burt of George Mason University in collaboration with Peruvian human rights NGOs and victims’ associations, there was a general downfall of judicial investigations of human rights violations in the past couple of years.140 In particular for investigations against the state forces there has been little appetite.141The case of the massacre of Accomarca in the province of Vilcashuamán, Ayacucho, is one of the most emblematic illustrations of persistent impunity for human rights violations committed by the state, and the lack of reform in an overly bureaucratic and clientelist judiciary. On August 14th, 1985, the Peruvian army killed more than 70 villagers in Accomarca by locking them up in houses that were set on fire. The women were separated from the men and raped before being killed. After 26 years of struggle by the relatives of the victims and human rights organizations, the trial against the 29 accused members of the military finally started in November 2010. The trial took six years and at least 250 hearings before the final sentence was pronounced in August 2016, condemning eleven of the accused persons to 10 to 25 years of prison for crimes against humanity. After two more years of appeal, this sentence was finally confirmed 138  Macher, ¿Hemos avanzado?, 149.139  Macher, 153.140  Jo-Marie Burt and Maria Rodríguez, “Justicia, Verdad y Memoria: El Proceso Penal Para El Caso de La Masacre de Accomarca,” in Políticas En Justicia Transicional. Miradas Comparativas Sobre El Legado de La CVR (IEP, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2015), 136.141  Burt and Rodríguez, 138.174III Clean Hands, Clean Slateby the Supreme Court in September 2018. Telmo Hurtado, the commander in charge during the massacre, fled to the United States after the repeal of Fujimori’s amnesty law in 2002 but was detained in 2008 and extradited in 2011.142 Hurtado confessed but always maintained that he was only taking orders from his superiors, not showing any repentance towards the relatives and the survivors.143 Still, the case of Accomarca was a landmark as it was the first time a military commander was condemned by the national court for human rights violations.144 It was, however, justice at a high prize: 33 years of perseverant activism went by before this goal was achieved. During a meeting with the Board of Directors of the association of displaced Accomarquinos in Lima, which is the driving force behind the relatives of the victims involved in the trial, the president of the association stressed that the state was the only responsible for the massacre and therefore did not have any interest in bringing about justice.145 3.5 Public narratives and memorialization Divergent truths “The history recorded here belongs to all of us, and it speaks of what we have been and what we should become”, thus Salomón Lerner when presenting the final report of the TRC and dedicating it to all Peruvians.146 Today, however, Peru is far from having achieved 142  Burt and Rodríguez, 146.143  Burt and Rodríguez, 153.144  An extensive overview of all the developments in the Accomarca case is provided on the website of Rights Peru: “Accomarca – RIGHTSPERU.NET – Juicios Por Violaciones a Los Derechos Humanos En El Perú,” RIGHTSPERU.NET - Juicios Por Violaciones a Los Derechos Humanos En El Perú (blog), accessed October 15, 2018, https://rightsperu.net/capturan-a-exmilitar-sentenciado-por-caso-accomarca/.145  Fieldnotes, Reunión residentes Accomarquinos, Lima, 09.12.2015.146  Starn, Degregori, and Kirk, The Peru Reader, 406.175III Clean Hands, Clean Slatea broadly shared consensus about its violent past. As soon as it was made public, the narrative recorded by the TRC had to compete with a strong ‘savior’s memory’ which honors Fujimori as the pacifier of the country. Human rights violations by the state were framed by Fujimori’s propaganda machine as collateral damage in the ‘war on terror’, and this idea is still shared by many Peruvians.147 To provide a counterweight against the narrative of the final report of the TRC, the Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú148 published its own version of the history of the civil war in a book with the telling title In honor of the truth. Version of the army on their participation in the defense of the democratic system against terrorist organizations.149 The chapter dedicated to the army’s relation with human rights takes off by stating that “the human rights violations that unfortunately occurred during the war were not a systematic practice, nor ordered or orchestrated by the guiding entities of the Peruvian army, but were based on absolute individual participation and decision.”150 Furthermore, the book portrays human rights organizations as ideological left-wing groups that “while the war reached its most critical point used their influence to denounce genocide but never made any claim when the terrorists perpetrated indiscriminate killings”.151 On the other side of the political spectrum, the 147  The term memoria salvadora (savior’s memory) was coined by Steve Stern in 1998. Degregori, Qué Difícil Es Ser Dios El Partido Comunista Del Perú - Sendero Luminoso y El Conflicto Armado Interno En El Perú: 1980-1999, 276.148  Permanent Commission of History of the Peruvian Army149  Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, En Honor a La Verdad. Versión Del Ejército Sobre Su Participación En La Defensa Del Sistema Democrático Contra Las Organizaciones Terroristas. (Lima, 2012).150  My translation of original citation: “Las violaciones de derechos humanos que lamentablemente sucedieron durante la guerra no fue una prática sistematizada, ni ordenada ni orquestada por los entes rectores del ejército del Peru, sino que fueron hechos de absoluta participación y decisión individual.” Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, 295.151  My translation of original citation: “En suma, mientras la guerra llegaba a su punto más álgido, usaron su influencia para denunciar genocidios, pero nunca hicieron reclamo alguno cuando los terroristas perpetraron matanzas indiscriminadas.” Comisión Permanente de 176III Clean Hands, Clean SlateMovimiento por la Amnestía y Derechos Fundamentales (MOVADEF)152, an underground political organization directly related to the Shining Path, upholds that it is time to turn the page and release Abimael Guzmán and other ‘political prisoners’ from jail. Similar to the way the state forces justify their excesses, the MOVADEF frames the extreme violence of the Shining Path as an “inevitable consequence” of the war.153 In 2012, the MOVADEF was at the center of heated media debates as it repeatedly tried (but not succeeded) to inscribe itself as a political party, with amnesty and reconciliation being the main agenda points. They stress that the war is something of the past and strive for what they call a political solution for the legacies of the war.154 Over the past couple of years, when ex-MRTA and ex-Shining Path members were gradually set free after having served their sentence, new debates have risen on their reintegration into society. On the 18th of May 2018, exactly 38 years after the Shining Path’s first attack in Chuschi, a law was approved by the congress that prohibits those who have ever been sentenced for terrorism to work in state institutions, demonstrating the persistent sensitivity of the topic in present-day Peru.155Public memorialization: For and by whom?Although the narrative of the final report of the TRC is heavily contested by several sectors of society, it does form the basis of many Historia del Ejército del Perú, 33.152  Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights153  Carmen Ilizarbe Pizarro, “Memoria, Olvido y Negacionismo En El Proceso de Recomposición Política En El Perú de La Posguerra Del Siglo XXI,” in Políticas En Justicia Transicional. Miradas Comparativas Sobre El Legado de La CVR, 2015, 244.154  Fieldnotes, 03.2012.155  This law was designed after a scandal revealing that a member of congress for the left-wing party Frente Amplio employed an ex-member of the MRTA who had fulfilled her sentence. Redacción EC, “Sentenciados por terrorismo no podrán trabajar en el Estado,” El Comercio, May 18, 2018, https://elcomercio.pe/politica/sentenciados-terrorismo-podran-noticia-520863.177III Clean Hands, Clean Slatepublic memorialization initiatives because it is generally accepted by human rights practitioners and the intellectual elite. One of the most important commemorative dates on a national level is the 28th of August, when the presentation of the final report of the TRC is commemorated at the Ojo Que Llora156, a monument erected in Lima by the human rights movement in honor of the victims of the civil war. As Javier Torres has pointed out, this commemoration spearheaded by human rights NGOs has “an auto celebratory touch” as it is a celebration of transitional justice rather than a ceremony owned by survivors.157 More recently, the narrative of the final report is also being visualized in the Lugar de la Memoria, la Tolerancia y la Inclusión Social (LUM)158. In 2008, the German government donated two million euros for the construction of this memory museum in Lima dedicated to the civil war and its victims. This donation was first rejected by then president Alan García – an overt critic of the final report – who under national and international pressure eventually accepted the money for the project.159 After a long and bumpy process led by several directors and including more than 80 negotiation meetings with victim’s associations, representatives of the army and police, human rights NGOs, state representatives and academics, a consensus was reached upon the museographic script. President Ollanta Humala eventually inaugurated the museum on December 17, 2015. Long before its inauguration, the LUM was already criticized for ‘looking at the Pacific and turning its back to the rest of the country’, a reference to its location on the pier in between Miraflores and San Isidro, two upper-middle class districts of Lima, far away from the daily reality of the majority 156  Crying Eye157  Torres, “Tan Lejos de La Transición, Tan Cerca de La Postguerra.” Fieldnotes, Conmemoración CVR+12 Ojo Que Llora, Lima, 28.08.2015.158  Place of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion159  “La Memoria del Lugar,” accessed October 18, 2018, https://redaccion.lamula.pe/2014/06/16/el-lugar-de-la-memoria-y-la-discordia/enriquelarrea/.178III Clean Hands, Clean Slateof survivors.160 Despite having become an important reference point for documentation and education on the history of the civil war in a relatively short time, the LUM is constantly under fire in the struggle for divergent truths described above. These attacks reached an all-time low in May 2018, when congressman Edwin Donayre together with some companions went undercover for a guided tour in the museum presenting himself as a mute victim of the Colombian civil war. After the visit, Donayre published an edited video on social media that compiled fragments of the tour in which a museum guide talked about human rights violations committed by the state forces. Donayre subsequently accused the LUM of being one-sided and ‘pro-terrorist’ as a result of which the guide was fired by the Ministry of Culture, which administers the museum.161 Another memorialization project funded by the German government is the Museo de la Memoria ‘Para que no se repita’162, which was created by the ANFASEP in Huamanga and opened to the public in 2005. The museum follows the testimonial style and narrative of the TRC in representing the history of the civil war. At the same time, it tells the history of the activism of the ANFASEP in searching for their disappeared relatives by displaying personal objects and pictures.163 The ANFASEP is also the driving force behind the future construction of a memorial site at La Hoyada, the mass grave next to the military base of Los Cabitos in Huamanga. Memorial sites are likewise to be found in several communities in the Ayacucho department, such as Uchuraccay, Cayara, Accomarca and Lucanamarca – not by chance places of emblematic cases detailed by the TRC. The majority of these memorial sites are clear 160  Fieldnotes, Taller y coloquio IFEA, Lima, 15.07.2014.161  LA RESISTENCIA, Congresista Donayre Denuncia Apología al Terrorismo En El LUM, accessed October 18, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl3EUou78z4.162  Memory Museum ‘So it does not repeat’163  “El Museo de la Memoria ‘Para que no se repita’ – ANFASEP,” accessed October 18, 2018, http://anfasep.org.pe/museo-de-la-memoria/.Monument El Ojo Que Llora in Jesus María, Lima (2014)products of the memory imperative fostered by transitional justice as they mostly come about under impulse of human rights NGOs, yet in collaboration with the local community. Nevertheless, as will be demonstrated extensively in the following chapters, the strategies of dealing with the past in most of the war-thorn communities are far more complex than the straightforward duty to remember which underlies these memorials. Pacha Pupum, ‘the navel of the earth’, Sacsamarca (2015)IV OPEN SECRETSConcealment and Coexistence in SacsamarcaSacsamarca (2015)Map of the province of Huancasancos184IV Open Secrets[...] éste rincón del Perú se enmarcaba en la escena sangrante, con valle de lágrimas, caminos que se cubrían sólo con el resucitar de un inocente polvo y sin poder calmar la inmensa sed que aquejaba a la gente humilde.1 IntroductionThat night in mid-February 1983, Jelacio Llacsa and Walter Huaccachi were already asleep in the house of the teacher - one of the wealthiest people in the village - where they had moved in after the latter had fled the village a few weeks earlier.2 Around midnight, a group of men first assaulted Jelacio’s part of the house and stabbed him to death. About half an hour later, another group entered Walter’s part through the roof. While his wife was blindfolded and taken outside, Walter was killed in front of his five-year-old son and the house was ransacked.3 A few months earlier, in October, Jelacio and Walter had been appointed by camarada ‘Omar’ - the Shining Path commander of the zone of Hualla and Cayara - as leaders of the local comité popular (popular committee)4 of the Shining Path, which from then on replaced the existing authorities as Sacsamarca became part of the so-called liberated zone. The killers were a group of fellow-villagers who had been planning this conspiracy to rebel against the rule of the Shining Path during secret meetings in the highlands. When the Shining Path took revenge by attacking 1  My English translation of Spanish original: “[...] this corner of Peru found itself  in the bloody scene, with a valley of tears, roads that were covered only with the resurrection of an innocent dust and without being able to calm the immense thirst that afflicted the humble people.” Hector González Huarcaya, La Vida No Vale Nada. Terror, Sangre y Muerte En Los Andes (Huancasancos: Visión y Vibración Andina, 2002), 26.2  Interview with Francisco, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 10.04.2015.3  Interview with Sara, direct witness of the events of February 1983, Sacsamarca, 22.05.2015.4  The denomination comité de base distrital (district base committee) is also used to refer to the local popular committees of the Shining Path. 185IV Open SecretsSacsamarca on May 21st with hundreds of recruits, it came to a battle which was won by the villagers and resulted in the death of, among others, comrade Omar. The events in Sacsamarca had a ripple effect throughout the region and meant the beginning of the end of the Shining Path’s control over the area. Every year on the 21st of May, Sacsamarca commemorates its victory in this battle and celebrates a memory of “rebellion and peace”, stressing that it was the first village to rebel against the Shining Path.5 It was this remarkable heroic memory that drew my attention to Sacsamarca and made me decide to do fieldwork there. While I found most of the villagers eager to share stories about the uprising against the Shining Path, during a conversation in the late hours of a communal celebration, one of the village authorities confirmed my presumption that the public narrative was entangled with other stories lying beneath the surface. He leaned forward over my shoulder and - as if making a clear demarcation - whispered in my ear:You won’t find the truth here. From the 100% of what happened here, maybe we will tell you 50%. Because here we killed each other, among cousins, among brothers. There are many secrets in Sacsamarca.6 While finding ‘the truth’ was not my main concern, I was intrigued by the interaction between the public narrative of the civil war and the secrets and silences that surrounded the community’s official memory. What does this dynamic between revealing and concealing tell about the way Sacsamarquinos7 deal with the legacies of the civil 5  Fieldnotes, Conversation with the mayor of Sacsamarca and representatives of the victims’ association, Sacsamarca, 27.06.2014.  6  My translation of original citation: “Aqui no vas a encontrar la verdad. Del 100% de lo que pasó aquí tal vez te vamos a contar 50%. Porque aquí nos hemos matado entre nosotros, entre primos, entre hermanos. Hay muchos secretos en Sacsamarca.” Fieldnotes, Conversation with a local authority, Sacsamarca, 19.06.2015. 7  Villagers of Sacsamarca186IV Open Secretswar? How do these strategies of dealing with the past relate to, differ from, or contest the ideas diffused by official transitional justice mechanisms such as the TRC, the reparation program or the exhumation of clandestine burial sites? Before turning to these questions, I will first set the scene by describing the demographical and geographical context of Sacsamarca, as well as the key events that marked the course of the civil war in the village, mainly between September 1982 and June 1983. Sacsamarca is a district of cattle-breeders in the basin of the Qaracha river which counts 1.313 inhabitants according to the national census of 2017.8 Its highlands are situated between 2.850 and 4800 meters AMSL and the territory of the entire district stretches out over no less than 1206 km2.9 The district of Sacsamarca is located in the province of Huancasancos and consists of the town of Sacsamarca and four annexes: Asca, Colcabamba, Putaccasa and Pallcca.10 The area was characterized by an early presence of the Shining Path, which spread its ideology in the first place in schools on the countryside. As in many communities in Ayacucho, in Sacsamarca there initially was significant support for the ideas of redistribution and social justice. The Shining Path should thus not merely be considered as an external force arriving to the community with the purpose of installing the revolution. It also became a local internal force which was received, appropriated and mobilized with different motivations and purposes. Indeed, as the in-depth report of the TRC on the province of Huancasancos states, “the political violence emerges from within the communities under study.”11 The 8  INEI, “Ayacucho Resultados Definitivos, Tomo I” (Lima, 2017), 160.9  Juan Miguel Espinoza Portocarrero, “1. Población y Territorio,” in Historia de La Comunidad Campesina de Sacsamarca. Diálogo, Memoria y Reconocimiento, ed. Juan Miguel Espinoza Portocarrero (Dirección Académica de Responsabilidad Social de la Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú, 2018) In comparison, Brussels-Capital Region has a superficies of 161 km2 and a population of aprox. 1.200.000.10  Espinoza Portocarrero, 25. Annexes are smaller hamlets or villages that surround the district capital but maintain a certain degree of political autonomy.11  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de 187IV Open SecretsShining Path’s revolutionary struggle got entangled with existing power imbalances and slumbering conflicts over land and resources. Nevertheless, despite the initial sympathy for and collaboration with the Shining Path, part of the villagers at a certain point turned to resistance and succeeded in overthrowing the regime of the popular committee. What began as a revolutionary struggle, escalated into a war between ‘intimate enemies’.Subsequently, I will turn to the (post-)conflict process and look into the diffusion of transitional justice in Sacsamarca. I will do this by analyzing the TRC’s process of truth-seeking in the community, as well as the implementation of the commission’s recommendations concerning reparations and the exhumation of clandestine burial sites. The TRC’s process of truth-finding in Sacsamarca was characterized by silence and suspicion from the villagers toward the commission. One of the motivations for the villagers’ reticence to talk clearly was the intimate nature of the violence and its entanglement with local conflicts.  The presumption that the rapid escalation of the violence was due to preexisting conflicts and internal power struggles also was one of the main hypotheses of investigation formulated by the research team of the special in-depth report of the TRC on the province of Huancasancos. Moreover, the report states that this hypothesis played an even bigger role than suspected. Nevertheless, while in the work of the TRC there was still some - albeit limited - room to touch upon the complexity of agency, I argue that this complexity was nullified by the implementation of the reparation program which manages a rigid categorization of victims and perpetrators. At the same time, this rigid categorization provided a strong incentive for potential beneficiaries of reparations to transform the narrative of intimate violence into one of innocent victimhood. The implementation of the TRC’s recommendations concerning exhumations of clandestine burial sites in Sacsamarca on its turn ran the risk of - literally - digging up a contentious past. Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca” (Lima, 2002).188IV Open SecretsIndeed, some of Sacsamarca’s burial sites are the material remainders of the complex encounter between villagers, the Shining Path and the state forces. These graves are spatial points of reference in the villagers’ narratives on the civil war; open secrets that rest beneath the surface of the highlands. I will focus on two different cases of clandestine burial sites in the highlands of Putaccasa in order to demonstrate how the possibility of uncovering these open secrets - some of which support a tense coexistence - provoked unrest in the community.After analyzing how transitional justice - with its underlying ideas on memory, victimhood and time - was diffused through the implementation of these mechanisms of truth-telling, reparation and exhumation, I will identify several processes of dealing with the past that reflect the appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation of these underlying ideas by survivors.  First, I will focus on public remembrance of the civil war in Sacsamarca. What happens when transitional justice’s memory duty collides with a contentious past of intimate violence? I argue that the truth-finding process of the TRC generated a space which was appropriated by the Sacsamarquinos to create a heroic narrative of resistance. This narrative stands in function of claiming recognition by the Peruvian state for the community’s role in opposing the Shining Path. Sacsamarca’s memory of resistance furthermore contradicts the idea of a passive peasantry caught between two fires and goes against the narrative of victimization and suffering that is predominant in the TRC’s final report. At the same time, the centrality of the rebellion as an act of resistance marks a before and after in the narrative of the community. This rupture allows the Sacsamarquinos to downplay the initial collaboration with the Shining Path and show their ‘clean hands’, a conditio sine qua non for making reparation claims.Second, I will further scrutinize how the community (in)directly concealed certain aspects of the past in order to make them less visible for outsiders; in this case the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ of transitional justice. Therefore, I will look at the open secrets that are 189IV Open Secretsentangled with the public heroic memory of resistance. In order to understand these open secrets and their origin, it is necessary to take a look at the micro-conflicts and power struggles that predated the conflict and escalated through the emergence of the Shining Path. I argue that, what is being (in)directly concealed by means of the open secrets is, in the first place, the intimate nature of the violence. These processes of concealment contest transitional justice’s idea of redemption through truth-telling that underlies the memory duty. Thirdly, I will investigate the role of concealment as a strategy of coexistence between (former) ‘intimate enemies’ on the one hand, and as a strategy of claiming citizenship within the Peruvian nation on the other. For the villagers, the pursuit of recognition as defenders of the Peruvian nation is not only a way of dealing with the past; it is also a means of denouncing the violence of a contemporary past of poverty and socio-economic exclusion and putting forward their expectations for the future. Forgetting, silence and secrecyThe beneficial properties of memory - its potential for prevention, redemption and recognition - and the normative character of the duty to remember have been widely questioned (cfr. chapter 2.1). This case-study on Sacsamarca situates itself within the debate on (the threats and opportunities of) forms of ‘silence’ and ‘forgetting’ as strategies of dealing with the past, which are the unavoidable mirror-image of transitional justice’s concern with truth-telling and remembrance. Due to this normative focus on revealing and speaking out about past human rights violations, mechanisms of ‘silence’ and ‘forgetting’ were for a long time mainly associated with negative processes of denial and erasure by both scholars and activists concerned with memory and transitional justice. Perpetrators and ‘implicated subjects’, those who had been on the wrong side of history and have something to lose in the (post-)conflict time, were mostly seen as the 190IV Open Secrets(only) advocates of these mechanisms of denial and erasure.12 The subjects of ‘silence’ or ‘forgetting’, then, were typically considered to be the ‘subaltern’, the disempowered, women and victims of sexual violence, the disappeared; i.e. those who do not speak out or (are assumed to) not have the capacity to do so. On the nexus between trauma and memory discourse, which directly connects the act of speaking out with the psychological process of working through, the survivors’ refusal to speak out would then in the first place be pathologized as a symptom of PTSD (‘not being ready yet to talk about it’).13It speaks for itself that it should not be neglected that, in many post-conflict societies, mechanisms of denial and erasure form important threats to transitional justice’s aims of coming to terms with the past. At the same time, the decision of survivors not to speak out about past human rights violations as a protection against re-traumatization should be taken seriously and respected. However, there is a lot more to say about the dynamics of ‘silence’ and ‘forgetting’ than merely pointing to the dangerous potential for denial and erasure or adopting a limited trauma-based psychological point of view that obfuscates political agency. In her analysis of the “labors of memory” (“trabajos de la memoria”) taking place in the Latin American post-Cold War context, Elizabeth Jelin was one of the first scholars to put emphasis on the political significance of silence.14 In the past decade, a growing body of literature has emerged in the field of transitional justice, memory and post-conflict studies that investigates ‘silence’ and ‘forgetting’ as “enabling” processes, mostly taking place at the 12  Andreas Huyssen points, again, to the importance of the holocaust in Europe and North America and the desaparecidos in Latin America when discussing the “obsession” with memory which, according to him, resulted in a “terror of forgetting”. Huyssen, Present Pasts Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory, 18.13  Caroline Yezer, “Who Wants to Know? Rumors, Suspicions, and Opposition to Truth-Telling in Ayacucho,” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 3, no. 3 (November 1, 2008): 280.14  Elizabeth Jelin, State Repression and the Labors of Memory (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).191IV Open Secretsmicro-level, which should be considered as one of many possible forms of dealing with the past rather than inherently opposed to remembrance. Such approaches to the potential constructive features of ‘silence’ reveal the agency that is behind the (in)direct choice of survivors to contest transitional justice’s memory duty and develop alternative strategies of dealing with the past. Accordingly, ‘silence’ can be considered as a deliberate decision rather than something that is merely imposed upon survivors against their will. My interest lies precisely in these alternative strategies and their (restorative) dynamics in light of (post-)conflict reconstruction and reintegration. Despite the increasing scholarly efforts to question the normative character of the memory duty and conceptualize the beneficial properties of ‘silence’, a lot of empirical work remains to be done to investigate how these mechanisms actually work on the ground. Moreover, as I have pointed out in chapter one and two respectively, crossing the borders between academic research and the practice of transitional justice is not always self-evident and the normative approach in favor of remembrance and ‘speaking out’ remains well-established, especially in transitional justice practice.For the Peruvian case, Ponciano del Pino, Caroline Yezer, Kimberly Theidon and Olga González have pointed to the dynamics between memory and ‘forgetting’ that characterize the post-war period and investigated the interaction between what is publicly known and what is kept secret; between the visible and the invisible in rural communities in Ayacucho.15 My research on Sacsamarca is inspired by their work, however it must be noted that my field research was 15  Del Pino’s research on Uchuraccay is particularly valuable in this respect, as he compares and historicizes the narratives of the villagers on the massacre of the journalists at three different moments in time (right after the events in 1983, when the villagers returned to the community in 1993, and when the TRC collected testimonies in 2002). Ponciano Del Pino, En Nombre Del Gobierno. El Perú y Uchuraccay: Un Siglo de Política Campesina (Lima: La Siniestra Ensayos, 2017); Caroline Yezer, “Anxious Citizenship: Insecurity, Apocalypse and War Memories in Peru’s Andes” (Duke University, 2007); Olga M. González, Unveiling Secrets of War in the Peruvian Andes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).192IV Open Secretscarried out almost a decade after Yezer’s and almost two decades after González and Theidon’s, and that mine postdates the work of the TRC. Narratives and memory strategies of survivors immediately after the war fundamentally differed in several ways from those that I encountered more than thirty years after the start of the war and more than a decade after the TRC visited Sacsamarca 16  While I thus situate this chapter in the abovementioned branch of empirical research on (post-)conflict memory processes at the micro-level, I will limit the use of the terms ‘silence’ or ‘forgetting’ to describe strategies that contest the memory duty, because at least in this case, their use would generate confusion rather than clarification. ‘Forgetting’, while mostly used in a metaphorical sense, implies a cognitive process of not remembering anymore what happened, which definitely is not the case. ‘Silence’ on its turn, whether in the literal sense of ‘not speaking out’ about the past or metaphorically referring to ‘the unsaid’, would be unsatisfactory as a concept to describe what is at stake in Sacsamarca. As we will see, what we find in Sacsamarca is a memory of resistance that is entangled with open secrets, the latter of which are (in)directly being concealed for certain outsiders. I  share González fascination for secrecy and prefer the use of the terms ‘open secret’ and ‘concealment’ to describe the particularities of the process of dealing with the past in this community and in order to stress the fact that “silence is more than a passive voice”.17 I define an ‘open secret’18 as a fact known by all within a delineated community but 16  Del Pino, En Nombre Del Gobierno. El Perú y Uchuraccay: Un Siglo de Política Campesina, 47.17  My translation of original citation: “El silencio es más que una voz pasiva.” Del Pino, 20.18  In her analysis of memories of the civil war in the village of Sarhua, Olga González uses the term “public secrecy” to refer to “that which is known but can’t be articulated”. González, 8; Del Pino on his turn speaks of a “shared secret” (“secreto compartido”) when talking about the restorative potential of silences in the context of post-conflict coexistence. Del Pino, En Nombre Del Gobierno. El Perú y Uchuraccay: Un Siglo de Política Campesina, 46.193IV Open Secretskept secret to certain outsiders19 and ‘concealment’ as the process of hiding certain (inconvenient) aspects of the truth. Of course, both open secrets and the process of concealment are often closely related to or can generate silences. In my analysis of memory processes in Sacsamarca, I furthermore follow Del Pino’s interest in the entanglement of “intracommunal dynamics” with “the pattern of public remembrance” that characterizes (post-)conflict memory in many rural communities in Ayacucho.20 As Del Pino states:“What defines the pattern of public remembrance is the management of the nearness, of the proximity of the violence among its members and the administration of the information; which results in the fact that some stories are told, and others remain silent.”21Methodology and sourcesFieldworkMy first visit to Sacsamarca was with the EPAF in 2012, during a two-month fieldtrip to Peru for my master thesis. At that time, Sacsamarca was one of the districts where the EPAF was doing preliminary research for the exhumation of mass graves. They maintained close ties with the authorities and with the victims’ association and through my affiliation with the EPAF I could 19  Stanley Cohen refers to an open secret as something that is “known by all, but knowingly not known”. Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity ; Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 138.20  Del Pino, En Nombre Del Gobierno. El Perú y Uchuraccay: Un Siglo de Política Campesina, 18.21  My translation of original citation: “Lo que define el patrón del recuerdo público es la gestión de la cercanía, de la proximidad de la violencia entre sus miembros y de la administración de la información; esto hace que ciertas historias se cuenten y otras queden en silencio.” Del Pino, 23.194IV Open Secretsestablish my first contacts in the village when I returned in 2014 during a two-month exploratory fieldtrip for my doctoral research. Moreover, as the territories of Sacsamarca and Hualla (cfr. chapter 5) are adjacent to each other, it seemed interesting to study both communities and, to a certain extent, take into account regional pre- and post-conflict dynamics. After these first visits in 2012 and 2014, I returned to Sacsamarca seven times in 2015 for stays varying from three to ten days each. Three of these seven fieldtrips in 2015 were conducted together with the EPAF, the other four times I went alone or with Gabriela Zamora Castellares, who accompanied me as a research collaborator. On the fieldtrips that we undertook together, Gabriela was - with a few exceptions - present during the interviews. Alicia Noa, who was working with me as a research collaborator in Hualla, was sometimes also in Sacsamarca at the same time as me, because she was working there as part of a community project set up by the Academic Direction of Social Responsibility (Dirección Académica de Responsabilidad Social, DARS) of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú)  in Lima. While I did not collaborate directly with Alicia in Sacsamarca, my research also benefitted from her knowledge about and contacts within the community. In total, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 33 different research participants, all inhabitants of Sacsamarca, with the length of the interviews varying between thirty minutes and two hours. Several of the interviewees, especially those who played a key-role in the resistance against the Shining Path, were interviewed up to three times. At least ten of the interviewees directly participated in the events of February and May 1983. Thirteen of the research participants were women and seven were (ex-)authorities. Five interviews were conducted in Quechua with Gabriela acting as a translator, the others were conducted in Spanish. Nine interviewees did not give permission to record the conversation, in that case notes were taken during the interview. In addition, some interviews conducted in Hualla also relate to events that occurred in Sacsamarca. The 195IV Open Secretsinterviews were complemented with many informal conversations during participant observation in daily activities and on special occasions such as community meetings, commemorations and festivities. In April 2015, at the beginning of my fieldwork, I traveled to the community to attend the asamblea comunal, the community assembly meeting which is the main decision-making body, and which is held four times a year. The asamblea comunal is a major event in which the entire community is expected to participate. The meeting lasted from 9am to 8pm with only a lunchbreak between 1 and 2pm and was held at the central courtyard in front of the church, the gates of which were locked with a chain for the entire duration of the meeting to prevent anyone from entering or leaving. Only for the last two hours of the meeting, when it started raining heavily, the gates were unlocked and the asamblea moved to the auditorium of the municipality. All kinds of community affairs were discussed during the meeting, with discussions over land, improvement of cattle-breeding and measures against cattle-theft taking up most of the time and attention of the present comuneros. During this asamblea, I got the opportunity to present myself independently from the EPAF and explain my arrival to the community, after which formal permission was granted by the community to conduct my research. On the 21st of May 2015, I attended the yearly commemoration of the rebellion and battle against the Shining Path (cfr. chapter 4.4). Two weeks later, in June, I returned to the village to accompany one of the forensic experts of the EPAF during the exhumation of a mass grave carried out by the EFE, the forensic team of the state, in the highlands of Putaccasa. The exhumation lasted for four days and coincided with the celebration of Corpus Christi in Sacsamarca. In August, I participated for three days in the celebration of the Virgen de la Asunción (Assumption of Mary), which is the patron saint of Sacsamarca. In May 2017, I returned to the village to participate in the yearly Pacha Pupum festival, an agricultural fair celebrated in the highlands (cfr. infra). While I initially doubted to use a pseudonym for Sacsamarca, the Asamblea comunal in Sacsamarca (2015)197IV Open Secretsevents that occurred in the village during the civil war are so particular that anyone with some knowledge on the course of the civil war in Ayacucho would be able to identify it. Moreover, the resistance of Sacsamarca is described in the in-depth study on the province of Huancasancos of the TRC and by a testimonial memory project set up by the NGO SER in 2003, which resulted in a publication edited by the Peruvian historian Ricardo Caro and a book chapter authored by the latter.22 Moreover, by using a pseudonym, I would run the risk of reducing Sacsamarca to a random scene of the civil war, while one of my research aims is precisely to point to the particularities of local experiences and to stress the agency of the population. Especially when writing about a village whose population has experienced long-time processes of exclusion and marginalization, it can be “an act of justice to inscribe its name in academic writing and in historiography”.23Additional sources on SacsamarcaIn addition to my own fieldwork data, I consulted the available testimonies given by Sacsamarquinos to the TRC in the Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos (Information Center of Collective Memory and Human Rights) in the ombudsman office in Lima. Of the 33 villagers who gave their testimony to the TRC, only fourteen gave permission for public consultation in the archive. (In comparison, in Hualla 92 persons testified of which 58 gave permission for consultation.) Of these fourteen available 22  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca”; Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004 (Lima: SER, 2005); Ricardo Caro, “Commemorative Paths in Sacsamarca,” in Art from a Fractured Past, ed. Cynthia E. Milton (Durham; London: Duke University Press, 2014).23  My translation of original citation: “[...] es un acto de justicia colocar su nombre en la escritura académica y en la historiografía (...)”, personal communication with Ricardo Caro, 17.05.2019. 198IV Open Secretstestimonies given by Sacsamarquinos, only three were registered by the mobile team of the TRC in Sacsamarca in July 2002.24 Two of the three testimonies registered in Sacsamarca were given by persons that I also interviewed. Nevertheless, only three of the consultable testimonies given to the TRC directly relate to the events of 1982-1983 which stand center-stage in this chapter. In addition, there is the in-depth study of the TRC on the province of Huancasancos, the purpose of which was in the first place to investigate the massacre of 69 people by the Shining Path in the village of Lucanamarca, but as the regional events are all related, the resistance against the Shining Path in Sacsamarca is also described in this report.25 The in-depth report was based on fieldwork which was carried out by another team than the mobile team collecting testimonies, and which took place between March 20 and April 13, 2002, of which six days were spent in Sacsamarca. During its stay in Sacsamarca, the team of the in-depth report conducted twelve formal and eleven informal interviews.26 In the final report of the TRC, the in-depth report on the province of Huancasancos is included as part of chapter two of volume five.27Furthermore, during one of our visits to Huancasancos with the EPAF, we met Hector González Huarcaya, a teacher who published a booklet entitled La vida no vale nada. Terror, sangre y muerte en los Andes28 in which he recounts his version of the events in Huancasancos 24  This means that the other testimonies related to events in Sacsamarca were given to either mobile teams or offices of the TRC in Huancasancos (3), Huancayo (1), Carapo (1), Huamanga (2), Cayara (1) and Ica (2). This geographical spreading is mostly due to internal displacement during the war.25  The TRC conducted nineteen in-depth studies of “significant cases”. The redaction of the final report was based on these in-depth studies. The content therefore partly overlaps with the text of the final report, but the in-depth studies are more detailed and extensive.26  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”27  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 5” (Lima, 2003).28  Life is worthless. Terror, blood and death in the Andes199IV Open Secretsand Sacsamarca during the civil war - an interesting testimonial source.29 Other important additional sources for this chapter were the publications of the above-mentioned community projects of the NGO SER and of the DARS of the PUCP, a publication of the EPAF on the legacies of the civil war in the valley of the Pampas and Qaracha rivers, and Ricardo Caro’s work on commemoration practices in Sacsamarca.30 Personal conversations with Ricardo as well as with historian Percy Rojas from the EPAF also led to important insights.The ethics of researching ‘silence’A lot can be said about the ethics of researching silence or digging up secrets that support a tense (post-)conflict coexistence. The potential harm that can be caused for survivors should at all times be considered when conducting research in (post-)conflict settings and especially when investigating sensitive topics. In my case, researching ‘the untold’ was never a purpose in itself; rather it simply was what I was confronted with during fieldwork. (Open) secrets were not something I had been looking for or had been aware of. They were revealed piecemeal by the villagers themselves through their stories. Ironically, I did initially expect to encounter a lot of ‘silence’ during fieldwork because, when I recently started setting up my research, most of my contacts in Huamanga and Lima warned me that people wouldn’t be too keen to share their stories with me. It is indeed a persistent idea in Peru that people in Ayacucho don’t 29  González Huarcaya, La Vida No Vale Nada. Terror, Sangre y Muerte En Los Andes.30  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004; Juan Miguel Espinoza Portocarrero, ed., Historia de La Comunidad Campesina de Sacsamarca. Diálogo, Memoria y Reconocimiento (Dirección Académica de Responsabilidad Social de la Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú, 2018); Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas (Lima: EPAF, 2012); Caro, “Commemorative Paths in Sacsamarca.”200IV Open Secretswant to talk about the war. At least in my fieldwork experience, this warning in most of the cases proved to be unfounded. It was not so much the case that people did not want to talk about the civil war. Rather, the topics that were brought up varied and changed over the course of my fieldwork and according to the degree of trust that I was able to build up. I felt that the act of leaving and returning to the village, which I repeated many times, played a crucial role in this process, as villagers at a certain point got used to my occasional presence in the community and in some cases started approaching me proactively to share their stories. Some research participants also hinted at the fact that my position as a foreigner inspired a certain degree of trust, as they considered me as someone neutral who had nothing to do with their history and therefore a ‘safe’ or ‘harmless’ person to talk to. They then adopted a position in which they had to explain me, the ignorant gringa, how things had happened. My position as a researcher affiliated to a foreign university enhanced this perception of neutrality.The relative openness that I found in Sacsamarca probably also has to do with the timing of my fieldwork. While there was still a well-founded fear for the Shining Path in the 1990s, and a lot of mutual mistrust and fear for vengeance and prosecution during the mandate of the TRC in the early 2000s, I arrived at a less turbulent point in time. Nevertheless, there were a few situations in which I encountered initial mistrust, although I could mostly overcome this quite quickly by explaining my research purposes. On a few occasions, especially around the date that an exhumation in Putaccasa was about to take place, some people explicated their suspicion that I was a representative of the prosecutor’s office. Some other villagers remarked - some more jokingly than others - that I reminded them of camarada ‘Carla’; Carlota Tello, who together with Edith Lagos was one of the main female leaders of the Shining Path in the provinces of Victor Fajardo and Huancasancos in the 1980s. According to Ricardo Caro, camarada Carla was mainly represented in the media as a “cruel woman” with a “rigid and resentful” character 201IV Open Secretsand a “penetrating gaze” - not really a pleasant or trust-inspiring point of comparison.31 While my physical appearance moreover does not quite come close to Carlota’s, Caro points out how, in July 1984, media reported on an attack on the police station of Luricocha led by camarada Carla and remarkably enough described her as “a tall, blond girl, with a regular posture who wore a red sweatshirt and sneakers.” While in reality, Carlota was short and dark-haired, the latter description comes pretty close to myself - including the red jacket and sneakers I often wore during fieldwork. When the villagers compared me to Carlota, they also described her as ‘a gringa like you’. According to Caro, “it wouldn’t be the first time that these, perhaps idealizing, characteristics were used to describe young senderistas.”32 Caro furthermore points out how the perception of camarada Carla as a female leader holding masculine values such as leadership, courage and militarism appeared as “a moral subversion of the world, where male domination is transgressed and confronted.”33 In addition to the descriptions of camarada Carla’s physical appearance as a gringa, the comparison between camarada Carla and I could be based on the way we both challenged gender relations in a machista society: she as a guerrillera and I as a an ‘emancipated’ western female researcher, traveling alone to the other side of the world. Carlota Tello’s life came to a tragic end as she was betrayed by a fellow party member and executed in the military base of Los Cabitos in Huamanga on Christmas Eve 1984, at the age of 23.3431  Ricardo Caro, “Ser Mujer, Joven y Senderista: Género y Pánico Moral En Las Percepciones de Sendero Luminoso,” 2006, 4.32  My translation of original citation: “[...] una muchacha alta y rubia, de regular contextura que vestía un buzo color rojo y zapatillas.” [...] “No será la única vez que se encuentran estos rasgos, quizás idealizados, para dar cuenta de las jóvenes senderistas.” Caro, 7; Kimberly Theidon encountered similar descriptions of senderistas as gringos with green eyes but interprets this as a process of othering rather than idealization. Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 216.33  My translation of original citation: “[...] una subversión moral del mundo, donde el dominio masculino es transgredido y confrontado.” Caro, 4.34  Caro, 10.202IV Open Secrets4.1 ‘Village that breeds llamas with plenty of wool’The district of Sacsamarca belongs to the province of Huancasancos, which was separated from the province of Victor Fajardo in 1984. The actual province of Huancasancos contains the districts of Carapo, Sancos, Lucanamarca and Sacsamarca. The capital of the province is the homonymous town of Huancasancos (in short Sancos), which lies at a 30 minutes’ drive from Sacsamarca. There are two main routes to enter Sacsamarca: coming from Huamanga, via Pampa Cangallo and Huancasancos, which is a four- to five-hour drive through the mountains now that the road has been paved; or coming from Lima, taking the coastal route via Palpa and Ica, which takes up to twelve hours. This geographical location between the coastal and mountain cities facilitated Sacsamarca’s historical economic development as a trade hub of meat, milk, cheese, wool and pottery since pre-Colombian times.35 When I first arrived to Sacsamarca with the EPAF, we took an alternative route coming from Hualla, a two- to three-hour drive over an unpaved road through the puna.36 On the confluence of this road with the coastal route lies Sacsamarca’s annex of Putaccasa, a hamlet of a few houses, on an altitude of 4390 meters AMSL, where the air is thin, and vegetation mainly consists of ichu.37 During the coldest months of the year, between May and August, the icy wind has free reign over the plateau and temperatures can drop to -15 degrees Celsius. The village restaurant on the side of the road serves fried trout to the passing truck drivers and personnel coming from the nearby mine of Canarias, the company of which constructed this part of the connection to the coast. Next to the restaurant stands the primary school building, where we met a dedicated teacher with his five pupils, all of them with rosy cheeks and damaged skin from 35  Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 66.36  Quechua word to refer to the highlands37  Typical Peruvian feather grassPutaccasa (2015)Sacsamarca (2014)204IV Open Secretsdry wind and sunburn. In 1987, Putaccasa was entirely burned down by the Shining Path. A bit further off-road from Putaccasa lies the Pacha Pupum - the ‘navel of the earth’ - an inactive geyser which looks like a small volcano and is surrounded by hot springs. The Pacha Pupum is a popular recreation spot among Sacsamarquinos and house to the yearly Pacha Pupum festival in the month of May. From Putaccasa, it is another 40 minutes’ drive to Sacsamarca, which lies in the greener and slightly warmer valley of the Qaracha river, an affluent of the Pampas river, at approximately 3500 meters AMSL. It took me some time to make sense of the landscape of the puna that surrounds Sacsamarca and understand how people could live there. What for me seemed nothing more than a breathtaking but foremost desolate place, soon turned out to be a resource and shelter for those who know how to coexist with it. The puna is the place where farmers spend a lot of time herding their cattle and where they have their estancias38, small houses built with rocks or adobe39 with a roof of ichu, mostly surrounded by a cattle pen built in stone to house their llamas, alpacas, cows or sheep. Cattle-breeding is the main economic activity in Sacsamarca, which thus not accidentally means as much as ‘village that breeds llamas with plenty of wool’ in Quechua.40 While Sacsamarca was once known for its commercial activity, traditional trade networks have seized to exist and agriculture is now mainly for subsistence.41 Cattle-breeding is complemented with the cultivation of crops such as potatoes, 38  Literally ‘places to stay’39  Adobe are sun-dried bricks made from sand, clay and straw. It has very good thermal properties: it stores warmth during the day which it releases at night. 40  Espinoza Portocarrero, “1. Población y Territorio,” 25.41  Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 66. Migration to the cities and a change in economic activities characterize the second half of the 20th century in the region and thus predate the civil war, but the process was accelerated due to the Shining Path’s control over mobility of people and goods, the massive internal displacement caused by the violence and the plundering of shops and warehouses by both the state forces and the Shining Path.205IV Open Secretscorn, wheat, barley and beans. During the busiest times of the year, most farmers stay in their estancias rather than in their houses in the village. The puna became an important hide-out for the villagers during the civil war, as they spent the night in their estancias or in caves to escape the violent nightly incursions of the Shining Path or the military in the village. Many others fled to the cities of Ica, Lima and Huamanga. While a lot of Sacsamarquinos returned to their hometown after the end of the civil war, others decided to stay in the cities.42 Today, a lot of youngsters decide to leave the village again in pursuit of work and education. Therefore, the current population mainly consists of children below the age of 14 and adults above the age of 45.43 The largest community of Sacsamarquino migrants lives in Ica and is represented by the Asociación de Residentes de Sacsamarca - Ayacucho (ARSA-ICA)44, which maintains close relations with the hometown.45 While Quechua is the mother tongue of the vast majority of Sacsamarquinos, most people - with exception of the oldest generation - are fluently bilingual in Spanish. Spanish is furthermore the language used in public activities, community governance and education. Like all rural districts in Ayacucho, Sacsamarca knows high poverty levels. According to the National Institute for Statistics, 77.1% of the population lives in poverty of which 38.6% in extreme poverty, which corresponds to a Human Development Index of 42  The district of Sacsamarca counted with 2.248 inhabitants in 1972, 2236 in 1981, 1905 in 1993 and 1797 in 2007. Espinoza Portocarrero, “1. Población y Territorio,” 32.43  Espinoza Portocarrero, 35.44  Association of Residents of Sacsamarca - Ayacucho45  Juan Miguel Espinoza Portocarrero, “5. La Comunidad de Sacsamarca En El Siglo XX,” in Historia de La Comunidad Campesina de Sacsamarca. Diálogo, Memoria y Reconocimiento, ed. Juan Miguel Espinoza Portocarrero (Dirección Académica de Responsabilidad Social de la Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú, 2018), 123. I did not actively engage with the Sacsamarquino migrants in Huamanga or Ica, although I met some of them when they visited Sacsamarca, mostly during celebrations. 206IV Open Secrets0.237.46 The average monthly income per capita is 134 PEN (approx. €35) and 40,1% of the population suffers from chronic malnutrition. While most children now have access to basic education, 35% of women and 7,4% of men above the age of 15 are still illiterate. 47The village nucleus as it is known today was founded by Spanish colonizers in 1574 as a regrouping of the indigenous population living in the area.48 The typical quadrangular Spanish floor-plan centralized around the plaza de armas and the church - the foundations of which still stand today -, as well as the syncretism of indigenous believes and customs with Catholicism reflect the colonial past. At the time of its foundation, Sacsamarca was organized in three neighborhoods according to the existing pre-Hispanic ayllus or clans which corresponded to three families that live in the village up until today: Aucasimi, Hanampa and Huaccachi.49 Conflicts with the central government as well as with neighboring communities such as Carapo and Pampamarca over the recognition and expansion of its territory run as a common thread through the history of Sacsamarca, and land claims still are the most important subject of intracommunal conflicts caused by for example inheritances.50 While in the Northern provinces of Ayacucho land possession used to be concentrated in the form of haciendas, the Southern provinces 46  Espinoza Portocarrero, “1. Población y Territorio,” 37 The HDI is an index to measure poverty beyond economic growth, taking into account life expectancy and education. A HDI below 0.550 is considered low human development. See: http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi.47  Espinoza Portocarrero, 38.48  Alejandro Santistevan Gutti, “3. Sacsamarca En El Periodo Colonial,” in Historia de La Comunidad Campesina de Sacsamarca. Diálogo, Memoria y Reconocimiento, ed. Juan Miguel Espinoza Portocarrero (Dirección Académica de Responsabilidad Social de la Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú, 2018), 69.49  Santistevan Gutti, 71.50  Alejandro Escudero Villanueva, “4. Sacsamarca En El Siglo XIX,” in Historia de La Comunidad Campesina de Sacsamarca. Diálogo, Memoria y Reconocimiento, ed. Juan Miguel Espinoza Portocarrero (Dirección Académica de Responsabilidad Social de la Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú, 2018), 93.207IV Open Secretsof Cangallo and Victor Fajardo - including the area of Sacsamarca - were characterized by the historical presence of multiple indigenous communities and their respective economic elites who disputed with each other to gain control over their own lands.51By the end of the 19th century, the traditional governance of the varayocs52 and the chacracura53 started to disappear and gradually made way for political structures that seek relation with and representation of the national government.54 After a long struggle, Sacsamarca was the first community in the valley of the Qaracha river to be recognized by the department of Indigenous Affairs of the Ministry of Health, Work and Social Welfare as a comunidad campesina in 1936 and have the boundaries of its territory officially registered.55 Subsequently, Sacsamarca became an independent district by separating itself from Huancasancos in 1961.56 In 1970, during the military government of Juan Velasco Alvarado national legislation established the governance model of the comunidad campesina as it exists today in Sacsamarca and in the majority of rural villages in the Andes.57 The community is governed by two different entities: the municipal government authorities, led by the major; and the comunidad campesina, represented by the asamblea comunal 58and the junta directiva comunal 59. While the municipal government authorities represent the state and are elected during the nationally organized municipal elections, the comunidad campesina is directly elected by the community every two years.60 The comunidades campesinas were recognized by the state 51  Espinoza Portocarrero, “5. La Comunidad de Sacsamarca En El Siglo XX,” 138.52  Governing body of elderly members of the community that existed since colonial times and watched over the maintenance of land and cattle53  Religious leader54  Escudero Villanueva, “4. Sacsamarca En El Siglo XIX,” 92.55  Espinoza Portocarrero, “5. La Comunidad de Sacsamarca En El Siglo XX,” 105.56  Espinoza Portocarrero, 135.57  Espinoza Portocarrero, 139.58  Communal assembly59  Communal board of directors60  Espinoza Portocarrero, “1. Población y Territorio,” 41.Sacsamarquinos at their estancia in the highlands (2015)Pacha Pupum festival (2017)209IV Open Secretsas “fundamental democratic institutions, autonomous in their organization” by the Ley General De Comunidades Campesinas 61 of 1987.62 In general, the comunidad campesina is in charge of everything which has to do with the community’s agricultural activities, such as the management of the granja comunal63 - the revenues of which are invested in community projects -  and the organization of the minka - collective communal work in function of agriculture. The municipal government on its turn manages public policies, the implementation of national government programs (mostly focused on poverty reduction and education) and infrastructural affairs, among which the faena - collective communal work in function of public space (e.g. construction works). The national government is furthermore represented by the subprefecto or gobernador who represents the Ministry of Interior and is in charge of security matters; and the juez de paz64 who represents the Ministry of Justice and manages minor legal issues and quarrels.65 4.2 From collaboration to resistance: Sacsamarca and the  Shining Path66Education at colegio Los Andes A combination of several factors explains the presence of the Shining Path in the area of Sacsamarca and the population’s initial 61  General Peasant Community Law62  “Ley General de Comunidades Campesinas,” Pub. L. No. 24656 (1987).63  Communal farm64  Justice of the Peace65  Espinoza Portocarrero, “1. Población y Territorio,” 43.66  The chronology of the events in Sacsamarca described here is a reconstruction based on the testimonies collected by SER, my own interviews, the in-depth study of the TRC and the testimonies collected by the TRC. While most testimonies coincide, some contain contradicting information, for example on the exact date of events. I try my best to balance between the general narrative and significant details or contradictions. 210IV Open Secretspositive reception of the ideas of redistribution and social justice. Education played a key role in the diffusion of the Shining Path’s revolutionary ideas, a process which was facilitated by the already existing degree of political empowerment among the local elites. The early organization in comunidades campesinas and the struggle for the creation of independent districts created an awareness of rights and recognition to be claimed from the national government. The local economic elites - basically those families possessing more land than others - were aware of the importance of education and literacy in order to be able to make these claims and gain access to bureaucratic procedures.67 According to the TRC, in Sacsamarca it were mainly the families Huaccachi, Herrera, Chávez and Yanqui who controlled power and divided political functions in a clientelist way.68 In the 1960s, the secondary school Los Andes was founded in Huancasancos. Initially, the teachers at Los Andes and other newly founded primary schools in the area were mostly the sons of the local economic elites, who could afford to send their children to Huamanga and Lima for completing secondary and higher education at, respectively, the UNSCH or the Universidad de San Marcos.69 The teachers made up an intellectual elite who, especially in Sacsamarca, enjoyed power and prestige through their literacy and, at the same time, abused this power by assigning themselves all kinds of privileges. The pupils, in contrast, were the children of the poorer families who for the first time enjoyed the opportunity to go to school in their own villages.70 The quality of education at Los Andes gained a good reputation and peasant families from communities in the valley of the Pampas river - such as Hualla, Cayara and Umaru; 67  Espinoza Portocarrero, “5. La Comunidad de Sacsamarca En El Siglo XX,” 141.68  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”69  Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 67.70  In Sacsamarca as well, the secondary school Daniel Alcides Carrión was founded by the community in 1982, although it would only start to function in 1984. Espinoza Portocarrero, “5. La Comunidad de Sacsamarca En El Siglo XX,” 151.211IV Open Secretsvery poor areas compared to Huancasancos - also started sending their children to Los Andes to attend classes. A gradual process of social mobility through education set in, as part of the graduates of Los Andes also pursued higher education at the UNSCH and the profession of teacher on the countryside was no longer exclusively performed by the elite, which in some places generated tensions between the old and new generation of teachers. At the same time, while the increased access to education broke the elite’s monopoly on literacy, this provoked growing awareness and discontent among the peasants over the existing inequalities and injustices they had to endure. By the 1970s, Shining Path militants - mostly students or alumni from the UNSCH, which by then already was a hotbed of revolutionary ideas - had successfully infiltrated the teaching staff of Los Andes.71 The school became a hub for the propaganda of Abimael Guzmán’s pensamiento Gonzalo which was spread from Los Andes to other schools in the area. The Shining Path’s communist ideas of redistribution of resources from the rich to the poor thrived well in the climate of growing discontent. In addition, some peasants saw the arrival of the Shining Path as an opportunity to question power relations, settle old conflicts or take revenge for abuses committed by the elites. Both the TRC and some of the testimonies collected by SER moreover mention that the idea of equality was a pull factor for women who embraced the Shining Path as a means to emancipate themselves. While the exact amount of support for or collaboration with the Shining Path remains hard to measure, the in-depth study of the TRC speaks of an initial “massive reception”, which is confirmed by the testimonies collected by SER and by my interviews.72  The Shining Path militants formed at the UNSCH and at Los Andes 71  According to the TRC, the student population of the UNSCH grew from 228 students in 1959 to 6095 students in 1980. CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4” (Lima, 2003), 30.72  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”212IV Open Secretsstarted to visit the villages on the countryside to organize escuelas populares73 in which they taught communist ideology and prepared the population for the armed struggle. According to the villagers of Sacsamarca and Lucanamarca, these militants were indeed mostly students from Huancasancos, commanded by the regional Shining Path leaders camarada Victor, camarada Omar and camarada Carla. In order to gain support from the peasants, the Shining Path started targeting the local elites and authorities who, according to them, abused their power against the population and prevented the installation of the República Popular de Nueva Democracia74. Furthermore, the Shining Path drew on existing conflicts - mostly over land and cattle - to sow discord.75 The beginning of the armed struggle in 1980 moreover coincided with a climatological and agricultural crisis. Severe drought increased the vulnerability of the peasants’ subsistence and caused a significant increase in cattle theft and conflicts over borders. Between 1980 and 1981, there were 120 charges of cattle theft in Sacsamarca, corresponding to approximately 700 stolen animals.76 The first incursions of the Shining Path in the district of Sacsamarca reflect these strategies of intimidating authorities and playing out existing tensions. On December 15, 1981, Enrique Cancho Vásquez, a villager of the annex of Pallcca, was killed by members of the Shining Path after being accused of cattle-theft.77 A few months later, in the night of August 10, 1982, Shining Path militants payed a visit to the Justice of the Peace in Sacsamarca, threatened him and searched the archives in his office.78 In the annex of Asca, Celedonio Huamaní was shot in his house by three Shining Path members, also 73  Popular schools74  Popular Republic of New Democracy75  CVR.76  Espinoza Portocarrero, “5. La Comunidad de Sacsamarca En El Siglo XX,” 149.77  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 88.78  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), 127.213IV Open Secretsafter being accused by a fellow villager of cattle-theft.79 Only a few days later, a Shining Path militia of about four people on horses, led by comrade Omar, arrived and assembled the population on the main square for the entire day while preaching the revolution:They took us to the main square, and they made us stand up straight, without moving, all day long, without food. [...] Then they taught us to talk about the comrades [...] ‘In the first place we greet camarada Gonzalo!’, that’s what they said. And that’s when my dad shouted at them: ‘How do you dare to make these old people stand up all day? Who do you think you are to command us like this?’ And that’s why they hated my dad.80 In 1982 the youngsters arrived. They gathered the entire village, with this fondness, this charisma that they had. They attracted us in the same way as milk attracts flies. We fell for their slogans, their words.81 Four armed persons appeared on the main square; two women 79  CVR, Testimonio 203686, Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos.80  My tranlation of original citation: “Nos ha llevado a la plaza, y nos ha hecho parar sin moverte ni nada, así derechitos, todo el día, sin comer. [...] Ahí pues han enseñado pues para que hablen de la camarada [...] ‘¡Camarada Gonzalo primer lugar le saludamos! así diciendo. En ahí mi papá les ha gritado: ‘¿Como van hacer parar así eso a los ancianitos? [...] ‘¿Qué cosa ustedes que piensan, para mandar al pueblo, qué cosa?’ Y por eso ya odiaron a mi papá.” Interview with Maria, daughter of one of the participants in the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 13.04.2015.81  My translation of original citation: “El ochenta y dos ya llegaron jóvenes, nos reunieron a todo el pueblo, con ese cariño, con ese carisma que tienen. Atrajeron como si la leche atrajera a la mosca igualito. La gente caímos pues a los dichos, a las palabras de ellos.” Interview with Mauricio, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 15.04.2015.214IV Open Secretsand two men with a red cloth as a scarf and a black hat with wisps, with red jackets, the ladies also, and they began to gather the people. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, come closer, we want to talk to you’, and well, as it was a novelty, the people approached without a problem. ‘We are communists. What is the central government doing? The capitalists are ruling and the poor nothing. We are going to fight for you!’ All the people said that it was alright and that they could go ahead.82 According to one testimony in the publication by SER, the Shining Path militants returned two weeks later, by the end of September, to recruit youngsters and distribute arms: rifles, revolvers, knives and home-made grenades in milk cans.83Zona liberada: The rule of the popular committee (October 1982 - February 1983)The permanent installation of Shining Path rule followed in October, when the regional leaders84 returned to Sacsamarca to force the existing authorities to abandon their posts and establish the local popular committee, subordinate to the regional Shining Path committee of Sacsamarca’s historical rival Huancasancos. During a general assembly, Walter Huaccachi - alias camarada Remigio - was 82  My translation of original citation: “[...] en la plaza aparecieron cuatro personas armados, dos mujeres y dos varones y con trapo rojo como chalina y sombrero negro, dibujado con hileras, con casaca roja, las damas también, y empezaron a reunir a la gente pue. ‘Señores acérquense, queremos conversar con ustedes’, y bueno como era primera novedad la gente se acercó normal. ‘ Nosotros somos comunista. ¿Qué está haciendo el gobierno central? Los capitalistas están dominando y los pobres nada. ¡Nosotros vamos a luchar por ustedes!’ [...] Toda la gente dijo que está bien y sigan nomás.” Interview with Victor, one of the participants in the battle against the Shining Path on 21 May 1983, Sacsamarca, 28.03.2015.83  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 79.84  Both the regional leaders comrade Arturo, a scholar of the UNSCH, and comrade Omar are mentioned in the testimonies in relation to this event.215IV Open Secretsassigned the responsibility of mando político85 and Jelacio Llacsa - alias camarada Mario - was appointed as mando militar86. Together with some thirty other villagers, they made up the popular committee which from then on would govern the ‘liberated’ Sacsamarca.87 The major was forced to hand in the key of the municipality to the new leaders.88 Testimonies contradict each other on the issue of to what extent Walter and Jelacio were forced by the regional leaders to take up the presidency of the popular committee or actually sympathized with the Shining Path. There is not a lot of information available on Jelacio, despite of the fact that he was a licenciado89 and that he was described to me by one informant as ‘dangerous’ (‘peligroso’).90 Walter figures as the central leader in the narrative, and most testimonies confirm that he ‘was with the party’ (‘andaba con el partido’). Walter Huaccachi was part of the economic elite of the village, as he belonged to one of the richest families of cattle-breeders. At the time of the events, he was about thirty years old and had spent some time studying agronomy at the UNSCH, but he did not finish his studies. During his time in Huamanga, he was the president of the Comité de Residentes de Sacsamarca91 and, according to the in-depth study of the TRC, he was considered “a respected leader of the community”. Most likely, Walter established his first contacts with the Shining Path during his time at the UNSCH. 92 Upon his 85  Political commander86  Military commander87  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 89.88  Interview with Daniel, ex-authority, Sacsamarca, 13.04.2015.89  Someone who has completed military service in the Peruvian army90  Interview with Julio, participant in the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 22.05.2015.91  Committee of Residents of Sacsamarca92  The in-depth study of the TRC on the one hand states that Walter did not finish his studies because he joined the Shining Path, but no testimonies confirm this statement. On the other hand, one of the testimonies cited in the study suggests that Walter joined the Shining Path because he did not finish his studies and was 216IV Open Secretsreturn to the village, Walter was eager to work as a teacher, but to his frustration, he was denied a position by the other teachers after which he dedicated himself to cattle-breeding and trade.93 From the moment the popular committee was in power, the new rulers aimed at gaining full control over the resources of the village with the purpose of redistributing goods from the wealthy to the poor. Grocery shops of merchants were confiscated, as were convoys transporting merchandise that passed through the village, and the goods were distributed among the population.94 The same happened to the cattle: at a certain moment, Shining Path militias from all over the region assaulted the communal farm of Huancasancos in the valley of the Qaracha river and distributed all the cattle to the neighboring communities, as a villager recalls:They took us to Huancasancos [...] to ruin the communal farm. There were five thousand sheep, brought together by each delegation of that pelotón [the Shining Path]. They gave twenty sheep to each village that had come. To Sacsamarca they gave twenty sheep.95Furthermore, the popular committee obliged all villagers to participate in vigilance patrols in order to protect the so-called frustrated by this: “[...] yo pienso que WH se metió al Partido porque había sido un hombre fracasado, en la universidad no terminó sus estudios [...]” CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.” One of the research participants stated that Walter returned to the community temporarily to work, but that he planned to go back to Huamanga to complete his studies. Interview with Sara, direct witness of the events of February 1983, Sacsamarca, 22.05.2015.93  CVR.94  CVR.95  My translation of original citation: “Nos llevó a Huancasancos [...] al arrasamiento de la granja comunal. Era cinco mil ovinos, cada delegación de ese pelotón habrá traído. De ahí de cada pueblito que ha venido, veinte a veinte de cinco mil ovinos rapidito, veinte ovejas nos han dado a Sacsamarca” Interview with Andrés, ex-authority, Sacsamarca, 21.05.2015.217IV Open Secretsliberated zone from incursions by the military.96 Daily life was militarized and Sacsamarca became part of the Shining Path’s revolutionary armed struggle.97 Leaving the village in order to work on the land or herd the cattle in the puna was forbidden - notwithstanding the fact that the popular committee came to power in the rainy season, when farmers normally spend most of the time at their estancias.98 The new regime was extremely repressive and the leaders of the popular committee did not tolerate dissent. Any form of resistance or refusal to collaborate was severely punished. Those who were accused of betraying the revolution were judged during a so-called juicio popular99, leading to physical punishment and, in the worst case, execution. The first deadly victim of the repression of the popular committee was Bernabé López, a young man who openly opposed the authority of the popular committee. After being executed on November 24, 1982, his corpse was carried around the square and left in the middle under the eucalyptus tree with a sign on his chest saying: “Así mueren los soplones”100.101 Several days later, on December 1st, Alejandro Avilés García was denounced to the popular committee by his own daughter and drowned in the river with his hand and feet tied together. The reasons for his denunciation vary per testimony: envy in the family102, cattle-theft103 and adultery104 are mentioned. On January 5th, 1983, during the village’s Three Kings Day celebration, a group of ex-authorities - 96  Interview with Andrés, ex-authority, Sacsamarca, 21.05.2015.97  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”98  Interview with Daniel, ex-authority, Sacsamarca, 13.04.2015.99  Popular trial100  This is how traitors die101  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 89, 128. Interview with Jesús, ex-authority, Sacsamarca, 14.04.2015.102  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), 89.103  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), 123.104  Interview with Jesús, ex-authority, Sacsamarca, 14.04.2015.218IV Open Secretslabeled by the Shining Path as tinterillos105 - was publicly tortured on the square while they had to watch how the archives of the justice of the peace were burned down.106 When the regional leader comrade Omar - who also happened to be in Sacsamarca that day - ordered the killing of the men, Walter Huaccachi intervened and prevented their execution by stating that they were blacklisted and would meet their fate later. One of the victims recounts the events of that day:  [...] as a punishment they first cut our hair to zero, on our knees, and after that we had  to run several rounds barefoot around the square [...] it was this Omar and other neighbors, I don’t know where they were from, maybe Huancasancos, I don’t know. They grabbed me like a football on the top of their feet, punched me everywhere, they left me nearly dead. Since that date, I feel my back. And then, to put me in front of the public, they said: ‘Bring a scarf’ [to blindfold the victim for the execution], and I said to myself: ‘Well, I will grab this Omar and we will both die on the square’, but then, this leader from here, Walter Huaccachi, he said to him [Omar]: ‘There is no scarf. We will burn him next time, he’s already on the blacklist.’107 Political repression and power abuse thus became the order of the day as soon as the Shining Path was in power. As the terror 105  Literal translation ‘inkpot’, derogatory term to refer to clerks106  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 98.107  My translation of original citation: “[...]como castigo primero corte de pelo a cero, de rodillas, después correr a la plaza descalzo varias vueltas [...] ese Omar después otros vecinos de dónde serÍa, Huancasancos, no sé. Me agarran como a una pelota a punta pie, puñete todo, casi muerto me deja. Total de esa fecha siento la espalda. Así para sacarme a publico dijeron: ‘Traigan pañuelo’, y me dije: ‘Bueno, a este Omar le voy a agarrar y nos vamos a caer los dos en la plaza’, y ese jefe de acá, Walter Huaccachi, le dijo: ‘No hay pañuelo. Para la próxima vamos a prender compañero, ya está en la lista negra’.” Interview with Jesús, ex-authority, Sacsamarca, 14.04.2015.219IV Open Secretsof the new regime became clear, more and more villagers tried to seek refuge in the puna or the cities. While preaching redistribution, the members of the popular committee kept the best part of the resources for their personal enrichment and the leaders allowed themselves all kinds of privileges and excesses. Several testimonies recount, for example, how the leaders picked the ‘best’ young girls of the village as their sex slaves.108 The popular trial that is most explicitly engraved in the village’s collective memory is the last one: the killing of the 28-year-old teacher Teodoro Fernández Huamaní, who originally was from Huancapi. After criticizing the abuses of the popular committee, Teodoro was executed with a bullet in his head in front of the church on February 6th, 1983.109 It is not clear whether the teacher had initially supported the popular committee, but the way in which his protest is recounted in several testimonies suggests that he denounced the aggressive methods of the Shining Path rather than the revolution per se:Gabriela: Why did they execute the teacher? Pablo: Simply because he said: ‘We are depriving the people a lot. Why do you do this? The people will get tired of this. They might turn against [you/us].’110 The words of the teacher would turn out to be prophetic. 108  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 93, 95.109  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), 90, 100, 128.110  My translation of original citation: Gabriela: “¿Por qué fusilaron al profesor?” Pablo: “Simplemente por haber dicho: ‘Mucho estamos privando a la gente. ¿Porqué hacen eso? La gente se va cansar. De repente puede venir en contra.›» Interview with Pablo, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 29.06.2015.220IV Open SecretsConspiracy and resistance (February - March 1983)The executions mark the point where the narrative on the position of the population turns from collaboration to resistance. The fact that the popular committee started killing - ‘ya empezaron a matar’ - is mentioned in many testimonies as a bridge too far.111 While the execution of the teacher can be seen as the proverbial last straw that broke the camel’s back, several motivations can be identified for the villagers’ change in position. The in-depth report of the TRC mentions four generic reasons: the Shining Path’s attack against the farmers’ economy, the discrepancy between ideology and practice, the use of terror, and the entanglement of the governance of the popular committee with existing conflicts and power struggles.112 Testimonies mention two additional immediate causes for the rebellion. The first one is the existence of a blacklist with names of people that would be eliminated by the popular committee. One of the members of the popular committee would have passed this list on to the people involved, who subsequently decided to set up a conspiracy against the popular committee to save their own skin.113 The second one, mentioned by several interviewees, is a threat received by a general of the army. As Sacsamarca was marked as a ‘red zone’ infiltrated by the Shining Path, the general would have given the villagers an ultimatum to demonstrate which side they were on. If not, Sacsamarca would be wiped from the map by the military, as would later happen with villages such as Umaro, Cayara or Accomarca. One testimony even mentions this threat as 111  Caroline Yezer similarly marks the popular trials as a breaking point for the village where she conducted her research. Yezer, “Who Wants to Know?,” 274.112  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”113  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 123; CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.” Interview with Daniel, ex-authority, Sacsamarca, 13.04.2015.221IV Open Secretsthe principal cause:The cause of our rebellion was the threat of the General [XXX] [...] who was determined to destroy this politics [of the Shining Path] [...]. He gave twenty days. [...] The general gave us this warning and if we would not organize this rebellion, this village, Sacsamarca, Huancasancos and Lucanamarca would totally disappear. [...] We rebelled foremost because of the threat by the general, if not we maybe would have died, if that [the threat] wouldn’t have happened, we wouldn’t have revolted against all these abuses.114The in-depth report of the TRC touches upon a related fact. In the weeks before the rebellion, several newspapers in Lima published a map upon which Sacsamarca was marked as a ‘red zone’ in hands of the Shining Path. The community of migrants from Sacsamarca in Lima picked up this reporting and sent concerned messages to their hometown, urging their fellow-villagers to do something. Their concern was either that the military would leave the villagers to their fate and would not intervene out of fear for the Shining Path, or that they would massacre the population in case they did decide to intervene.115In any case, it was in the days after the execution of the teacher on February 6th that a conspiracy against the popular committee started to take shape during secret meetings in the puna held by a group of approximately twenty villagers. They decided to strike during the 114  My translation of original citation: “Y el caso de la causa de nuestra revelación fue por la amenaza del General [XXX] [...] que iba a hacer desaparecer esa política [...] Dió 20 días [...] El general nos dió esa advertencia, y si no hacía esa revelación [rebelión], el pueblo este, Sacsamarca, Huancasancos y Lucanamarca iba a desaparecer, en global ya. [...] Más por amenaza del general es que nos hemos rebelado, sino de repente nos hubiéramos muerto, quizás sino hubiera pasado eso, no nos hubiéramos rebelado de tantos abusos.” Interview with Daniel, ex-authority, Sacsamarca, 13.04.2015.115  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”222IV Open Secretscarnival celebrations on February 15th116, when the leaders would be drunk and inattentive. On the eve of the celebrations, a meeting with about 170 villagers was set up in the puna in which a detailed plan and corresponding division of tasks was defined. According to the testimonies, the plan was to capture the leaders and not to kill them.117 When it came to the crunch, however, Walter and Jelacio were both surprised in their sleep and stabbed and stoned to death, as described in the introduction. According to the in-depth report of the TRC, the villagers stated that they decided to kill the leaders instead of capturing them because there were no government authorities in Sacsamarca to which they could hand them over.118 The other members of the popular committee were captured and tied together with a rope. Nevertheless, some of them could escape to Huancasancos and warn the Shining Path leadership there of what had occurred in Sacsamarca. Infuriated by the news of the rebellion, the popular committee of Huancasancos immediately sent militias to Sacsamarca and captured a group of thirty men, among whom the principal leaders of the conspiracy. They took the prisoners to Huancasancos, where they directed ten of them to the main square to be quartered in front of the population. The other twenty were locked up in an oven to be burned.119 They had to wait, however, 116  Testimonies contradict each other on the exact date of the rebellion, but February 15, 1983, is the date on Walter Huaccachi’s gravestone at the cemetery of the village. 117  Interview with Francisco, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 10.04.2015; interview with Julio, participant in the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 22.05.2015; interview with Pablo, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 29.06.2015; interview with Daniel, ex-authority and participant in the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 13.04.2015; Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 80. 118  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”119  Interview with Mauricio, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 15.04.2015; interview with Julio, participant in the rebellion 223IV Open Secretsfor the permission of comrade Victor - the main regional Shining Path leader, who at that moment was out of town - to carry out the executions.120 In the meantime, a commission of three men from Sacsamarca traveled to the police station in Huancapi to ask for help. However, when confronted with the story about the rebellion, the police men were suspicious and did not believe the Sacsamarquinos. Out of desperation, the men decided to hurt themselves and went back the next day with the pretext that they were attacked by the Shining Path. With their faces covered in blood, they were finally believed by the police who decided to send a helicopter to Huancasancos in order to free the prisoners.121 Meanwhile, three days had passed and comrade Victor had not yet returned to Huancasancos. When the helicopter of the police arrived to Huancasancos, they found the prisoners alive and succeeded in liberating them. During the rescue operation, the Sinchis122 demonstrated their reputation as ruthless brutes by randomly firing their arms in the streets of Huancasancos, hereby killing fourteen civilians.123The rebellion against the leaders of the popular committee in Sacsamarca unleashed a series of events of resistance and violence against (presumed members of) the Shining Path in the region perpetrated by the state forces as well as by civilians. On February 20th, the villagers of Huancasancos lynched comrade Victor and against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 22.05.2015; interview with Barbara, widow, Sacsamarca, 20.05.2015.120  According to one testimony, comrade Victor would have been on a mission in the region with Abimael Guzmán himself. Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 100.121  Interview with Daniel, ex-authority and participant in the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 13.04.2015; interview with Daniela, widow whose husband was involved with and later killed by the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 21.05.2015.122  Nickname of the anti-terror unit of the Guardia Civil123  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”224IV Open Secretsother leaders of the popular committee. The villagers left the corpses of the leaders in the streets for three days in order to demonstrate their resistance to the Sinchis.124 A few days later, the Sinchis arrested three men in Sacsamarca on the suspicion of being part of the Shining Path. After being interrogated at the police station, the men were told that they were found innocent. They were taken back and released on the bridge at the entrance of the village. As soon as they had turned around to start their walk to the center of the village, the police men released a shower of bullets in their backs, leaving all three of them dead. One of the three victims, Liberato García, was Walter Huaccahi’s father-in-law.125 On February 24, the military raided the village of Lucanamarca, killed a Shining Path leader nicknamed comrade Nelson and ordered the population to revolt against the remaining leaders.126 The next day, the leaders of the popular committee of Colcabamba, who had decided to flee after having heard what had happened to Walter and Jelacio, were persecuted and killed by villagers of Sacsamarca in the highlands of Putaccasa.127 Two of the eight victims were Mavilón Cancho and Beatriz García, Walter Huaccachi’s brother- and sister-in-law. Their three-year-old daughter Giovanna was locked up in a room while she could hear her parents being shot. Beatriz was pregnant from a second child. The family members of the victims were prevented 124  González Huarcaya, La Vida No Vale Nada. Terror, Sangre y Muerte En Los Andes, 45; CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”125  CVR, Testimonio 201114, Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos.126  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”127  They were persecuted by groups of villagers both from Colcabamba and Sacsamarca, but according to the most detailed testimonies it was the group from Sacsamarca that eventually perpetrated the killing. Interview with Manuel, Hualla, 30.04.2015; CVR, Testimonio 201114; Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 88.225IV Open Secretsby their fellow-villagers from burying the corpses on the cemetery of Colcabamba, which is why the corpses were buried in Putaccasa close to the place of the massacre, where they rest up until today.128 In the meantime, the military increasingly put pressure on the villagers of Sacsamarca to denounce the remaining Shining Path militants and executed at least three villagers in the weeks after the rebellion.129 On March 22, the villagers of Lucanamarca on their turn completed the military’s order to revolt and killed the leader of the local popular committee by stoning and burning him in front of the church.130 The Shining Path takes revenge (April - May 1983)The response of the Shining Path against the wave of resistance of the villages in the region was severe. On April 3, they besieged and raided Lucanamarca, where the villagers were collectively working on the maintenance of the roads. The participants in the faena were randomly killed in the streets. Thereafter, the Shining Path militants gathered the remaining population on the main square and carried out a mass execution. In total, they slaughtered 67 villagers - including men, women, children and elderly - with bladed arms. The massacre was planned with help from Shining Path militants among the population.131 Abimael Guzmán would justify the massacre a few years later as follows:I reiterate that the main purpose was to make them understand 128  Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), 78; Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 90.129  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 111, 125.130  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”131  CVR.226IV Open Secretsthat we were a hard  nut to crack, that we were ready for anything. Because Marx has taught us that resistance is not a game.132Sacsamarca was next in line to be repaid for its disloyalty. In the early morning of May 21, four- to five hundred Shining Path recruits from the villages of the valley of the Pampas river - Hualla, Tiquihua, Canaria, Chincheros -, led by comrade Omar and comrade Pablo, started to arrive to the highlands of Tambobamba, in the surroundings of Sacsamarca. As in Lucanamarca, a communal gathering and faena was planned to take place in Sacsamarca that day. Victor Auccasi, a farmer living in the puna, could escape the approaching Shining Path militias and ran downtown to warn the villagers by ringing the bells of the church tower. Together with three policemen who happened to be around and were armed with FALs133, the villagers decided to confront the Shining Path militias who, except for Omar and Pablo, fought without firearms. Ten villagers of Sacsamarca, Pallcca and Asca and an unknown number of Shining Path recruits lost their lives in the battle, which eventually turned in favor of the Sacsamarquinos.134 When comrade Omar and Pablo managed to escape in the direction of Pallcca, two of the policemen and some Sacsamarquinos gave chase. During the persecution, one of the policemen got shot by Omar, after which the other policeman killed the latter and ordered a villager to cut off his head. Pablo, who got shot in his leg, surrendered and asked for 132  My translation of original citation: “Reitero ahí lo principal era hacerles entender que éramos un hueso duro de roer, que estábamos dispuesto a todo. Porque Marx nos ha enseñado que no se juega a la insurrección.” Cited in: CVR.133  Fusil Automatique Léger, semi-automatic rifle produced by the Belgian company FN Herstal134  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca”; Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 77–132.‘Enfrentamiento’ by Anibal Pillaca Huaccachi (Source: SER 2005) Drawing depicting the battle of May 21st 1983228IV Open Secretsmercy, but was killed on the spot by the villagers.135 The day after, Sacsamarca mourned its victims. The dead policeman was picked up by helicopter and the fallen villagers buried on the cemetery. Some twenty or thirty Shining Path recruits who were taken as prisoners during the battle were brought to the village where they had to endure severe torture by the police and were locked up without any food. After three days, the police captain ordered his men to execute the prisoners on the outskirts of the village. Some villagers were obliged to bury the corpses in a mass grave close to the village, where they remain until today.136Between the devil and the deep blue sea: Living with the Sinchis (May 1983 - ca. 1994)The rebellion against the leaders of the popular committee and the battle of Tambobamba marked the end of Sacsamarca’s coexistence with the Shining Path, but the villagers now had to endure the presence of the abusive state forces. In the aftermath of the rebellion, a military base was installed in Huancasancos and a police station in Lucanamarca and Sacsamarca. In the latter case, an agreement was established with the population that they would provide the policemen with foodstuff and wood in exchange for protection. 137 The minutes of a community meeting held in Sacsamarca on May 22nd, 1983, the day after the battle, state that: [...] the major [XX] left the police detachment installed on this 135  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 84, 126.136  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004; CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”137  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 111.229IV Open Secretsdate for the protection of all the inhabitants of the villages that were mentioned in the previous lines [Sacsamarca, Pallcca, Colcabamba, Asca, Putaccasa] [...] for which the population was very grateful and compromised itself to collaborate in every sense of the word.138 During their presence, the police reorganized the village into two neighborhoods which exist up until today - Los Libertadores and Túpac Amaru - and obliged the population to carry out vigilance patrols.139 Nevertheless, the mistrust and disdain of the Sinchis towards the population resulted in horrific abuses, including plundering, torture and rape:“[...] the Sinchis did anything they wanted, like raping the women, they rinsed out the drunks at any time of the night, they let disobedient people run around naked, they massacred them, they took their belongings and even stole the animals, they treated us like dogs [...]”140“[...] there was abuse from both sides, also from the state forces, because this village was already marked as a red zone. The people were virtually worth nothing for the state, and that is most regrettable. The people were totally unprotected, 138  My translation of original citation: “[...] el mayor [XX] dejó en la fecha instalada el destacamaneto policial para el resguardo de todo los habitantes de cuyo [...] el pueblo quedó sumamanete agaradecido y se comprometió colaborar en todo sentido de la palabra.” Archivo directiva comunal Sacsamarca, Acta del día veintidos de mayo de mil novecientos ochentitres.139  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 111.140  My translation of original citation: “[...] los Sinchis hicieron todo lo que querían, como violar a las mujeres, los bañaban a los borrachitos a cualquier hora de la noche, hacían correr calatos a personas desobedientes, los masacraban, quitaban sus pertenencias hasta robaban animales, a las personas nos trataban como a perros [...]” Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), 94.230IV Open Secretsthat was the reason why they came and then they came, and they did whatever they wanted with the mothers, the ladies, the girls. It was a violation of human rights, as much sexual as everything else.141During a general assembly in 1984, the village reconsidered the agreement with the police and decided that they could no longer provide them with food.142 Testimonies contradict each other on when the police station in Sacsamarca was abandoned: in 1990, 1992 or 1994.143 This confusion is probably due to the fact that the police regularly visited the village through patrols also after their withdrawal from permanent residence in the village. The military base in Huancasancos was dissolved in 1994.144While the revolts against the popular committees in Sacsamarca, Huancasancos, Lucanamarca and Colcabamba meant the beginning of the end of the ‘liberated’ zone in the region, incursions of the Shining Path took a deadly toll during the entire decade to follow. The event that is marked in testimonies as the last violent action of the Shining Path in Sacsamarca is the killing of the mayor, Sergio Barrientos, in June 1994. Between 1981 and 1994, at least 107 villagers of the district of Sacsamarca lost their lives as a result of violence perpetrated either by the Shining Path, the state forces, or 141  My translation of original citation: “[...] también hubo abuso de las fuerzas armadas de las dos partes, porque este pueblo ya estaba designado ya como una zona roja, la gente ya no valía nada ni prácticamente para el estado, y eso es lo más lamentable. Estaba totalmente desprotegidos, tal es por eso que vino las fuerzas armadas vinieron e hicieron lo que quisieron con las madres, señoras, señoritas. Hubo una violación de los derechos humanos tanto sexual como de todo.” Interview with Alonso, witness of the events of 1983, Sacsamarca, 13.04.2015. 142  Personal communication with Ricardo Caro, 18.06.2019.143  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 113, 127, 132.144  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”231IV Open Secretstheir own neighbors.145 4.3 Diffusion of transitional justiceSilence and suspicion: The Truth and Reconciliation CommissionKnowing the course of the events of the civil war in Sacsamarca, it already becomes clear that transitional justice’s quest of finding ‘the truth’ would not be self-evident in this community. If the arrival of the Shining Path opened a pandora’s box of micro conflicts and vengeances, as is stated by the TRC itself, then the process of truth-finding at least ran the risk of re-opening this box.146 As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the TRC was present in Sacsamarca through the mobile teams which collected testimonies on the one hand, and, the research team in charge of the in-depth report on the province of Huancasancos on the other. In general, it seems that not a lot of Sacsamarquinos were eager to give their individual testimony to the TRC (33 of which only fourteen are available), and even less so in relation to the events of 1982 and 1983 (only three of the available testimonies). One research participant suggested to me that as soon as the villagers knew about the existence of the TRC, they came to an internal agreement during a general assembly not to testify on certain events such as the killing of the leaders of the popular committee.147 The in-depth research team indeed states in its report that it encountered “distrust, fear, resentment and envy” upon its arrival to the researched communities in the province of Huancasancos and that the team was insulted and accused of seeking the liberation of Shining Path members. In the report, the distrust of villagers towards the commission is in the first place ascribed 145  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 114.146  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”147  Fieldnotes, 28.06.2014. 232IV Open Secretsto disinformation about the work and the purpose of the TRC.148 Moreover, they indicated that, of all the visited communities in the province of Huancasancos, distrust was strongest in Sacsamarca:In Sacsamarca, in comparison to the other communities, we encountered mayor  difficulties in accessing the population.This is mainly due to the lack of information concerning the objectives of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The average peasant had no knowledge of what it was and if they did, they did not want to talk to us, stating that they had no time and that they had not been present in those years of violence.149If it is true, however, that an internal agreement had been made in advance by the villagers, than it was alertness rather than unawareness or disinformation that explains the villagers’ reluctance to talk to the TRC. Whether such an internal agreement existed or not, in any case several motivations can be identified for the villagers’ restraint. General distrust and fear for reprisals were often mentioned by research participants as a reason for not testifying:eva: After all of this happened here, the Truth Commission came to investigate? Suyana: Yes, an expert of the Truth Commission came to investigate. After that, they have investigated, and they have taken declarations. [...] But the majority was afraid, they did not want to declare. We were afraid, pues, ‘maybe this group is coming with  lies, why are 148  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”149  My translation of original citation: “En Sacsamarca, con relación a las otras comunidades encontramos mayores dificultades para acceder a la población. Esto se debe principalmente a la falta de información acerca de los objetivos de la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, el campesino promedio no tenía conocimiento de qué era y por el contrario no querían hablar con nosotros aduciendo falta de tiempo y que no habían estado presentes en aquellos años de violencia.” CVR.233IV Open Secretswe going to inform them?’, that’s what we said. Others were scared.150 This general climate of fear demonstrates that, although the war had already calmed down for several years at the time of the mandate of the TRC, the villagers had their reasons to believe that the circle of violence and vengeance could easily be sparked again - especially in a context of close proximity between (former) enemies. Another reason to be afraid to testify was the fear that the investigations of the TRC, despite its lack of legal mandate, would lead to prosecutions. During my fieldwork, this was specifically mentioned by research participants involved in the events of February 1983. One of the leaders of the rebellion explicitly wanted to make sure that my research did not serve any legal purposes, probably because there had been investigations by the prosecutor’s office concerning the exhumation of one of the mass graves in Putaccasa shortly before the interview took place: The Truth Commission, and I don’t know who else, all of them always come to ask me. Sometimes it makes me bitter, what do I still have to say? Now lately, for example, people are getting uncomfortable. On the basis of their report [the final report of the TRC] they start to analyze, and they start saying: ‘No, but you told me this, and that...’, and then the judicial investigation begins, and one compromises oneself, I would not want that, señorita Eva.151150  My translation of original citation: “Eva: Después de que pasó todo eso, vinieron a investigar aquí, de lo que pasó, de la comisión de la verdad? Suyana: Si pues, un perito ha venido de la comisión de la verdad a investigar. Después ellos han investigado, han tomado manifestaciones. [...] Pero mayoría se han quedado de miedo, no querían avisar. Teníamos miedo pues, quizá ese grupo nomas con mentira está viniendo, para que vamos avisar, diciendo. Otros tenían miedo” Interview with Suyana, widow whose husband was disappeared by the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 16.04.2015.151  My translation of original citation: “Comisión de la Verdad, y no se quiénes ya y todo el mundo siempre me viene. A veces ya me amarga y ¿qué cosa ya digo? Ahora últimamente está 234IV Open SecretsAnother reason mentioned by Caroline Yezer in her research on opposition to the TRC, which was conducted in an anonymized village in Ayacucho at the very moment the TRC started to take shape, is that people did not see the purpose of testifying. The villagers already knew what happened, why would they be interested in finding the truth? The commissioner’s argument in function of national reconciliation, that they should speak so that ‘people in the city would know their story’, made the villagers feel that their testimony was in the first place extracted for others, and that their ‘memory work’ was being exploited, thus Yezer.152 Moreover, the fact that the mobile teams took individual private testimonies - in contrast to the public hearings - based on standardized questionnaires, contributed to the feeling that their testimony had no visibility.153 If we extrapolate this motivation to Sacsamarca, in addition to the climate of fear for reprisal and prosecution that characterizes the aftermath of intimate violence, villagers thus most likely made a deliberate consideration that they had more to lose than to win by talking about the violence. In addition, at the time of the TRC’s mandate, it was not yet clear whether its work would lead to any (monetary) compensations for victims. In case they did testify, the villagers’ expectation that they would receive something in return was a very strong incentive to talk, as is mentioned in the in-depth report: The first reaction of the people was to ask us what we would give in return if they would tell us; the expectations of individual economic reparations are very big [...]154surgiendo por ejemplo incómodos a la gente. Ya acorde a su informe comienzan a analizar y te dicen: ‘No, tú me has dicho este, que esto...’ y comienza la investigación judicial, entonces uno mismo se compromete, eso no quisiera señorita Eva.” Interview with Mauricio, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 15.04.2015.152  Yezer, “Who Wants to Know?,” 280.153  Yezer, 277.154  My translation of original citation: “La primera reacción de la gente fue preguntarnos qué es lo que les íbamos a dar a cambio de lo que nos contaran; las expectativas de reparación 235IV Open SecretsYezer points out how the investigators of the TRC, in the case of the village where she conducted research, reduced the villagers’ reluctance to talk to a symptom of PTSD (‘they are afraid because they don’t understand that the war is over’), and did not consider the rational considerations or political struggles behind the silences.155 This does not entirely seem to be the case for the TRC’s investigations in Sacsamarca. Despite the fact that the in-depth report indeed pays a lot of attention to notions of trauma, and that it lists mental health care as its first recommendation while the population does not really seem to prioritize it, it also explicitly points to the limitations of a PTSD-based model of analysis - albeit without further specifying these limitations:We found that a medical-psychological “posttraumatic stress” model which focuses on short term traumatic events and takes the individual as the unity of analysis and intervention, has its limitations.156Furthermore, the investigators did look for explanations beyond PTSD or misinformation for the villagers’ mistrust. The in-depth report clearly indicates an awareness of the tense coexistence between victims and perpetrators as a pragmatic incentive to keep silent:The great distrust to talk about the period of the political violence and the fear for reprisals makes us think that we are in a community where victims and perpetrators from both económica de forma individual son muy grandes [...]” CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”155  Yezer, “Who Wants to Know?,” 271.156  My translation of original citation: “Encontramos que existen limitaciones de un modelo médico-psicológico de “estrés post-traumático” que enfoca sucesos traumatizantes de corto plazo y toma al individuo como unidad de análisis y de intervención.” CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”236IV Open Secretssides live together. This has provoked important changes in the community and although in the formal discourse they talk about reconciliation, the conflicts and resentments are still very present.157The investigators moreover reflected on their position as outsiders and potential disturbers of a tense equilibrium in Sacsamarca:  The resentment is so strong [...], they recognize their enemies and yet they live together in the same village. The coexistence is complex; in this case all the conflicts, grudges and accusations are so present in the everyday that we don’t have to believe that we disturb the “equilibrium” of the community because this is a fictitious equilibrium in which they try to believe, but nevertheless, it stands out in all its dimensions in front of the  presence of strangers, like us.158The tense coexistence between ‘intimate enemies’ was thus something that the investigators of the in-depth report were very aware of. Moreover, the presumption that the escalation of the violence was the result of a “war between peasants” (“guerra entre campesinos”), shaped by preexisting conflicts and power struggles, was one of the main hypotheses of investigation formulated at the beginning of the investigation. The in-depth report furthermore 157 My translation of original citation: “La gran desconfianza para hablar sobre la época de la violencia política y el miedo a represalias, nos hace pensar que estamos en una comunidad donde viven víctimas y victimarios de ambos lados. Esto ha provocado cambios importantes en la comunidad y aunque en el discurso formal se habla de una reconciliación, aún los conflictos y los rencores están presentes en la vida cotidiana.” CVR.158  My translation of original citation: “El resentimiento es tan fuerte, como podemos ver en las citas anteriores, reconocen a sus enemigos y sin embargo viven en la misma localidad con ellos. La convivencia es compleja; en este caso todos los conflictos, rencores y acusaciones están tan presentes en el día a día, que no debemos creer que perturbamos el “equilibrio” de la comunidad porque este es una [sic] equilibrio ficticio en el cual tratan de creer, pero sin embargo resalta en toda su amplitud ante la presencia de extraños, como nosotros.” CVR.237IV Open Secretsmentions that this hypothesis gained importance throughout the research process in the sense that micro conflicts and power dynamics within the communities even played a much bigger role than expected.159 At the same time, the standardized format of the questionnaires used by the mobile teams to collect testimonies reflects a rather rigid categorization of victims and perpetrators and of the type of violations, which is also predominant in the reparation program that followed from the recommendations of the TRC.160From ‘intimate enemies’ to innocent victims: The reparation programThe recommendations of the TRC resulted in the design of a reparation plan and the opening of a victim register (Registro Único de Víctimas, RUV) in 2004 (cfr. chapter 3.2). While there was still some room in the in-depth report to touch upon the complexity of agency that characterizes intimate violence, the reparation program manages strictly delineated categories of victimhood and violation to define beneficiaries. Registration in the RUV is the first necessary prerequisite to be eligible for reparations and can be done by declaring before one of the offices of the RUV. This declaration needs to be confirmed by three witnesses in the form of a declaration of honor. Individual economic reparations are limited to family members of victims who died or disappeared, victims with mental or physical disabilities as a consequence of (sexual) violence or torture, victims of wrongful imprisonment, victims 159  CVR.160  The first page of the questionnaire consists of multiple-choice boxes indicating the ‘responsable groups’ (‘grupos responsables’, choice between: ‘state forces’, ‘self-defense committees’, ‘paramilitary groups’, ‘terrorist organizations’, ‘civilians’, ‘others’ and ‘undefined’); the ‘type of declarant’ (‘tipo de declarante’, choice between ‘family member of victim’, ‘victim’, ‘perpetrator or agent’, ‘direct witness’ and ‘other’); and the ‘topics of the interview’ (‘temas de entrevista’, choice between: ‘death’, ‘disappearance’, ‘torture or abuse’, ‘detention or kidnapping’, ‘sexual violence’, ‘judicial processes/judicial problems’, ‘destruction of goods and properties’, ‘forced use of persons’, ‘graves’ or ‘other topics’). 238IV Open Secretsof rape and children born from rape. The reparation program furthermore applies a clean hands doctrine which implies that (family members of) victims who belonged to the Shining Path are automatically excluded from the right to reparations (cfr. chapter 3.3). In Sacsamarca, 482 direct victims (of whom 190 men and 292 women) and 373 family members of victims (of whom 221 men and 152 women) had registered in the RUV by 2014.161 The combination of this clean hands doctrine and the clear-cut categorization of victims and perpetrators provided a strong incentive for potential beneficiaries of the reparation program to transform the narrative of intimate violence into one of a victimized population caught between two fires, as María Eugenia Ulfe and Ximena Málaga state in their analysis of the relation between the condition of victimhood and the implementation of the reparation program in Huancasancos and Lucanamarca:Through the metaphor of “between two fires”, the victim makes his/her way in this great national context as a depoliticized subject that is located in the middle of the crossing of violence [...] This metaphor helps to draw a defined line between victim and perpetrator, and as a way of dignifying the one who suffered, (s)he is given centrality in the story. [...] The perpetrator is not defined in positive terms, but in opposition to the victim.162161  Dirección Académica de Responsabilidad Social de la Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú, “Diagnóstico Socioeconómico y Psicosocial de La Comunidad y Distrito Sacsamarca” (Lima: Dirección Académica de Responsabilidad Social de la Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú, 2014), 91.162  My translation of original citation: “Sirviéndose de la metáfora “entre dos fuegos”, la víctima se abre paso en este gran texto nacional como un sujeto despolitizado que se encuentra ubicado al medio del cruce de violencia [...] Esta metáfora ayuda a trazar una línea definida entre víctima y perpetrador, y como forma de dignificación del sufriente, se le otorga centralidad en el relato. [...] El perpetrador no es definido en términos positivos, sino en oposición a una víctima.” Maria Eugenia Ulfe and Ximena Málaga Sabogal, “Los Nuevos Suplicantes Del Estado Peruano: Las Víctimas y El Programa Integral de Reparaciones (PIR),” in 239IV Open SecretsIndeed, this narrative of innocent victimhood leaves little room to elaborate on the initial involvement and collaboration of many Sascamarquinos with the Shining Path. The murderers of the leaders of the popular committee on their turn, most of whom also initially sympathized or collaborated with the Shining Path, were further encouraged to cover up their role in the killings in order to present themselves in the first place as victims. At the same time, the family members of the leaders who were killed by their fellow-villagers, or of those alleged Shining Path members who were executed by the state forces in the aftermath of the rebellion, are not considered as victims and cannot claim reparations for the loss of their relatives. Despite the rigid categorization of victims and perpetrators, the implementation of the reparation program in Sacsamarca is thus inevitably intertwined with the intimate nature of the violence which now divides the population in beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the program. As Ulfe and Málaga put it, the category of victimhood is thus not abstract and has tangible repercussions for social relations:On the one hand, you become a potential beneficiary [...] of an individual economic reparation. On the other, your fellow-citizens [paisanos] will never see you in the same way - they will want to know what happened to you, or why you received some money from the State and they didn’t. The rumors emerge like a dust-cloud and revive the moments before, during and after the internal armed conflict.163In Sacsamarca, this has resulted in discontent and mutual accusations Políticas En Justicia Transicional. Miradas Comparativas Sobre El Legado de La CVR., ed. Ludwig Huber and Ponciano Del Pino, IEP, 2015, 174.163  My translation of original citation: “De un lado, te vuelves potencial beneficiario [...] de una reparación económica individual. Por otro lado, tus paisanos nunca te verán de la misma forma - querrán saber qué te sucedió, o por qué tú recibiste un dinero del Estado y ellos no. Los rumores emergen como una polvareda y reviven los momentos antes, durante y después del conflico armado interno.” Ulfe and Málaga Sabogal, 179.240IV Open Secretsamong villagers concerning false declarations or alleged unjust claims of victimhood. According to one villager, for example, the leaders of the rebellion tried to clear their names by making twisted statements:Manuel: These are twisted versions that are not real, and they did this simply to clean their hands, they have cleaned their hands. eva: Who? Manuel: Those responsible of the massacre, let’s say [...] eva: So, some people have declared things that are not true? Manuel: That is how it is, things that are not true.164Another recurring accusation is that the family members of people who were involved with the Shining Path are receiving reparations, despite the fact that they are not eligible: Here also, there were those who participated [in the Shining Path]. Now, oh god, they even receive reparation! They killed Walter Huaccachi and Jelacio Auccasi [Llacsa]. They were the youngsters that dictated us. Now they are receiving, they are the first afectados [affected] and the first to receive, the wife of the terrorist leader has received [reparation].165164  My translation of original citation: “Manuel: Son versiones tergiversadas que no son reales y eso han hecho porque simplemente han limpiado, se han limpiado la mano. Eva: ¿Quiénes? Manuel: Los responsables, digamos de la matanza [...] Eva: Ósea ¿Que algunos han declarado cosas que no son ciertas? Manuel: Así es, cosas que no son ciertas.” Interview with Manuel, Hualla, 30.04.2015165  My translation of original citation: “Aquí también pues hubo los que participaron. Ahora, ay Dios, ellos todavía reciben reparación! Ahí pues mataron a Walter Huaccachi y Jelacio Auccasi [Llacsa]. Ellos fueron los jóvenes que nos mandaban bastante. Ahora ellos están recibiendo, ellos son los primeros afectados y los primeros en recibir, la mujer de la cabeza terrorista ha recibido pues.” Interview with Barbara, widow, Sacsamarca, 20.05.2015. Family members of Shining Path militants might be eligible for reparations relating to violations others than the ones involving a Shining Path family member, such as the death or disappearance of another non-involved family member, or sexual violence. This can subsequently falsely be perceived by other villagers as a reparation for the death of the Shining Path family member. 241IV Open SecretsOn the other hand, for those who were (in)directly involved in the rebellion, the reparations are perceived as a poor compensation and an insufficient recognition for the sacrifices that they made to resist the Shining Path: eva: What do you think about the economic reparations that they are giving to the victims? elena: Totally bad, and that is what we complain about. Why doesn’t the Peruvian people say: ‘Thank you, thanks to them at least the people rebelled’? Why not recognize it, right? And we are humble people who did this, we have fought until the last sob, we are still fighting. Why is the Peruvian government not capable of recognizing this? [...] And now what they gave us, what is this? It is nothing more than a tip [...]166Reparation? No, it is not enough compared to what we have realized, it is not enough. At least there are illegitimate persons there [in the victim register] that are making claims, and the four persons that have organized [the rebellion] they are not even in that reparation, that bothers me.167The latter frustration concerning some of the leaders of the rebellion 166  My translation of original citation: “Eva: ¿Qué opina sobre la reparación económica, que están dando a las víctimas? Elena: Totalmente mal, y eso es lo que reclamamos. ¿Porqué no dice el pueblo peruano: ‘Gracias, por ellos siquiera hubo que la gente se han rebelado’. ¿Porqué no reconocerlo, no? Y gente humilde hemos hecho eso, hemos luchado hasta este último, estamos luchando. ¿Porqué no es capaz de reconocer el gobierno peruano? [...] Y ahora a nosotros, qué es eso, una propina nomas [...]” Interview with Elena, widow whose husband was killed by the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 15.04.2015.167  My translation of original citation: “¿Reparación? No, no es suficiente de acuerdo a lo que hemos trabajado, no es suficiente. Por lo menos hay personas que no son legales que están ahí correteando, los cuatro que han organizado ni siquiera están en esa reparación, eso a mí me preocupa [...]” Interview with Pablo, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 29.06.2015.242IV Open Secretswho are not receiving reparations relates to a recurring fundamental problem with the reparation program, which is the fact that victims of torture are hardly eligible for individual economic reparations. Some of the leaders of the rebellion were, however, direct victims of severe physical punishments and tortures by the Shining Path when they were taken as prisoners to Huancasancos. As one of them states:Only those who suffered the death of their father, of their mother [are receiving reparations]. But other people who have been tortured, morally, psychologically, those who were beaten up, knocked about, whose goods were plundered, no. [They] never [received].168Some other villagers who encounter problems with their reparation claims suspect that these difficulties are entangled with personal animosities between them and other villagers, like one woman whose husband was first involved with and later killed by the Shining Path: Gabriela: Did you receive a reparation? Daniela: No. They told me I would, but I did not receive. Gabriela: But are you in the victim register? Daniela: Yes, I was registered. But I don’t know, we have sent documents, and nothing. [...] Maybe it doesn’t work out because they hate me, if not, why didn’t I receive? The [XX] family did receive, like [YY], the wife of my cousin. We are all family...169168  My translation of original citation: “Pero solamente aquellos que sufrieron la muerte de su papá, de su mamá [...]. Pero otra gente que han sido realmente maltratados, moralmente, psicológicamente, los que han sido golpeados, pegados, sus bienes han sido arrasados, no. Nunca [recibieron].” Interview with Mauricio, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 15.04.2015.169  My translation of original citation: “Gabriela: “¿Recibió una reparación? Daniela: No. Decían no ya va llegar la reparación pero yo no recibí. Gabriela: ¿Pero está en el registro de víctimas? Daniela: Sí, hubo empadronamiento. Pero no sé, hemos enviado documentos, y nada. [...] Tal vez no sale porque me odian, ¿sino porqué no recibí? Los [XX] si recibieron, como 243IV Open SecretsThe fact that declarations of additional witnesses are needed to register in the RUV furthermore implies that those who want to register need to count with the willingness of others to overcome their fears or break certain silences. This can be challenging, especially for cases with few witnesses, such as the disappearance of Suyana’s husband by the Shining Path. The only witness of the events refuses to speak out until today:Up until now he is here, and he has never wanted to tell. [...] To register myself for the unique victim register [RUV] they asked us for a witness, and we asked the man: ‘Please, they are asking us for a witness, you have to testify.’ He did not want to.170 These internal tensions, mutual accusations and discontent come on top of the already existing problems with the implementation of the reparation program, such as procedural errors, corruption of bank clerks who manage the funds, and general dissatisfaction with the low amounts of the individual economic reparations. As in most communities affected by the civil war, in Sacsamarca a local victims’ association was founded in the wake of the launch of the reparation plan in order to support the procedures of individual reparation claims. However, the abovementioned problems, which emerge on the intersection of the reparation plan’s criteria for eligibility and the intimate nature of the violence, also disconcert the unity of the association. Some of the members of the association are said to be ex-Shining Path members who want to take advantage of the association to clean their hands and receive reparations.171 One of [XX] la esposa de mi primo. Todos somos familia...” Interview with Daniela, widow, Sacsamarca, 21.05.2015.170  My translation of original citation: “Hasta ahora está aquí y nunca ha querido decir. [...] Para registrarme, para el registro único de víctimas, ahí pues nos ha pedido testigo y al señor hemos dicho: ‘Por favor, testigo nos está pidiendo, tu pues manifiéstate.’ No ha querido.” Interview with Suyana, widow whose husband was disappeared by the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 16.04.2015.171  Dirección Académica de Responsabilidad Social de la Pontífica Universidad 244IV Open Secretsthe leaders of the rebellion furthermore accused the association of being a bunch of opportunists who are not interested in the real history of the resistance against the Shining Path.172 Furthermore, the criteria for eligibility for individual economic reparations have created a kind of victim hierarchy, which results in the fact that certain groups of victims, such as the tortured, have no incentive to participate in the association.173 Others have abandoned their membership of the association out of frustration over the procedures, or because they have already received their reparation and don’t have another incentive to participate.174 Furthermore, the association has a continuous problem with lack of leadership and commitment, and seems likely to die out in the course of the following years.175(Un)covering open secrets: Exhumations of clandestine burial sitesAnother recommendation of the TRC that reached Sacsamarca is the exhumation of clandestine burial sites from the civil war. As mentioned in chapter 3.2, the TRC’s preoccupation with the search for the disappeared resulted in a National Register of Burial Sites and a National Plan for Forensic Anthropological Investigations.176 As I will further explain in chapter five, the implementation of this plan has been facing many difficulties due to, among other factors, Católica del Perú, “Diagnóstico Socioeconómico y Psicosocial de La Comunidad y Distrito Sacsamarca,” 88.172  Interview with Pablo, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 29.06.2015.173  Fieldnotes, Conversation with the mayor of Sacsamarca and representatives of the victims’ association, Sacsamarca, 27.06.2014. 174  Fieldnotes, Conversation with representatives of the victims’ association, Sacsamarca, 28.06.2015.175  Fieldnotes, Conversation with the ex-president of the victims’ association, Sacsamarca, 19.05.2017.176  During its mandate, the TRC registered 4.644 burial sites. Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación Perú, “Informe Final,” Tomo IX, 209. Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación Perú, “Informe Final,” Tomo IX, 209.245IV Open Secretsa lack of coordination between the Public Ministry and civil society organizations and frictions between the judicial and humanitarian dimensions of the exhumation processes. The new legal framework that is in place since 2016 has nevertheless brought some hopes for improvement As in the entire Ayacucho department, in Sacsamarca and its surroundings steps have been taken to exhume mass graves from the civil war in order to identify and rebury the bodies they contain. According to an update of the TRC’s register of burial sites, performed by the Commission of Human Rights (COMISEDH) in 2011, 158 of Ayacucho’s 4052 presumed clandestine burial sites are located in the province of Huancasancos.177 As mentioned in chapter 3.2, one of the three mass graves which were exhumed during the mandate of the TRC was the one containing the victims of the massacre perpetrated by the Shining Path in Lucanamarca in April 1983 (cfr. chapter 4.2).178 The exhumation provided the commission with forensic evidence for the cruelty of the Shining Path and, in this way, Lucanamarca became an emblematic case of the civil war.179 For the district of Sacsamarca, the TRC registered 22 clandestine burial sites.180 Since 2010, the EPAF has conducted preliminary investigations on a number of cases throughout the district and the Public Ministry has carried out several exhumations. Between 2007 and 2009, for example, exhumations were carried out in relation to the range of extrajudicial executions committed by the 177  COMISEDH, Los Muertos de Ayacucho. Violencia y Sitios de Entierro Clandestinos, 74.178  On the process of exhumation and reburial in Lucanamarca, see: Rojas-Perez, Mourning Remains, 45.179  Bunselmeyer, “Trust Repaired? The Impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Reparation Program on Social Cohesion in Post-Conflict Communities of Peru,” 65.180  Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos. Clandestine burial sites are graves containing corpses without death certificate. These can be individual or collective graves; the identity of the buried persons can be known by the community or not.246IV Open Secretsmilitary in February and March 1983 throughout the province of Huancasancos, among which the case of the three men who were shot in their backs on the bridge at the entrance of the village of Sacsamarca (cfr. chapter 4.2).181 However, the narratives surrounding some of these graves are less clear-cut than in the emblematic case of Lucanamarca, where the population’s role in collaborating with the local popular committee was backgrounded in comparison with the immensity of the massacre perpetrated by the Shining Path.182 Indeed, some of Sacsamarca’s burial sites are the material remainders of the complex encounter between villagers, the Shining Path and the state forces. These graves are spatial points of reference in the villagers’ narratives on the civil war; open secrets that rest beneath the surface of the highlands. For example, the mass grave on the outskirts of the village, which holds the corpses of the prisoners who were taken during the battle of May 21st, executed by the police and buried by the villagers, remains covered until today but is often referred to by villagers in conversations. The prospect of uncovering these open secrets provoked tensions and unrest among some villagers during my fieldwork in 2015. In June, I participated in the exhumation of a mass grave in the highlands of Sacsamarca’s annex of Putaccasa. Together with Oscar Loyola, forensic archeologist of the EPAF, I was part of the process as expert on behalf of the relatives of the victims. While the actual exhumation was carried out by the Public Ministry, it was the EPAF that documented and presented the case on the basis of years of preliminary research in the region. The mass grave contained the victims of a violent confrontation between the military and a group of Shining Path militias which took place on August 7th, 181  COMISEDH, Los Muertos de Ayacucho. Violencia y Sitios de Entierro Clandestinos, 96.182  Isaias Rojas-Perez describes how in Lucanamarca it became clear during the exhumation that, as in Sacsamarca, the villagers resisted the victim subject position offered by the TRC and preferred to inscribe themselves in a discourse of heroic nationalism. Rojas-Perez, Mourning Remains, 49.247IV Open Secrets1985. The Shining Path militias were recruited in the villages of Arapacancha and Upiray, both in the province of Vilcashuamán. The confrontation resulted in the execution of a group of recruits by the military, after which the corpses were left unburied on the side of the river. The villagers of Putaccasa, who found the bodies the day after the execution, decided to bury them on the spot in a mass grave, which they dug secretly - out of fear for being held responsible for the massacre - during the two following nights.183 Notwithstanding the fact that the exhumed burial site contained remains belonging to approximately sixteen corpses, the witness statements in the preliminary investigation mentioned numbers ranging from eleven to thirty-two victims.184 The exhumation lasted for four days and was thwarted by the bad state of conservation of the remains. As the victims were recruits coming from different places and marched for several days to reach Putaccasa, it is hard to reconstruct the exact course of the events and to identify the victims. Several family members of the presumed victims were involved in the process, but the corpses remain unidentified and stored in the public ministry in Huamanga up until today.185In the months before the exhumation was about to take place, the public prosecutor’s office payed several visits to Sacsamarca in order to conduct preliminary research in relation to the case. These visits inspired distrust and fear among some villagers. For example, during one of my visits in April 2015, I talked about my research 183  EPAF, Informe Preliminar Forense Putaccasa II; fieldnotes, exhumation Putaccasa II, Putaccasa, 16-19.06.2015.184  A report found by the EPAF in the community archive of Sacsamarca, which dates from the week after the execution and describes the events in Putaccasa, speaks of twenty-six victims (twenty men and six women). Other witnesses speak of eleven to eighteen victims. According to the anthropologist of the Public Ministry, the local authorities might have exaggerated the number of victims to glorify the death of Shining Path members. Another explanation might be that there is a second burial site holding the other corpses. Fieldnotes, exhumation Putaccasa II, Putaccasa, 16-19.06.2015.185  Fieldnotes, exhumation Putaccasa II, Putaccasa, 16-19.06.2015.Exhumation of mass grave in Putaccasa (2015)249IV Open Secretswith one of the village authorities. During this conversation, the man expressed concern that my research would be thwarted by the fact that people would be reluctant to talk me. When I asked him why this would be the case, he explained that the prosecutor’s office had recently come by to conduct investigations in relation to the mass grave in Putaccasa. “We only defended ourselves”, he added on a whisper.186 This reference to the villagers’ involvement in the crime indicated that the Sacsamarquinos seemed to associate the investigations of the prosecutor’s office with another series of graves in the highlands of Putaccasa. As described in 4.2, in the aftermath of the rebellion in February 1983, the fugitive leaders of the popular committee of Sacsamarca’s annex of Colcabamba were persecuted and killed by villagers of Sacsamarca in Putaccasa. The family members of the victims were prevented from burying the corpses of the eight victims - two of which were relatives of Walter Huaccachi - on the cemetery of Colcabamba, which is why they were buried in individual clandestine graves close to the place of the massacre, in the highlands of Putaccasa. The case goes unmentioned in the in-depth report of the TRC but was documented in subsequent years by the EPAF.187 Until today, the graves remain unexhumed, despite the desire of several family members living in Sacsamarca and Hualla to recover the bodies of their loved ones and bury them at the cemetery. Some of the perpetrators of the killings still live in Sacsamarca; the family members know very well who they are.188 An exhumation process can only be started by filing a complaint and initiating a legal investigation. However, Manuel, who is one of the family members of the victims, explicitly states that he does not 186  Fieldnotes, conversation with local authority, Sacsamarca, 10.04.2015.187  Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 63–98.188  Fieldnotes, visit to the graves of Putaccasa I y II, Sacsamarca, 28.03.2015; interview with Sara, direct witness of the events of February 1983, Sacsamarca, 22.05.2015; interview with Manuel, Hualla, 30.04.2015; conversation with relatives grave Putaccasa I, Hualla, 18.05.2017.250IV Open Secretswant to denounce the killers. To some extent, he seems to consider the perpetrator(s) also as victim(s) of circumstances caused by the civil war: We were going to denounce, but why would we denounce if these people [that person] against their will, fell to a miserable, very poor life, failed, fucked up? [...] If we denounce, (s)he will be there in prison, nothing more, just that.189 Nevertheless, it is not surprising that the news of exhumations in Putaccasa - albeit of another burial site - sparked some villagers’ fear that the forensic evidence of the killings perpetrated by the Sacsamarquinos against their neighbors from Colcabamba would be uncovered as well. Moreover, if the exhumation of the other grave already sparked mistrust, the possibility of digging up the remains of the Colcabambinos that rest in Putaccasa is likely to pave the way for accusations, bitterness or feelings of vengeance. Despite the fact that the two cases are unrelated, the shared geography of their physical remainders casted a shadow of secrecy and tension over both burial sites. While the forensic evidence of the case of August 1985 was uncovered through the exhumation, the existence of the graves of the Colcabambinos in Putaccasa remains an open secret that supports a tense coexistence. The question remains, then, which power relations are at play in this coexistence and which or whose motivations gain the upper hand in the decision whether or not to uncover certain open secrets. For example, at first sight, Manuel seems to show some mercy with the perpetrators. Nevertheless, other reasons might be at play not to denounce the killers; such as fear for reprisals, the social cost of stirring up old conflicts or a general lack of trust in the judicial system. The decision not to 189  My translation of original citation: “Íbamos denunciar ya, pero ¿para qué ya vamos a denunciar si esta gente otro por su propio peso han caído a una vida lastimosa, paupérrimo, fracasados, jodidos? [...] Si vamos a denunciar, ahí va estar en prisión nada más solo eso.” Interview with Manuel, Hualla, 30.04.2015.251IV Open Secretsfile a complaint should therefore not too easily be understood as a positive choice for reconciliation or forgiveness. When I asked the man in question about his thoughts on the idea of reconciliation, he was skeptical and stated that until today, he endures stigmatization because of his family’s collaboration with the Shining Path: There can always be reconciliation when the persons who affected you understand and change their conduct. If that family that killed my family still has the same intention of hurting you, then there will never be reconciliation, ever, because they always look at you in a bad way [...] How can there be reconciliation? There can never be, even if I leave it to God it will be impossible. That’s how it is, señorita, reconciliation is nonsense. There are always persons that judge you with bad intentions; their children are always screwing you.1904.4 Appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation of transitional justice The public narrative: A memory of resistance Notwithstanding the fact that the investigations of the TRC in Sacsamarca were surrounded by silence, suspicion and secrecy, the truth-finding process generated a space which was appropriated by the Sacsamarquinos to publicly commemorate and give meaning to 190  My translation of original citation: “Reconciliación puede haber siempre en cuando las personas que te han afectado que comprendan, que cambian su conducta. Si esa familia que ha matado a mi familia y va tener ese mismo pensamiento siempre de fregarte, hacerte daño, nunca va haber reconciliación, jamás, porque siempre te está viendo mal [...] ¿Cómo puede haber reconciliación? Nunca puede haber, aunque yo lo dejo así a Dios, y no se puede haber. Así es pues señorita, reconciliación es por gusto. Siempre hay personas que te juz gan de mala fe, los hijos de estos siempre te están fregando.” Interview with Manuel, Hualla, 30.04.2015.252IV Open Secretsthe past through a narrative of resistance against the Shining Path. The roots of this heroic narrative however predate the final report of the TRC. Already in 1984, during their presence in the village, the Sinchis remodeled and renamed the central town square. The eucalyptus tree standing in the middle, which had been a place of punishment and execution under the rule of the popular committee, was cut down and the square was named after Telesforo Dueñas, the policeman who lost his live during the battle, representing him as the martyr of Sacsamarca’s victory over the Shining Path.191 Nevertheless, in 1998, when the state forces had permanently withdrawn from the region, the Sacsamarquinos reclaimed their share in the story by renaming the square Plaza 21 de Mayo and putting up a new commemorative plaque with the names of the ten villagers who died during the confrontation with the Shining Path in 1983. The role of the police was downplayed as the villagers put their own martyrs center-stage with name and surname, while the police officer was mentioned sideways as ‘a military man, Dueñas’.192 Despite its focus on the intimate nature of the violence, the work of the TRC further strengthened and legitimized this heroic narrative by giving a detailed account of the resistance of the Sacsamarquinos in its final report. Moreover, the TRC provided the immediate trigger for this narrative to become the subject of public commemoration practices through the personal experience of Orlando Janampa, a young Sacsamarquino migrant living in Ica. Orlando Janampa worked as a volunteer with the local teams of the TRC and got directly inspired by the memory duty underlying the commission’s truth-finding mission to set up the primer homenaje de reconocimiento 191  Caro, “Commemorative Paths in Sacsamarca,” 182; One of the testimonies recorded by SER slightly contradicts Caro’s information by stating that the policemen named the square after José Cotrina Elorriada, a captain who died during an attack of the Shining Path in Huancasanos. Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 114.192  Caro, 182.253IV Open Secretsa las víctimas por la violencia política193 on May 21st, 2003, on the 20th anniversary of Sacsamarca’s confrontation with the Shining Path. Janampa himself described his motivation to take the initiative for the commemoration as follows: The symbolic recognition [through public commemoration] proposed by the TRC seemed interesting to me. Therefore, I internalized these ideas, thought a lot and reflected. My motivation grew stronger that this was the only way to talk about the topic of the political violence, as a way of approaching one another among Sacsamarquinos.194Using the final report of the TRC as a legitimation, Janampa succeeded in convincing the municipal authorities of the importance of installing a new tradition and setting up a commemoration day in his hometown. The event was furthermore supported by the TRC’s regional office in Ayacucho, the Regional Front of Grassroots Organizations for Truth and Justice, local and regional victims’ associations and the Christian NGO Paz y Esperanza195.196 The program of this first edition of the commemoration included a mass dedicated to all the victims of the war, a reenactment of the battle against the Shining Path and a pilgrimage to the cemetery in honor of the death and disappeared victims.197 In line with the objectives of the TRC, the goal of the commemoration, thus Orlando Janampa, 193  First tribute of recognition to the victims of the political violence194  My translation of original citation: “El reconocimiento simbólico como propuesta de la CVR, me pareció interesante, por lo tanto interoricé estas ideas, pensé mucho y reflexioné. Mi motivación fue creciendo toda vez que era la única manera de hablar del tema de la violencia política como una forma de acercamiento entre nosotros los Sacsamarquinos.” Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 120.195  Peace and Hope196  Caro, “Commemorative Paths in Sacsamarca,” 184.197  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 12.254IV Open Secretswas to [...] obtain a real pardon and internal reconciliation in Sacsamarca, as we are brothers and we will be heirs of one single history, we are part of one single family.198However, the celebration of the first edition immediately sparked a conflict over who could be subject of the tribute. While the commemoration was set up - with Janampa’s reconciliatory ideas in mind - to include all the victims of the period of 1980 to 2000, some villagers had imagined that the commemoration would be exclusively dedicated to the heroes and martyrs of May 21st. Among other things, Janampa was accused of honoring those villagers who had pertained to the Shining Path. The mayor at that time - one of the leaders of the rebellion of February 1983 - refused to support the organization of the next edition of the commemoration in 2004. Nevertheless, Janampa persisted and set up the second edition with the support of the TRC and several NGOs from Ayacucho and Lima, including SER, Paz y Esperanza, COMISEDH, APRODEH, the ICRC, Christian Aid and the citizen platform Para Que No Se Repita199.200 The ‘Second Tribute to the Victims of Political Violence’ lasted for four days (May 18 to 21, 2004) and was attended by representatives from the supporting NGOs, representatives from the national Ombudsman office, exchange students from a secondary school in Lima and a press team of the national television program Sin Rodeos. The nine minute reportage broadcasted by Sin Rodeos reproduces the heroic narrative of resistance.201 Art competitions in music, poetry, 198  My translation of original citation: “[...] lograr en Sacsamarca un verdadero perdón y una reconciliación interna, ya que somos hermanos y seremos herederos de una sola historia, somos parte de una sola familia.” Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), 12.199  So It Does Not Repeat200  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), 12.201  “Sacsamarca - Programa Sin Rodeos - YouTube,” accessed August 2, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4Nncj3yrLE.255IV Open Secretsdrawing and history writing as well as a running contest were added to the program of the second edition.202 According to Ricardo Caro, the reinforcement of Sacsamarca’s heroic narrative became the central aim of the second edition of the commemoration: [...] Janampa and the team organizing the tribute hoped to build stronger consensus about the heroic meaning of May 21 for the community and about the shared memory of the residents of Sacsamarca who died, whether they had died while opposing Shining Path or had belonged to or been perceived as close to the insurgent cause.203The meaning and purpose of the commemoration thus gradually shifted to favor a narrative of heroism directed to an external audience of NGO and state representatives over one of reconciliation between ‘intimate enemies’. However, due to the persisting conflict between Orlando Janampa and the mayor, no commemoration was organized in 2005 and 2006.204 The tribute was revived by the newly elected mayor Edgar Olivares in 2007, shortly after president Alan García had launched the collective reparation program. The mayor saw the commemoration as an opportunity to emphasize Sacsamarca’s contribution to the defeat of the Shining Path in order to enhance the village’s opportunity to benefit from the program. In contrast to the previous editions, the 2007 commemoration was entirely organized by the municipal authorities.205 However, since the EPAF started its work in Sacsamarca in 2010, it actively encouraged the local authorities and the victims’ association to commemorate the past 202  Caro, “Commemorative Paths in Sacsamarca,” 185. The submission to the art competitions are compiled in the publication ‘Rescate Por La Memoria’ of SER cited in this chapter. 203  Caro, 185.204  Caro, 189.205  Caro, 190.256IV Open Secrets[...] because Sacsamarca constructs its future without forgetting its past, because a pueblo [village/people] without memory definitely is a pueblo without history.206In April 2013, Sacsamarca was one of the villages in the region where the EPAF took the initiative to plant a “bosque de paz y esperanza” (“forest of peace and hope”), each tree representing a victim of the violence.207 On May 21st of that year, thirty years after the battle, the EPAF was also present during the commemoration ceremony and supported the demand of the victims’ association to reopen the victim register and enable new claims for individual economic reparations.208 For the first time, the commemoration was combined with the festivities of the Pachapupum festival, an agricultural fair celebrated in the highlands which, according to the EPAF, represented Sacsamarca’s “search for development alternatives in absence of a state that supports them” and could therefore be seen as “a symbol of struggle and resistance”.209 In 2015, there initially was little enthusiasm to organize the commemoration. Eventually, after some quarrels between the municipal authorities and members of the victims’ association, the event did take place and was relatively well-attended by the villagers. However, no external state or NGO representatives were invited. In the morning, a Catholic mass was held in honor of the victims of the civil war, whose names were 206  My translation of original citation: “[...] porque Sacsamarca construye su futuro sin olvidar su pasado, porque un pueblo sin memoria definitivamente es un pueblo sin historia.” “EPAF: Sacsamarca - YouTube,” accessed August 2, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=KN5c9CnybuQ.207  “EPAF: Sacsamarca - YouTube.”208  The RUV had been closed by the Supreme Decree 051-2011 issued under Alan García’s presidency but was reopened under Ollanta Humala. EPAF, “Sacsamarca conmemora ‘Día de la Memoria’ diciendo No a la violencia,” accessed August 2, 2019, http://epafperu.org/sacsamarca-conmemora-dia-de-la-memoria-diciendo-no-a-la-violencia/.209  EPAF, “Sacsamarca en la memoria… 30 años después,” accessed August 4, 2019, http://epafperu.org/sacsamrca-en-la-memoria30-anos-despues/.Commemorative mass on May 21st in Sacsamarca (2015)258IV Open Secretsmentioned chronologically by date of death or disappearance. Remarkably, the names of Jelacio Llacsa and Walter Huaccachi, the leaders of the popular committee who were murdered, were mentioned among the others. Furthermore, the priest - who for the occasion had come from Huancasancos as there is no catholic priest in Sacsamarca - sharply criticized the work of ‘well-meaning outsiders’ in his homily, hereby referring to the well-known case of Lucanamarca:Until today, we, poor people, are being used by a lot of NGOs [...] who are often enriching themselves by using our name, the tears of these families [...] and we cannot tolerate that here. [...] We cannot sell the dignity of our brothers, of our fathers and their pains. For example, how much talking has been done about the most famous case, Lucanamarca? They have even made documentaries, videos, everything, and they have been sold in a lot of parts of the world. But if we go to Lucanamarca, what has changed? What have these persons done for Lucanamarca? Almost nothing! Therefore, brothers, we don’t have to wait for the help from outside. Let’s stand up ourselves.210 The ceremony that followed the mass included a tribute to the Peruvian flag, a civic parade, a reenactment of the battle by students, poetry reading, a speech by the mayor and an historical narration of the events by Sósimo Chavez, one of the oldest men of Sacsamarca 210  My translation of original citation: “Hasta hoy día, los pobres, seguimos siendo usados por muchas ONG [...] usando nuestro nombre, muchas veces las lágrimas de esas familias, están haciéndose ricos [...] y eso no podemos permitir aquí. [...] No podemos vender la dignidad de nuestros hermanos, de nuestros padres y sus dolores. [...] Por ejemplo, ¿cuánto se ha hablado del caso más conocido, de Lucanamarca? Hasta se han hecho reportajes, videos, todo, y han sido vendidos en muchas partes del mundo. Pero vayamos a Lucanamarca, ¿qué ha cambiado? ¿Qué han hecho esas personas para Lucanamarca? Casi nada! Por eso, hermanos, no hay que esperar la ayuda de afuera. Nosotros levantémonos.” Field recordings, Mass for the victims, Sacsamarca, 21.05.2015.259IV Open Secretsand the village’s living memory.211 In 2017, the Pacha Pupum festival was organized by the authorities between May 19-21 and the commemoration ceremony was integrated in the program of the last day. Once again, however, there had been disagreements between the victims’ association and the authorities on who should assume responsibility over the organization of the event; the former being frustrated with the lack of enthusiasm of the latter.212 While, by then, the commemoration seemed destined to die out in subsequent years, it surprisingly took new turns in 2018 under the auspices of congresswoman Tania Pariona. Pariona, a native from the town of Cayara in the province of Victor Fajardo, was elected to congress for the progressive party Frente Amplio (currently Nuevo Perú) in 2016. Having lived through the war during her youth in Huamanga, Pariona puts the struggles of the victims and the implementation of transitional justice mechanisms such as the reparation program high on her political agenda. In June 2018, Pariona presented a bill in congress containing two articles; the first one proposing the recognition of Sacsamarca as cuna de rebellión contra el terrorismo, para pacificación nacional213 and the second one ordering: [...] the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Interior, as well as the Regional Government of Ayacucho, the Provincial Municipality of Huanca Sancos and the District Municipality of Sacsamarca, according to their competences and functions, to make the necessary arrangements to realize an homage to the persons who fought and rebelled against the terrorism in Sacsamarca each 15th of February.214211  Fieldnotes, Commemoration ceremony, Sacsamarca, 21.05.2015.212  Fieldnotes, Pacha Pupum festival, Sacsamarca, 19.05.2017.213  Cradle of rebellion against the terrorism, for the national pacification214  My translation of original citation: “Ordenar al Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos, el Ministerio de Cultura, el Ministerio del Interior, así como el Gobierno Regional de Ayacucho, la Municipalidad Provincial de Huanca Sancos y la Municipalidad Distrital de 260IV Open SecretsThe motivation of the proposal leans on two central arguments: “the right to truth” (“el derecho a la verdad”) and “tolerance as content of the democratic State” (“la tolerancia como contenido del Estado democrático”).215 The Peruvian Ombudsman Office explicitly expressed itself in favor of the law, framing it as part of the symbolic reparation plan and stating that:[...] the collective treatment of a violent past and massive human rights violations can  be addressed through processes of truth-finding and collective memory work.216The revision of the proposal by the Commission of Justice and Human Rights of the congress concludes that the proposal constitutes:[...] a legal contribution in line with the recognition of the courageous behavior as a response of the most vulnerable citizens in the face of terrorism, who with their sacrifice gave us a free future, they gave us an example of patriotism so that all Peruvians can become aware of this example, and in this way contribute to the mechanism of memory for national pacification and to a permanent national commitment to the strengthening of democratic institutions.217Sacsamarca, conforme a sus competencias y funciones, dispongan las acciones pertinentes para realizar cada 15 de febrero un homenaje a las personas que lucharon y se rebelaron contra el terrorismo en Sacsamarca.” Comisión de Justicia y Derechos Humanos, “Dictamen Proyecto de Ley 3047/2017-CR,” December 5, 2018, 3.215  Comisión de Justicia y Derechos Humanos, 5.216  My translation of original citation: “[...] el tratamiento colectivo de un pasado de violencia y masivas violaciones de derechos humanos, pueden encausarse a través de procesos de búsqueda de la verdad y de trabajo colectivo de memoria.” Comisión de Justicia y Derechos Humanos, 10.217  My translation of original citation: “[...] aporte legal en la línea de reconocer la valerosa conducta como respuesta de los ciudadanos más vulnerables frente al terrorismo, los que con su sacrificio nos legaron un porvenir libre, nos dieron ejemplo de patriotismo a fin que todos los 261IV Open SecretsThe proposal received a final positive advice in May 2019, but has not yet been approved at the time of writing.218 Despite the fact that the bill somewhat remarkably proposed February 15th as a commemorative date, the 2018 commemoration, entitled “35th homage to the martyrs and heroes of May 21st 1983”, was held again on May 21st. The event was co-organized by the CMAN (the institution within the Ministry of Justice responsible for the implementation of the reparation program), the Pontific Catholic University of Lima (PUCP) and an organizational committee of villagers, which in addition to Orlando Janampa included several villagers who had played a prominent role in the events of February and May 1983. Among the special invitees were the president of the Regional Government of Ayacucho; Fernando Muñoz, one of the police officials who fought in the battle; Gustavo Gorriti, renowned journalist of IDL-reporteros and Salomón Lerner Febres, president of the TRC.219 The event was furthermore reported on by the national newspaper La República.220Sacsamarca’s trajectory of public remembrance has thus been characterized by varying levels of intensity depending on the initiative and support of both insiders and outsiders as well as the dynamics generated between them. Notwithstanding this heterogeneity, two aspects can be highlighted to better understand the significance of the commemoration and its dominant narrative. The first one concerns the way in which the narrative of the commemoration peruanos tomen conciencia de su ejemplo, de esta forma coadyuvar al mecanismo de memoria para la pacificación nacional y a un permanente compromiso nacional para con el fortalecimiento de las instituciones democráticas.” Comisión de Justicia y Derechos Humanos, 12.218  Servindi - Servicios de Comunicación Intercultural, “Avanza Proyecto de Ley Que Declara a Sacsamarca Pueblo Benemérito,” accessed August 4, 2019, https://www.servindi.org/actualidad-noticias/21/05/2019/aprueban-dictamen-de-proyecto-de-ley-que-declara-sacsamarca-pueblo.219  Leaflet Invitación XXXV Homenaje a Los Mártires y Héroes Del 21 de Mayo 1983 (Comisión Organizadora, 2018, personal archive of the author).220  La República, “Fernando Muñoz, el héroe de Sacsamarca,” May 28, 2019, https://larepublica.pe/domingo/1258451-heroede-sacsamarca/.262IV Open Secretsrepresents the agency of the peasantry in relation to the Peruvian state. In a meeting with the authorities and representatives of the victims’ association, the mayor stated that Sacsamarca wanted “to commemorate, but not victimize” (“conmemorar pero no victimizar”).221 By putting an active narrative of resistance center stage, the Sacsamarquinos aim at highlighting their deliberate choice to stand up against the injustices caused by the presence of the Shining Path. Therefore, as Ricardo Caro also remarks, they prefer to identify the dead of the war as martyrs rather than victims.222 The heroism of the Sacsamarquinos is furthermore framed by several research participants in a longer history of Sacsamarca as a “pueblo rebelde” (“rebellious village/people”) which actively seeks to rectify the relation with its oppressors, hereby referring to the fact that it was the first community in the valley of the Qaracha river to struggle for and obtain recognition from the state as a comunidad campesina in 1936.223 Through commemoration, Sacsamarca wants to conquer its place in the history of the Peruvian nation. As one of the research participants explains the importance of the ceremony:[...] for me it is important because [...] we Peruvians always remember the battle of Arica, the battle of Tarapacá, July 28th, 1821, independence.... Why would we forget? That is our communal sense, the patriotism, because that way Peru has made history. [...] Obviously not you yourself, but your forefathers, they died. In a similar way, Sacsamarca stood up, to die or to live, in defense of its interests, in defense of its people, in defense of its children and women, of its mothers 221  Fieldnotes, Conversation with the mayor and representatives of the victims’ association, Sacsamarca, 27.06.2014.  222  Caro, “Commemorative Paths in Sacsamarca,” 185.223  Interview with Pablo, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 29.06.2015; interview with Francisco, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 10.04.2015; interview with Mauricio, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 15.04.2015.263IV Open Secretsand wives. Several have died and why forget that?224The heroic narrative thus not only goes against victimization, it also stands in function of the recognition of Sacsamarca as ‘the (first) village that rebelled against the Shining Path’. While the Fujimori government systematically glorified the merit of the state forces in defeating the Shining Path, the Sacsamarquinos succeeded in “highlighting the community’s role and thus downplaying the emphasis on the military and the Fujimori regime as the sole heroes”.225Secondly, the narrative of resistance provides a clear rupture in time, marking a before and after in Sacsamarca’s history of the civil war. The killing of the leaders during the rebellion and the final defeat of the Shining Path through the battle mark a kind of purification ritual that cleans the village from its initial involvement with the Shining Path, transforming Sacsamarca from a hotspot of collaboration into one of resistance. While in reality some villagers collaborated, some resisted and some switched roles over time, these individual decisions are now represented as collective and homogenous, as one research participant states it:[...] at first the entire population was compromised, then they all rebelled.226224  My translation of original citation: “[...] para mi es importante, porque [...] los peruanos recordamos siempre la batalla de Arica, la batalla de Tarapacá, el 28 de Julio de 1821, la independencia, ¿por qué vamos a olvidar? Ahí está el civismo, el patriotismo, porque con eso Perú ha hecho historia. [...] Claro que no uno mismo no, sino nuestros antepasados murieron. Así igualito Sacsamarca ese día se enfrentó, realmente morir o vivir, en defensa de sus intereses, en defensa de su gente, en defensa de sus niños y mujeres, de sus mamás y esposas. Varios murieron y ¿por qué olvidarlo?”, interview with Mauricio, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 15.04.2015.225  Caro, “Commemorative Paths in Sacsamarca,” 188.226  My translation of original citation: “Toda la población se ha comprometido, después todos se han revelado.” Interview with Veronica, widow whose husband was killed by the military, Sacsamarca, 21.05.2015.264IV Open SecretsEmphasizing the resistance allows the villagers to clear their names and demonstrate that they were on ‘the right side’ of history. Hereby, the Sacsamarquinos do not only show themselves as defenders of the Peruvian nation against the insurgents of the Shining Path; they also justify their entitlement to reparations. In function of these two aims, the villagers seem to shift their identity on the axis between heroism and victimization, depending on who they address. While, as stated above, they present themselves foremost as heroes when claiming their position in relation to the Peruvian state, this does not necessarily prevent the Sacsamarquinos from appropriating the victim identity extended to them by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ involved in the transitional justice process, for example when claiming reparations or demanding the exhumation of clandestine burial sites. This fluidity becomes visible in the shifting meanings and purposes of the commemoration ceremony: from obtaining reconciliation between all the victims of the civil war, over paying tribute to a specific selection of heroes and martyrs, to claiming reparations and recognition. The disagreements over whether the commemoration ceremony should be dedicated to all the victims or exclusively to the heroes and martyrs of the rebellion and the battle also reflects this diversity in significance. During my fieldwork in 2015, the two leading figures of the victims’ association expressed diametrically opposite opinions on the matter.227The appropriation of these shifting meanings between victimhood and heroism is no one-way traffic but a mutual process between the villagers and the well-meaning outsiders of transitional justice, i.e. the different NGOs that over the years were involved in the commemorative practices, but also state representatives concerned with transitional justice, such as congresswoman Tania Pariona or members of the CMAN. By supporting and encouraging the villagers’ commemorative practices, these ‘well-meaning 227  Interview with Suyana, widow whose husband was disappeared by the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 16.04.2015; interview with Carlos, victim whose father was assassinated by the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 11.04.2015.265IV Open Secretsoutsiders’ reinforced the heroic narrative and, in some cases, started reproducing it. The design of the law that strives for the official recognition of Sacsamarca’s courageous resistance against the Shining Path demonstrates how these outsiders on their turn appropriated the heroic narrative extended by the villagers, in function of transitional justice’s general aims of obtaining truth, justice and reparation for the victims of the civil war. In other words, it seems that the villagers’ public narrative of resistance against the Shining Path eventually succeeded in backgrounding the narrative of violence between intimate enemies provided in the final report of the TRC as well as the narrative of victimization extended through the reparation program. Beneath the surface: Open secretsSacsamarca’s heroic narrative is, however, entangled with open secrets that lie beneath the surface of the public narrative of resistance. These open secrets are facts that are known within the community but concealed to certain outsiders. Depending on the context, the audience, and the purpose, these facts can be openly talked about or not, partially revealed or downplayed in favor of another narrative plot. In the case of Sacsamarca, the public heroic narrative serves as a curtain that gradually opens or closes, and behind which certain aspects of the violent past are put to rest by the keepers of its memory when they consider it convenient.228 These open secrets do not necessarily have a fixed character; rather they are fluid and dynamic and can serve varying purposes. The common thread linking Sacsamarca’s open secrets is, however, the villagers’ involvement with the Shining Path and the intimate nature of the violence resulting from this involvement.229 228  Or as Ricardo Caro states: “[...] amnesia, omission, and remembering differently serve a collective convenience as a discursive compromise in this process of writing a narrative of their past.” Caro, “Commemorative Paths in Sacsamarca,” 193.229  As Ponciano Del Pino states, the involvement of the rural population with 266IV Open SecretsTo better understand the origins of this intimate violence, it is necessary to take a look at certain tensions and power struggles that predated the conflict and escalated through the emergence of the Shining Path, be it through collaboration with or resistance against the new rulers of the popular committee. To begin with, as mentioned in 4.1, land possession in the Southern provinces of Ayacucho was not concentrated in the form of haciendas but scattered among multiple communities who disputed the control over their territories. Conflicts over agricultural resources - land but also cattle - caused ongoing tensions between Sacsamarca and its neighboring communities, but also within the community. The struggle to gain control over these resources was slightly different in Sacsamarca than in its surrounding communities. According to the in-depth report of the TRC, socio-economic inequalities between the elite and the rest of the population were less pronounced in Sacsamarca than in Lucanamarca and Huancasancos. This is why in Sacsamarca, more than in other communities, literacy was a way to stand out. The power and legitimacy of the elite were thus also based on education, a resource controlled in first instance by the intellectuals of the community. Control over both economic as intellectual resources thus became a gateway to power, which in Sacsamarca was dominated by an elite of teachers. These teachers not seldomly abused their power to further enrich themselves, for example by asking quota from students and their families in the form of food.230 The gradual process of social mobility that was set in motion by the availability of education at Colegio Los Andes in some cases generated tensions between an old and new generation of teachers. The emergence of the Shining Path intersects with this generational shift, which traversed the personal aspirations of Walter Huaccachi, one of the key figures in Sacsamarca’s history of the conflict. As mentioned the Shining Path has long been under exposed. Del Pino, “En El Nombre Del Gobierno”: Políticas Locales, Memoria y Violencia En El Perú Del Siglo XX,” 94.230  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”267IV Open Secretsbefore, Walter wanted to become a teacher in his hometown after his studies at the UNSCH but was denied a position by the teachers of the old generation.231Walter’s story, however, is not that of a poor man fighting the elite and running into the economic boundaries of social mobility. When Sacsamarca was founded by Spanish colonizers in 1574, they organized the village according to the three leading ayllus or family clans, one of which were the Huaccachi’s. In 1980, Walter’s family of cattle breeders was still one of the wealthiest of the village and belonged to the economic elite. Which role did these local elites - whose legitimacy was based on both economic and intellectual resources - play in the emergence of the Shining Path and its ideology? How did they relate to the ideas of redistribution and social justice? While the explanation of a struggle of the poor peasant mass against a rich minority might tell us something about the general nature of the civil war on a national scale, it proves unsatisfactory to explain processes of violence on a micro-level. The position of the local elites can in this case only be understood when looking at how they related to other groups in society. Walter may have been nothing more than a poor highland peasant in the eyes of the middle-class in Lima, but for his fellow-villagers he was a man of power. On the other hand, the local elite may have been wealthier than their poorer fellows, but they still had a lot to fight for. What we see in Sacsamarca is that most of the members who were involved with the popular committee, like Huaccachi, had been leading figures in the community before or came from families who had played key roles in local and regional politics and community organization for a long time. This appeal of the Shining Path to the elites can have several possible explanations, resulting in different personal motivations to join or support the new regime. In the first place, through their greater access to education, members of the elite were among the first to get in touch with the ideas of the Shining Path at 231  CVR. The in-depth report also more generally mentions generational conflicts as a cause for escalation of violence but does not further specify this.268IV Open Secretsthe UNSCH. The elite’s interest in education moreover originated from a political awareness of rights and recognition to be claimed from the national government. The Shining Path’s discourse on redistribution and social justice was furthermore not new: since the re-opening of the UNSCH in 1959, several left-wing movements and (maoist) fractions of the communist party rapidly gained support on the countryside.232 Many members of the elite thus undoubtedly joined or supported the Shining Path out of ideological conviction. The in-depth report of the TRC furthermore suggests a more pragmatic motivation in the case of Walter Huaccachi, namely that he would have joined the Shining Path to protect the interests of his family and prevent its properties from being expropriated or redistributed among the population.233 In general, the fear to lose privileges is a plausible motivation for the elite to ally with a new emerging power. In any case, it is not really a secret that the Shining Path initially appealed to the Sacsamarquinos. As mentioned before, the in-depth study of the TRC speaks of an initial “massive reception”, which is openly confirmed by most of my research participants.234 It is important to mention here that several (if not most) of the men who would lead the rebellion initially also supported or collaborated with the Shining Path.235 How, then, did this initial support turn into resistance so quickly? First of all, the emergence of the Shining Path challenged and disrupted the existing intracommunal (power) relations and created new alliances. As one research participant puts it:232  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 31.233  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”234  CVR.235  Interview with Mauricio, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 15.04.2015.269IV Open SecretsThere was division, everyone wanted to be the boss.236On the micro-scale of a community with a tight network of social relations, these new alliances turned family members and former friends into ‘intimate enemies’. The Shining Path’s focus on redistribution of land and cattle furthermore paved the way for long existing conflicts over these resources to escalate. Second, the abusive behavior of the new leaders of the popular committee and their use of extreme violence - justified by the Pensamiento Gonzalo - played a key role in how things got out of hand. The most recurring motivation for the rebellion mentioned by research participants in this respect is that ‘they started killing’ (‘empezaron a matar’) instead of punishing, but also that the new leaders did not practice what they preached because they enriched themselves instead of redistributing resources to the poor:They robbed [arrasar] all the sheep in the highlands, they ate it, they were like that. They robbed everything, they robbed like four houses. [...] During nighttime they took all the good stuff, and they only gave the useless things to the poor. They handed out the useless stuff! Is that politics?237 So, I don’t know whether it was among brothers or among brothers-in-law, but there was some discord about the interests of his father. Walter Huaccachi was prosperous, so because he 236  My translation of original citation: “Ha habido división, pues, todos ya querían mandarnos.” Interview with Victor, one of the participants in the battle against the Shining Path on 21 May 1983, Sacsamarca, 28.03.2015.237  My translation of original citation: “Después arrasaban todo el carnero de arriba, comían y así eran pues. Todas las casas arrasaron, arrasaron como cuatro casas pues. [...] En la noche ellos llevaban todas las cosas buenas. Y lo que no sirve nada más para el pobre. Reparten lo que no servía! ¿Eso es política?” Interview with Julio, participant in the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 22.05.2015.270IV Open Secretswas prosperous [...] he also was a lettered teacher. [...] So the community said: ‘This guy cannot be our leader because he has economic ambitions’. So, they started to organize, and they killed him. [...] They told him: ‘Although you are a nobody, you are appropriating the things of your father, defending the interests of your family so that the Shining Path cannot affect them. That is why you entered; you don’t defend the Shining Path’.238Taking into account that the leaders of the rebellion also sympathized with the ideas of the Shining Path, the argument that the local popular committee did not implement the ideology correctly seems to point in the first place to an internal struggle between supporters of the Shining Path rather than to a struggle against the Shining Path. In other words: the rebellion was directed against the local popular committee, but not necessarily against the revolutionary ideas of the Shining Path. The in-depth report of the TRC formulates a similar hypothesis of the rebellion as a struggle over the rule over the popular committee and hence over the community and its resources. The report furthermore emphasizes the generational component of this struggle, which takes place between the old generation of teachers and a new group of educated villagers.239 While the old generation considered itself better prepared for leadership, the young generation accused them of being gamonales240.241 This generational 238  My translation of original citation: “No sé si entre hermanos o cuñados, se llevan disgustos sobre interés de su padre. Era de tener Walter Huaccachi, entonces como era de tener [...] también es leído, es profesor. [...] Y la comunidad diciendo: ‘Este no nos puede liderar porque tiene ambición económica’. [...] Empezó a organizar pues, y matan. [...] Dijeron: ‘Aunque tú no eres nada, tu estas apoderando las cosas de tu papá, viendo los intereses de tu familia para que el senderismo no pueda afectar. Para eso nomas has entrado, tu no defiendes a la organización del senderismo’.” Interview with Manuel, Hualla, 30.04.2015239  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”240  Term used to refer to large landowners who exploit the indigenous population241  Dirección Académica de Responsabilidad Social de la Pontífica Universidad 271IV Open Secretspower struggle was furthermore fueled by the historical conflict between Sacsamarca and Huancasancos. In line with the new political structures introduced by the Shining Path, the popular committee of Sacsamarca was subordinate to the regional committee of Huancasancos. For the old generation, whose (grand)parents had struggled to obtain the village’s autonomy, this was unacceptable.242Another factor that needs to be taken into account to understand the quick escalation of violence between ‘intimate enemies’ is the presence of the state forces and their severe repression against (presumed members of) the Shining Path throughout the zona liberada. As mentioned in 4.2, several research participants point to a threat received by a general of the army as a direct cause for the killing of the leaders of the popular committee. As Sacsamarca was marked as a ‘red zone’ infiltrated by the Shining Path, the villagers had to demonstrate which side they were on. In addition to killing Walter and Jelacio, Sacsamarquinos killed the leaders of the popular committee of the annex of Colcabamba, among whom Walter’s brother- and sister-in-law. According to some research participants, Walter’s father-in-law, who was one of the three men who were shot in the back by the military on the bridge at the entrance of the village, was falsely accused by some villagers in order to prevent him from taking revenge for Walter’s death.243 In general, denouncing fellow-villagers to the military in order to settle conflicts or to save one’s own skin became a strategy which contributed to the circle of violence and vengeance. This external pressure of the state forces on the Sacsamarquinos to demonstrate their loyalty to the nation is mostly downplayed in the public narrative. Católica del Perú, “Diagnóstico Socioeconómico y Psicosocial de La Comunidad y Distrito Sacsamarca,” 87.242  CVR, “Violencia Política En La Provincia de Huancasancos: Los Casos de Lucanamarca, Sancos y Sacsamarca.”243  Interview with Manuel, Hualla, 30.04.2015; interview with Victor, one of the participants in the battle against the Shining Path on 21 May 1983, Sacsamarca, 28.03.2015.272IV Open SecretsThe consequences of the intimate violence live on today in the form of feelings of resentment, bitterness or fear between members of the community. One research participant, for example, expresses his “fury” [“rabia”] about the fact that some former members of the popular committee now take up political functions in the municipal board or work as teachers.244 In the wake of the commemoration ceremony in 2015, one of the leaders of the rebellion stated that he felt “bitter” [“amargo”] because some villagers were representing themselves as “innocents, fighters, while in fact they were traitors” [“inocentes, luchadores cuando eran unos vendepatrias”]. He also stated that he could not talk freely because he still feared reprisals.245 Walter Huaccachi’s wife, on her turn, still lives in the village and is confronted daily with people who were involved in the death of her husband, her father, her sister with her unborn child, and her brother-in-law. Her silence is one of many which resounds behind the public narrative of resistance.Concealment, coexistence and citizenshipSacsamarca’s history of intimate violence and its heroic memory of resistance are thus separated by processes of concealment which have varying degrees of intensity depending on the context in which they take place and the purposes they serve. The agents of these processes of concealment are, in the first place, the villagers themselves. During the communal assembly in April 2015, representatives of the DARS presented the community project that they wanted to set up with their students in Sacsamarca. Among their proposals was that history students of the PUCP would come to investigate and write the history of the community. One of the leaders of the rebellion intervened and set a condition: the students should only investigate 244  Interview with Mauricio, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 15.04.2015.245  Interview with Pablo, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 29.06.2015.273IV Open Secretsthe history of Sacsamarca before the arrival of the Shining Path.246 His demand was respected and in the final publication of the project, 1980 is taken as an endpoint because - thus the author - the TRC already described the events of the civil war.247 The brief description of the rebellion in the epilogue of the publication follows the heroic narrative of the commemoration.248 The Sacsamarquinos again succeeded in putting resistance center-stage and downplaying their own involvement. The fact that the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ have access to information that reveals certain open secrets does not seem to impede the villagers’ concealment. The in-depth report of the TRC describes the intimate nature of the violence; yet this knowledge is given little weight by the outsiders who welcome the narrative extended by the villagers. The process of concealment is thus, to a certain extent, reinforced by a mutual approach between the two parties. The (post-)conflict identity between heroism and victimhood which is put forward by the villagers stands in function of recognition and reparation; goals which are promoted by the ‘well-meaning outsiders’. From the point of view of the outsiders, this post-conflict identity is more convenient and indeed better fits their aims than an identity of ‘intimate enemies’ who try to maintain a tense coexistence. The categories of victimhood and violation put forward in the reparation program contributed to this construction of delineated post-conflict identities at the expense of the complexity of agency which characterizes intimate violence, as already mentioned in 4.3.Of course, the man who intervened during the assembly did not represent the entire community. The dynamics between concealment and revelation are not only traversed by the way in which the villagers seek to relate themselves to the state and to the ‘well-meaning outsiders’, but also by relations of power and 246  Fieldnotes, Communal assembly, Sacsamarca, 12.04.2015.247  Espinoza Portocarrero, “5. La Comunidad de Sacsamarca En El Siglo XX,” 97.248  Espinoza Portocarrero, Historia de La Comunidad Campesina de Sacsamarca. Diálogo, Memoria y Reconocimiento, 167.274IV Open Secretsinterdependency between villagers. On their turn, these relations - which were often already characterized by conflict and struggle before the arrival of the Shining Path - are now in many cases burdened with feelings of resentment, revenge, bitterness and fear as a consequence of the civil war. Sacsamarca is, in other words, a (post-)conflict community where former ‘intimate enemies’ bump into each other on the main square on a daily basis. Commemorating the past through a unifying narrative of resistance which conceals the intimate nature of the violence can also be seen as a pragmatic strategy to maintain a tense coexistence between these former ‘intimate enemies’. For villagers living together in a subsistence economy characterized by a significant dependence on both people and places, this coexistence is a necessity for survival. Suzanne Buckley-Zistel identifies similar processes in post-genocide Rwanda under the term “chosen amnesia”.249 Paul Connerton speaks in this respect of “forgetting that is constitutive in the formation of a new identity”:  newly shared memories can replace the old ones “that serve no practicable purpose in the management of one’s current identity and ongoing purposes”.250 As one villager states in his or her contribution for the history writing contest set up in the mark of the commemoration ceremony in 2004:We are eye-witnesses of the criminal acts of the past, but in the present,  we always  have to keep unity and reconciliation in mind, forgetting all the suffering that we have  lived.251249  Suzanne Buckley-Zistel describes similar processes of coexistence in local communities for post-genocide Rwanda. See: Buckley-Zistel, “Remembering to Forget.”250  Connerton, “Seven Types of Forgetting,” 62.251  My translation of original citation: “Somos testigos presenciales de los actos criminales del pasado, pero en el presente siempre debemos de pensar en la unidad y reconciliación, olvidando todo el sufrimiento que hemos vivido.” Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 105.275IV Open SecretsWhen I asked the question how the villagers manage to live together, one research participant stated that:We can’t be estranged for the rest of our lives. Who doesn’t make mistakes? Maybe involuntarily, or voluntarily, maybe forced, obliged. By understanding all of this we managed to forgive each other. Yet this will only be erased when we die, that’s how it is.252Strengthening this coexistence by obtaining reconciliation between Sacsamarquinos was Orlando Janampa’s initial motivation to set up the commemoration ceremony. The conflicts and negotiations over who could be the subject of the subsequent editions of the commemoration - the heroes and martyrs of 1983 or everyone who died as a consequence of the civil war, including those who belonged to the Shining Path - are an example of how the relations between villagers influence the dynamics between concealment and revelation. Lastly, the pursuit of recognition as defenders of the Peruvian nation is one the main motivations behind the villagers’ processes of concealment. Their claim represents a demand for full citizenship from an historically marginalized population group and fits the TRC’s idea of reconciliation between the Peruvian state and its citizens as one of the main desirable outcomes of the transitional justice process. Despite the villagers’ success in emphasizing their heroic narrative of resistance, they still feel that the government falls short in recognizing the merits of the Sacsamarquinos. The villagers mostly link this feeling of being abandoned [abandonado] by the government to a contemporary past of ongoing structural violence in the form 252  My translation of original citation: “No toda la vida nos podemos mirar distanciados. ¿Quién no comete errores? Quizás no voluntariamente, o voluntariamente, pero, quizás exigido, obligado. Todo eso comprendiendo sí nos hemos disculpado, pero eso va a borrase solamente con la muerte, así es.” Interview with Mauricio, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 15.04.2015.276IV Open Secretsof poverty and socio-economic exclusion: despite their heroism and suffering during the conflict, they still face the same difficult living conditions. While the reparation program has failed to fulfill the expectation of improving these conditions in the perception of most of the villagers, some believe that the recognition of a past in which Sacsamarca has showed itself as the ‘cradle of the pacification’, will lead to more development projects by government institutions or NGOs.253 The villagers’ strategies of concealment are thus not only a way of dealing with the past; they are also a way of denouncing present injustices and raising expectations for the future. Conclusion: The microhistory of a struggle for survival and inclusionThis chapter aimed at grasping processes and strategies of dealing with a violent past that only become visible through the magnifying glass of the microstoria.254 The scenery of this microhistory was Sacsamarca, a village in which the Shining Path’s revolutionary struggle got entangled with existing power imbalances and slumbering conflicts over land and resources, as was the case in many peasant communities in Ayacucho in the 1980s. The tension between involvement with and resistance against the Shining Path which marked Sacsamarca’s position during the civil war resulted in a particular (post-)conflict dynamic between the public narrative on the past on the one hand, and the (open) secrets and silences that surround it on the other. This chapter scrutinized how this dynamic between revealing and concealing that characterizes the villagers’ way of dealing with the past relates to, differs from, or contests the ideas diffused by official transitional justice mechanisms.The first of these mechanisms to reach Sacsamarca was the process 253  Interview with Victor, one of the participants in the battle against the Shining Path on 21 May 1983, Sacsamarca, 28.03.2015.254  Carlo Ginzburg, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It,” Critical Inquiry 20, no. 1 (1993): 10–35.277IV Open Secretsof truth-finding which was set up by the TRC. This process was marked by silence and suspicion of the villagers towards both the mobile teams which collected testimonies and the research team of the in-depth report on the province of Huancasancos. The idea of finding redemption through truth-telling did not appeal to the villagers, who in the first place expressed the expectation of receiving monetary compensations in return for their testimony. The in-depth report did not overlook the tense coexistence between ‘intimate enemies’ and framed the escalation of the violence in the region as the result of, among other factors, a “war between peasants”. The complexity of the agency and motivations of these ‘intimate enemies’ was, however, nullified by the design and implementation of the reparation program. The combination of the clean hands doctrine and the clear-cut categorization of victims and perpetrators provided a strong incentive for potential beneficiaries of the reparation program to transform the narrative of intimate violence into one of a victimized population caught between two fires. The categorization of villagers in beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of the program, in addition to existing feelings of resentment and revenge as a consequence of the intimate nature of the violence, resulted in discontent and mutual accusations among villagers concerning false declarations or alleged unjust claims of victimhood. The implementation of the TRC’s recommendations with regards to exhumations of clandestine burial sites also sparked unrest in the community. The tense atmosphere surrounding the exhumation in Putaccasa made clear how some of the open secrets related to the involvement of the villagers in the violence were literally buried. The prospect of digging up this contentious past was received by some with mistrust and fear, while others still cherish the desire to find the remains of their loved ones. In sum, the work of the TRC, the implementation of the reparation program and the exhumation of clandestine burial sites were all intersected by the tense coexistence between ‘intimate enemies’ and at first sight seem to have fomented confrontation rather than reconciliation or unity 278IV Open Secretsamong the villagers. Nevertheless, the Sacsamarquinos appropriated their own space within the transitional justice process to create a heroic narrative in which their resistance against the Shining Path stands center-stage. Putting forward this narrative of resistance allows the villagers to shift their (post-)conflict identity on the axis between victimhood and heroism in function of their claims for recognition and reparations directed to the state and the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ of transitional justice. The public heroic narrative serves as a curtain behind which the open secrets concerning the villagers’ involvement with the Shining Path and the intimate nature of the violence are kept. Depending on the context, the audience, and the purpose, a new dynamic between revealing and concealing these open secrets emerges. Giving shape to these shifting (post-)conflict identities between victimhood and heroism is a mutual process between the villagers and the ‘well-meaning outsiders’. The latter reproduce the heroic narrative by encouraging the villagers’ commemorative practices and they support their claims for reparation and recognition. The central tenet of these claims, which are both past- and future-oriented, is the pursuit of full citizenship. In addition to these claims directed to outsiders, relations of power and interdependency between villagers define the process of concealment, as the unifying narrative serves to maintain a tense coexistence between former ‘intimate enemies’. The findings in this chapter thus show that the diffusion of transitional justice’s ideas on memory, victimhood and time generates mutual processes of appropriation and contestation between the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ and the public that is addressed through their mechanisms. The Sacsamarquinos were inspired by the memory duty to set up their own way of dealing with the past. Concealment and secrecy - notions which go against the idea of finding redemption and recognition through truth-telling - became essential features of this practice, which on its turn is received and sponsored by the ‘well-meaning outsiders’. Lastly, by writing a microhistory, I have demonstrated that these 279IV Open Secretslocal post-conflict strategies of remembrance, concealment and coexistence cannot and should not be separated from the (pre)history of the conflict. The Sacsamarquinos were not the subject of a coincidental outbreak of violence caused by external forces. They are the protagonists in a struggle for survival and inclusion which reaches far beyond the time frames of transitional justice.  Widows of the disappeared at the Día de la Memoria in Hualla (2014)V ABSENT BODIESThe Contemporary Past of Enforced Disappearance in HuallaHualla (2015)Map of the province of Victor Fajardo284V Absent BodiesSon: Who buried those who died? Father: They buried themselves, I guess. Who was going to bury them then?Son: Those who could...?Father: Those who could? I don’t know, we couldn’t...Mother: They probably just threw them over there.Father: The dead probably piled themselves up. Who was going to bury them?Mother: Where would they even be? They probably rotted away, the condors also...1IntroductionIn the Peruvian Andes, there is almost no twilight. Soon after the burning sun has set, complete darkness falls abruptly, marking the relentless separation between day and night. During my first night in Hualla’s communal hostel in the municipality building on the main square, I was wide awake while imagining how during the civil war, the tuta puriqkuna2 found their way to the village through this darkness to recruit youngsters or menace the population by killing dogs in the streets. While the tuta puriqkuna came after sunset, the soldiers of the nearby military bases held their razzias in search of Shining Path suspects during daytime, more often than not resulting in arbitrary detentions, plundering and rape. One of the victims of these detentions was Herminda’ s father. On Sunday 4th of November 1984, he was detained by the military after being accused of sympathizing with the Shining Path by someone of the neighboring village of Cayara. Because Herminda’s father resisted his detention, he was beaten to death by the soldiers and left on 1  My translation of original citation: lucho: “¿A los que han muerto, quiénes han enterrado?” Flavio: “Ellos solo ya será. ¿Quién va enterrar ya?” lucho: “¿El quién puede...?” Flavio: “¿El quién puede? No sé, nosotros no...” lena: “Por allí lo habrán botado.” Flavio: “Ellos se habrán amontonado. ¿Quién va enterrar?” lena: “¿Dónde estarán también? Se habrán podrido, los cóndores también...” Interview with Flavio, Lena and their son Lucho, victims of torture and internal displacement, Hualla, 02.05.2015.2  Quechua for ‘those who walk at night’, reference to Shining Path militias285V Absent Bodiesthe side of the road, where he was later buried hastily by two other villagers under a pile of stones. I met Herminda during this first visit to Hualla in March 2012, together with Percy Rojas of the EPAF). After a meeting with the Asociación de Familiares Víctimas de la Violencia Sociopolítica de Hualla (AFAVISPH)3, Herminda approached us and expressed the desire to recover the remains of her father. The next day, Percy and I accompanied her to the place where her father was buried. Herminda carried a pickaxe, which she used to dig out the rocky soil and remove the stones upon our arrival to the presumed burial site. After a few slashes, some pieces of her father’s clothes and bones appeared. Herminda remembered exactly what he had been wearing that day: green trousers, a yellow t-shirt, a dark blue jacket and blue shoes. Percy stopped her from further excavating the grave and explained that the actual exhumation could only be carried out legally by the Specialized Forensic Team of the public ministry after initiating a judicial process.4 When I returned to Hualla in 2015, the exhumation had taken place and Herminda had reburied her father on the cemetery at the outskirts of the village. Nevertheless, as he had been accused of pertaining to the Shining Path, Herminda’s registration in the victim register was not accepted. She did not receive her victim certificate and hence cannot claim reparations.5 Herminda’s father is one of the approximately 15.000 to 20.000 victims of the civil war buried in individual or collective clandestine burial sites - the so-called desaparecidos or disappeared persons.6 They have no death certificate and are hence not officially deceased. Of some of these, like Herminda’s father, the burial place is known by 3  Association of Relatives Victims of the Socio-political Violence of Hualla4  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 16.03.2012.5  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 05.03.2015, 30.04.2015.6  Between 1989 and 1991, Peru became the country with the highest number of reported enforced disappearances in the world. Carlos Iván Degregori, Qué Difícil Es Ser Dios El Partido Comunista Del Perú - Sendero Luminoso y El Conflicto Armado Interno En El Perú: 1980-1999, 94.286V Absent Bodieswitnesses.7 Of others, every trace is missing since the moment they were detained by the military or recruited by the Shining Path. In the 20th century Latin-American context, enforced disappearance is mainly associated with the military regimes of the Southern cone. Article two of the UN International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance defines enforced disappearance indeed in the first place as a crime perpetrated by state forces:For the purpose of this Convention, “enforced disappearance” is considered to be the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.8Article three of the convention however adds that:Each State Party shall take appropriate measures to investigate acts defined in article 2 committed by persons or groups of persons acting without the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State and to bring those responsible to justice.9According to article five of the convention, enforced disappearance 7  During its mandate, the TRC registered 4.644 burial sites for the entire country. Until 2011, the COMISEDH located 4.052 presumed clandestine burial sites for the Ayacucho region only, containing the remains of approximately 8660 victims. COMISEDH, Los Muertos de Ayacucho. Violencia y Sitios de Entierro Clandestinos, 74.8  United Nations General Assembly, “International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance,” December 20, 2006, A/RES/61/177.9  United Nations General Assembly.287V Absent Bodiesis considered a crime against humanity when applied as a widespread or systematic practice.10 In Peru, a broad interpretation of the definition is used, considering enforced disappearance as a crime which was committed by both the state forces and the Shining Path, and denominating all victims who were buried in clandestine graves as desaparecidos. Law N°30470 on the Search of Persons Disappeared During the Period of Violence 1980-2000 (hereafter: Search Law), approved by the Peruvian congress in June 2016, defines a “disappeared person” (“persona desaparecida”) as:[...] any person whose whereabouts are unknown by his relatives or of whom there is no legal certainty of their location, as a consequence of the period of violence 1980-2000.11 [My emphasis.]I will follow this definition formulated in the Search Law when referring to the Peruvian desaparecidos. As mentioned in chapter 3.2, the search for the disappeared was among the main reasons of existence of the TRC. In line with the so-called ‘forensic turn’ in transitional justice12, finding, exhuming and identifying the disappeared was one of the priorities of the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ involved in Peru’s initiatives of coming to terms with the legacies of the civil war. This chapter will focus on the process of dealing with the disappeared in the aftermath of the civil war. More specifically, I analyze how processes of searching and remembering the disappeared are shaped by the involvement of local, national and international actors and their respective ways of diffusing, appropriating and contesting transitional justice’s ideas on memory, victimhood and time. The district of Hualla, in the province of Victor Fajardo, Ayacucho, serves as the lens through 10  United Nations General Assembly.11  “Ley de Búsqueda de Personas Desaparecidas Durante El Período de Violencia 1980-2000,” Pub. L. No. 30470.12  Colaert, “History from the Grave. Politics of Memory in Exhumations of Mass Graves from the Spanish Civil War,” 34.288V Absent Bodieswhich I will address these questions. Nevertheless, the findings for Hualla can in many cases be extrapolated to the broader context of dealing with the legacies of enforced disappearance in Peru.As in the previous chapter, I will first briefly sketch the geographical and demographical context of the village. The district of Hualla has one annex, the village of Tiquihua, and is known in the region as ‘the capital of corn’ after its agricultural specialization, which is the cultivation of at least 33 different types of corn.13 Hualla is situated in the valley of the Pampas river, in the heart of the Comité Zonal Cangallo - Victor Fajardo, the main base from where the Shining Path waged its revolutionary struggle.14 I will continue by describing how the crime of enforced disappearance affected Hualla in particular during the civil war. Because of its geographical location in the midst of the Shining Path’s zona liberada, Hualla was one of the villages where the Shining Path aimed to reinforce its support base by taking over the governance of the community, recruiting youngsters for its ejército guerrillero popular (popular guerrilla army) and terrorizing those who refused to support the armed struggle. As in Sacsamarca, the balance between collaboration and resistance is complex, as a significant part of the (intellectual) elite sympathized or was actively involved with the Shining Path.15 Because of the Shining Path’s prominent presence, Hualla also became the scene for the violent repression of the state forces, who set up a network of military bases throughout the region as part of their counter-subversive strategy. The crime of enforced disappearance was perpetrated by the Shining Path in the form of enforced recruitment or kidnapping, as well as by the state forces in the form of clandestine detention, torture and extrajudicial 13  FAO Perú and GAUSS VIDEO, “Documental Hualla,” 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6qz7NHzaw4.14  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 41.15  For an analysis of the participation of Huallinos in the Shining Path, see: Devin Finn, “Civilian Participation in Politics and Violent Revolution: Ideology, Networks, and Action in Peru and India” (Georgetown University, 2016), 173–235.289V Absent Bodiesexecution in the military bases. Then, I will turn to the diffusion of transitional justice in Hualla. First, I will analyze how the work of the TRC and the implementation of the reparation program shaped (post-)conflict identities in Hualla. I argue that the ‘ideal’ victim identity extended by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ and appropriated by survivors is based on disempowering characteristics, reasserts existing gender structures that facilitate sexual violence (mainly against women), and prevents certain survivors (mainly men) from claiming their rights. It therefore obfuscates the political agency of the villagers in the past and weakens their struggle for justice in the present. Understanding (the limitations of) the subject position of survivors is crucial to understand the search for the disappeared, as it is part of the presuppositions underlying the design of the process and defines the conditions on which relatives of the disappeared are invited to be part of it.16Second, I will look at how the search for the disappeared takes shape at the intersection of international, national and local policy. I claim that the tension between the humanitarian and legal purposes of the ‘forensic turn’ in transitional justice generates frictions in the interactions between the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ and the state, which obstruct the search for the disappeared. The process is further thwarted by the inefficiency of what Deborah Poole calls the “drifting state”, or what Hannah Arendt refers to as the “tyranny” of bureaucracy.17 I will furthermore describe one specific case of exhumation in Hualla to demonstrate that the relation between the relatives of the disappeared and the state representatives who coordinate the search process is characterized by mechanism of 16  On these presuppositions, see: Rojas-Perez, Mourning Remains, 43.17  Deborah Poole, “Between Threat and Guarantee. Justice and Community in the Margins of the Peruvian State,” in Anthropolog y in the Margins of the State, ed. Veena Das and Deborah Poole (Santa Fe, N.M.; Oxford [England]: School of American Research Press ; James Currey, 2004), 42; Hannah Arendt, On Violence (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 63.290V Absent Bodiessocio-economic exclusion and racism that are deeply engrained in Peruvian society.Subsequently, I will look into the appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation of transitional justice through a closer analysis of processes of searching, mourning and remembering the disappeared in Hualla. First, I will point to what I call the contemporary past of enforced disappearance. Herewith I refer to the structural and ongoing violence underlying the crime of enforced disappearance as well as the process of coming to terms with it. This notion of a contemporary past challenges transitional justice’s linear temporality, in which the search for the disappeared is conceived as a means to achieve closure, and promoted by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ as such. This focus on closure cannot only collide with the relatives’ experiences of a contemporary past, it also runs the risk of depoliticizing and even weakening their struggle for inclusion and citizenship. Lastly, taking into account all the difficulties encountered in the current policies regarding the disappeared in Peru, I will reflect upon an alternative approach to the problem of the desaparecidos that shifts away from the narrow focus on recovering bodies and that intends to maximize the emancipatory potential of the disappeared for transforming the relation between the state and the survivors in the present and future. I take Judith Butler’s notion of “grievable life” as a starting point to shift the emphasis from ‘how can we find the bodies of the disappeared?’ to ‘how can we achieve recognition and citizenship for the relatives of the disappeared in absence of the bodies?’. According to Butler, grievability is a precondition for the recognition of life: lives that remain ungrieved when lost “are never lived nor lost in the full sense”.18 I argue that it is not enough to make the disappeared ‘mournable’; this is to facilitate the process of mourning for the relatives by finding and reburying the body. Instead, the disappeared should become grievable. This grievability can be achieved retrospectively by recognizing the loss of the life 18  Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, 1.291V Absent Bodiesof the desaparecido for the relative. At the same time, this process of recognition of loss can be a way to achieve the grievabilty of the relatives, which is a necessary precondition to prevent the crime from happening again. In other words, recognizing the grievability of the desaparecidos, I argue, holds the potential to become a way of recognizing the lives of the relatives as grievableMethodology and sources FieldworkMy arrival to Hualla as well as my interest in dealing with the aftermath of enforced disappearance were incited by my close collaboration with the EPAF since 2012 (cfr. general introduction). As Sacsamarca, Hualla was one of the communities where the EPAF had been doing preliminary investigations concerning cases of enforced disappearance since 2010. After visiting Hualla for the first time in 2012 with the EPAF, I went back nine times to conduct fieldwork for this dissertation: once in 2014, seven times in 2015 and once in 2017. Six of these stays were visits from two to three days together with the EPAF. In addition to these short visits, I traveled three times for longer stays of seven to ten days without the EPAF. Karina Barrientos, Alicia Noa Alfaro and Gabriela Zamora Castellares respectively accompanied me as research collaborators on these three stays, during which most of the interviews were conducted. Doing field research in an Andes community such as Hualla means following the daily routine of the villagers, who get up between five and five in the morning to cook and do their household, after which they go to their lands in the surroundings of the village, to return around five in the afternoon. This implies that, apart from the people working in the municipality, the health post or the schools, the village is mostly empty during daytime, especially during sowing and harvesting periods. Most of the interviews took place between four and nine in the morning and Fieldwork in Hualla (2015)Hualla shortly before sunrise (2015)293V Absent Bodiesbetween five and seven in the afternoon, or on some occasions when I accompanied villagers to their lands. In total, I conducted semi-structured interviews with 38 different research participants in Hualla, some of which were interviewed several times. Ten of these interviews were (partly) conducted in Quechua with translation provided by one of the research collaborators. Twenty-one research participants were female and five were communal authorities. All interviewees were directly affected by the violence of the civil war: at least eight were victims of torture and sexual violence perpetrated by the military, at least nineteen were direct relatives of victims of enforced disappearance perpetrated by either the Shining Path or the state forces, others were victims of forced displacement or direct relatives of villagers who were assassinated by the Shining Path. I visited Hualla’s annex of Tiquihua on several occasions, but I did not conduct interviews there. The interviews were complemented with many informal conversations during participant observation in daily activities, as well as on specific occasions such as meetings of the victims’ association and the Día de la Memoria19 which is celebrated yearly at the end of June during the Mama Sara20 harvest festival and which I attended in 2014 and 2015. Furthermore, I followed the inquiry into one case of enforced disappearance from the moment the EPAF started its preliminary investigations in June 2014 until the remains were recovered and reburied in November 2016. The relatives of the victims of this case were forcibly displaced and now live in Lima, where I visited them several times in the suburb district of Lurín, which is where the biggest community of Huallino migrants lives.  Apart from this fieldwork focused on Hualla, my understanding of the general procedures of searching, exhuming and identifying the disappeared in the Peruvian context was shaped in many different ways during my stays in Peru in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2017. Throughout this chapter, I will contextualize the case of Hualla 19  Day of Memory20  Mother Corn294V Absent Bodieswithin this broader context. The approach is thus slightly different than that of the previous case study: I will not write a microhistory of Hualla; rather I will use the lens of a local context to look at (the aftermath of) enforced disappearance. The fieldtrips conducted with the EPAF in 2012, 2014 and 2015 to Sacsamarca, Hualla and other communities in the valley of the Pampas and Qaracha rivers all had the purpose of doing preliminary investigation concerning potential burial sites. These fieldtrips in first instance immersed me in the particular problematic of truth-finding in the aftermath of enforced disappearance: the difficulty of finding clues and dealing with the uncertainty of what has happened. Subsequently, I was involved in one actual exhumation of a mass grave carried out by the forensic anthropologists of the EFE of the Public Ministry in Sacsamarca (cfr. chapter 4). I furthermore became familiar with the identification process through participating in a so-called exhibición de prendas21 in Huamanga, which is an occasion on which (presumed) relatives are given the opportunity to recognize the clothes and objects that were found in an exhumed mass grave in order to identify the victim. Also, I assisted the EPAF for one week in the laboratory of the Public Ministry in Lima in doing the forensic analysis of human remains pertaining to the case of the 1986 prison massacre.22 In Huamanga, I attended several collective restitutions of remains: ceremonies organized by the CMAN and the Public Ministry during which the remains pertaining to several cases are collectively returned to their relatives, after which they are transported back to their respective hometowns by the relatives themselves for reburial. In addition, I followed the debate on an academic and institutional level by participating in several seminars organized by the EPAF, the Institute of Democracy and Human Rights of the Pontifical 21  Exhibition of clothes22  On June 19th, 1986, the state forces executed at least 124 presumed Shining Path members in the prisons of El Frontón and San Juan de Lurigancho after a revolt. See: CVR, Las Ejecuciones Extrajudiciales del penal de el Frontón y el Lurigancho (1986), Lima, 2003.295V Absent BodiesCatholic University of Peru (IDEHPUCP) and the French Institute of Andean Studies (IFEA) on the topic of enforced disappearance, which were attended by NGO representatives, state representatives as well as (inter)national academics. I furthermore engaged in personal conversations with representatives of the CMAN in Lima and Ayacucho as well as of the ICRC in Ayacucho, which apart from the EPAF is the only other non-governmental actor actively involved in the search for missing persons in Peru. In June 2015, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances visited Peru to evaluate the initiatives of the state and civil society concerning the search for the disappeared of the civil war. Through my affiliation with the EPAF, I had the opportunity to participate in one of the meetings with the working group representatives at the UN headquarters in Lima. Additional sources on HuallaIn addition to my own fieldwork data, I consulted the available testimonies given by Huallinos23 to the TRC in the Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos24 in the ombudsman office in Lima. Of the 92 villagers who gave their testimony to the TRC, 58 gave permission for public consultation in the archive.25 In contrast to the province of Huancasancos, the TRC made no in-depth report on the province of Victor Fajardo. The events in Victor Fajardo are part of the first chapter of the fourth volume of the final report of the TRC, more specifically of the paragraph Zona 1: El comité zonal fundamental: las cuencas de los ríos Pampas-Qaracha.26 Furthermore, I consulted the TRC’s list of cases for the department of Ayacucho 23  Villagers of Hualla24  Information Center of Collective Memory and Human Rights25  Of these available testimonies, 34 were given to the mobile testimony team of the TRC in Hualla, five were given in Lima, seven in Ica, nine in Huamanga, two in Cayara and one in Putaccasa.26  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4.”296V Absent Bodieswhich includes 77 cases related to events that took place in Hualla.27 Mauro Tucta Crisante, one of Hualla’s oldest inhabitants and the living memory of the village, published the book Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla28, which gives an overview of Hualla’s history and culture and recounts the events of the civil war.29 Another interviewee also shared his handwritten logbook of these years. The EPAF’s publication De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de la Violencia Política en Comunidades de la Cuenca del Río Pampas30 includes a chapter on enforced disappearances in Hualla co-authored by Mauricio Cerna Rivera and Renzo Aroni Sulca.31 Renzo Aroni is an historian who conducted research on the role of Hualla’s typical pumpín music in post-conflict Huallino migrant communities in Lima.32 Devin Finn’s doctoral dissertation on civilian participation in politics and violent revolution furthermore includes an extensive case-study on wartime violence and memory in Hualla.33 I had the opportunity to discuss some of my research findings with both Renzo and Devin during my stays in Peru. Kimberly Theidon’s book Intimate Enemies furthermore includes several references to (post-)conflict coexistence and sexual violence in Hualla, which are based on fieldwork conducted before and during the mandate of the TRC.34 Lastly, Peruvian historian Percy Rojas is the one who facilitated my research by introducing me to Hualla. During our many trips together, Percy did not only share 27  CVR, “Casos Del Departamento de Ayacucho Reportados a La CVR,” 2003.28  The History of the Golden Village. The Village of Saint Peter of Hualla29  Mauro Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla (Editorial Ritisa, 2009).30  From Victims to Citizens: Memories of the Political Violence in Communities in the Valley of the Pampas River31  Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas.32  Renzo Aroni, “Crónicas Del Migrante Andino: Múisca, Migración y Violencia Política En Perú,” Nueva Corónica 2 ( July 2013): 525–55.33  Finn, “Civilian Participation in Politics and Violent Revolution: Ideology, Networks, and Action in Peru and India.”34  Theidon, Intimate Enemies.297V Absent Bodieshis thorough knowledge of the village and the region with me; he also provided many answers to the endless series of questions that emerge when in the field. 5.1 ‘Capital of corn’: Geography, demography and political organizationFrom Sacsamarca, it takes a three-hour drive on a dust road through the emptiness of the puna to get to Hualla.35 In the past few years, the trajectory of the road between Huamanga - Pampa Cangallo - Huancapi - Hualla has been asphalted piece by piece, which has now reduced travel time from six to approximately four hours when travelling from Huamanga. Hualla lies at 3340 meters AMSL in the fertile valley of the Pampas river and is closed in by rounded mountain peaks that change colors from sand-brown during the dry season to all kinds of shades of green when the rain sets in. The territory of the entire district, which includes Hualla and its annex Tiquihua, stretches out over 162 km2.36 Tiquihua lies at about 8 km to the South of Hualla and historically maintains a rather hostile relation with its district capital, which, according to the inhabitants of Tiquihua, does not look after its annex. Disputes over territory between the two communities were also played out by the Shining Path during the war. Today, most conflicts between the two villages appeased. Nevertheless, I remember a drunk fight between villagers of Hualla and Tiquihua during the late hours of the Mama Sara festival in 2014, after which the mayor had to intervene to calm 35  The spelling “Huaya” is used in the sources of the TRC as well as sometimes in official government administration. The villagers nevertheless consistently use the spelling with “ll” instead of “y”. The name Hualla is derived from “Guaylla”, a typical regional plant with a golden shine. Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 11.36  PNUD Perú, “La Provincia de Víctor Fajardo En Ayacucho: Información Para El Desarrollo Humano” (Lima: PNUD/UNDP, 2006), 111.298V Absent Bodiesthings down.37 Hualla was founded as a conglomeration of indigenous communities in 1589 and organized in four ayllus or family clans: the Curma, Sanca, Tocta and Ñamcca family.38 Today, the village consists of four barrios or neighborhoods: Andamarca, San Pablo, San Cristóbal and San Miguel. The main square with the church reflects the typical colonial ground plan. On November 18th, 1823, the battle of Trigopampa was fought on Hualla’s territory during which the villagers granted their support to the Peruvian independence fighters in the war against the Spanish crown. Simón Bolívar recognized Hualla for its loyalty to the cause of independence by giving the village the official title of Benemérita Villa de San Pedro de Hualla39, which the Huallinos carry with proud until today, especially during the yearly commemoration of the battle of Trigopampa in November.40 Over the past decades, Hualla’s population has strongly declined: from 4.440 inhabitants in 1981, to 2.732 inhabitants in 199141, and 2092 inhabitants according to the census of 2017. The majority of the current population is either younger than fifteen (903 villagers) or older than 45 years old (831 villagers).42 The decline in population is due to forced displacement during the civil war and economic migration from the countryside to the cities. Hualla’s largest migrant communities live in Lima, Ica, Huamanga, Cañete and Pisco and are organized in associations that maintain close ties with the hometown by actively fostering the traditions of the village. Apart from its typical costume characterized by jackets and skirts with yellow, sky blue and red embroidery, Hualla has a strong musical tradition of harp, violin and guitar players that perform pumpín, a musical genre 37  Fieldnotes, Mama Sara festival, Hualla, 25.06.2014.38  Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 23.39  Deserving Town of Saint Peter of Hualla40  Fieldnotes, Conmemoración batalla de Trigopampa, Hualla, 18.11.2015.41  Aroni, “Crónicas Del Migrante Andino: Múisca, Migración y Violencia Política En Perú,” 528.42  INEI, “Ayacucho Resultados Definitivos, Tomo I,” 454.299V Absent Bodiestypical of the Victor Fajardo province which is characterized by testimonial songs that recount historical events.43 San Pedro and San Pablo are the village’s patron saints, which are celebrated at the end of June during the Mama Sara harvest festival.  Hualla’s political organization today is similar to that of Sacsamarca and most peasant communities in Ayacucho (cfr. 4.1). The village is governed by the municipal government authorities on the one hand, and the comunidad campesina on the other. In contrast to Sacsamarca, the varayocs or varados still played a significant role in community governance at the beginning of the civil war. The varados were a governing body of elderly members of the community that existed since colonial times and watched over the maintenance of land and cattle - a function which is now performed by the directiva comunal of the peasant community.44 The main economic activity in the village is subsistence agriculture, and, to a lesser extent, fish and livestock farming. Like in the area of Huancasancos, in the Victor Fajardo province land was owned by indigenous communities since colonial times, and at the moment of the agrarian reforms in 1968 there was only one hacienda in the entire province. Nevertheless, Victor Fajardo is historically poorer than Huancasancos because of its geographical location which impedes direct connection to coastal markets and implies very low access to public services.45 Unlike Huancasancos, Victor Fajardo does not have a strong tradition of cattle breeding. Moreover, in Hualla, the entire livestock was plundered and killed by the Shining Path during the civil war. According to Mauro Tucta, “not one sheep was left in the village”.46 As explained in chapter 4.2, education was perceived as an important means for social mobility 43  For an analysis of the role of testimonial music and poetry in Hualla’s migrant community in Lima, see: Aroni, “Crónicas Del Migrante Andino: Múisca, Migración y Violencia Política En Perú.” For an example of pumpín Huallino, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR4l_CABJa8.44  Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 52.45  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 42–44.46  Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 85.300V Absent Bodiesfrom the 1960s onwards, and children from the region of Hualla went to study at the secondary school Los Andes in Huancasancos which became a hotbed of Shining Path militancy throughout the 1970s. Hualla has a primary school for boys since 1825, a primary school for girls since 1935, and a nursery and secondary school since 1975.47 Hualla’s secondary school is named after José Carlos Mariátegui, one of the most famous Marxist thinkers of Peru and Latin America. According to research conducted by the UN Development Program (UNDP) between 2004 and 2006, 174 villagers had completed secondary education while 614 villagers above the age of fifteen were illiterate. The majority of the population (68%) is bilingual in Spanish and Quechua, with 2% speaking only Spanish and 30% only Quechua.48 The average yearly income per capita is 320 PEN (€86) and 42% of the children suffers from chronic malnutrition.49 A health post with nurses and a doctor was established in 1970, but the personnel abandoned the post when the village was taken over by the Shining Path in 1982, after which it was reestablished in 1997.50 Electricity and water supplies were installed in respectively 2001 and 2002; nevertheless, approximately 30% of the villagers has no access to these services in their houses according to a publication of the EPAF in 2012.51The study of the UNDP identified alcoholism52, health problems, 47  Tucta Crisante, 104.48  PNUD Perú, “La Provincia de Víctor Fajardo En Ayacucho: Información Para El Desarrollo Humano,” 121.49  FAO Perú and GAUSS VIDEO, “Documental Hualla.”50  Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 120.51  Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 15.52  Alcoholism is a widespread problem in the entire Ayacucho department and is mostly directly linked by research participants to the aftermath of the violence of the civil war. In Hualla, during my fieldwork in 2015, I was told that the previous mayor had prohibited the sale of alcohol in the entire village, but this ban was certainly not always respected. Fieldnotes, Hualla, 03.05.2015.Plaza de Armas of Hualla (2012)Commemoration of the battle of Trigopampa (2015)302V Absent Bodieslack of access to higher education, insecurity, unemployment and environmental impact of mining and petrol extraction as the main obstructions to development in the district of Hualla.53 Mental health problems as a consequence of the violence of the civil war were mentioned  by almost all informants, and in a conversation the mayor stated that Hualla urgently needed psychologists.54 In general, access to mental health care for survivors in rural communities in Ayacucho is very poor to non-existent, and there is a great lack of psychologists who speak Quechua.5.2 Enforced disappearances in Hualla during the civil war Killings and enforced recruitment by the Shining PathIn the late afternoon of Sunday, 11th of July 1982, the villagers of Hualla had completed the faena, a day of collective work to plant the eucalyptus trees donated by the Ministry of Agriculture. They were in the middle of a football competition when four men and a little boy wearing balaclavas and armed with a machine gun, three revolvers and a big stick entered the field in search of Juan Inca Allccaco and Blas Quispe Inca, the mayor and governor of the village. While the governor was released, the armed men took the mayor downtown to the central square and tied him up in front of the church together with his compadre55 Demetrio Ipurre García, who together with the mayor was one of the wealthiest merchants in town. Through a loud-speaker, the villagers were summoned to the square to witness the 53  PNUD Perú, “La Provincia de Víctor Fajardo En Ayacucho: Información Para El Desarrollo Humano,” 146.54  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 30.04.2015. Kimberly Theidon describes a similar anecdote from when she was working at the TRC office in Huamanga, where she was approached by an ex-Shining Path member from Hualla who insisted that the village needed psychologists. Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 33.55  The compadre or comadre is the godfather or godmother of one’s child, mostly an intimate friend. 303V Absent Bodiesjuicio popular that was about to take place. The judgment would not take long. After being accused of authoritarianism and power abuse, Juan Inca and Demetrio Ipurre were shot through their heads while the villagers were incited to join the killers in chanting revolutionary slogans. The masked men headed to the house of the mayor where they plundered his grocery store and distributed the loot among the villagers. The five-headed Shining Path militia left as quickly as it came, leaving the villagers in shock. When the latter sent a commission to the police post in Huancapi to denounce what had happened, they found out that the post had been abandoned after attacks from the Shining Path and that they had to go all the way to Cangallo for help.56 After five days, the judge in Cangallo ordered the villagers to carry out the autopsy and gave permission to bury the corpses, but no police reinforcement was sent to Hualla.57 The villagers later found out that one of the five masked men had been camarada Arturo, one of the main regional Shining Path leaders.58In the villagers’ narrative of the civil war, the execution of the mayor and his compadre marks the beginning of the Shining Path’s presence in Hualla. With the promise of equality and redistribution from the rich to the poor, Hualla became part of the liberated zone of the Base Committee Cangallo - Victor Fajardo, the Shining Path’s main focal point in the Ayacucho department during the first years of the war. As there were no big landowners in the Victor Fajardo province, it were the local authorities and the (relatively) rich elite who were accused of being gamonales ‘representing the old state’. Juan Inca and Demetrio Ipurre became the first targets of the Shining Path’s revolutionary struggle, which initially gained support of a significant 56  Between 1981 and 1982, the Shining Path attacked police stations all over the region, which lead to the withdrawal of the police and the population being left unprotected. CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 47.57  Interview with Luís, village authority and witness of the events of 11 July 1982, Hualla, 06.03.2015; fieldnotes, Hualla, 02.05.2015; Tucta Crisante, 57; caso 1003020 CVR, “Casos Del Departamento de Ayacucho Reportados a La CVR,” 2003, 906.58  Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 58.304V Absent Bodiespart of the villagers.59 As one research participant recounts: The village trusted the senderistas. There were a lot of gamonales and some villagers complained about them to the senderistas. They declared that the mayor was a gamonál. The Shining Path disappeared all the gamonales.60 Don Floriano, one of the village authorities, tells the story of his father, who was persecuted by the Shining Path because he was one of the varayocs. The senderistas accused him of being a soplón: a traitor who turned in villagers to the military. The Shining Path came after him on several occasions and eventually succeeded in capturing him when he was drunk. Floriano never saw his father again and does not know what happened to him.61 Similar to the role of Walter Huaccachi in Sacsamarca, the story of Hualla’s involvement with the Shining Path as recounted by research participants as well as in the testimonies of the TRC has a clear protagonist: Flavio Claudio Pariona Villagaray, nicknamed camarada Rolando.62 Flavio was the son of Eustaquio Pariona, who together with Juan Inca and Demetrio Ipurre was the third richest man in town. According to Mauro Tucta, Eustaquio’s livestock consisted of no less than 1570 sheep, 350 alpacas, 40 cows and twenty horses.63 As a teacher in Hualla’s secondary school, Flavio became familiar with the pensamiento Gonzalo through the intellectual network of teachers in the region. According to Tucta, most of Hualla’s primary and secondary school teachers were involved with the Shining Path 59  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 44.60  My translation of original citation: “El pueblo tenía confianza con los senderistas. Hubo bastantes gamonales y algunos pobladores se quejaron sobre ellos con los senderistas. Así declararon que el alcalde era gamonal. Sendero desapareció a todos los gamonales.” Interview with Tomás, victim of forced displacement and returnee, Hualla, 03.05.2015.61  Fieldnotes, Conversation with village authority, Hualla, 04.03.2015.62  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 101.63  Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 85.305V Absent Bodiesand changed their curriculum to teach the pensamiento Gonzalo.64 One research participant also suggests that Flavio - like Walter in Sacsamarca - primarily joined the Shining Path to protect the interests of his own family and to prevent his father’s livestock from being redistributed by the insurgents.65The fate of Flavio and his family would, however, take dramatic turns in the bloody months of August and September 1984. In the night of August 9, 1984, more than sixty Shining Path militants armed with bladed arms raided Hualla and massacred 26 villagers, among whom Flavio’s father Eustaquio.66 In a second raid in the night of August 20, Shining Path militants entered the house of Flavio’s mother Felicitas Villagaray García, stoning her and Flavio’s pregnant sister Luzmila to death. That night, eighteen other villagers were killed.67 The night before, the Shining Path had burned down the municipality building, reducing the entire village archive to ashes.68 The bodies of twelve merchants, coming from outside the village to sell their goods, were found on September 3th in the abandoned house of Eustaquio Pariona, which after his death was used as a depot by Shining Path members.69 On the 13th of September 1984, Flavio himself was eventually captured by a group of villagers and handed over to soldiers of the military basis of Canaria.70 According to some accounts, the villagers who turned 64  Tucta Crisante, 58. According to Tucta, Flavio was one of the few teachers who was a native from Hualla. Until today, teachers in rural towns in the Andes are mostly not natives from the town where they teach, because their assignment depends on where they are sent by the Ministry of Education. 65  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 02.05.2015.66  Caso 1004745 CVR, “Casos Del Departamento de Ayacucho Reportados a La CVR”; Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 62.67  Caso 1004639 CVR, “Casos Del Departamento de Ayacucho Reportados a La CVR.”68  Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 62.69  Tucta Crisante, 63; CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 39.70  The exact chronology of the events is not clear, and testimonies contradict each other. According to the TRC (case 1003271), Flavio’s capture took place between 306V Absent BodiesFlavio in had been tortured by the military until agreeing to deliver the local Shining Path leader.71 In the military basis of Canaria, Flavio on his turn was tortured, after which the soldiers took him on a tour through the neighboring villages, where he was forced to identify the Shining Path’s support bases and weapons depots. Thereafter, Flavio and another Shining Path leader from Hualla, Crisiliano Tacsi, were executed by the military. Their heads were shown to the villagers as a war trophy.72 It remains unclear who were the Shining Path militants that targeted Flavio’s family, or whether Flavio himself was involved in the killings. Apart from Flavio, several other villagers were known as active Shining Path militants and it is not unlikely that internal conflicts and struggles over power within the party’s governance played a role in things turning against him. Kimberly Theidon’s fieldwork data from Hualla moreover make reference to two other Shining Path leaders from Hualla with the surname Pariona - Amador and Hernán - which might point to a family feud.73 The fact that Flavio, his parents and his sister did not survive might also shape the centrality they are ascribed a posteriori in the stories of the villagers. Like in Sacsamarca, the post-conflict narratives of the Huallinos are characterized by concealment when it comes to the villagers’ involvement with the Shining Path and the intrigues and conflicts that led to the escalation of violence between ‘intimate enemies’. As part of the Shining Path’s main ideological and military epicenter during the initial phase of the armed struggle, Hualla was one of the districts where the party actively recruited youngsters to join the ejército guerrillero popular. It is hard to establish exact numbers on how many villagers were forced to join the guerilla army, but one August 10 and December 12, 1984. I here follow Tucta’s version of the events. Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla.71  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 04.05.2015.72  Caso 1003271 CVR, “Casos Del Departamento de Ayacucho Reportados a La CVR.”73  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 33, 129.307V Absent Bodiesvillage authority speaks of at least 200 Huallinos who were forcedly recruited by the Shining Path, many of whom remain disappeared until today.74 In first instance, students were recruited by their teachers to join the Shining Path - whether voluntarily or not. One of the many cases of recruitment reported to the TRC, for example, concerns the young Huallina Divina Crisianti Tacsi, who came to say goodbye to her parents in June 1982, telling them that she was now with the Shining Path and that she feared for her life if she did not go back to join her comrades. Her parents never saw her again and every trace is missing since that last goodbye.75 Valentín Loayza Cuya from Tiquihua was in her second year of high school when she was kidnapped by the Shining Path, despite the pleas of her mother, who until today does not know what happened to her daughter.76 The nightly arrivals of the Shining Path to the village mostly also had the purpose of recruiting youngsters, resulting in violent repression against those who refused to join or let their children go. One villager states in his testimony to the TRC that:They [the Shining Path] took away the children, so I had to pay potatoes and corn so that they wouldn’t take mine.77Another case of the TRC makes mention of a girl who was kidnapped together with her two parents in September 1982 - the three of them were never seen again.78 Due to the nightly incursions of the Shining Path, many villagers left their houses to spend the night in caves, trees or in the puna.79 The recruits received military 74  Fieldnotes, Conversation with village authority, Hualla, 04.03.2015.75  CVR, Caso 1014517.76  CVR, Caso 1001246.77  My translation of original citation: “Ellos quitaban a los hijos, entonces tenía que pagar papa y maíz para que no me quiten el mío.” CVR, testimonio 201723.78  CVR, Caso 1005392, “Casos Del Departamento de Ayacucho Reportados a La CVR.”79  Interview with Carolina, mother of two disappeared children, 03.05.2015; Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 59.308V Absent Bodiestraining in camps outside the village. Nevertheless, the Shining Path’s popular army was mostly armed with peasants’ tools: axes, machetes, sticks and knives. Firearms were a privilege of the few leaders only.80 The Shining Path often recruited forces in function of specific missions or attacks. The assault of the communal farm of Huancasancos in December 1982 (cfr. chapter 4), for example, was carried out by recruits from Hualla and surroundings.81 For the attack on Sacsamarca in May 1983, the Shining Path recruited people from several villages, including at least twenty Huallinos.82 Of this group of recruits, only one survivor lives in the village today.83 According to Mauro Tucta, in total approximately 200 villagers from Tiquihua, Chincheros, Cayara, Accomarca and Hualla were recruited to participate in the attack on Sacsamarca.84 Zósimo Chavez states that Flavio Pariona participated in the battle as well, and that he «wanted to take revenge on Sacsamarca».85 Today, the participation of recruits from Hualla in the battle of May 21st, 1983, is remembered with bitterness by the Sacsamarquinos, who still often refer to people from Hualla as terrucos. The relation of trueque (exchange) of corn, cheese and pottery between the two villages that dated from ancient times, seized to exist ever since.86Clandestine detention, torture, sexual violence and extrajudicial execution by the state forces Because of its location in the heart of the Shining Path’s zona liberada, the Victor Fajardo province became a priority area for military 80  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 47.81  CVR, 49.82  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 23.06.2014.83  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 04.05.2015.84  Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 60.85  Servicios Educativos Rurales (SER), Rescate Por La Memoria. Sacsamarca: Trabajos Presentados En El II Homenaje a Las Víctimas de La Violencia Política, Mayo 2004, 101.86  Fieldnotes, Sacsamarca, 27.06.2014.309V Absent Bodiesintervention. According to the TRC, the entry of the state forces into the scenery in 1983 marked the beginning of the most bloody phase of the war, and Victor Fajardo was the most deadly area of the conflict between 1983 and 1984.87 The soldiers were badly prepared for guerrilla warfare and had no strategy to differentiate between combatants and civilians apart from ethnic profiling the local Quechua speaking population as potential terrorists. The cultural distance between the representatives of the state and the citizens it was supposed to protect resulted in racism, discrimination and, ultimately, a total escalation of violence from the military towards the Andean population. Moreover, the state forces did not succeed in controlling the increasing number of violent actions of the Shining Path.88 As part of the counter-subversive intervention, a network of military bases was installed all over the Ayacucho region, with the base of Los Cabitos in Huamanga serving as the headquarter and main center of detention and extrajudicial execution of Shining Path suspects. As indicated on the map, Hualla was surrounded by the military bases of Canaria, Accomarca and Cayara. In September 1984, in the aftermath of the massacres perpetrated by the Shining Path, a military base was set up in Chimpapampa, at the outskirts of the village of Hualla.89 As the community was a hotbed of recruitment by the Shining Path, it also became a focal point for repression from the military. As Kimberly Theidon writes on the presence of the military in Hualla, the soldiers “came to castigar el pueblo (to punish the town)” for being a support base for the Shining Path rather than to protect the villagers.90 Enforced disappearance became one of the state forces’ main strategies to eliminate potential Shining 87  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 35.88  Finn, “Civilian Participation in Politics and Violent Revolution: Ideology, Networks, and Action in Peru and India,” 201; Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 25.89  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 04.05.2015.90  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 125.310V Absent BodiesPath members and, most importantly, also eliminate every trace of war crimes perpetrated by the soldiers. Suspects were unlawfully arrested during razzias and taken to one of the nearby military bases where they were tortured in order to make confessions. Frequent torture techniques included waterboarding, sexual torture and food and sleep deprivation.91 One research participant who witnessed the tortures in Chimpapampa, recounts:[...] he [the soldier] brought in an old man, saying that he was a terrorist. The man was wearing a white t-shirt. They started to beat him, they made him spit blood and they undressed him and rinsed the poor man with water time and again, they grabbed him and hanged him from his genitals, they hanged him from his genitals, the old man was screaming.92While some prisoners were released after being tortured, others did not survive their injuries or were executed, after which their bodies were burned, buried in mass graves or - in the case of Chimpapampa - thrown of the mountain cliffs.93 To erase evidence and thwart post-mortem identification, detainees were exchanged between different military bases, they were forced to swap clothes, corpses were unrecognizably mutilated or burned, or body parts were buried in different places.94 The lieutenants in charge of the 91  Interview with Emilio, victim of torture by the military, Hualla, 02.05.2015; interview with Isabel, relative of victim of enforced disappearance, Hualla, 05.03.2015; interview with Tania, relative of victim of enforced disappearance, Hualla, 05.03.2015.92  My translation of original citation: “[...] trajo a un anciano, diciendo que era terrorista. Estaba con su polito blanco. Empezaron a golpearle, le hacían escupir sangre y le desnudaron todo y le bañaron cada rato con agua al pobre anciano y agarraron y lo colgaron de su genital, le colgaron de su genital, gritaba el anciano.” Interview with Juan, witness of torture, relative of victims of enforced disappearance, victim of forced displacement, Hualla, 04.05.2015.93  Fieldnotes, Visita a Chimpapampa, Hualla, 25.06.2015.94  José Pablo Baraybar et al., Desaparición Forzada En El Perú. El Aporte de La 311V Absent Bodiesbases were only known by the villagers by their nicknames: “Gusano” (“Worm”), “Leopardo” (“Leopard”)  and “Scorpión” (“Scorpion”) are most often named in relation to the base of Chimpapampa.95 During my fieldwork in 2015, investigations against the responsible lieutenants of the base of Chimpapampa had recently been opened; nevertheless, the case was proceeding slowly as one of the main suspects fled the country to the United States.96 While it is one of the characteristics of enforced disappearance that it is hard to measure the exact scale on which the crime took place, the EPAF identified the names of at least 65 villagers from the district of Hualla who disappeared after being detained by the military and taken to the military bases of either Canaria or Chimpampa between May 1983 and September 1984.97 The soldiers have done more [harm] to the people. They came from Canaria, they saw a person and they took him, and that person never came back, not one of them, they didn’t come back, I don’t know how many they took.98One of the razzias engraved in the collective memory of the Huallinos is the one held by the military during the village’s patron saint celebration on June 29th, 1983. In the middle of the party, a group of Investigación Antropológica Forense En La Obtención de La Evidencia Probatoria y La Construcción de Un Paraguas Humanitario (Lima: EPAF, CNDH, 2009), 35.95  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 05.03.2015; CVR testimonio 201723.96  Fieldnotes, Putaccasa, 17.06.2015.97  This number is based on research conducted by the EPAF as well as on data from the TRC. The actual number is likely to be a lot higher due to underreporting and internal displacement. Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 50.98  My translation of original citation: “Los militares ha hecho más a las personas. De aquí ha venido de Canaria, han visto a una persona y se lo llevaron y él nunca más regreso, ni uno, no ha regresado, no sé cuántos habrá llevado.” Interview with Flavio, victim of torture by the military, Hualla, 02.05.2015.312V Absent Bodiesabout fifteen soldiers entered by force. After obliging the population to gather on the main square and separating women from men, the men were lined up, shackled and forced to lie down while they were ran over and beaten by the soldiers, who sorted out and detained at least eighteen villagers. The prisoners were forced to enter a military truck that took them to the base of Canaria, after which they were never seen again. Their bodies were not found - according to rumors they were dumped in a spot close to the base.99[...] one time, we were in the celebration of Saint Peter, and they [the military] came like that. We were with the carqulloq [the person in charge of the organization of the party], so they came: “Goddamn shitty terrucoy [terrorists], go to the square”. They took us to the square, on the square, damn, they let us lie down, they let us lie down, so we lay down from two to seven PM. [...] They picked out the suspects and took them away. [...] They did not return, they took them to Canaria, they did not come back, they took several people there.100Killings by the military did not only take place inside the military bases. During their incursions in the village or during their passage through the puna where peasants have their estancias, soldiers also executed civilians and left their bodies lying around to be buried on the spot. One research participant recounts how her husband 99  CVR, Caso 1000345, “Casos Del Departamento de Ayacucho Reportados a La CVR”; The case in the TRC speaks of 1982, while other testimonies situate the event in 1983 or 1984. I follow Tucta’s chronology, which I consider the most reliable. Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 61.100  My translation of original citation: “[...] una vez también estamos en una fiesta de San Pedro, y han venido así.  Nosotros estábamos con el carqulloq (mayordomo), entonces ha venido: “Carajo terrucoy mierda, vamos a la plaza”. Nos llevaron a la plaza, en la plaza, pucha, nos hacía echar, nos hacía echar, entonces estamos echados desde las 2 de la tarde hasta las 7 de la noche. [...] A los sospechosos ya los escogía y ya llevaba. Ya no regresaron ya, llevaron pa’ Canaria, ya no regresaron ya, varios han llevado allí.” Interview with Emilio, victim of torture by the military, Hualla, 02.05.2015313V Absent Bodiesand her three daughters of fourteen, seven and two and a half years old were killed in her house while she was forced to go outside. According to the woman, the soldiers accused her of “breeding little terrorists” [“criar terrucos”]. The soldiers buried the bodies in the courtyard of the house.101 In addition, as in most villages where the military was present, rape against women was perpetrated on a large scale by soldiers in Hualla, both inside the military bases as well as downtown in the houses of the villagers.102 Juan, a war orphan who was kidnapped by soldiers and raised in the military base of Chimpapampa together with another boy from the village, recounts how he was forced to witness and participate in rape against female detainees:We have seen so many things, señorita [...] Listen carefully, señorita, at that age we did not know about sexuality, about sex, but these soldiers they threw us on top of these naked girls and we stayed on top them, what kind of scum were they [the soldiers], really señorita, I don’t know if they were persons or if they were beasts, now that I understand [...] They tied both feet of the girls with a rope so that they would not move while they raped them, and they opened them and anyone entered, señorita [...] That’s what the soldiers did.103101  CVR, Caso 1006505, “Casos Del Departamento de Ayacucho Reportados a La CVR;” Interview with Milushka, Hualla, victim whose husband and three daughters were killed by the military, 03.05.2015.102  The testimonies given to the TRC made clear that gender-related and sexual violence took place on a large scale during the civil war. The TRC registered 538 cases of penetrative rape, which is estimated to be only 7% of the total amount of rape cases. The vast majority (83%) of these rape cases were perpetrated by the army, the police or the CADs, and 527 of the 538 reported cases were perpetrated against women. For an exhaustive analysis of the legacies of sexual violence perpetrated by the military in rural communities in Peru, see: Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 103–42.103  My translation of original citation: “Nosotros hemos visto tantas cosas, señorita [...] Fíjate señorita que a esa edad no sabíamos de sexualidad, de sexo, pero esos militares nos tiraban encima de esas chicas calatas y nosotros quedábamos encima de ellas, que basuras eran, señorita 314V Absent BodiesGisela described how she was raped up to three times by soldiers who entered her house in the village. She blamed herself for nothing having put the padlock on the door, that first night they entered. While showing the scars of mutilations on her arms, she described how on the next occasion, she tried to defend herself with the help of the ladies next door. Her defense resulted in permanent back injuries. At that time, she was thirteen years old. She states that the soldiers have ruined her life and that of many other villagers:[...] we have lost everything, even in the puna they burned our houses, they even ate our sheep, they took them to the base to eat them, they burned things down, there was nothing left, absolutely nothing, nothing, like that, completely poor, they left us. They killed our family, burned our house and on top of that they beat us, they hit us, they raped us. They brought us complete disaster; they did anything to us.104Carmen told how soldiers raped her at her home in the village while her four-year-old daughter was watching. When the little girl started crying, the soldiers threw her into the open fire inside the house which, until today, many women in Hualla use to cook their food on. The burnings permanently damaged two fingers of the girl’s hand. Carmen had never told anyone about the rape before.105 en verdad, no sé si esos eran personas o eran unas bestías, ahora que entiendo [...] Las chicas para que ellas no se mueven al violar le amaraban de los dos pies con soga y las abrían y entraba cualquiera, señorita [...] Eso hacían los militares.” Interview with Juan, witness of torture, relative of victims of enforced disappearance, victim of forced displacement, Hualla, 04.05.2015.104  My translation of original citation: “[...] hemos quedado fracasado todo, hasta en la puna nos quemaba nuestra casa, hasta comían carnero, llevaban a la base a comer, quemaban, no había, no quedaba nadita, seguramente nada nadita, así total pobre nos dejó; mataron nuestra familia, quemaron nuestra casa y todavía remate nos golpea, nos pega, nos viola. Todo desastre nos ha hecho, todo nos ha hecho.” Interview with Gisela, victim of sexual violence perpetrated by the military, Hualla, 04.05.2015.105  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 18.11.2015.315V Absent BodiesMany women who went asking for their detained relatives at the military bases were forced to barter sex in exchange for information about their loved ones.106 This was a strategy set up by the military: ex-soldiers explained how they sorted out the prettiest young women of the village and detained their brothers or fathers, after which the girls could set them free by offering their body.107 In the villagers’ narratives on the civil war, rape is most often referred to as a systematic characteristic of the intervention of the state forces that affected the female population of the village, while rape perpetrated by the Shining Path is referred to as sporadic:It’s the military that has also left children [born from rape] here, but the senderistas they did not [sexually] abuse, not often, it were the soldiers who abused the girls. The senderistas they did not abuse just to abuse, they killed people, they killed with stones and axes, that’s how they killed, albeit with a knife; while the soldiers, of the women, they abused the majority of them, they also abused the women.108 The crimes of enforced disappearance (including the extrajudicial detention and torture preceding it) and rape perpetrated by the military were thus entangled in the sense that they appeared together and are closely associated with one another in the narratives of survivors. Especially in the context of an extremely machista society, widows or single women - unprotected by their husbands - proved 106  Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 30; Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 104.107  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 130.108  My translation of original citation: “De los militares es lo que ha quedado sus hijos también, pero no abusaban los senderistas poco era, pero los militares eran los que se abusaban a las chicas. Los senderistas no se abusaban de abusarse solamente, mataban a la gente, mataban con piedra con hacha asi lo mataban, aunque sea con cuchillo, mientras lo militares a las señoras casi a la mayoría se han abusado, se han abusado de las señoras también.” Interview with Tania, relative of victim of enforced disappearance, Hualla, 05.03.2015.316V Absent Bodiesmost vulnerable to the abuses of the state forces.109 Hence, the disappearance of men resulted in women’s increased exposure to (sexual) violence. 5.3 Diffusion of transitional justiceThe construction of gendered survivor identitiesThe gendered character of these crimes inevitably marks the (post-)conflict socio-economic fabric of Hualla and the way certain roles and identities are attributed or appropriated in the village. In a society organized alongside traditional gender roles, the loss of a male head of family constitutes an economic loss and affects the family’s social capital. As the widows in Hualla often state during interviews, all of the sudden, they had to be ‘a man and a woman at the same time’.110 The violence of the civil war moreover created the new social category of the disappeared: men who “exist but are not here” [“son, pero no están”]111, who in the representations by their relatives often find themselves at the verge of life and death, but who are physically absent.112 The absence of their bodies contrasts sharply with the vivid presence of their souls in popular imagination. The pre-occupation with ghosts and spirits of the dead in Andean society is strong and reflects “a deep temporality that not only connects generations, but also crosses the frontier between life and death.”113 They are part of daily life and can inspire both fear and confidence. For example, one research participant in Hualla described how, while hiding in the puna after an attack of the Shining Path, she performed 109  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 119.110  Interview with Erika, widow of disappeared husband, Hualla, 01.05.2015.111  I borrow this expression from José Pablo Baraybar. Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 15.112  Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), 15, 28, 33.113  Rojas-Perez, Mourning Remains, 72.317V Absent Bodiesa ritual to calm down her sheep that were upset by the presence of ghosts who were wandering around after the massacre.114 The women - the widows, the mothers - are the present counterparts of the disappeared; they evoke the ghosts of their relatives through memory and search their bodies in an attempt to bring them peace. As Isaias Rojas-Perez points out, women traditionally play a leading role in performing funerary rites, as during the wake “women are vocal and openly demonstrate their grief while men are silent and inhibited”.115 In her ethnography on representations of the Peruvian civil war in dreams, Arianna Cecconi describes the nightly visits of the ghosts of the disappeared in the dreams of their relatives, often providing information about their fate and their whereabouts.116 The post-conflict identity of the villagers is, however, not only shaped by the gendered character of the crimes. The way in which particular subject positions are constructed by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ involved in the transitional justice process highly influences the survivor identities assigned to and appropriated by the villagers in the aftermath of the crimes. The ‘ideal’ victim identity that emerges from transitional justice’s ideas on victimhood and trauma, and which is characterized by innocence, purity and lack of responsibility (cfr. chapter 2), coincides with a gendered dichotomy: the dominant victim identity that is being constructed is female, and the dominant perpetrator identity is male. This construction of an ‘ideal’ female victim identity was made explicit through the TRC’s one-sided approach to gender, which in this case was understood as a focus on women. In line with the growing international attention for sexual violence in conflict settings in Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Congo, and in transitional justice processes in Guatemala and South Africa, the 114  Interview with Elsa, widow whose husband disappeared, Hualla, 02.05.2015.115  Rojas-Perez, Mourning Remains, 69.116  Arianna Cecconi, “Cuando Las Almas Cuentan La Guerra: Sueños, Apariciones y Visitas de Los Desaparecidos En La Región de Ayacucho,” in Las Formas Del Recuerdo Etnografiías de La Violencia Política En El Perú, 2013, 179.318V Absent BodiesTRC adopted a so-called gender-sensitive approach.117 Women were actively encouraged to testify, resulting in 64% of the testimonies in the Ayacucho department being given by female survivors.118 However well-intended, and despite the fact that scholars like Pascha Bueno-Hansen argue that the gender sensitive approach of the TRC constituted an important international example for the integration of gender in transitional justice policies119, this one-sided approach to gender, which characterizes the narrative of the final report as well as the recommendations that followed from it, also has serious implications. Some of these implications can be identified by looking at how this victim identity is propagated by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ and appropriated by survivors in Hualla. The work of the TRC and the implementation of the reparation program were the main mechanisms which familiarized survivors of the civil war in Hualla with the kind of victim identity that stood center-stage in the transitional justice process. Teams of the TRC visited Hualla on at least three different occasions: in August 2001 for preliminary research, in June 2002 to take testimonies and in April 2003 to localize clandestine burial sites.120 Many Huallinos seemed eager to testify before the TRC: 92 villagers gave their testimony and 77 cases of violence registered by the TRC relate to Hualla.121 The tick boxes on the files of the testimonies show how the TRC identified four possible “types of declarants”: “relatives of victims”, “victims”, “perpetrator or agent” and direct witness”. The category of relatives of victims contains one sub-category: “direct relative of victim of disappearance”. The 117  J Boesten, Sexual Violence during War and Peace. (S.l.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 6; Bueno-Hansen, Feminist and Human Rights Struggles in Peru, 53; Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 107.118  On a national level, 54% of testimonies were provided by women. Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 106.119  Bueno-Hansen, 79.120  Tucta Crisante, Willakuy Qorillaccta. Pueblo de San Pedro de Hualla, 67.121  In comparison, in Sacsamarca the TRC registered 33 testimonies and 35 cases. CVR, “Casos Del Departamento de Ayacucho Reportados a La CVR.”319V Absent Bodiescategory of victims is divided into five sub-categories: “victims of torture”, “victims of rape”, “victims of forced recruitment”, “victims detained in jails and prisons” and “survivor of massacres”.122 As the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ translated narrated experiences of the civil war into this vocabulary, the villagers were expected to identify with one of the proposed categories. Let me single out two of these categories which have a remarkable bodily impact for the survivor in the aftermath of the respective crime, and which are highly gendered: victims of rape and victims of torture (hereby not overlooking the fact that most survivors of course correspond to more than one category). Despite the fact that the TRC initially adopted a broad definition of sexual violence, this was largely reduced to a narrow (legalistic) definition of penetrative rape perpetrated by men on women in the narrative of the final report and in recommendations such as the reparation program.123 As explained in chapter three, in theory, individual economic reparations are granted to family members of victims who died or disappeared, victims with mental or physical disabilities as a consequence of (sexual) violence or torture, victims of wrongful imprisonment, victims of rape and children born from rape. In practice, however, due to the priorities set by the government in the implementation of the reparation program, only family members of victims who died or disappeared and victims of rape are held eligible.124 Both categories of victims receive an individual economic 122  The use of singular and plural forms in the description of these categories strikes me: ‘victims’ is always put in plural, while ‘witness’, ‘survivor’ and ‘perpetraror’ are singular forms - as if the former were a group and the latter individuals.123  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 106; Boesten, Sexual Violence during War and Peace, 154; Bueno-Hansen, Feminist and Human Rights Struggles in Peru, 54. Hereby other forms of sexual violence such as sexual slavery (including forced marriage, forced prostitution and forced pregnancy), forced sterilization, sexual torture and violence against LGBTQ were excluded.124  By 2018, 4.623 victims of sexual violence had registered in the RUV but only the rape victims receive economic reparations. Andrea Carrasco, “Las víctimas ausentes en la obligación de reparar del Estado peruano, por Andrea 320V Absent Bodiesreparation of 10.000 PEN (€2.600), which in case of death or disappearance has to be shared between all members of the family. While all victims certified by the RUV can access benefits such as health care insurance and scholarships for their (grand)children, obtaining individual economic reparations therefore is a privilege preserved for particular groups of victims.It has to be noted that, at the moment the Huallinos gave their testimonies to the TRC, their expectations concerning economic reparations were very high.125 As one research participant stated when asked whether she had declared before the TRC:The governor [of the village] took us and he said: ‘Testify!’, and I didn’t want to. What was I going to testify for? What was I going to say? It’s in vain. He told me: ‘Be careful, maybe you are going to regret afterwards that you didn’t do it. There might going to be something [a compensation], maybe you can use it to educate your children’, that’s what they told me, that’s how they took us [to testify] [...]126The collaborators of the TRC insisted to the villagers that giving their testimony would “bring something good” and that they had “to talk so these things never happen again” - even when some women stated that they felt better when they forgot.127 The Carrasco,” IDEHPUCP (blog), August 27, 2019, http://idehpucp.pucp.edu.pe/notas-informativas/las-victimas-ausentes-en-la-obligacion-de-reparar-del-estado-peruano/.125  Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 41; Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 109.126  My translation of original citation: “El gobernador nos ha llevado ‘¡declárate!’ diciendo, y yo no quería, ¿cómo voy a declarar, como voy a hablar, qué voy hablar?, es por gusto. Me dijo: ‘Cuidado, posteriormente te arrepientas de no hacerlo. Va haber cualquier cosa, siquiera para así siquiera eduques a tus hijos’, así diciendo me han dicho, a todos nos ha llevado [...]” Interview with Erika, widow of disappeared husband, 01.05.2015.127  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 113.321V Absent Bodiesdifferentiation according to categories of victimization has serious implications regarding the benefits that are granted to some and denied to others, but also for the way in which villagers (have to) organize to claim their rights. Like most communities in Ayacucho, Hualla has its own victims’ association which, in this case with the sporadic support of NGOs such as the EPAF, keeps watch over the rights of those villagers inscribed in the victim register. In Hualla, participation in the victims’ association is highly gendered due to the victim categories which were created by the TRC and reaffirmed by the implementation of the reparation program. Men who suffered torture feel that they have no incentive to participate in the association because they are not eligible for economic reparations. Accordingly, with few exceptions, the association is mostly made up of widows or mothers of the disappeared. Several male research participants who had been victims of torture, extrajudicial detention and/or forced recruitment indicated that they found the reparation program unfair or that they felt abandoned.128 During one of my stays in Hualla, the municipality handed out some wheelchairs to victims of torture which were donated by the US-based NGO China Aid. One of the receivers was an old man who had been continuously tortured for eight days in the base of Chimpapampa, after which he remained cripple. He was inscribed in the victim register but had not received any economic reparations. The old man - surprised by the sudden attention - was told he should be grateful for this unexpected gift from foreign donors. The whole scene felt absurd, even more so because one could not think of a less wheelchair-friendly environment than Hualla, with its steep and mostly unpaved rocky dust roads and deep abysses on every edge of the village.129 Many male survivors thus disappear into the background of the struggle for justice and reparations as they feel the transitional justice mechanisms are not for them, or as one of them put it: “No 128  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 30.04.2015, 17.11.2015, 18.11.2015.129  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 18.11.2015.322V Absent Bodiesone has helped me” [“a mi nadie me ha ayudado”].130 The women on their turn become the protagonists of these struggles, but only on the condition that they identify with certain characteristics that fit the ‘ideal’ victim and inscribe themselves in the passive narrative of undergoing violence rather than an active narrative of participation, resistance or protection. As Kimberly Theidon points out, the war widows - in this case more specifically the wives of the disappeared - are the “archetypal personae” of this passive narrative of victimhood.131 In the case of sexual violence, women can only receive reparations if they explicitly step forward as rape victims, which is not a self-evident thing to do, and even less so in a highly machista environment where victims of sexual violence and children born from rape are in many cases repudiated by their family or even the entire community. One research participant in Hualla stated that her husband had recently found out that she had been raped by the military during the war, after which he left her because he considered her a “soldiers’ leftover” [“sobra del militar”].132 During a meeting of the victims’ association, a woman sitting next to me suddenly started whispering in my ear, asking where she could register in the RUV. I told her that they had recently reopened the registration process in the village so that she didn’t have to go all the way to Huancapi, and I indicated the man in charge of the registration office. She shook her head and whispered that it was impossible to talk to him because he was “male and from the same village” [“varón y paisano”].133 Of the rape victims we spoke to in Hualla, only very few had mentioned in their declarations before the victim register that they were victims of sexual violence. As one research participant states:130  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 17.11.2015.131  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 144.132  Interview with Gisela, victim of sexual violence perpetrated by the military, Hualla, 04.05.2015. This seems to have been a common insult for raped women in Hualla, as Theidon also encountered it during her fieldwork. See: Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 125.133  Fieldnotes, Meeting of the victims’ association, Hualla, 18.05.2017.323V Absent BodiesThey did this [the rape] to me that time, by grabbing me. At first in my declaration I had forgotten, I didn’t remember, I only told about the terrorists, I only told it later, and then they told me: “You should have told us from the beginning”, but I hadn’t told them what they [the military] did to me.134Theidon furthermore describes that in focus groups held by the TRC, women did not focus on rape during the war, but on their marginalization in the community before and after the war. The TRC’s focus on the category of rape limited the time frame of sexual violence to the period of the civil war instead of looking into the structural processes of violence and discrimination against women. Jelke Boesten has pointed out, however, how sexual violence against women during the civil war should be considered as a product of existing gender, race and class hierarchies and states that “impunity of wartime sexual violence reflects peacetime values regarding gender and gendered violence”.135 Boesten furthermore warns how the TRC’s narrow focus on gender holds the danger of reasserting gender stereotypes rather than questioning them.136 She states that “narratives of sexual violence were received from within a normative framework that emphasized feminine stereotypes such as motherhood, endurance, and sacrifice.”137 The work of the TRC thus contributed to the construction of a female survivor identity that responds to the paradigm of innocent, weak and passive victims whose suffering is pathologized rather than politicized. This victim identity was in many cases reinforced throughout the 134  My translation from original citation: “A mi esa vez alcanzándome me han hecho eso. Por eso desde el inicio en mi declaración me había olvidado, no me recordaba, de los terroristas nada mas he dicho, ya después he contado, me dijeron: “Desde el principio te hubieras avisado”, no he avisado lo que me han hecho.” Interview with Elsa, widow of disappeared hsuband, Hualla, 02.05.2015.135  Boesten, Sexual Violence during War and Peace, 5.136  Boesten, 155.137  Of the 538 rape cases reported to the TRC, evidence was provided for 16 cases but none of these has proceeded to trial. Boesten, 5.324V Absent Bodiestransitional justice process by the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ working with survivors. A clear example hereof is found in a leaflet entitled “Abusaruwanku. Violación Sexual Contra Mujeres Durante el conflicto armado interno”138, distributed and designed by the COMISEDH and the Manuela Ramos movement (a Peruvian NGO working on gender) with the financial support of the Project Counselling Service (a Latin American NGO working on trauma and human rights) and the Canadian International Development Agency. The leaflet intends to teach rural communities how they have to deal with women who were raped during the conflict. The last page consists of a list with eight guidelines “to prevent this from happening again” [“para que no vuelva a ocurrir”], the second of which is for the other villagers “to consider the raped woman as a woman in bad health conditions who needs care and help”.139 Another striking sentence states that “raped women do not feel pleasure in sexual relations with their husbands, which on a long-term causes problems of domestic violence”, hereby implying that raped women will be beaten by their spouse if they fail to meet their sexual demands. That the obstruction to enjoy sexual pleasure in the first place is a serious problem for the sexuality of the women themselves, is completely neglected. Furthermore, the need to “break the silence” [“romper el silencio”] and for counselling is stressed. This emphasis on the redemptive power of speaking out is not only problematic in a context where survivors have no access to psychological support, it also reasserts existing gender stereotypes as the female survivor is actively encouraged to talk, while men must stay strong and silent - which is exactly what they are expected to do in a machista environment where ‘big boys don’t cry’. The other way around, it can be very difficult for men in a masculine-value-driven environment to ‘become’ a victim if this means that they 138  They abused me. Rape Against Women During the internal armed conflict139  My translation of original citation: “Considerar a la mujer violada como una mujer en mal estado de salud que necesita atención y apoyo.” COMISEDH and Movimiento Manuela Ramos, “Abusaruwanku. Violación Sexual Contra Mujeres Durante El Conflicto Armado Interno,” n.d.325V Absent Bodieshave to identify with ‘female’ vulnerability. In sum, the diffusion of a victim identity based on trauma and suffering intersects with the reassertion of existing gender stereotypes which has serious implications for both male and female survivors. In line with the categories employed by the TRC and the reparation program, there was another clear condition on which survivors in Hualla could appropriate victimhood: they had to assume innocence. In contrast with Sacsamarca, the Huallinos do not have a heroic narrative to use as a curtain to conceal that the village was a hotbed of Shining Path militancy. Research participants often state that the repression by the military was the villagers’ own fault, hereby implying that they shouldn’t have allied with the Shining Path. They also state that they did not denounce the crimes committed by both sides during the civil war because they were not believed, and because it was too dangerous.140 While this of course holds true, the villagers did most likely also refrain from denouncing the crimes perpetrated by the Shining Path because of their own involvement with the insurgents. When the TRC arrived with its depoliticized victim categories, this provided a space for the villagers to focus on the violence perpetrated by the military, obfuscate their implication in the violence of the Shining Path, and become eligible for reparations. While the Sacsamarquinos concealed their involvement with heroism, the Huallinos covered themselves with innocence. As in Sacsamarca, this narrative of innocence also serves the purpose of maintaining a tense coexistence between ‘intimate enemies’.141 Survivors in Hualla thus appropriated an identity that was offered to them by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ during the transitional justice process. This identity, however, does not only obfuscate the political 140  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 30.04.2015.141  This corresponds to what Theidon has called the “narrative capital” of the villagers in front of the TRC, or what the EPAF describes as the “public use of memory”. Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 113; Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 32.326V Absent Bodiesagency of the villagers in the past; it also weakens their struggle for justice in the present as it is based on disempowering properties, reasserts existing gender structures that facilitate sexual violence (mainly against women), and prevents certain survivors (mainly men) from claiming their rights.The desaparecidos at the intersection of local, national and international policyAs mentioned in chapter three, the concern with the problem of the disappeared in the design and implementation of Peru’s transitional justice process directly relates to the international notion of the right to truth and to the ‘forensic turn’ in dealing with the legacies of mass violence. The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (1980),  the UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (1992) and eventually the UN International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (2006) provided an international framework for dealing with the crime of enforced disappearance and recognized “the right of victims and their families to know the truth regarding the circumstances and fate of the disappeared person.”142 This right to truth is the main point of departure of transitional justice and underlies ideas and policies regarding (past-oriented) accountability as well as (future-oriented) reconciliation, as described in chapter one and two.In Latin America, the Argentinian disappeared stood center-stage in the CONADEP’s mandate of seeking truth concerning the faith of the political prisoners during the regime of the military junta. The Nunca Más report became a bestseller, and the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo became a worldwide icon of activism against enforced disappearance.143 Their imagery of representing the disappeared 142  United Nations General Assembly, “International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.”143  On the activism of the Madres and their “resistance against the irreversible time of history”, see: Bevernage, History, Memory, and State-Sponsored Violence, 23–45.327V Absent Bodieswith black and white portrait photographs was copied by survivors and activists around the globe, among who the Peruvian mothers of ANFASEP, who started organizing themselves in Ayacucho in 1983.144 Accordingly, the transition in Argentina was not only a benchmark for transitional justice in general, but also for the application of forensic science in the wake of mass human rights violations. In the context of the CONADEP, the American forensic archeologist Clyde Snow trained Argentinean forensic specialists and hereby gave birth to the Equipo Argentino de Antopología Forense (EAAF). As mentioned in chapter one, the EAAF was the first of what became an international network of NGOs concerned with the application of forensic science in the search for the disappeared. The Peruvian counterpart EPAF was founded in Lima in 2001 by José Pablo Baraybar, Juan Carlos Tello, Aldo Bolaños and Carmen Rosa Cardoza, and its forensic experts carried out the TRC’s exhumation in Chuschi.145 The exchange of expertise within the international network of forensic teams led to a shared methodology for the search of missing persons, adapted according to the local contexts in which it is applied. In case of the EPAF, for example, the team took over the methodology of the ICTY and the ICTR, as its founders were Peruvian forensic experts who had worked in the exhumation of mass graves in Kosovo and Rwanda.146 In sum, the search for the disappeared, based on a forensic interpretation of the right to truth, became an elementary and standardized component of transitional justice contexts around the globe which landed in Peru in the aftermath of the civil war. Yet, the TRC’s initial strong engagement with the search for the disappeared fell flat due to disagreements between the various human 144  For an analysis of the emergence of transnational activism concerning enforced disappearance and its aftermath, see: Gabriel Gatti, Desapariciones. Usos Locales, Circulaciones Globales, 2017, 13–33.145  EPAF, “Historia Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense,” accessed September 2, 2019, http://epafperu.org/acerca-de-epaf/historia/.146  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 24.06.2014.328V Absent Bodiesrights institutions involved in the process (EPAF, COMISEDH, CNDDHH, ICRC and CENIA) and the post-TRC monopoly of the Specialized Forensic Team (EFE) of the Public Ministry to carry out exhumations (cfr. chapter 3.2). The central tension that has been intersecting the process since the beginning is that between the legal purposes of finding forensic evidence to bring the perpetrators to trial on the one hand, and the humanitarian purposes of facilitating the relatives’ process of closure and mourning on the other. This directly reflects the tensions between retributive and restorative justice, and between accountability and reconciliation, that are inherent to transitional justice (cfr. chapter 1). In the wake of the design of the TRC’s National Plan for Forensic Anthropological Investigations (PNIAF), these diverging applications of the right to truth led to a schism between the EPAF and the other human rights institutions involved with the TRC. While the COMISEDH, the CNDDHH and CENIA advocated the application of the evidence obtained through exhumations for forensic purposes, the EPAF emphasized the need for a so-called humanitarian umbrella [paraguas humanitario] for the exhumations, hereby prioritizing the restitution of the bodies in order to facilitate mourning and closure for the relatives.147 According to the EPAF, “in a context such as Peru, the search, identification and restitution of the remains of missing persons cannot be subordinated to judicial deadlines” - hereby referring to the slow and overly bureaucratic judicial apparatus.148 The other human rights organizations, however, accused the EPAF’s stance of going against the right to justice.149 The disagreements led to an open conflict, after which the EPAF aborted its collaboration with the TRC.150 In the following years, the EPAF lobbied for the 147  Interview with Sofía Macher, ex-commissioner of the TRC, Lima, 24.05.2017.148  My translation of original citation: “En un contexto como el peruano, la búsqueda, identificación y restitución de los restos de personas desaparecidas no pueden estar subordinados a los plazos judiciales.” EPAF, “Historia Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense.”149  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 25.06.2015.150  EPAF, “Historia Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense.”329V Absent Bodiestransformation of the TRC’s PNIAF into an integrated national plan of search, hereby emphasizing the need for a shift from a “technical to a public policy approach”.151 While the work of the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ was paralyzed by disagreements and a lack of coordination, the Public Ministry and the EFE handled a strictly legal and forensic approach by only initiating the exhumation of burial sites in response to legal complaints issued by relatives (mostly acting with the support of human rights NGOs), this is without an overarching plan and disregarding the prior work of the TRC. According to Rafael Barrantes, former coordinator of the missing persons program of the ICRC in Peru, the Public Ministry did not set priorities in cases and adopted a responsive rather than a proactive position. The relation between human rights organizations and the Public Ministry has mostly been tense. According to a representative of the Public Ministry, a cooperation agreement between the EPAF and the EFE was cancelled because the “critical position of the EPAF annoyed the public prosecutors”.152 The EPAF in its turn blames the EFE for its lack of self-reflection. The Public Ministry’s narrow legal approach furthermore has to be situated within the bureaucracy of what Deborah Poole calls the “drifting state”, in which legal cases “seem to drift more or less aimlessly from one office to the next, before finally being returned, unresolved and often years later, to their points of origin.”153 In case of the disappeared, this applies almost literally: the uncoordinated work of the Public Ministry has resulted in a big discrepancy between the number of excavated bodies and the ones that can actually be identified and 151  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 25.06.2015.152  Fieldnotes, Coloquio internacional IDEHPUCP: Impactos de las reparaciones a las víctimas en las sociedades posconflicto. Memoria de los cuerpos, conmemoración y patrimonialización, Lima, 24.08.2015.153  Poole, “Between Threat and Guarantee. Justice and Community in the Margins of the Peruvian State,” 42.330V Absent Bodiesgiven back to their relatives.154 As a result, the remains of hundreds of so-called NN155 are piled up in cardboard boxes to be stored, forgotten and ‘disappeared’ for a second time in the basements of the laboratory of the Public Ministry in Huamanga.156 During one of the collective restitution ceremonies which I attended in Huamanga, representatives of the public prosecutor’s office admitted during their speeches that they were indeed “slow but committed to justice” and that it was “thanks to the leaders of the human rights movement that the hope for justice is still alive”.157 Hereby, they recognized to a certain extent that they were paralyzed by bureaucratization and pointed to the necessary watchdog function of civil society organizations in absence of a more responsive judiciary system. This admission of impotence relates to what Hannah Arendt describes as the “tyranny” of bureaucracy:[...] the rule of an intricate system of bureaus in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many, can be held responsible, and which could be properly called rule by Nobody. (If, in accord with traditional political thought, we identify tyranny as government that is not held to give account of  itself, rule by Nobody is clearly the most tyrannical of all, since there is no one left who could even be asked to answer 154  According to the EPAF, by 2015 around 3.200 bodies were exhumed of which ca. 1830 were identified. EPAF, “Una Política Para La Búsqueda de Personas Desaparecidas,” accessed September 24, 2018, http://epafperu.org/una-politica-para-la-busqueda-de-personas-desaparecidas/.EPAF, “Una Política Para La Búsqueda de Personas Desaparecidas,” accessed September 24, 2018, http://epafperu.org/una-politica-para-la-busqueda-de-personas-desaparecidas/.155  NN, after the Latin phrase ‘nomen nescio’ (‘I don’t know the name’) is a common term to refer to the disappeared in Latin America.156  Fieldnotes, Sacsamarca, 28.06.2014.157  My translation of original citation: “[...] somos lentos pero tenemos compromiso con la justicia”; “[...] gracias a los líderes del movimiento de derechos humanos sigue viva la esperanza de la justicia”, Fieldnotes, Restitution massacre Chungui, Huamanga, 16.12.2015.Restitution of remains at the public ministry in Huamanga (2015)332V Absent Bodiesfor what is being done.)158The descend of the search for the disappeared into the judicial apparatus also further corroded its restorative significance by hollowing out the restitution ceremonies. As Rojas-Perez points out, in contrast with the public and highly symbolical restitution ceremonies during the mandate of the TRC, during the post-TRC period “the legal restitution of exhumed bodies to relatives has become a bureaucratic affair conducted on the premises of the provincial branches of the Fiscalía [the public prosecutor’s office] [...] and the reburial of these victims has become almost exclusively a local affair”.159 Indeed, while the restitution of remains of the disappeared was included in the symbolic reparation program, the provided budgets were mainly invested in basic infrastructural items such as coffins to store the remains. According to a representative of the CMAN, the collective restitution ceremonies which were intended to give visibility to the relatives were “overdone” [“exagerado”] in an instrumental way by the public prosecutor’s office and lost their symbolic meaning. Psychological support for the relatives throughout the entire process of exhumation, identification and reburial - if any - was mostly provided by NGO’s.160 Due to all these factors, the search for the disappeared stranded in a deadlock in the first post-TRC decade. José Pablo Baraybar ended his presentation during a seminar in Huamanga in March 2015 with the words: “to conclude, it is a disaster”161, and according to former truth commissioner Sofía Macher “the disappeared are forgotten 158  Arendt, On Violence, 38.159  Rojas-Perez, Mourning Remains, 49.160 Fieldnotes, Coloquio internacional IDEHPUCP: Impactos de las reparaciones a las víctimas en las sociedades posconflicto. Memoria de los cuerpos, conmemoración y patrimonialización, Lima, 24.08.2015.161  Fieldnotes, Seminario Desaparición Forzada y Ejecución Extrajudicial, Huamanga, 14.03.2015.333V Absent Bodiesbecause of quarrels [peleas]”.162Nevertheless, as already touched upon in chapter three, the EPAF eventually won its plea for the ‘humanitarian umbrella’. After the failure to implement the TRC’s PNIAF, human rights organizations jointly lobbied for the design of a new national plan for the search of the disappeared, coordinated by the Ministry of Justice in close collaboration with the Public Ministry, and with a primarily humanitarian focus on the “reparative effect for the families”.163 The Law On the Search of Persons Who Disappeared During the Period of Violence 1980-2000 was approved by the Congress in June 2016 and created the General Directorate of Search for Disappeared Persons (DGBPD) within the Ministry of Justice to coordinate the process. Several people who used to work in the search for the disappeared from within civil society now work for the DGBPD, including former members of the EPAF. While the new legal framework has led to certain improvements such as sustained psychological support and a better-informed involvement of relatives throughout the entire process, relations between the EFE of the Public Ministry and the newly created DGBPD remain tense. The former proceeds with exhumations for legal purposes, while one of the DGPBD’s main concerns is the identification and restitution of the more than 1.500 already exhumed corpses piled up in the Public Ministry in Huamanga.164162  Interview with Sofía Macher, ex-commissioner of the TRC, Lima, 24.05.2017.163  Plan nacional para la búsqueda de personas desaparecidas (1980-2000), p. 9, <https://www.minjus.gob.pe/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Plan__busqueda_personas_desaparecidas.pdf>, last consulted 13.02.2017.164  The Public Ministry’s legal purposes do not only include criminal justice, but also the so-called casos de ratificación de identidad (cases of ratification of identity), which comes down to the exhumation of clandestine cemeteries where people are buried whose identity is known but who, due to the emergency circumstances during the war, have no legal death certificate, which often brings administrative problems for relatives in the aftermath. In order for the relatives to yet obtain this death certificate they have to request exhumation. Personal communication with Gisela Ortiz, director of the EPAF and relative of the disappeared students of La 334V Absent BodiesTurning back to the (subject position of) the survivors, it becomes clear how the search for their disappeared relatives has become a process of which they are only invited to be part on certain conditions set by the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ and the state actors involved.165 On the one hand, the tense context described above has led to a ‘scramble’ for the survivors among the different ‘well-meaning outsiders’ involved. Human rights NGOs claim ‘their’ cases and represent ‘their’ victims in order to legitimize their work, which takes place in a difficult context with scant resources.166 For example, after a restitution ceremony in Huamanga, it was unclear how the coffins with the remains would be transported back to the respective villages of the relatives. This is an essential part of the process which the state does not account for, which means that the relatives have to pay for the transportation themselves or depend on the goodwill of NGOs to do so. Moreover, finding bus drivers who are willing to take along the coffins with the remains is mostly difficult, because of superstition as well as practical concerns. While the relatives were discussing how to the handle the problem, they were surrounded by several representatives of different NGOs who were all individually offering their solutions, as if they were bargaining a sales deal.167 Part of this ‘scramble’ for the survivors is the reproduction of the international imagery concerning the (relatives of) the disappeared. Taking into account the difference in socio-economic background between the often white or mestizo urban middle class NGO personnel and the rural and indigenous survivors, the reproduction of this imagery sometimes results in a problematic paternalism of the former towards the latter, and runs the risk of becoming an instrumentalization of the ‘ideal’ victim identity by well-meaning Cantuta, 02.09.2019.165  I must reiterate here that most of my fieldwork data predates the new legal framework. Certain aspects of the process might have improved since 2016. 166  Fieldnotes, Seminario Desaparición Forzada y Ejecución Extrajudicial, Huamanga, 14.03.2015.167  Fieldnotes, Restitution massacre Chungui, Huamanga, 16.12.2015.335V Absent Bodiesoutsiders.168On the other hand, the attitude of the state towards the relatives is hindered by the ‘tyranny’ of bureaucracy, but also by mechanisms of discrimination and racism towards the rural indigenous population which are deeply engrained in Peruvian society. In order to demonstrate how both factors manifest themselves concretely in the search for the disappeared, I will elaborate on one case of searching, exhuming and identifying six disappeared villagers in Hualla which I observed from the first preliminary investigations in June 2014, until the reburial of the corpses in November 2016. The case concerned a clandestine grave containing the remains of one man, three women (an older lady and her two daughters) and two girls of six and one and a half years old (the children of one of the daughters). They were executed by the military at the man’s estancia in the highlands in 1984 on the accusation of collaborating with the Shining Path. Other villagers were obliged by the soldiers to bury the corpses in the middle of the puna - one of them still lives downtown and is the only surviving witness of the events. The daughter of the murdered man went to localize the remains of her father in the direct aftermath of the execution and found the recently buried corpses. After that, she never went back to the burial site:[...] There I found them, still fresh... They were only covered with soil. And there we found the sisters [...] with the daughters, a little one [...] We found the hair of one of them sticking out, 168  An example hereof was provided by a representative of the CMAN who, during a seminar on enforced disappearance, recounted how after a restitution ceremony which took place in the Cathedral of Huamanga, relatives were asked by the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ accompanying the process to take a walk around the square while carrying the coffins with the remains of their loved ones. This is a public symbolic act which is most likely inspired by the Madres’ walk around the pyramid on the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires. The survivors, however, refused their collaboration, stating that “we are not sheep” [“no somos ovejas”]. Fieldnotes, Coloquio internacional IDEHPUCP: Impactos de las reparaciones a las víctimas en las sociedades posconflicto. Memoria de los cuerpos, conmemoración y patrimonialización, Lima, 24.08.2015.Localization of burial site in the highlands of Hualla (2014)337V Absent Bodiestheir braids with their bolitas169. So, I put a cross on the spot where they were. Since that date, I didn’t go there anymore. Until now I never went again to that quebrada [fissure]. And they told me recently that when they were walking around there that the cross doesn’t exist anymore either. Because it is a bit downhill, quebradita, the water of the rain could have washed away the cross.170The direct relatives of this case live in Lima, but like many other Huallino migrants, they returned to their hometown to participate in the yearly Mama Sara festival celebrations in June 2014. As the family had expressed the desire to exhume the corpses of their loved ones in order to provide them with a proper burial, the EPAF decided to conduct the necessary preliminary investigations and present the case with the support of the International Commission of Jurists to the public prosecutor’s office. Therefore, the EPAF needed to know the exact location of the grave, as this information needs to be included in the file presented to the prosecutor. The lady who had visited the burial site more than thirty years ago was not sure whether she would still be able to identify the spot. The witness living in the village was reluctant at first, but at the insistence of the family and the EPAF, he eventually agreed to collaborate. The morning after the last night of the festival, we left at five in the morning - the village still covered under the smell of chicha and the last drunks arguing at the square - to undertake the journey through the highlands to localize the grave. After 45 minutes by car on the 169  Small balls of wool used by women in the Andes to decorate their braids170  My translation of original citation: “Ahí encontré fresco... Había tierra tapado no mas. Y de ahí encontramos las hermanas [...] estaban su hijitas, una pequeña mas o menos esa eda. Una que hemos encontrado así que estaba afuera y sus caballitos, sus trenzas con sus bolitas [...] Por eso he puesto una cruz, ponemos donde estaban. De la fecha no llego ya. Hasta ahora no llegé mas a esta quebrada. Y dijeron ahora ’ultimo cuando ha ido andar por ahí que ya no existe cruz tampoco. Como está un poco medio bajado, quebradita, agua posiblemente cuando llueve que se lo ha llevado.” Interview with Alicia, relative of victims burial site Hualla, 25.06.2015.338V Absent Bodiesdust road to Sacsamarca, followed by two hours of descending by foot in a fissure, the witness indicated the spot, in the middle of a landscape which for an outsider like me appeared a yellow-green vastness without any clues for orientation. After carrying out the Pagapu to Pacha Mama171, we began our way back - four hours of steep climbing through thin air until reaching the top at 4400 meters AMSL. The relatives and the witness made their way back to Hualla, while I accompanied the EPAF on their continuing journey to Putaccasa and Sacsamarca.172Our paths crossed again in May 2015. Almost exactly one year after the EPAF and the ICJ had presented the case, the Public Ministry had planned the exhumation in the period that Alicia and I were conducting interviews in Hualla. Because nobody of the EPAF could come over, Alicia and I decided to accompany the relatives again, six of whom had travelled all the way from Lima. According to the notification sent out by the prosecutor’s office to the relatives, the exhumation was programmed to last for two days. On the eve of the first day, the public prosecutor and the forensic expert arrived to the village to notify the relatives that they would return the next morning at eight, and to order them to recruit some workmen to help with the excavations. After ten minutes they left again for Huancapi, where they would spend the night, without giving any further explanations on the process of the exhumation. The public prosecutor did not even get out of the pickup truck to greet the family members.173 The next day, Alicia and I left the village by minivan with two workmen, a shovel and a pickaxe, the meat of a sheep that had been butchered for the occasion, tents and blankets to spend the night in the highlands, and five of the six relatives - one of them, a 171  The Pagapu or Pago a la tierra is an Andean ritual to pay tribute to Mother Earth [Pacha Mama], which includes offering coca leaves, and sometimes also alcohol and cigarettes. 172  Fieldnotes, Localization burial site, Hualla, 27.06.2014.173  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 05.05.2015.339V Absent Bodieswoman who suffered from diabetes, had become ill and would stay downtown. The pick-up truck with the prosecutor and the forensic expert followed us to the place where we would start our descend by foot. We unloaded the van and borrowed three horses from the nearby estancia to take the material of the expedition into the fissure. Once arrived at the alleged spot of the grave around eleven in the morning, the forensic expert gave the order to dig a first hole, but no human remains were found. A second and a third hole were dug in the surroundings of the first one, but still no bones appeared. The prosecutor was visibly annoyed, and the forensic expert snapped to the relatives that other families actually searched for the bones before calling the prosecutor’s office. When the relatives tried to read the coca leaves in order to find some traces of their deceased family members, the prosecutor and the forensic expert rolled their eyes and openly mocked them. They sat down, while the relatives, stressed out and in despair, were randomly digging around and opening new holes. After a while, the prosecutor approached me and remarked that he really pitied the family members as they looked so desperate, looking around with the hope of finding their relatives. Around three thirty in the afternoon, the prosecutor and the forensic expert announced that they were leaving and would not come back. The family members and I objected the decision, stating that their mission was programmed for two days and that they should continue the search the next day. The prosecutor annoyedly pointed to his clipboard with the info sheet and remarked that their mission was to recover [recuperar] and not to search [buscar] the remains. He added that the family members could call them back when they thought they had found something, and then they would return to do the actual exhumation. In the meantime, the husband of the ill woman who had stayed downtown had received a phone call that his wife urgently needed to see a doctor. The man decided to walk back to the village, while the other relatives - tired and disappointed - wanted to stay and spend the night in the highlands. Alicia and I stayed with them and put up the tents, while the ladies 340V Absent Bodiescooked soup of the head of the sheep. As soon as the night fell, one of the relatives started worrying about the jarjachas, the ghosts of the condemned who wander around the puna in search of revenge on the living.174 He felt afraid, and wondered how, as a child, he liked the peace and quietness of the puna. That night went by without much sleep. The relatives kept telling stories about their youth and the drastic changes caused by the war. The return to the village the next day took place in a tense and emotional atmosphere. Upon our arrival to the village by sunset, the relatives felt dispirited and frustrated but were determined to continue the search and decided to come back on another occasion. The next morning, Alicia and I were invited to share the remainder of the sheep for breakfast, after which we traveled back to Huamanga, and the family members went back home to Lima.175Two days later, back in Huamanga, I received a phone call from one of the relatives. Their journey back to Lima took a dramatic turn: the lady who suffered from diabetes deceased during the bus ride - they could not reach a hospital in time. Until today, I cannot get rid of the thought that the emotional stress generated by the entire process became too much for her.176 Her death caused tensions among the relatives. Some wanted to continue the search, while others found that the prize they had payed was already too high, and that it was unlikely that they would still get something in return. The ones who wanted to continue, however, persisted, and in August I accompanied them again to the highlands, with new instructions of the witness who this time seemed more sober. Some of the remains were found after superficial excavations, and the Public Ministry came back to do the actual exhumation in September.177 The remains were recovered, but it took more than a year before they were finally 174  On the notion of jarjachas, see: Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 215.175  Fieldnotes, Exhumation, Hualla, 06.05.2015.176  Fieldnotes, Huamanga, 09.05.2015.177  Fieldnotes, Exhumation bis, Hualla, 11.08.2015; meeting relatives burial site Hualla, Lima, 27.08.2015. 341V Absent Bodiesgiven back to the relatives on November 11, 2016. During a collective ceremony in Huamanga, 58 remains of victims of different cases in the region were restituted to their families.  After the ceremony, the family members transported the coffins with the remains to Hualla, where they were buried at the cemetery in a mausoleum constructed by the municipality.1785.4 Appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation of transitional justice Adding insult to injury: The contemporary past of enforced disappearance Now that I have discussed how the relation between the state and the relatives of the disappeared is intersected by mechanisms of discrimination and racism, I will take a closer look at these notions of structural violence that underlie the crime of enforced disappearance as well as the process of coming to terms with it. This enables me to point to what I call the ‘contemporary past’ of enforced disappearance and how it challenges the linear temporality of transitional justice in which the search for the disappeared is perceived as a way of finding closure. Therefore, I first want to turn to survivors’ statements on the value of life, and more specifically to their recurring claims that, in the eyes of those who inflicted violence, ‘life is worthless’ [‘la vida no vale nada’].179 The value of life testifies to the expense of death, and 178  I was in Belgium at the moment of the restitution, but Gabriela attended the ceremony. Personal communication with Gabriela Zamora, 11.11.2016. La República, “Ministra Pérez Tello participó en entrega de restos de víctimas de terrorismo,” May 26, 2019, https://larepublica.pe/politica/820581-ministra-perez-tello-participo-en-entrega-de-restos-de-victimas-de-terrorismo/.179  Interview with Juan, witness of torture, relative of victims of enforced disappearance, victim of forced displacement, Hualla, 04.05.2015. This is a recurring statement throughout my interviews with survivors in Hualla, but also in Sacsamarca and the VRAEM.342V Absent Bodiesto how the bodies of the dead are treated. The way in which this value of life, and the capacity to mourn the loss of life, differentiates human beings from animals is a common thread in survivors’ narratives on the cruel forms of violence inflicted upon civilians by the Shining Path and the military. Survivors state that, during the war, people were treated like animals, killed like animals and buried - or thrown away [botado] - like animals.180 The state intervention which was expected to restore the ‘normal’ value of life, on the contrary facilitated a further devaluation of the lives of indigenous peasants.Do you know what they [the soldiers] did with the dead? They left them scattered  on the streets, the pigs ate them. [...] Once they cut a girl’s breast, they cut her breast and when she started screaming, they put a cloth in her mouth to keep her silent. The dogs and the pigs out there finished her, in that street, a bit further down the road from the school, they finished her. Señorita, these times, you would bump into a dead body over here, and another one over there, and another one a bit further, being eaten by a dog. It almost didn’t frighten us anymore; it was almost normal.181 180  Interview with Zaïra, survivor whose father was killed by the Shining Path during the massacre of August 1984, Hualla, 26.06.2015; interview with Katarina, widow whose husband was kidnapped by the Shining Path, Hualla, 26.06.2015; interview with Elsa, widow of disappeared husband, Hualla, 02.05.2015. See also: Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 26.181  My translation of original citation: “¿Sabes que hacían con los muertos? Los muertos los aventaban a la calle, a los caminos, los chanchos se lo comían. [...] Una vez a una chica le cortaron el seno y la chica empezó a gritar y le metían trapo a la boca para que no grite, y a esa chicha se lo terminó los perros y los chanchos de allí, de la escuela más abajo en la calle, se lo terminó. Señorita, tú caminabas en ese tiempo te encontrabas con cadáver en ese tiempo más allá otro, más allá que está comiéndose el perro, ya no era, ya no era miedo, ya era casi normal.” Interview with Juan, witness of torture, relative of victims of enforced disappearance, victim of forced displacement, Hualla, 04.05.2015.343V Absent BodiesWe are demanding the state to do more [for the survivors], because our life is worth more than gold [ref. to reparation program]. Why did these people [the soldiers] do this to us? Why? If we were the same as them, why did they mistreat us? Until now, when I remember how they beat me, I ask myself: Why? What did I do to these  persons so that they would do this to me, so that they would beat me, what did I do  wrong?182Racism and discrimination against Andean indigenous peasants intersect this value of life and are closely connected to skin color and the ‘value’ of whiteness in Peruvian society. As the TRC’s final report states, racism played an important role in the justification of violence during the civil war:Many times, ethnic and racial differences - converted into criteria for naturalizing social inequalities - were invoked by the perpetrators to justify actions committed  against those who were their victims.183It is important to understand that racism in Peruvian society is a multidirectional phenomenon that does not necessary take place between clearly delineated socio-economic or ethnic strata, but that it intersects class and social relations from the micro to the macro level. For example, Kimberly Theidon has demonstrated how, in the case of sexual violence perpetrated by the military, “rape was raced” in the sense that women were selected and ‘distributed’ among the 182  My translation of original citation: “Estamos reclamando para que haga más, por que nuestra vida vale más que oro. ¿Porqué nos ha hecho ese tiempo esa gente? ¿Porqué?  Si como ellos éramos igual, ¿porqué nos maltrataba? Le digo yo, hasta ahorita cuando me recuerdo lo que me pegado. ¿Porqué? ¿Qué he hecho a esas personas para que me hagan eso, para que me golpee, qué cosa le he hecho?” Interview with Gisela, victim of sexual violence perpetrated by the military, Hualla, 04.05.2015.183  CVR, Informe final, Tomo 8, cited in: Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 123.344V Absent Bodiessoldiers according to their skin color: The mestizas were preserved for the captains, while the cholas were handed over to the troops.184 These troops were mostly darker-skinned Peruvians themselves. As Theidon states: “Raping, combined with the ethnic insults, was a means by which these young men “whitened” themselves and transferred ethnic humiliation to their victims.”185 The mechanisms through which the rural Andean population was a priori stigmatized as ‘terrorists’ also testifies of racism. Research participants state, for example, how the military justified the killing of an entire family by stating that they had to “root out” [“sacar de raíz”] the Shining Path, or by accusing villagers of “breeding terrorists” [“criar terrucos”], hereby adopting a racist approach to political affiliation.186 In case of the crime of enforced disappearance, the erasure of all traces of existence and the denial to a dignified burial [entierro digno] testify to the ultimate devaluation of the life of the victim. This devaluation of life during the civil war, especially when inflicted by the state upon civilians, cannot be separated from the historical and socio-economic context of discrimination and structural inequality in which it takes place. The state did not just fail to protect civilians; its representatives systematically violated the basic rights of the people they were supposed to protect in a context of complete impunity. For the victimized population, “the image of the State as an institution that manages and ensures the welfare of citizens became more distant.”187184  Mestizo,-a is a term used in Latin America to refer to persons who have combined European and indigenous American descent. Cholo,-a is a term that is used in Peru to refer to the Andean population. It can have a derogatory meaning depending on the context in which it is used.185  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 135.186  Interview with Emilio, victim of torture, Hualla, 02.05.2015; interview with Lucho, victim of displacement, Hualla, 02.05.2015.187  My translation of original citation: “[...] la imagen del Estado como instución que administra y vela por el bienestar de los ciudadanos, se hizo más distante.” Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), De Víctimas a Ciudadanos: Memorias de La Violencia Política En Comunidades de La Cuenca Del Río Pampas, 38.345V Absent BodiesThese findings help us to understand the problematic relation between the state and the relatives of the disappeared during the process of search as a form of ‘adding insult to injury’: during the attempt of coming to terms with the legacies of a violent crime, which is clearly embedded in an historical context of injustice, new wrongdoings are inflicted upon those who are seeking redress. This is what I call the contemporary past of enforced disappearance: the crime, which is past, is embedded in a context of structural injustice which has historical roots and is still present. This ongoing context of structural injustice is characterized by unequal access to public services, and by racism and discrimination against civilians by state representatives. If we then relate this contemporary past of enforced disappearance to the ‘forensic turn’ in transitional justice, and the focus on finding, exhuming and identifying the bodies of the disappeared as a means of achieving closure, several problems arise. First of all, if carried out as described in the foregoing paragraph, the process of searching the disappeared runs a serious risk of re-victimizing historically excluded population groups.188 The example of the exhumation in Hualla does not stand alone. In her reflections on exhumations in the district of Chungui, Ayacucho, Nathalie Koc-Menard comes to similar conclusions: “A process that was conceived as a means of restoring dignity to victims has, in the eyes of some families, become an experience of insult and discrimination, a reminder that they are excluded because they are poor people from the countryside.”189 The focus on searching and exhuming the bodies 188  This resonates with Mijke de Waardt’s findings on how the implementation of the reparation program is perceived by survivors: “For the moment, Peru’s attempt to close the chapter on its two-decade long internal conflict is seen by interviewees and other victim-survivors in the media as having led to the paradoxical result of feeling mocked—victimized yet again.” De Waardt, “Are Peruvian Victims Being Mocked?: Politicization of Victimhood and Victims’ Motivations for Reparations,” 849.189  Nathalie Koc-Menard, “Notes from the Field: Exhuming the Past After the Peruvian Internal Conflict,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 8, no. 2 ( January 7, 2014): 288.346V Absent Bodiescan thus become very problematic if new non-physical violence is inflicted during the process through which relatives are supposed to find closure of the legacies of violence. The ‘well-meaning outsiders’ are clearly not responsible for the relation between the state and the relatives, or for the way the former treats the latter. Nevertheless, they are the most important mediator between the two parties, and they are the main advocates of inscribing the Peruvian transitional justice process in the international ‘forensic turn’ in the first place. Hereby, they actively transmit the message to the relatives and to society in general that the disappeared should and can be found and that this is a priority or even a necessity in order to come to terms with the past. This message generates high expectations for the survivors. The historical asymmetrical power relations between the Peruvian state and its rural indigenous population did however not end with the war; they also define the context in which the transitional justice process takes place. When advocating for the search of the disappeared, the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ should at all times take these circumstances into account because they shape the limits of the frame in which a certain policy can be implemented.190 Second, if we situate the implementation of the ‘forensic turn’ in Peru in the context of a contemporary past of enforced disappearance, we can wonder what the significance is of the kind of closure proposed by ‘well-meaning outsiders’, which is attached to the act of finding the body, if the condition of structural inequality in which this closure is expected to come about does not significantly change. In other words: to what extent can survivors appreciate the dignified reburial of loved ones as an endpoint of violence - in case they are found and identified in the first place - if it does not testify to a transformation of their relationship with the state into one based on rights and protection? In many cases, survivors’ relation to the disappeared has proven to be a highly political one that speaks to the 190  Indeed, taking some of these limits into account is exactly what the EPAF intended to do by pragmatically stressing the priority of the humanitarian umbrella over a legal approach in a context of impunity and bureaucracy.347V Absent Bodiespresent and future as much as it speaks to the past. In Argentina, for example, the Madres have explicitly resisted exhumations, fearing that the restitution of the corpses of the disappeared would obfuscate their demand for structural socio-economic reforms. The Madres want to cultivate a ‘fertile memory’ of resistance, instead of a ‘memory of death’.191 Based on fieldwork with the Peruvian Mamas of ANFASEP, Isaias Rojas-Perez demonstrates how the exhumations at the military base Los Cabitos in Huamanga opened a space which was claimed by the relatives for political purposes as much as for ritual ones: “the search for their disappeared [...] is no longer focused only on finding the individual missing body, but also on founding a new relationship with the body politic.”192 From a pragmatic point of view, and turning back to the rural context of Hualla, it is not surprising that survivors who live in precarious socio-economic conditions prioritize forward-looking policies that might provide perspectives for improvement of their socio-economic conditions over symbolic measures. For the majority of Huallinos, past-oriented activism is simply a luxury: they cannot afford to spend scarce resources - money as well as precious time - on anything else than the present or the near future. Several villagers indicated that they consider participating in the search for their disappeared relatives too difficult, too expensive, or that they do not see the purpose of digging up the past [¿para qué recordar ya?].193 One research participant who is involved in the search for her disappeared husband expressed her doubts over the process as follows: Deborah: Now I have already found peace. What will happen to me when I remember? When I remember I feel sad, I only 191  Bevernage, History, Memory, and State-Sponsored Violence, 34.192  Rojas-Perez, Mourning Remains, 24.193  Interview with Milushka, victim whose husband and three daughters were killed by the military, Hualla, 03.05.2015; fieldnotes, conversation with local authority, Hualla, 24.06.2015; fieldnotes, conversation with local authority, Hualla, 17.11.2015.348V Absent Bodiesfeel sad. Now again, the señor juez [mister judge] from Ayacucho sent us a notification [to testify]. eva: And do you still foster the hope of finding him? Deborah: I don’t know how it will be. Why would he [the judge] be calling us? They are calling several of us [the relatives of the disappeared]. That day three of us went, but we went in vain. We spent money; the round-trip ticket costs 50 soles [13 euro]. [...] I don’t know why they are calling us. What are they going to tell me? Once again, they are making us remember, that’s what I say, because I feel sad.194 A research participant whose father disappeared in the military basis of Canaria explains how the family could no longer follow-up on the process and explicitly frames the accountability for the disappearance of his father in a wider context of political responsibility: We pulled out. You have to dedicate yourself to it, you have to travel there [to Huamanga], go back, ... But one has to work as well, and that is why one does not have time, so we left it there. Moreover, the case has been archived; we couldn’t find out who was the responsible, but actually, the real responsible who executed, who disappeared, is also the political class: the presidents, the ministers, the political system on the level of the entire country, actually they are the perpetrators. Of course, because Sendero also appeared in an attempt to claim the villages because there was no good distribution of resources on a national level, because there was  a lot of discrimination, there was no access to public services, so all of this created  194  My translation of original citation: “Deborah: Ahora ya estoy tranquila ya pues. ¿Que voy hacer cuando recuerdo? Recuerdo tengo pena pues, ahora ya también, solo tengo pena no mas ya pues. Ahora también de Ayacucho el señor juez, nos mandó una notificación. Eva: Y sigue todavía con la esperanza de encontrar? Deborah: No sé, como será. ¿Para que nos estará llamando? A varios nos está llamando. Esa día hemos ido tres, pero en vano hemos ido. Hemos gastado plata; pasaje también ida y vuelta está 50 soles pues. [...] No sé para que nos estará llamando. ¿Qué me dirá? De vuelta nos está recordando, digo yo, porque tengo pena.” Interview with Deborah, whose husband was disappeared by the military, Hualla, 06.03.2015.349V Absent Bodiesresentment with the population and Sendero captured this.195One of the local authorities, when asked about what kind of policies Hualla would prioritize in order to come to terms with its violent past, states the following:Well, in my opinion, what we want here is to transform ourselves in a different way for the future of our district, of our village, so that in that way there is some development. Not think about that [the war] anymore but think about development: the development of the entire family, the development of our country, that is how it should be. From the point of development, we have to look at the future.196In sum, the friction between the notion of closure attached to the search of the disappeared as it is promoted by ‘well-meaning outsiders’, and the contemporary past of enforced disappearance as it is experienced by and inflicted upon survivors, reflects conflicting temporalities between the perception of enforced disappearance as a criminal event situated in the past that can be redressed in the present 195  My translation of original citation: “Lo dejamos. Hay que dedicarse, estar viajando allá, regresar... Uno también trabaja y no tiene disponibilidad de tiempo, entonces ahí dejamos. Inclusive el caso ya se ha archivado, no pudimos detectar quién era el responsable, pero en el fondo el verdadero responsable del que ha ejecutado, el que ha hecho desaparecer, está también la clase política: el caso de los presidentes, los ministros, lo que es el sistema político a nivel del país, en sí ellos son culpables. Claro, porque Sendero también aparece en una acción por reivindicar a los pueblos, porque no había una buena distribución de los recursos a nivel del país, porque había mucha discriminación, no había mucho acceso al que es el servicio del estado, entonces todas esa cosa creó un resentimiento en la población y de eso se agarró Sendero.” Interview with Joaquin, local authority whose father was disappeared by the military, Hualla, 05.03.2015.196  My translation of original citation: “Bueno para mí, acá nosotros queremos transformarnos de otra manera para el futuro de nuestro distrito, de nuestro pueblo, entonces de esa manera hay un desarrollo. Ya no pensar en esto, sino pensar en el desarrollo: el desarrollo de toda la familia, el desarrollo de nuestro país, eso debe ser. Desde el desarrollo tiene que mirar al futuro.” Interview with Edilberto, local authority, Hualla, 06.03.2015.350V Absent Bodieson the one hand; and the perception of enforced disappearance as a symptom of a structural and ongoing denial of the value of the lives of certain population groups on the other. While the former can be addressed through present-oriented but backward-looking policies, the latter expresses a notion of continuous violence of the past in the present and a desire for transformation in the future. The idea that relatives should actively participate in the search for closure by finding the disappeared, and are expected to ‘leave the past behind’ once this process has been completed, can leave a bitter after taste: in absence of policies that offer solutions to structural problems, the body of the desaparecido can become a Band-Aid on a historical wound. The absence of the bodies testifies to the ultimate denial of the value of the lives of the disappeared and therefore, their restitution might be significant for relatives on an individual level. Moreover, forensic prove of mass atrocity recovered through exhumations can lead to punishment of perpetrators. The friction between the ‘forensic turn’ and the contemporary past of enforced disappearance should therefore not be taken as a plea against actively addressing the problem of the disappeared or against the exhumation and restitution of their bodies. Yet, what I intend to demonstrate is that finding and restituting the bodies of the disappeared in itself does not a priori contribute to justice for the survivors, and less so when implemented in a way that adds insult to injury. In combination with the particular subject positions assigned to and appropriated by survivors, the focus on closure by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ moreover runs the risk of depoliticizing and even weakening the survivors’ long-term struggle for justice. From ‘mournable’ to ‘grievable’ lives?Taking into account all the difficulties encountered in the current policies, it is useful to think of an alternative approach that shifts away from the narrow focus on recovering bodies and that intends to maximize the emancipatory potential of the disappeared for Relatives in front of the cross in memory of the disappeared in Hualla  (2015)Relatives of the disappeared put down flowers at the cemetery (2014)352V Absent Bodiestransforming the relation between the state and the survivors in the present and future. Judith Butler’s idea of “grievable life” can hereby be helpful as a starting point:If certain lives do not qualify as lives or are, from the start, not conceivable as lives within certain epistemological frames, then these lives are never lived nor lost in the full sense. [...] Without grievability, there is no life, or, rather, there is something living that is other than life. Instead, “there is a life that will never have been lived,” sustained by no regard, no testimony, and ungrieved when lost.197Asking Butler’s question “When is life grievable?” allows us to understand the conditions that precede enforced disappearance as well as its specific implications for survivors in the aftermath. If, as Butler argues, grievability is a precondition for the recognition of life, then the absence of this grievability exactly points to the contemporary past that made, make and will make enforced disappearance possible, namely the depreciation of life and more specifically of the lives of certain groups. I therefore argue that it is not enough to make the disappeared ‘mournable’; this is to facilitate the process of mourning for the relatives by finding and reburying the body. Instead, they should become grievable.198 This grievability can be achieved retrospectively by recognizing the loss of the life of the desaparecido for the relative. At the same time, this process of recognition of loss can be a way to achieve the grievabilty of the relatives, which is a necessary precondition to prevent the crime from happening again. In other words, recognizing the grievability of the desaparecidos, I argue, has the potential to become a way of recognizing the lives of the relatives as grievable. The difference, 197  Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, 1.198  Butler uses the concepts of precariousness and grievability “to apprehend a life”. She does not distinguish between grief and mourning. Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable?, 2.353V Absent Bodiesthen, between mournability and grievability lies in going beyond the personal process of achieving closure in order to shift the focus to the political process of becoming a citizen. This implies a temporal shift from a past-oriented to a present- and future-oriented emphasis throughout the process of recognition; from ‘how can we find the bodies of the disappeared?’ to ‘how can we achieve recognition and citizenship for the relatives of the disappeared in absence of the bodies?’. It also implies a shift in responsibility: while closure - in the psychological sense of ‘being able to move on’ - is a goal which can only be achieved by the individual survivor on a personal level, it is the state who is responsible for facilitating and completing the political process of becoming a citizen, which takes place on a societal level. These shifts in emphasis do not necessarily imply mutually exclusive choices between either a backward-looking individual approach, or a forward-looking societal approach. Rather, they reflect the difficult act of balancing priorities in policies of dealing with the past. To put this in practice, we first of all have to question the basic presupposition underpinning the way in which the problem of the disappeared is addressed through the ‘forensic turn’, namely the belief that “the material remains of the dead are available for forensic recovery”.199 Attaching the notion of recognition to the restitution of the body is problematic, because it implies that there will be no recognition if there are no remains to recover. In the first post-TRC decade, less than 2.000 of the 15.000 Peruvian desaparecidos have been found and identified. Only a small fraction of the total amount of relatives of disappeared persons is thus actively addressed through the policies of search, exhumation and restitution. The majority does not participate in the search, abandons the process along the way, or never achieves the point of restitution because the recovered bodies are not identified. Even in case of more efficient procedures, the bodies of many of them will remain unfindable or unidentifiable because of the precise nature of the crime of enforced 199  Rojas-Perez, Mourning Remains, 43.354V Absent Bodiesdisappearance. Therefore, I want to have a closer look at the way in which the disappeared are commemorated by their relatives in Hualla in absence of their bodies. Every year in June, the village commemorates the victims of the civil war on the Día de la Memoria [Day of Memory] during the Mama Sara festival. The Día de la Memoria was set up in 2012 as an initiative of the EPAF in collaboration with Hualla’s victims’ association and the municipality.200 In 2014 and 2015, I attended the commemoration which consisted of a commemorative mass in the morning, followed by a pilgrimage [romería] from the main square to  the cemetery located at the outskirts of the village. At the cemetery, villagers brought flowers and candles to the graves of their loved ones who died during the war. After that, a communal meal was shared in the house of one of the villagers downtown. The pilgrimage to the cemetery confronted the relatives of the disappeared with a fundamental problem: their loved ones do not have a grave and accordingly, they had no place to bring flowers or light candles. I don’t go. Those who bury [their dead] there, they go, I don’t go. Why would I be  going? For nothing.201   [We remember] just by talking. There is no place to bring flowers. […] Because he is not at the cemetery, so nothing, we don’t bring anything.202200  Fieldnotes, Sacsamarca, 28.06.2014.201  My translation of original citation: “Yo no voy. ¿A qué voy a ir si no está allí? Los que entierran allí sí van, yo no voy. ¿Para qué voy a ir? Por gusto.” Interview with Elsa, widow of disappeared husband, Hualla, 02.05.2015. 202  My translation of original citation: “Así hablando no más ya [recordamos]. No hay dónde llevar flor [...] Como no está en el cementerio, entonces nada pues, no llevamos nada.” Interview with Isabel, relative of victim of enforced disappearance, Hualla, 05.03.2015.355V Absent BodiesTo counter this problem, after the first edition of the Día de la Memoria, the relatives of the disappeared started lobbying with the municipal authorities to put a big cross in honor of the disappeared at the graveyard. While the mayor promised to fulfill their demand, there was still no cross by the 2014 edition. The relatives of the disappeared who participated in the pilgrimage gathered separately at the cemetery while the other villagers dispersed to their respective graves. A short ritual was performed in which the relatives stepped forward one by one and put down flowers in the grass. The mayor was called to account for his failure to comply with the construction of the cross, after which he apologized and promised to fulfill his duty before the next edition.203 Indeed, the cross was inaugurated on the Día de la Memoria of 2015. However, instead of putting the cross on the cemetery, the mayor decided to put it on the courtyard in front of the catholic church. This decision caused much dismay with the family members, who claimed that they wanted the disappeared to be part of the cemetery; moreover, a decent [ formal] and well-maintained cemetery:Señor alcalde [mister mayor], fulfill your promise! […] That cross must stand on the cemetery, so that if we go there, we can also leave flowers. For those who have niches, we can leave the flowers there; for those who don’t, we are going to leave them at the cross. We need to have a formal cemetery!204Señor alcalde! Our cemetery has to be in order, because now it is really too disorderly! It doesn’t even look like a cemetery, but 203  Fieldnotes, Día de la Memoria, Hualla, 26.06.2014.204  My translation of original citation: “Señor alcalde eso que sí cumple! […] Esa cruz que sea en el cementerio, cuando nosotras también vamos para dejar nuestra flor. Si de alguno de nosotros tenemos el nicho llevamos ahí, y de los que no tiene van a dejar en la cruz. Debemos tener un cementerio formal.” Field recordings, Día de la memoria: inauguración de la cruz, intervention by a relative of the disappeared, Hualla, 26.06.2015.356V Absent Bodiesrather like a place for animals! If we would take this model [the cross] to the place as it is now, it would be in vain, it will end up in nothing. So, [I suggest] that the señor alcalde makes sure that the cemetery will be fenced, as a matter of creating somewhere safe for the memory of our village to linger.205 The fact that the relatives want the disappeared to be part of a formal cemetery through the construction of the cross tells us at least two things. First of all, it shows that for the relatives of the disappeared, the body is not a necessary precondition for integrating their loved ones into the space of the dead at the cemetery. In absence of the bodies, they developed an alternative way of commemorating which is not attached to the physical remains of the desaparecido. Second, the fact that the cemetery has to be a formal place, protected by the authorities from intrusion by strangers, expresses the political demand to make the disappeared grievable; to revalue their lives as that of human beings instead of animals; as that of citizens. The cross cannot just stand anywhere: it can only fulfill its function if it is safeguarded by the community and secured by the local representatives of the state. While the ‘forensic turn’ puts emphasis on the need to bury the disappeared, the relatives claim the space generated by the absence of the disappeared to vocalize their desire for inclusion and protection in front of the state. As Isaias Rojas-Perez states, the presupposition that relatives are mainly concerned with offering proper burial to the desaparecidos risks reducing survivors to “cultural automatons, preoccupied with following cultural rules” rather than seeing them as ‘modern’ citizens who 205  My translation of original citation: “Señor alcalde! Nuestro cementerio que esté en orden, porque está demasiado descuidado! Ni parece cementerio, sino un sitio de animales! En vano sería si llevamos este modelo, al final no va quedar en nada. Entonces que el señor alcalde está viendo que este cementerio que sea cercado, cosa que ahí va ser una cosa segura, permanecer la memoria de nuestro pueblo. Señor alcalde, usted está comprometiendo al pueblo, que al final que se cumpla! Gracias, señor alcalde.” Field recordings, Día de la memoria: inauguración de la cruz, intervention by a relative of the disappeared, Hualla, 26.06.2015.357V Absent Bodiesmake political claims.206One of the main characteristics of the crime of enforced disappearance is that it generates uncertainty for the family members about the fate of the victim. It is this uncertainty that is mostly pointed out by survivors as generating distress in the aftermath. This brings us back to transitional justice’s core notion of finding truth about the events of the past, and to the key idea behind the ‘forensic turn’ that this truth can be found directly on the body. If we want to think of alternative ways of addressing the problem of the disappeared, it might as well be useful to think of ways to prioritize other mechanisms of revealing the truth about the fate of the desaparecidos. In this respect, a desire that is expressed by Huallinos in relation to those who disappeared in the military bases of Canaria and Chimpapampa, is to hear confessions by the perpetrators. The soldiers know what happened, and by speaking out they can relieve the survivors’ uncertainty. In Hualla, this truth is kept within the confines of the village: one of the soldiers who served in the military base of Chimpapampa married a Huallina and still lives in town: iSabel: He knows where they are, how many dead, how many people they killed, and that person is alive here. eva: And he doesn’t speak? iSabel: He doesn’t speak.207The man’s wife approached Alicia and me several times to invite us over to her house for a conversation. When we went at the agreed time, her husband turned us down from the courtyard, stating that his wife was not home. He left a drunk and aggressive impression as he was sided by his barking dogs who kept us at a safe distance. The house lies a bit at the outskirts of the village - unsurprisingly, the 206  Isaias Rojas-Perez, Mourning Remains, 78.207  My translation of original citation: Isabel: “Él sabe dónde está, cuántos muertos, cuánta gente lo han matado y esa persona está viva aquí.” Eva: “¿Y no habla?” Isabel: “No habla.” Interview with Isabel, relative of victim of enforced disappearance, Hualla, 05.03.2015.358V Absent Bodiesman is malvisto [‘seen badly’, unpopular] and his silence is received with bitterness by the relatives of the disappeared.208Conclusion: In search of the body politicWithout the presence of public authorities, the village feels like an orphan.209 During one of our conversations in Hualla, Mari-Luz told me that ever since her husband had been taken by the soldiers to the military base of Canaria, she had been dreaming about him. The dreams had stopped recently, however. Wondering why her husband had abandoned his nightly visits, Mari-Luz came to the conclusion that it was probably because she had received her economic reparation. This conclusion could imply various motivations for the restless soul of her husband to no longer visit her in her dreams: or he found peace because she received the money, or he was upset with her for accepting the money and reducing the value of his life to 5.000 soles. In any case, it testifies to the direct influence of transitional justice policies on the relation between Mari-Luz and her disappeared husband.This chapter addressed the problem of Peru s´ desaparecidos through the lens of Hualla, a town in which the violence of the civil war was characterized by this specific crime, and the crimes of torture and sexual violence that are closely related to it. By looking at the implementation of transitional justice policies such as the TRC and the reparation program in Hualla in the aftermath of the war, I have first of all pointed out how survivors appropriated an identity that was offered to them by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ as a precondition to claim certain rights. This identity based on trauma, suffering and innocence, does not only obfuscate the political agency of the 208  Fieldnotes, Hualla, 24.06.2014; 03.05.2015.209  My translation of original citation: “El pueblo se siente huérfano sin presencia de autoridades.” Interview with Edilberto, local authority, Hualla, 06.03.2015.359V Absent Bodiesvillagers during the war. It also weakens their struggle for justice in the present because it is based on disempowering characteristics, reasserts existing gender structures that facilitate sexual violence (mainly against women), and prevents certain survivors (mainly men) from claiming their rights.Secondly, the chapter turned from the survivors to the desaparecidos to scrutinize how they are being looked for and looked after during the transitional justice process. By looking at the tense interaction between the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ and the state, and at the poor progress that has been achieved since the end of the mandate of the TRC, it becomes clear that the implementation of the ‘forensic turn’ in Peru has stranded in a deadlock. This deadlock is caused by the tension between the legal and humanitarian purposes of the search for the disappeared on the one hand; and by the “tyranny” of the bureaucracy of the judicial apparatus on the other. Moreover, the relation between state representatives and survivors throughout the process of searching, identifying and restituting the bodies of the disappeared is intersected by racism and discrimination against rural indigenous peasants. These forms of exclusion inflicted by the state upon survivors add insult to injury: new violence is inflicted upon those who seek redress, who are hereby reminded of the mechanisms of structural violence that underlie the crimes of the past and still characterize the present. I point to this phenomenon as the contemporary past of enforced disappearance. By relating this contemporary past of enforced disappearance to the implementation of the ‘forensic turn’, I identified two main problems. First of all, taking into account the problematic attitude of the state towards the survivors, the process of searching the disappeared runs a serious risk of re-victimizing historically excluded population groups. When advocating for the search of the disappeared, the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ should at all times consider the limits of the frame in which a certain policy is implemented if they want to respect the ‘do no harm’ principle. In the case of Peru, these limits are shaped by the historically asymmetrical power relations between 360V Absent Bodiesthe Peruvian state and its rural indigenous population. Second, the notion of closure through reburial and the contemporary past of enforced disappearance reflect conflicting temporalities between the perception of a criminal event situated in the past that can be redressed in the present on the one hand; and the perception of enforced disappearance as a symptom of a structural and ongoing denial of the value of the lives of certain population groups on the other. While the former can be addressed through present-oriented yet backward-looking policies, the latter expresses a notion of continuous violence in the present and a desire for transformation in the future. This desire for transformation is inherently political and reflects survivors’ claims for rights and protection by the state.I therefore argue that, while exhumation and restitution can contribute to recognition as well as to justice in important ways, the narrow focus on bodies as the main starting point for dealing with the disappeared can result to be highly problematic for two reasons. First of all, in absence of structural measures against socio-economic exclusion, and taking into account the insult that is added to injury during the process of search, the bodies risk to become a Band-aid on a historical wound. Second, from a pragmatic point of view, it is necessary to acknowledge that, even in the best possible circumstances, the remains of many disappeared will never be found or identified. The ‘forensic turn’ in transitional justice created a very specific way of dealing with the disappeared, but there might be other options that moreover better respond to survivors’ future-oriented political claims for citizenship and inclusion. In order to imagine these alternatives, I suggest shifting the emphasis from ‘how can we find the bodies of the disappeared?’ to ‘how can we achieve recognition and citizenship for the relatives of the disappeared in absence of the bodies?’. When it comes to the implementation of transitional justice policies, ‘well-meaning outsiders’ have to pick their battles carefully, because choices motivated by normative ideas might have very tangible implications for survivors. Therefore, taking into account the Peruvian context, I advocate an approach 361V Absent BodiesWomen harvesting wheat in Hualla (2015)to the problem of the disappeared that prioritizes the search for the body politic, rather than the search for bodies.Self-defense committees parading during ceremony in Pichiwillca (2018) VI HIDDEN HEROESCitizenship Claims of the Comités de Autodefensa Civil in the Valley of the Apurímac River Map of the VRAEM 1: Fieldwork districtsMap of the VRAEM 2: Points of interest366VI Hidden HeroesHas any enlightened intellectual ever dedicated a chapter to that generation of brave self-defense commandos? To fight ‘for the family agriculture’ is like fighting for family survival before the indifference of the state... Hasta la victoria siempre!1IntroductionThis chapter takes us from the highlands South of Huamanga to the subtropical ‘eyebrow’ of the jungle (ceja de selva) that stretches Northwest from the capital of the Ayacucho region. Here, in the valley of the Apurímac River, the comités de autodefensa civil (CADs, civil self-defense committees) played a key-role in defeating the Shining Path during the civil war.2 The Peruvian self-defense committees best fit the definition of militias provided by Jentzsch, Kalyvas and Schubiger: “armed groups that operate alongside regular security forces or work independently of the state to shield the local population from insurgents.”3 As the authors point out, while other definitions have used the term militias to describe any nonstate armed groups, the crucial element in this definition is the anti-rebel dimension. Despite the fact that militias have emerged in many conflicts, they rarely are the object of study as the proliferation and fragmentation of armed actors is mostly 1  My translation of original citation: “Algún intelectual iluminado [...] en algún momento ha dedicado algún capítulo a esa generación de valerosos ronderos? [...] Luchar ‘por la agricultura familiar’, es como luchar por la supervivencia familiar, ante la indiferencia del estado...Hasta la victoria siempre!” An ex-self-defense committee member in a comment on facebook to an article of Noticias Vraem about coca eradication policies, https://www.facebook.com/permal ink.php?story_fbid=910286432688282&id=100011208014188, 14.09.2019.2  While self-defense committees existed in many other parts of the war-affected departments as well, their role was especially significant in the valley of the Apurímac river. 3  Corinna Jentzsch, Stathis N. Kalyvas, and Livia Isabella Schubiger, “Militias in Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 5 (August 1, 2015): 755.367VI Hidden Heroesstudied from a rebel perspective.4 Nevertheless, Jentzsch, Kalyvas and Schubiger rightfully claim that “the study of militias contributes not only to theories relevant for understanding conflict processes but more generally to theories of post-conflict dynamics, including postwar violence, inclusiveness, and citizenship.”5 In (post-)conflict Peru as well, the role of the CADs is both under exposed and controversial. According to the TRC,[…] for no other actor of the war, the dividing line between perpetrator and victim, between hero and villain, is so thin and porous as for the self-defense committees. As pacifiers for some and murderers for others, they are a concern for all […]6 Before focusing on the analysis of the diffusion of transitional justice with its underlying ideas on time, memory and victimhood by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ in the Valley of the Apurímac river, and the several ways in which these ideas are contested by the (post-)conflict reality of the self-defense committees, I will turn to the geographical and historical background against which this chapter unfolds. Therefore, this chapter starts with a brief introduction to the history and geography of the region, which differs in many ways from the scenery of Sacsamarca and Hualla. The valley of the Apurímac River forms part of the larger region of the Valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro Rivers, most commonly known by its acronym VRAEM. Next to being home to the few active remnants of the Shining Path, the region is the country’s and one of the world’s biggest providers of coca leaves, cocaine paste and cocaine. Depicted mostly in Peruvian and international media as a 4  Jentzsch, Kalyvas, and Schubiger, 756.5  Jentzsch, Kalyvas, and Schubiger, 763.6  My translation of original citation: “[…] en ningún otro actor de la Guerra la línea divisoria entre perpetrador y víctima, entre héroe y villano es tan delgada y tan porosa como en los comités de autodefensa. Pacificadores para unos, asesinos para otros, son inquietud para todos […].” CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 74.368VI Hidden Heroesviolent no-go area ruled by narcos and ‘terrorists’, it is probably Peru’s most contested region. Because of the ongoing struggle against ‘narcoterrorism’, the VRAEM is declared in state of emergency and is the most militarized area of the country.7 Secondly, I will give an historical overview of how the organization of civil self-defense committees in the VRAEM came about during the civil war. While the CADs originally emerged from the initiative of the local population and their opposition against the violent incursions of both the military and the Shining Path, the military began actively facilitating and, in some cases, even imposing their organization. This resulted in a complex alliance between the CADs and the state forces. Furthermore, I will highlight how the war developed parallel to the rise of an illicit economy based on the cultivation of coca leaves for the production of cocaine paste and cocaine, bringing about a pragmatic alliance between the CADs – who made and make a living as coca farmers (cocaleros) – on the one hand and drug traffickers (narcotraficantes) on the other. I will conclude the first part by briefly touching upon the role of the CADs in local order and security in the VRAEM today.  Subsequently, the chapter turns to the diffusion of transitional justice by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ with regards to the (post-)conflict position of the CADs in the VRAEM. More specifically, I analyze the respective position of the TRC and the treatment of the CADs in the reparation program (PIR). The process of diffusion of transitional justice in the VRAEM differs fundamentally from what we have seen in the case studies on Sacsamarca and Hualla. I identify at least 7  The VRAEM is in the first place a geographical area delineating an emergency zone for military intervention, which means it is not one of the 24 administrative departments of Peru. Formerly, the denomination VRAE was used but since the supreme decree N°074-2012-PCM of 2012 the river Mantaro was included. The territory of the VRAEM counts with 66 districts in ten provinces, covering parts of the administrative departments of Junín, Cusco, Huancavelica, Apurímac and Ayacucho. See also: Christoph Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State” (doctoral dissertation, Philipps-Universität Marburg, 2017), 182.369VI Hidden Heroestwo reasons why this is the case. Firstly, when the TRC started its mandate in 2001, the valley of the Apurímac river was still far less accessible than it is today because of lack of infrastructure - transport was still largely over water- and because of the insecurity caused by persisting activities of the Shining Path. This inaccessibility is one of the plausible explanations for the rather limited amount of fieldwork conducted by the TRC in the VRAEM8 and the remarkable absence of (international) human rights NGOs in the region until today, especially in comparison with the highlands of Ayacucho. The second reason – and the most important one in light of this study - has to do with the nexus between human rights, trauma and victimhood that underlies transitional justice. Because transitional justice tends to describe agency in (post-)conflict in exclusive categories of victims and perpetrators, civilian participation in war – whether it takes the shape of collaboration, resistance or self-defense - is obfuscated and lacks conceptualization. The agency of the CADs corresponds to this blind spot in transitional justice. The CADs were definitely an important concern for the TRC because of their bad reputation and involvement in human rights violations. However, the real complexity of their agency and their (post-)conflict identity is left untold in the final report and unaddressed in its recommendations and follow-up mechanisms such as the reparation program. In other words, the CADs of the VRAEM resulted to be a ‘difficult’ actor in a ‘difficult’ region. Consequently, transitional justice with its underlying ideas on memory, victimhood and time was not as actively diffused in the VRAEM as in the highlands of Ayacucho.    8  The in-depth study of the TRC on the CADs (this means all the CADs, not only those in the valley of the Apurímac river) mentions that its findings were based on 40 interviews and “some” focus groups with commanders and members of the CADs. In July 2002, the TRC organized a two-day workshop in the city of Huanta on the topic of the CADs, in which eight commanders of the valley of the Apurímac river participated. During my own fieldwork, research participants mostly answered negatively to the question whether they had given their testimony to the TRC. CVR, “Comité de Autodefensa 2,” 2002, 8, SCO34509, Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos.370VI Hidden HeroesTransitional justice’s underlying ideas on memory, victimhood and time are appropriated, reaffirmed and contested in several ways by the CADs in the VRAEM.  Firstly, and in response to the abovementioned blind spot of civil participation that characterizes the way transitional justice describes the agency of survivors, a look beyond the bad reputation of the CADs of the valley of the Apurímac river reveals an image that goes beyond that of peasants caught between two fires turning into “zombies” or “Andean Rambo’s”.9 As Mario Fumerton has pointed out, the role of militias such as the Peruvian self-defense committees as providers of local governance and social order is under investigated due to the one-sided focus on their destructive nature.10 Jemima García-Godos equally highlights the importance of the CADs as “the governing bodies of peasant communities in the context of war.”11 According to Jentzsch, Kalyvas and Schubiger, “one of the least explored aspects of militias is their role in setting-up local forms of governance that depart from existing state structures and can operate with remarkable autonomy.”12 Indeed, the collaboration between the CADs and the state forces and the coercion that was in many cases exercised by the latter over the former should not obscure the peasants’ own initiative in organizing the self-defense committees. As Ponciano Del Pino stated when describing the Shining Path’s initial mistaken assessment of the self-defense committees: Probably the Shining Path never imagined a minimally 9  Carlos Iván Degregori, “Sendas Peligrosas. La Guerra Del Comandante Huayhuaco,” in Jamás Tan Cerca Arremetió Lo Lejos: Sendero Luminoso y La Violenica Politica, IEP (Lima, 2015), 127.10  Mario Fumerton, “Beyond Counterinsurgency: Peasant Militias and Wartime Social Order in Peru’s Civil War,” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 105 (2018): 63.11  Jemima García-Godos, “Victim Reparations in the Peruvian Truth Commission and the Challenge of Historical Interpretation,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 2, no. 1 (2008): 69.12  Jentzsch, Kalyvas, and Schubiger, “Militias in Civil Wars,” 758.371VI Hidden Heroesautonomous response against them by the civilian population; even less that the most forceful answer would come from the peasantry which they saw as amorphous, incapable of political initiative. [… ]  I argue that there are many places where the civil defense committees arise by peasant initiative, others where the imposition plays an important and even brutal role; but in all those [self-defense committees] that are operative, there is some disposal of the peasants. The collaboration with the army, even when receiving orders from them, does not nullify that political decision.13Carlos Iván Degregori similarly points to the “understanding of the peasantry as an actor incapable of initiative” as a blind spot of Abimael Guzmán’s pensamiento Gonzalo.14 Moreover, Del Pino adds that many politicians and intellectuals made the same mistake of merely seeing a “passive peasantry caught between two fires” which was forced by the army to organize in self-defense committees.15 Besides the blind spot of civilian participation in transitional justice, the general underestimation of the agency of peasant communities in Peru highlighted by Degregori and Del Pino can be considered 13  My translation of original citation: “Probablemente SL nunca imaginó una respuesta mínimamente autónoma de la población civil en su contra; menos aún que la respuesta más contundente provendría del campesinado al cual veían amorfo, incapaz de iniciativa política. [… ] Postulamos que hay muchos lugares donde los CDC surgen por iniciativa campesina, otros donde la imposición juega un papel importante y hasta brutal; pero en todos aquellos que son operativos, hay algo de voluntad campesina. La coordinación con el Ejército, incluso recibiendo órdenes de él, no le quita valor a esa decisión política.” Ponciano Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” in Las Rondas Campesinas y La Derrota de Sendero Luminoso (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1996), 134.14  My translation of original citation: “su comprensión del campesinado como un actor incapaz de iniciativa”. Degregori, Qué Difícil Es Ser Dios El Partido Comunista Del Perú - Sendero Luminoso y El Conflicto Armado Interno En El Perú: 1980-1999, 226.15  My translation of original citation: “un campesinado pasivo y atrapado entre dos fuegos” Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” 134.372VI Hidden Heroesas an additional explanation for the lack of conceptualization of the agency of the CADs by transitional justice mechanisms such as the TRC. While I have argued that the first finds its origin in international human rights discourse, the latter can be contextualized in a historiographic tradition that, as Cecilia Méndez has pointed out, tends to assign a passive role to the Peruvian peasantry. 16 My main concern here remains, of course, human rights and transitional justice discourse, which is why I will not engage in an in-depth analysis of this historiographic tradition, nor of its possible underlying assumptions on the inferiority of indigenous peasants which have deep historical roots. Nevertheless, the possible intersection of transitional justice and human rights discourse with existing ideas leading to similar blind spots should not be neglected. In this case, both the lack of conceptualization of civilian participation in violence that characterizes transitional justice and the underestimation of the agency of peasant communities result in a failure to shed light on the local processes of governance and social order that are both cause and consequence of the organization of peasants in self-defense committees during the war. By scrutinizing how the CADs “were capable not only of defeating the Shining Path, but also of organizing life in the valley in the midst of war”17 an image of the CADs emerges that is more comprehensive than that of predatory warlords or that of a peasantry used by the military as cannon fodder, hereby contesting transitional justice’s underlying ideas on victimhood and (post-war) agency. 16  In her review of the historiography of Peruvian Independence, Cecilia Méndez points out how “both nationalist and Marxist historians converged in assigning peasants a passive role.” While Méndez points out how this trend has shifted since the 1980s, its influence should not be underestimated. Cecilia Méndez, The Plebeian Republic: The Huanta Rebellion and the Making of the Peruvian State, 1820–1850 (Duke University Press, 2005), 8.17  My translation of original citation: “fueron capaces no solo de derrotar a SL [Sendero Luminoso], sino de ordenar la vida dentro del valle en plena guerra.” Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” 175.373VI Hidden HeroesSecondly, the kind of memory of the civil war fostered by the CADs is in the first place a heroic memory that stresses the decisive role of the CADs in the so-called ‘pacification’ of the VRAEM. While the memory duty in transitional justice focuses on traumatic memories of human rights violations, the CADs foster a heroic memory of victory over the Shining Path. With this narrative, they strive for the recognition of their contribution to the pacification rather than the recognition of their victimhood based on suffering. In other words: they claim to be heroes rather than victims. Also, this kind of narrative – which glorifies rather than condemns certain aspects of the war - does not fit transitional justice’s ‘never again’ idea. Therefore, the heroic memory of the CADs contests the way in which transitional justice describes the agency of survivors (victims vs. heroes) as well as several of the underlying assumptions (recognition and prevention) of transitional justice’s memory duty. Thirdly, when scrutinizing the (post-)conflict temporality of the VRAEM, it becomes clear that for the CADs in the VRAEM, the ruptures between past, present and future proposed by transitional justice are not that self-evident. When the TRC started its mandate in 2001, the CADs clearly did not perceive the struggle with the Shining Path as over and they expressed that they were not ready at all to disarm. Today, while the CADs naturally distinguish the extreme violence of the civil war from the present, there is still a strong sense of continuation of conflict in which the violence of the past is entangled with, rather than separated from, the ongoing struggle against ‘narcoterrorism’. The sustained declaration of the VRAEM as an emergency zone and the continuous presence of the state forces facilitate this sense of a ‘contemporary past’ in the VRAEM, which on its turn is perceived as an obstacle for future development of the region. Lastly, this chapter reflects upon notions of citizenship and recognition in relation to the (post-)conflict agency of the CADs, as these are two essential components of transitional justice’s aims of coming to terms with the past. As many scholars have concluded in their analysis 374VI Hidden Heroesof national and international wars and conflicts around the globe, “soldiering is tied with concepts of citizenship.”18 As both Fumerton and García-Godos have argued for the Peruvian self-defense committees, and as my research confirms, their militia service was a way of claiming citizenship status within the nation-state.19 The local governance structure of the CADs is therefore, despite its high degree of autonomy, inevitably strongly entangled with the national level of the state. I argue that, for the CADs, building this strong governance structure was not only a way of organizing, but also of legitimizing self-defense and, therefore, a means to claim their position within the Peruvian nation. I hereby follow García-Godos’ interpretation of Tilly’s (1996) conceptualization of the notion of citizenship, which defines citizenship as “the practices in which actors engage by virtue of their relationship to the state.”20 This relational approach to citizenship “as a tie between people and (agents of the) state” helps to study citizenship not as something that is merely granted by the state in a top-down manner, but rather as something that is claimed and negotiated bottom-up, especially in contexts of high socio-economic inequality.21 It allows to study the concept as a range varying “from thin to thick citizenship, that is, from a few to many transactions, thus allowing multiple categories and forms of citizenship within the same state.”22 Moreover, as García-Godos argues, the context of the civil war created a space for negotiation between the state and its rural populations as the state eventually 18  Kimberly Theidon, “Reconstructing Masculinities: The Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration of Former Combatants in Colombia,” Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. 1 (2009): 16.19  Fumerton, “Beyond Counterinsurgency: Peasant Militias and Wartime Social Order in Peru’s Civil War,” 79; García-Godos, “Victim Reparations in the Peruvian Truth Commission and the Challenge of Historical Interpretation,” 70.20  Jemima García-Godos, “Citizenship, Conflict and Reconstruction: A Case-Study of the Effects of Armed Conflict on Peasant-State Relations in Tambo, Peru” (University of Oslo, 2005), 36.21  García-Godos, 38.22  García-Godos, 36.375VI Hidden Heroesrealized that it needed its support to win the war. Consequently, “the armed conflict brought peasants and state together in an alliance that exchanged support for recognition.”23 This brings us to the link between citizenship and recognition. Of course, the CAD’s claimed position within the Peruvian nation could or can only fully come into being if recognized as such within the larger unity of the nation-state. A distinction can be made here between the recognition of the CADs as a legitimate actor during the war on the one hand, and the (post-)conflict recognition of their contribution to the defeat of the Shining Path on the other, the latter of which is not only the essence of the heroic memory fostered by the CADs, but also of their political agency as citizens. Subsequently, the question can be asked how conceptions of citizenship and recognition in the case of the CADs relate to the aim of reconciling the ‘multiple Peru’s’ that stands center-stage in the country’s transitional justice project. The chapter concludes by reflecting upon the (methodological) implications of my findings for the study of transitional justice and (post-)conflict dynamics in general. Most importantly, I will argue that there is an urgent need to conceptualize a multi-layered survivor identity which embraces the fact that victimhood, violation, resistance and heroism are no mutually exclusive features.Methodology and sourcesAs Christoph Heuser has pointed out, “the VRAEM is a vast territory with great diversity” which is all too often “taken as a monolithic block”.24 It is therefore important to keep in mind that, while throughout this chapter I will sometimes refer to the VRAEM region as a whole when describing the general and contemporary context, the case study focuses on the self-defense committees of the valley of the Apurímac River. More specifically, Gabriela 23  García-Godos, 40.24  Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State,” 182.376VI Hidden HeroesZamora and I conducted forty interviews in twenty small villages (centros poblados) in the districts of Samugari and Santa Rosa (province of La Mar, department of Ayacucho), Kimbiri and Pichari (province of La Convención, department of Cusco), Llochegua (province of Huanta, department of Ayacucho) and Rio Tambo (province of Satipo, department of Junín25).Of the forty interviewees, 32 are ex-CAD members - meaning that they participated in one way or another in self-defense - of whom thirteen are ex-commanders. Other interviewees include relatives of ex-CADs, actual CAD members and local authorities. Twelve of the interviewees are women. The underrepresentation of women is due to the fact that most of the ex-commanders, who were the main target group for interviews, were men. Women did, however, actively participate in the daily activities of self-defense and in some cases took up leading roles. We spoke to a woman in the district of Santa Rosa, for example, whose mother was a prominent figure in the local self-defense committee and committed suicide after persistent intimidation by the Shining Path.26 Another research participant who participated from a very young age in self-defense recounted how his mother was in charge of the comando de mujeres27 in her village, whose task mainly was to provide food for the patrols.28 A study focusing on female perspectives on self-defense would undoubtedly provide interesting complementary insights. More than in the highlands, Spanish by now is the dominant language in the VRAEM which is why only three of the interviews were conducted in Quechua and the remaining in Spanish. Gabriela and I conducted the majority of interviews together, except for two conversations 25  In the district of Rio Tambo, I only conducted fieldwork in the most Southern part, which officially belongs to Satipo, Junín, but mostly counts itself as part of Pichari, Cusco. 26  Interview with Flora, daughter of ex-CAD commander, district of Santa Rosa, 11.07.2018.27  Women command28  Interview with Ladislao, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.377VI Hidden Heroesinvolving close relatives of hers which I conducted alone. Six interviewees did not give permission to record the conversation, in that case notes were taken during the interview. The fact that the fieldwork was multi-sited reflects the nature of the object of study: the CADs were organized in a network that covered the entire valley and we followed the structure of the organization for our fieldwork. Potential interviewees were selected both through our own previous knowledge of the subject, which made it possible to identify key informants, and through snowball sampling. Participant observation was carried out during the commemoration ceremony of the 34th anniversary of the foundation of the self-defense committees of the valley in the village of Pichiwillca, during several town meetings and patron saint celebrations and during a training of the actual CAD by the military in the district of Samugari. The commemoration ceremony was an excellent moment to network and find possible research participants, as ex-members of the self-defense committees of the entire valley come to Pichiwillca to participate in the activities. Permission to carry out participant observation during the ceremony was given by the actual commander of the self-defense committee of Pichiwillca. Fieldnotes and an extensive fieldwork diary helped me to process the information gathered through observation. In order to guarantee the privacy of the research participants, I will mostly refer to the districts but not to the specific villages or towns where the fieldwork was conducted, unless in cases where the location is obvious such as for example in case of the commemoration in Pichiwillca. The fieldwork was carried out during three separate fieldtrips. Two exploratory fieldtrips of a week were carried out in 2015 and 2017. Subsequently, the majority of the interviews were conducted during one month of fieldwork in 2018, which first focused on the Southern part of the valley (the districts of Samugari, Santa Rosa and Kimbiri) and then on the Northern part (the districts of Pichari and Llochegua). My close collaboration with Gabriela Zamora was decisive for turning towards the VRAEM. Despite the negative advice of many others, 378VI Hidden HeroesGabriela encouraged me to explore a part of Ayacucho which had always seemed inaccessible. Her parents Victor Zamora and Flora Castellares received me in their home in Malvinas as if I were their sixth daughter. The family’s help and knowledge were crucial for making this field research possible. The lengthy conversations with don Victor and mama Flora, whose life stories alone could fill another book, were essential for my understanding of the region’s past and present. During our time in the field, their home in Malvinas was our main operating base from where we traveled to other places during the daytime. We did, however, sometimes spend the night in other places when it was too late to get home before nightfall. During the fieldwork in the Northern part of the valley we also stayed several times in the town of Pichari. As we did not have our own car or motorbike, we relied on riding along on the loading ramp of one of the many Toyota Hilux trucks for traveling long distances, mototaxis and walking for short distances and boats to cross the river. Quite some information and insights were gained from the many hours spent on the road and the conversations with fellow travelers. Additionally, my own empirical material was triangulated with data from the TRC and the few academic studies involving in-depth field research with the self-defense committees in the valley of the Apurímac river conducted by Ponciano Del Pino, Mario Fumerton and Steven Zech.29 Furthermore, Christoph Heuser’s dissertation on the VRAEM’s illicit economy and Jemima García-Godos’ research on peasant self-defense in the highland district of Tambo, Ayacucho, were important sources of information and inspiration for understanding, respectively, the general context of the VRAEM and the phenomenon of self-defense during the civil war.3029  Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac”; Mario Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000 (Amsterdam: Thela Publishers, 2002); Steven T. Zech, “Between Two Fires: Civilian Resistance during Internal Armed Conflict in Peru” (University of Washington, 2016).30  Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the 379VI Hidden HeroesWhile conducting fieldwork in an emergency zone might seem challenging, I did not experience remarkable feelings or real situations of insecurity during my time in the field. Nevertheless, foreigners do not go unnoticed in the VRAEM. While in most villages in the highland provinces of Huancasancos and Victor Fajardo the population is used to receiving NGO or state personnel coming from Lima or abroad, the foreigners that come to the VRAEM are mostly narcotraficantes. In this respect, I feel that being a woman for once was an advantage for my security. As a female and ‘innocent’ outsider, I would at the very most be mistaken for a Jehovah’s Witness trying to convert the local population, while my German white male colleague Christophe with whom I spent some time in the VRAEM would mostly be suspected of being a North-American drug trafficker. Or, even worse, whispers behind his back would accuse him of being the pishtaco, a mythical violent figure in Andean tales, who is mostly described as a white male that murders and rapes locals in a particularly cruel way.31 As Gabriela and I presented ourselves as researchers during the commemoration ceremony in Pichiwillca, many of the people who we approached for interviews already knew about our presence in the valley. The fact that we were investigating the history of the self-defense committees was overall received positively. The fact that Gabriela’s family is well-known, especially in the Southern part of the valley, also made it easier to gain access. Nevertheless, I remained alert for the possible bias that the family connection entailed. Sometimes don Victor would warn us that we should not try to talk to certain people, herewith referring to existing conflicts between families and individuals. The self-defense committees also ‘had our back’ which of course was an Margins of the State”; García-Godos, “Citizenship, Conflict and Reconstruction: A Case-Study of the Effects of Armed Conflict on Peasant-State Relations in Tambo, Peru”; García-Godos, “Victim Reparations in the Peruvian Truth Commission and the Challenge of Historical Interpretation.”31  On the notion of the pishtaco, see: Mary Weismantel, Cholas and Pishtacos: Stories of Race and Sex in the Andes (University of Chicago Press, 2001).380VI Hidden Heroesasset for our (feeling of) security. In some places, they actively kept us up to date about the security situation by phone or whatsapp. On one occasion, we were actively warned no to go somewhere because of rumors about the presence of the Quispe Palomino clan, one of the remnants of the Shining Path.Another important source of information for this case study were the documents kept in the archive of the central headquarter of the self-defense committees in Pichiwillca. Negotiating access to the documents was not self-evident, but permission was eventually granted by the self-defense committee of Pichiwillca to consult the archive for the purpose of my study.32 While the archive is most likely incomplete - several documents containing incriminating information could have been intentionally destroyed - and in a bad state of conservation due to the climatological and infrastructural conditions in which it has been kept, it still contains a wealth of information of which I can only include a small fraction in this book. In total, I consulted around 600 documents. The archive includes correspondence from the base and zonal committees (cfr. infra) to the headquarters of the self-defense committees in Monterrico or Pichiwillca33, drafts and originals from communication and orders send out from the headquarter to the base committees, communication between the headquarter of the self-defense committees and the military, letters written by the president of 32  One of the promises that Gabriela and I made during the negotiation was that we would do an effort to improve the conditions of conservation, which we did by storing the majority of documents in plastic boxes that we brought. However, more specialized conservation techniques should be applied to properly store the documents, for example by centralizing them in the archive of peasant communities in Huamanga. Nevertheless, this should of course be discussed with the self-defense committee and the involved communities. 33  In the early years of the war, the regional headquarter was established in the town of Monterrico. In 1984-1985, the central leadership was taken over by the self-defense committee of Pichiwillca. At least part of the archive was moved from Monterrico to Pichiwillca as well, because the current archive in Pichiwillca includes a lot of documents that are addressed to the headquarter in Monterrico. 381VI Hidden Heroesthe headquarter of the self-defense committees addressed to the Peruvian congress, to president Fujimori, to national media, etc. Interestingly enough, all documents are written in Spanish. The documents are either handwritten or written with a typewriter and contain a lot of spelling mistakes and linguistic interferences with Quechua.34 The English translation of the citations leans as close as possible to the Spanish original. However, punctuation was sometimes added to enhance the readability of the text. Similar as in the case of the interview citations, the Spanish original (without extra punctuation) is included in the footnote. I will refer to the documents in the footnotes by their title, subject, or number; to the sender, which mostly is one of the base committees or the headquarter in Pichiwillca and to the date - always if any is mentioned.35  For privacy reasons, I will again avoid mentioning any names of persons. Last but not least, studying an archive which was produced during wartime by an actor as ambiguous as the self-defense committees is challenging in many respects. Some documents contain a straightforward license to kill or have the purpose of justifying horrific acts of violence, while others foremost reflect the desperation of a population left to its fate by the rest of the nation. That being said, nothing in this chapter, whether based on fieldwork or archival sources, should be read as a justification of the human rights violations committed by the CADs rather than as an effort to unravel the agency and governance of a ‘difficult’ actor in a ‘difficult’ region.34  For example, one very common linguistic interference between Quecha and Spanish is using ‘i’ for ‘e’. Incorrect spelling will be referred to in the Spanish original of the citations with [sic].35  Date annotations, both in case of the archival sources as in the case of interviews, follow the structure dd.mm.yyyy.  Town of Pichari (2018)383VI Hidden Heroes6.1 The self-defense committees in the VRAEM‘No-man’s land’: History and geography of the VRAEMThe Apurímac river runs as a leitmotif through the histories of the valley, which until today remains rather difficult to access because of its geography and (perceived) insecurity. Its fast-flowing water roars as an untamable monster during the rainy season and gradually transforms into a rough cleavage made up of sandbanks when the dry time of the year sets in. During the civil war, the belligerent parties turned the river into a mass grave. As one research participant claims, the bodies of the desaparecidos that came ashore served as prey for the condors, who found their way into the valley all the way from their regular environment in Arequipa.36 ‘The God who speaks’, as is the significance of the river’s name in Quechua, splits the valley in a left and right bank, respectively belonging to the departments of Ayacucho and Cusco. The main entry point of the valley from the side of Ayacucho is the town of San Francisco37. The curvy road connecting Huamanga to San Francisco, which was constructed in 1964, runs over high mountain tops and enters the cloud forest alongside deep abysses. In the past few years, many parts of the road have been improved and asphalted, reducing travel time from the former ten hours to currently five hours in a four-wheel drive truck (if everything goes well). During the rainy season, however, landslides frequently block the road. When I first visited the VRAEM in 2015, we got stuck in such a landslide on our journey back to Huamanga and had to wait for a day on the side of the road before the passage was cleared. (Returning is mostly not 36  Fieldnotes, district of Kimbiri, 24.06.2018. 37  Locals jokingly say that one can find the whole world in the VRAEM, because many towns and villages in the valley are named after other places in the world, e.g. San Francisco, Luisiana, Palestina and Malvinas. As San Francisco in California has the famous Golden Gate bridge, San Francisco of the VRAEM has a big bridge that connects the town to Kimbiri which was inaugurated in 1971. 384VI Hidden Heroesan option in these situations, because hundreds of cars queue up on both sides.) As this road is an important axis for transportation of drugs, cars are regularly searched at the military checkpoint in Machente right before entering San Francisco, or by the police before entering Huamanga. Because of the bad infrastructure and relatively high risk, traveling between Huamanga and San Francisco is rather expensive compared to Peruvian standards: the journey in the cabin of a pick-up truck costs 60 to 70 soles (around €17). The majority of the roads connecting the central districts on both the left and right bank of the Apurímac river were constructed in 2002. Before the existence of this road, transportation of people and goods throughout the valley all happened over water in small boats or in some cases by plane.38 Today, most of the transport happens over land with private pick-up trucks - almost exclusively Toyota Hilux - that cross the river by ferry.In the 17th century, when Jesuits and Franciscans made their way into the cloud forest, eager to Christianize the native Asháninka population who had lived there for centuries, the landscape of the valley must have been pristine. It largely remained as such until the beginning of the 20th century, when colonos39 from the Northern highlands of Ayacucho entered the “no-man’s land”40 38  In the 1950s, airstrips were constructed on the haciendas of Teresita and Luisiana. At the height of the development of the coca economy (1985-1995), the airstrip of Palmapampa was highly frequented by Colombian narco-flights for transportation of cocaine paste. Mario Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000 (Amsterdam: Thela Publishers, 2002), 109; Ponciano Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” in Las Rondas Campesinas y La Derrota de Sendero Luminoso (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1996), 170; Heuser, “Contested State Fromation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State,” 200.39  Settlers40  One of the research participants, whose family was among the first generation of colonos, referred to the valley as “tierra de nadie” (“no-man’s land”) when recounting the colonization process. Fieldnotes, district of Kimbiri, 24.06.2018. Apurímac River in the district of Kimbiri (2017)Landslide on the road between Huamanga and San Francisco (2015)386VI Hidden Heroesof the valley in search for better lands and lives.41 Especially from the 1950s onwards, it became home to farmers who explored the valley’s fertility to grow cocoa, coca, coffee, peanuts and barbasco42. In this early stage of colonization, a handful of farmers succeeded in claiming big pieces of lands and establishing haciendas in several places. Peones43 coming from the highlands were exploited on these haciendas while other small-scale farmers had to struggle to survive. These inequalities between wealthy landowners and merchants on the one hand, and peasant smallholders and peones on the other, led to class tensions that would later play into the hands of the Shining Path.44 Between 1968 and 1975, the agricultural reforms of president Velasco Alvarado obliged the redistribution of the land of the hacendados45, which gave rise to minifundias46 and small cooperatives of farmers.47 In 1976, the Federación Campesina del Valle del Río Apurímac (FECVRA)48 was founded as an umbrella of around 100 small cooperatives. In absence of the state, the FECVRA became an important entity for organizing public services such as education and health care.49 41  For a detailed overview of the colonization process, see: Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” 123–28.42  Barbasco is a plant containing strong chemical compounds that was formerly used as an insecticide. Today, barbasco is not used anymore because plagues have become more resistant due to the use of chemical insecticides distributed by multinational companies such as Bayer. 43  Seasonal wage workers44  Interview with José Pablo, ex-CAD commander, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018.45  Hacienda owners46  Small farm, the opposite of a hacienda47  Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State,” 191–94. By now, most of the land in the VRAEM is shredded in small parcels because peones bought pieces of land from the smallholders, and because of the fact that inheritances are mostly divided under a large amount of children in one family. This makes for small-scale agriculture with low profits. 48  Peasant Federation of the Valley of the Apurímac River49  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in 387VI Hidden HeroesAs the colonos almost exclusively came from the Northern highlands of Ayacucho and maintained strong ties with their communities of origin, they imported the Andes culture into the subtropical valley. As a response to the invading settlers, the native Asháninka population largely displaced itself downstream to the valley of the river Ene. Until today, however, several Asháninka communities in the valley of the Apurímac river coexist with the colonos from the highlands, although their territory was in many cases fiercely reduced by the settlers.50 According to the TRC, the total population of the valley was around 100.000 by 1980, excluding the floating population of peones.51 As soon as the Shining Path initiated the war in the highlands of Ayacucho in 1980, more peasants from that area decided to leave their hometowns to seek refuge in the VRAEM. The valley was then still considered a safe zone.52 It would not take long, however, before the Shining Path would also make its way into the jungle. The civil war in the valley of the Apurímac river53Similar to the process that gave rise to the emergence of the Shining Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 110.50  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 74.51  The numbers are, however, quite unclear. Ponciano Del Pino speaks of a population of 40.000 in 1981 and 111.000 in 1994. Nevertheless, both the TRC and Del Pino base themselves on numbers of the INEI. CVR, 75; Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” 122.52  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 107.53  I will limit myself here to a summarized account of the civil war in the Apurímac valley. For a more detailed account, see: Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac”; Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 110–52; Zech, “Between Two Fires: Civilian Resistance during Internal Armed Conflict in Peru,” 207–81; CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 74–86.388VI Hidden HeroesPath in the highlands of Ayacucho, the dissemination of communist ideology via popular schools also played a key-role in the valley of the Apurímac river. In 1978, in the Southern highland district of Chungui, primary and secondary schools were founded by teachers who were trained at the UNSCH and formed part of the Shining Path.54 Between 1980 and 1982, the Shining Path appeared several times in the valley, mostly intimidating or killing existing authorities. The FECVRA, which from the beginning refused to collaborate with the Shining Path’s strategy of closing off all markets in order to starve the cities, became one of the Shining Path’s first targets in the valley.55 In 1982, militants set fire to a truck carrying agricultural products of the peasants associates of the FECVRA and blew up a bridge in Machente in order to sabotage export.56The violent escalation of the war fully took off in 1983. As an answer to the increasingly violent attacks of the Shining Path, the marine forces of the Peruvian army established bases throughout the valley.57 The severe repression by the state forces against civilians in some cases caused an opposite effect by generating more sympathy from the local population toward the Shining Path.58 The FECVRA, attacked by the Shining Path for not wanting to collaborate and by the military on the suspicion of doing so, was dissolved in 1983.59 In order to defend itself against the military, the Shining Path 54  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 77.55  According to the Shining Path, commercial crops destined for sale at markets, such as coffee, cacao and barbasco, only enriched the wealthy merchants. Therefore, the Shining Path wanted the peasants to produce crops for subsistence only. Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 111.56  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 78.57  In 1985, the marine forces were replaced by the regular army. CVR, 84.58  CVR, 79.59  The direct cause for the dissolution was the enforced disappearance of the FECVRA’s president Julio Orozco Huamaní in August 1983, most likely perpetrated by the marine forces. Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 110.389VI Hidden Heroescentralized its support bases in several camps throughout the valley where communist ideology was preached and practiced. Significant parts of the local population were forcedly recruited and had to live in these camps against their will, often in very poor livelihood conditions.60 One of the research participants in the district of Pichari was recruited by the Shining Path together with his parents and brothers when he was six years old and lived with the Shining Path for two years:eva: But your parents were not with la política [the Shining Path]? caMilo: Indeed, they were not, but you were obliged in it. You were taken as a recruit, whether you want it or not, you’re there, and from then on, there is no school, there is nothing anymore. [...] Likewise, the military were the other abusivos [brutes], that’s why I am on my guard because they were the same, the same as the terrucos [terrorists], they were the same, they did not spare [anyone], they found [a suspect] and took [him or her] out, it  [the violence] was from the both [sides], pues.61The brutal response of the military to the Shining Path, which basically consisted of indiscriminately killing peasants, was far from effective. Instead of defeating the Shining Path, they drove the ejército guerrillero popular further into the forest on the right bank of the Apurímac river. This area belongs to the Cusco department, and was therefore not part of the emergency zone designated for military intervention. Here, the Shining Path could thus operate more freely, 60  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 80.61  My translation of original citation: “Pero tus papás igual no estaban con la política?” - “ Claro, no estaban, pero estabas obligado pues dentro de ello. Ahí estás tomado recluta, quieras o no quieras estás ahí, para ahí ya no hay escuela, ya no hay nada ya [...] Igualito los militares eran otros abusivos, por eso justo pongo mi guardia porque eran iguales, igual que terrucos, igualitos eran, no perdonaban, encontraban y sacaban, de los dos era pues.” Interview with Camilo, ex-recruit of the Shining Path, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018.390VI Hidden Heroesregain forces and prepare for attacks all over the valley.62 In the midst of this crossfire between the marine forces and the Shining Path, a third actor arose that turned out to be decisive for the development of the war in the valley: the civilian self-defense committees. Despite the initial sympathy and support for the revolutionary ideas of the Shining Path, arbitrary and excessive violence –including forced recruitments (of children), torture, assassinations and restricted access to land and markets - generated deep feelings of resentment in the population over time. In addition, the peasant population was chased rather than protected by the disproportionately violent repression of the state forces.63 An ex-commander in Pichari describes the situation of mutual mistrust between the population and the armed forces as follows: That time, it was difficult to live with the armed forces, because that time it was all confusion, because it was not known if you were on that side or not, or if your friend was on that side, or your woman was on that side, sometimes everyone was involved and you could not trust anyone.64The escalation of the war forced many peasants to leave their homes in the valley behind to build their lives elsewhere. However, as mentioned, a significant part of the population already consisted of refugees from the highlands. Persecuted by the war, the peasants who stayed in the valley decided to organize themselves against the violence perpetrated by both the state forces and the Shining Path. 62  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 112.63  Fumerton, 114.64  My translation of original citation: “Ese tiempo fue difícil convivir con las fuerzas armadas, porque ese tiempo todo era confusión, porque no se sabía si tú estabas en ese bando o no, o si el amigo estaba en ese bando, o la mujer estaba en ese bando, a veces todos estaban metidos y no podías confiar en nadie.” Interview with Alejandro, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 08.07.2018.391VI Hidden HeroesThe organization of peasant self-defense committees as it came about in the valley of the Apurímac river shared characteristics with a tradition that already existed in other parts of the country before the civil war. In the 1970s, peasants organized themselves in so-called rondas campesinas65 in the Northern Andes region of Cajamarca to protect their communities from cattle rustling and other common crimes in a region where the presence of the state was poor or even non-existent.66  The first self-defense committees in the context of the civil war in the VRAEM, the so-called montoneros, organized themselves in the Southern part of the valley of the Apurímac river, in the highland districts of Chungui and Anco.67 In 1984, these montoneros held a march downstream from Chungui to San Francisco and Kimbiri in order to encourage the peasants of the entire valley to organize themselves in self-defense committees. The idea quickly gained ground as the population was tired of being caught between the incursions of the Shining Path and the military. The previous organizational experience of the FECVRA helped the peasants to bring about an efficient model of self-defense which spread through the valley like wildfire.68 Every new-founded comité 65  Peasant rounds66  For a detailed account of the phenomenon of the rondas campesinas in the Northern Peruvian Andes, see: Orin Starn, Nightwatch: The Politics of Protest in the Andes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999); When the self-defense committees in the VRAEM arose, there was confusion between them and the phenomenon of the rondas campesinas from the North. The rondas campesinas, however, distanced themselves from the self-defense committees in the VRAEM and their use of violence. In a document issued by the NGO SER in 1986, a comparison is made between the rondas campesinas and the self-defense committees which mainly depicts the rondas as a peaceful organization and the self-defense committees as a violent militia. José Burneo Labrín and Marianne Eyde, “Ronda Campesina y Defensa Civil : Cuadro Comparativo” (SER, 1986), Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos.67  Interview with Oliver, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018, Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 115.68  Del Pino also points to the rise of evangelical churches and religious narratives 392VI Hidden Heroesde base69 corresponded to a geographical ‘sector’ and was steered by a board of directors consisting mostly of a president, vice-president, secretary of acts, treasurer, operations commander and intelligence officer.70 Per family, at least one healthy man or woman between the age of more or less 15 and 70 was obliged to participate in the self-defense committee.71 When the self-defense committees left the base committee to patrol for several weeks, the proprietarios72 often bought of their duty by paying their peones to join the patrols in their place. Only those youngsters who were studying in high school were mostly exempted from participating in the self-defense committees.73 One research participant recounted how his mother wanted him to attend school rather than join the patrols of the self-defense committees. When the patrols came after him to recruit him, his mother made up excuses, argued with them or hid him. In the end, he joined the patrols voluntarily at the age of sixteen, leaving his mother in distress.74 Participation in the committee involved duties directly related to self-defense such as patrolling. 75 Communal work, such as cleaning irrigation canals and repairing roads, was also organized and executed by the self-defense committee. While both men and women participated, they were assigned different as an important factor in the mobilization of the population against the Shining Path. For example, the Shining Path was portrayed as the devil or the antichrist, the war as the apocalypse. See: Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac.”69  Base committee70  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 116.71  Interview with Flora, daughter of ex-CAD commander, district of Santa Rosa, 11.07.2018. 72  Peasant who owns land, the opposite of a peón73  Interview with Juana, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 29.06.2018.74  Interview with Ladislao, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.75  García-Godos gives an excellent detailed account of the ‘practices of self-defense’ applied in the district of Tambo, which are very similar to those in the VRAEM. García-Godos, “Citizenship, Conflict and Reconstruction: A Case-Study of the Effects of Armed Conflict on Peasant-State Relations in Tambo, Peru,” 128.393VI Hidden Heroestasks which were mostly gendered, with women for example preparing the food for the patrols. Nevertheless, when the village was under attack, man and women alike were expected to take part in the community’s defense.76 Disobedience was not tolerated and participation in the self-defense committees was enforced through fines and corporal punishments such as whipping.77 Moreover, the self-defense committees had their own intelligence service and were constantly looking for infiltrated members of the Shining Path in the community, resulting for example in violent nightly house-to-house searches.78 The commanders who made up the board of directors were often licenciados who fostered a military attitude.79 The main headquarter of the self-defense committees of the valley - the Sede Central del Comité de Defensa Civil Valle del Río Apurímac - was established in Pichiwillca on the 21st of June of 1984. In the following years, the self-defense committees of Pichiwillca, under the leadership of Antonio Cardenas, became the driving force behind the proliferation of the model of self-defense throughout the entire valley by – often violently - forcing peasants in every single locality to organize themselves in what they called Comités de Defensa Civil Antisubversiva (DECAS)80.81 The organizational structure was highly hierarchical: the headquarter in Pichiwillca (the sede or comité central) instructed the 76  Interview with Diana, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 25.06.2018; interview with Nelida, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 30.06.2018; Fumerton, “Beyond Counterinsurgency: Peasant Militias and Wartime Social Order in Peru’s Civil War,” 70.77  Interview with Sebastián, ex-CAD member, district of Santa Rosa, 27.06.2018; Fumerton, 70.78  Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” 148.79  Interview with Oliver, ex-CAD commander and licenciado, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018; interview with Sergio, ex-CAD commander and licenciado, district of Samugari, 27.06.2018; interview with Franco, ex-CAD member, district of Kimbiri, 24.06.2018.80  Anti-Subversive Civil Defense Committees81  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 83.394VI Hidden Heroessub sectores or comités zonales82 which on their turn instructed the sectores or comités de base.83 According to Ponciano Del Pino, the valley of the Apurímac river counted 280 self-defense committees by 1991.84 The historical review written by the central self-defense committee of Pichiwillca in 1993 speaks of 393 communities organized in base committees and 23 zonal committees.85For safety reasons, the commanders operated under nicknames such as Sombra (Shadow), Bestia (Beast), Huayhuaco (a type of big crow), Gato (Cat) or Dragón (Dragon).86 One of the events that marks the history of the self-defense committees in the valley is the Shining Path’s attack of the headquarter in Pichiwillca on April 13, 1988. In a bloody confrontation, the self-defense committee of Pichiwillca, assisted by the self-defense committee of Anchihuay and the military, succeeded in overthrowing a group of forty armed Shining Path members who were accompanied by 400 peasant recruits.87 Despite the Shining Path’s brutal responses to the peasants’ resistance, the self-defense committees were efficient in regaining control over the valley. In 1985, the Shining Path issued a statement saying that it had lost its initial support bases in the valley and that the committees gained ground. Moreover, many Shining Path fighters defected to the mesnadas88 or yana umas89, as the self-defense 82  Zonal committees83  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 142; Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” 153. 84  Del Pino, 118.85  Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Con motivo de las fiestas de homenaje al 9no aniversario de los comites de auto defensa (DECAS) y 7mo aniversario de la central del valle del rio Apurimac y Ene. Breve reseña historica, 6, 1993.86  Interview with Franco, ex-CAD member, district of Kimbiri, 24.06.2018.87  Zech, “Between Two Fires: Civilian Resistance during Internal Armed Conflict in Peru,” 214.88  The term mesnadas is in this context best translated as ‘paramilitaries’, which, as Ponciano Del Pino has suggested, reveals the fact that the Shining Path considered the CADs in the first place as imposed by the military. Del Pino, 134.89  Yana uma is Quechua for ‘black head’, referring to the black balaclavas worn 395VI Hidden Heroescommittees were called by the Shining Path. These defectors or arrepentidos90 provided the self-defense committees with essential information on the war strategy of the revolutionaries. As an ex-commander puts it: “we eliminated the Shining Path with their own war strategy, with their own people.”91 For example, a letter from one of the base committees to the headquarter reports on the capture of a Shining Path member and sums up the armament and other material that according to the captive can be found in the nearby Shining Path camps, among which ten machine guns and twenty-five police uniforms, and states that [...] according to our opinion, we think that this person should serve as a guide, because he knows the places where the above-mentioned objects are to be found.92For this reason, Shining Path fighters captured by the self-defense committees were not handed over to the military but either incorporated into the committees or – if they refused to join – killed, as an ex-commander in the district of Pichari explains:by the self-defense committees. The population, however, also uses yana umas sometimes to refer to members of the Shining Path, who also used balaclavas. Fieldnotes, district of Kimbiri, 25.06.2018. Others refer to Shining Path members as puca umas, red heads. Interview with Diana, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 25.06.2018.90  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 134.91  My translation of original citation: “Nosotros les hemos eliminado a sendero con su propia estrategia de guerra, con su propia gente.” Interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 09.07.2018.92  My translation of original citation: “[...] segun la opinion de nosotros opinamos que esta persona debiria serber (sic) como una guia, porque conoce, los lugares donde se encuentran los objetos arriba mencionado.” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Oficio N°08 g-g 85, Informe sobre la declaracion de los detinidos que se encuentraba en nuestro base, Canal, 15.01.1985.396VI Hidden HeroesWhen we caught them and they were slightly, as if they did not want to [collaborate], well, to the river then, straight away. Straight away. And if they did want to collaborate, well, all right.”93 A new violent counteroffensive by the Shining Path between 1986 and 1987 gave rise to an expansion and reorganization of the self-defense committees in the entire valley. A statement from the central committee of the self-defense forces in Pichiwillca directed to the commander of the state forces in the military base in Luisiana describes, for example, how on the 9th of May 1987 a base committee in the district of Kimbiri was attacked by “80 terrorists made up of men, women, from the age of eight years to 40 years with machine guns, revolvers, breechloaders and bladed arms like knive, sticks, slings.”94 Only a few days earlier, the central committee had ordered the base committees of the entire valley to reorganize by rearming the population of every base with bladed arms and reactivating the trenches and watchtowers, while threatening to severely punish any failure to comply with the orders.95 By the end of 1989, the self-defense committees had succeeded in controlling the entire valley from Anchihuay in the South to Boca Mantaro in the North.96 While 1984 to 1986 were the bloodiest years, the war in the valley 93  My translation of original citation: “Cuando chapamos, cuando era medio este, que no quería, ya al rio pues, de frente. Ya. Y si quería colaborar, ya, listo.” Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.94  My translation of original citation: [...] “80 tarroristas (sic) conformado por hombres, mujeres, desde los 8 años hasta 40 años con armamentos de Fall. metralletas, revolveres, retros y armas blancas como cuchillo, palos, hondas.” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Oficio N°065-87-S-C-C-D-C-V-R-A-E-P, Ataque sufrido de lq Defenza Cvil (sic) de Serenachayocc, Pichiwillca, 11.05.1987.95  Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Oficio N°059-87-S-C-C-D-C-V-R-A-B-P, 03.05.1987.96  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 142.397VI Hidden Heroesraged until the mid-nineties.97 As one of the ex-commanders of the CADs in the district of Llochegua recounts: Between 1983 and 1995, there were no laws, guns were the masters of life.98 Despite their efficiency in controlling the valley and fighting the Shining Path, the self-defense committees – a violent armed actor in need of asserting its authority - also contributed to the proliferation of violence.99 Several research participants mentioned the excessive use of violence by the CADs and their involvement in personal reprisals and struggles over power.100 According to Steven Zech’s analysis, over the span of the entire conflict in the Ayacucho department, armed civilians were involved in 409 of the 8.202 violent incidents registered by the TRC.101 The TRC ascribes the responsibility for 24% of the total number of victims during the war in the entire country to peasant rounds, self-defense committees, the MRTA, paramilitary groups and non-identified agents.10297  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 77.98  My translation of original citation: “De 1983 hasta 1995 no había leyes, el arma era dueño de la vida.” Interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 10.05.2017. 99  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 120.100  Fieldnotes, district of Santa Rosa, 27.06.2018; interview with Flora, daughter of ex-CAD commander, district of Santa Rosa, 11.07.2018; interview with Humberto, ex-CAD commander, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018; interview with Rosa, ex-CAD member whose father was killed by the Shining Path, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018; interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 09.07.2018.101  The participation of armed civilians was most significant in the provinces of Huamanga, Huanta and La Mar with respectively 171, 73 and 121 incidents involving armed civilians Zech, “Between Two Fires: Civilian Resistance during Internal Armed Conflict in Peru,” 83.102  46% was attributed to the Shining Path and 30% to the state forces. CVR, “Informe Final, Anexo 2” (Lima, 2003), 13.398VI Hidden HeroesAlthough the self-defense committees originally emerged from spontaneous peasant action, the marine forces facilitated and in some places even enforced their organization under the name of Comités de Defensa Civil (CVC)103.104 In 1991, under the first government of president Alberto Fujimori, the self-defense committees were officially recognized by law under the name Comités de Autodefensa (CAD)105, and allowed to use firearms “obtained by purchase or by donation from the State or individuals” in “activities of self-defense of their community to avoid infiltration of terrorists and drug traffickers, to defend themselves from their attacks and to help the Peruvian Army and the National Police with the tasks of pacification and national development”.106 This legalization was a clear strategy to gain stricter governmental control over the CADs, their weaponry and the nature of their interventions in order to prevent them from transforming into independent death squads or criminal organizations.107  Already in 1989, before the CADs were even legally allowed to use firearms, president Alan García had personally visited the valley and donated 200 shotguns to the CADs in the town of Rinconada, the home base of the notorious self-defense commander Huayhuaco.108 The army registered 1.564 CADs 103  Civil Defense Committees104  Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” 139.105  Self-Defense Committees106  Reconocen a Comités de Autodefensa, como organizaciones de la población para desarrollar actividades de auto defensa de su comunidad (Decreto Legislativo 741); This does not mean that firearms were not used before this legislation. Many peasant who did not have the resources to buy firearmes fought, however, with bladed weapons. Interestingly enough, the research of Zech shows that “weapons and other resources make self-defense forces more capable but are not a necessary condition for sustained civilian resistance. Organizational capacity and technical expertise played a more important role.”  Zech, “Between Two Fires: Civilian Resistance during Internal Armed Conflict in Peru,” 233.107  Fumerton, “Beyond Counterinsurgency: Peasant Militias and Wartime Social Order in Peru’s Civil War,” 80.108  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in 399VI Hidden Heroeswith 6.1450 members and 5.583 firearms for the entire department of Ayacucho by 1993.109 The alliance between the CADs and the state forces, which became stronger from the beginning of the 1990s, was complex throughout the whole course of the war and varied from place to place. In first instance, collaborating was a pragmatic choice for both parties. Because of their cruel and indiscriminate repression, the peasants in many cases perceived the state forces as a greater threat than the Shining Path. By consolidating their alliance with the marine forces and the military, the peasants demonstrated which side they were on and liberated themselves of the constant suspicion of belonging to the Shining path.110 This was the case for example in the district of Sivia, where self-defense was in the first place organized as a response to the violent incursions of the state forces against the population. The Shining Path on its turn responded with attacks against the population as a punishment for their resistance against the revolution.111 Furthermore, settlements reluctant to organize themselves in self-defense committees risked brutal punishment by the military or by notorious CADs, such as those of Pichiwillca.112 At the same time, for many peasants, fighting alongside the representatives of the state became a way of pursuing a sense of belonging to the national community (cfr. 6.3).113 The marines and the military, on their turn, were unfamiliar with the Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 138.109  There were 4.205 CADs with 235.465 members and 16.1696 firearms on a national level in 1993 according to the numbers of the Comando Conjunto of the army, in Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” 181.110  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 114.111  As Zech points out, Shining Path violence was thus in many cases a consequence of and not a direct cause for peasant self-defense. Zech, “Between Two Fires: Civilian Resistance during Internal Armed Conflict in Peru,” 256.112  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 117.113  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 85.400VI Hidden Heroesgeography of the valley and the Shining Path’s guerrilla warfare and therefore needed the CAD’s territorial knowledge.114 During joint patrols, the self-defense committees mostly functioned as the shield of the military.115 Initially there was, however, a lot of mutual distrust between the state forces and the CADs:In 1990 we got together with the military. And we got started and we told him [the general]: ‘We have talked with the general in Ayacucho.’ ‘No this is bad, goddamn, you are going to ambush us, you are going to take us yourselves and hinder us.’ ‘Okay general’, I said to him, ‘you don’t want to? Well then, we will attack you as well. Come to our base, visit us or something, and we will knock the shit out of you as well.’116They did not believe us [when we said that the Shining Path was present], it was difficult to establish this relation with the army [...] we needed the army for their fire force, not because they were so brave [...] Step by step, we entered in a relation and in the end they gave us this confidence and then we have cooperated well [...] but the biggest part, the biggest part, almost 90% of what has been done was the self-defense, that is, the peasant population.117114  Interview with Franco, ex-CAD member, district of Kimbiri, 24.06.2018.115  Interview with Ladislao, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.116  My translation of original citation: “En el ‘90 nos juntamos ya con los militares. Y comenzamos y le decimos: ‘Hemos hablado con el general en Ayacucho, con el general Rueda.’ ‘No que esto está mal, carajo, ustedes nos va llevar a emboscar, ustedes mismos nos va llevar, nos va malograr.’ ‘Bueno,’ le digo ‘general, usted no quiere? Entonces también les vamos a atacar a ustedes. Vienen a nuestra base, nos visitan o algo, también le sacamos el ancho.’ ” Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017. 117  My translation of original citation: “Ellos no creían [...] era difícil de encontrar esa relación con el ejército [...] al ejercito nosotros necesitábamos por la potencia de fuego que tenía, no por lo que eran valientes [...] de poco a poco de poco a poco, entramos en una relación y hay bueno a final de cuenta pues nos dieron esa confianza y ya si, hemos trabajado bien  [...] pero la mayor 401VI Hidden HeroesNotwithstanding their alliance with the military, the CADs maintained a high degree of autonomy. Because the Peruvian army in many cases had no proper strategy, the soldiers were scared and often stayed inside their bases while the CADs did the dirty work of confronting the Shining Path.118 Consequently, the CADs and not the army controlled most of the valley. The CADs thus became the main target of the Shining Path.119 Violent confrontations also took place between the CADs and the army, when the latter entered a CAD-controlled zone without permission.120 The relation between the CADs and the police was outspokenly bad, as the latter historically sided with the big landowners and was notorious for its discrimination against the peasant population.121The arrival of the Shining Path and the organization of peasants in self-defense committees in 1983 furthermore coincided with a deep economic crisis caused by increasing insecurity and the rise of illicit drug trafficking. The constant threat of the Shining Path made it very dangerous for the peasant population to work on their lands, which led to general scarcity and famine.122 The restrained access to markets caused the collapse of traditional crops such as cocoa, coffee and peanuts. At the same time, the increasing international demand for coca leaves for the production of cocaine paste and cocaine motivated peasants to focus on the cultivation of coca. Moreover, cultivating coca is a lot less time-consuming part,e la mayor parte casi el 90% de que ha trabajado es más la autodefensa como así decirlo, la gente campesina.” Interview with Alfonso, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 10.07.2018.118  Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017; interview with Alfonso, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 10.07.2018; Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 120.119  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 84.120  Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” 169.121  Interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 10.05.2017.122  Interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 10.05.2017.The former hacienda of Luisiana, which was turned into a military base during the war (2015)403VI Hidden Heroesand more profitable than the traditional crops. It therefore resulted easier to combine with the tasks of self-defense.123 In addition, the government’s counterinsurgency strategy increasingly failed during the presidency of Alan García (1985-1990). Tensions between the president and the army in some cases resulted in mutiny. The CADs were hence in need of new allies in their struggle to control the valley.124 This is how a pragmatic alliance between the CADs – who made a living as cocaleros – and the narcotraficantes was established in the VRAEM between 1985 and 1987.125 Because the CADs controlled access to most parts of the territory, they provided security for the narcotraficantes and made sure they were left undisturbed by incursions of the Shining Path. The narcotraficantes – initially mostly connected to Colombian drug cartels - on their turn assured the demand for coca and provided the CADs with arms, money and food.126 The economic surplus generated by the coca boom allowed the CADs to form the comandos especiales – the so-called Tigers and Condors: elite militias who received professional training and a monthly salary.127 It is therefore a recurring saying by ex-commanders and the population in general that “the VRAEM was pacified thanks to the coca” (“gracias a la coca se pacificó el VRAEM”).128 In contrast to the Northern jungle parts of the Alto Huallaga, where the Shining Path allied with the drug traffickers to finance its revolutionary struggle, the coca economy and the alliance with the narcotraficantes 123  Contrary to most other crops, coca can be harvested the whole year long. Interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 10.05.2017.124  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 120.125  Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” 127.126  Del Pino, 167.127  Interview with Mario, ex-CAD member, district of Santa Rosa, 27.06.2018; Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 142.128  Fieldnotes, district of Llochegua, 10.05.2017; interview with Ladislao, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.404VI Hidden Heroesfinanced the population’s defense against the Shining Path in the valley of the Apurímac river.129 As Heuser has pointed out, the kind of illicit economy that developed in the VRAEM should in the first place be seen as a war economy resulting from the population’s survival strategy. What was gained from the coca was immediately re-invested in the self-defense committees by buying weapons and other war infrastructure.130 The cultivation of coca did not generate big concentrations of wealth nor gave rise to the emergence of big cartels or paramilitary groups, as was the case in Colombia or Mexico.131 Colombian drug cartels did, however, play an important role in the VRAEM’s drug economy. During the coca boom that lasted from 1985 to 1995, the region was dollarized. Small airplanes that took off and landed at the airstrip of Palmapampa transported weapons and money into the valley while taking out cargos of cocaine paste with a value of several million dollars.132 The disruption of the Colombian cartels after the death of Pablo Escobar in 1993 and the repressive anti-drug policies under the government of president Fujimori caused a sudden collapse of the drug economy in 1995. Nevertheless, by the end of the decade, the region had recovered from the crisis and returned to the production of coca for the drug market.133 129  Del Pino, “Tiempos de Guerra y de Dioses: Ronderos, Evangélicos y Senderistas En El Valle Del Río Apurímac,” 119.130  Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State,” 202.131  Some of the CAD commanders were however closely involved in drug trafficking and have served time in jail, such as the infamous commander Huayhuaco. Zech, “Between Two Fires: Civilian Resistance during Internal Armed Conflict in Peru,” 215. An ex-commander in the district of Kimbiri whom we interviewed also was in jail twice for drug trafficking. Interview with Lalo, ex-CAD commander, district of Kimbiri, 28.06.2018. 132  Heuser, 200.133  Heuser, 201.405VI Hidden HeroesThe VRAEM and the self-defense committees todayToday, life in the VRAEM is still very much defined by the history of the civil war and the illicit economy that developed parallel to it. The smell of heaps of harvested coca leaves that lie drying in the sun covers the valley as a blanket. Coca is still the most lucrative crop, with one hectare yielding approximately as much profit as five hectares of cocoa.134 Thus, for the majority of the peasants in the VRAEM, coca is the main source of income. Apart from its economic value, coca also has a cultural value as a divine and ancestral plant, a tradition that was imported from the highlands into the VRAEM. Coca is thus used for chewing135, as a substrate in medicinal preparations, as offering in rituals or for fortune-telling. Notwithstanding the legal uses of coca leaves, the big majority of coca production is still destined for the illegal market.136 The narcotraficantes in many cases even pick up the harvest straight from the fields of the cocaleros. The many bars, hotels and brothels in the bigger towns of the valley provide the drug traffickers with shelter and diversion. Cocaine paste and cocaine are produced in laboratories hidden in the forest.137 The visible side-effects of the existence of these laboratories are the many gas stations, agricultural shops and pharmacies selling respectively petrol, fertilizers and chemicals - all of them elementary components for cocaine production.138 The so-134  Interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 10.05.2017.135  Chewing coca is a widespread habit among peasants on the Peruvian countryside. It has a stimulating effect comparable with caffeine and is therefore used during work on the land and to replace meals. 136  According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Peru became the largest producer of coca in 1980 and of coca and cocaine in 2012. UNODC cited in: Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State,” 7.137  In Llochegua, a luxury hotel with a rooftop jacuzzi looks over the shabby houses of most of the villagers. Fieldnotes, district of Llochegua, 10.05.2017.138  Environmental pollution because of the drug laboratories and the herbicides that are used in the coca cultivation are a huge problem in the VRAEM. Many soils Cocalero drying his coca harvest in the district of Río Tambo (2018)407VI Hidden Heroescalled mochileros139, mostly young men, transport the drugs by foot through the jungle – a relatively lucrative but dangerous business. The general management of the drug economy is now in the hands of several local family clans instead of international cartels.140 Despite its illegality, the illicit coca economy in the VRAEM can to a certain extent be seen as a provider of order rather than of chaos and violence.141 The majority of the population, including the military and the police – (in)directly beneftis from the drug economy.142 As one of the ex-commanders of the CADs in Pichari affirms:I cannot lie and I say this very clearly: narcotráfico exists. We here in the VRAEM live directly and indirectly from the narcotráfico. Because we grow coca leaves. This is our petty cash, it’s coca. Right now, I will go weeding my coca. I can’t deny it. Now, I grab my coca and I sell it to whoever wants to buy it.143 Nevertheless, coca is not generating great wealth for the local population. The VRAEM is one of Peru’s poorest regions. The overall poverty level for the region was estimated at 42,9% in 2013, compared to 23,9% nationally. The Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática (INEI, National Institute of Statistics and Information are by now so polluted that the only crop that still can be grown is coca. Interview with Alejandro, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 08.07.2018; interview with Alfonso, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 10.07.2018; interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 09.07.2018.139  Backpackers140  Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State,” 209.141  Heuser, 1.142  Heuser, 204.143  My translation of original citation: “No puedo mentir y digo bien claro: el narcotráfico existe. Nosotros acá en el VRAEM vivimos directa- y indirectamente del narcotráfico. Porque producimos hoja de coca. Eso es nuestro caja chica de nosotros, es coca. Ahorita pronto voy deshierbando mi coca. No puedo negar. Ahora, yo agarro mi coca, vendo a quien sea.” Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.408VI Hidden Heroesscience) considers all the districts of the VRAEM either poor or extremely poor.144 Access to public services such as healthcare and education is dramatically bad. Until the late 1970s there was a single hospital with one doctor for the entire valley.145 During the war, deceases such as malaria, cholera and measles affected significant parts of the population, especially children.146 Today, only one out of two inhabitants of the VRAEM has direct access to basic health care. Education levels are far below the national average, with 29% of youngsters between the age of 20 and 24 not having completed primary education.147 The government programs intended to promote alternative crops and development in the valley are failing dramatically for several reasons.148 Furthermore, the VRAEM is still an emergency zone where the approximately 10.000149 stationed members of the Peruvian army and the police are supposedly fighting a war on drugs against the so-called narcoterroristas, remnants of the Shining Path that now provide security for drug traffickers.150 In 2018 and 2019, several Peruvian newspapers reported on villagers from the communities of La Libertad de Mantaro and Vizcatán 144  INEI cited in: Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State,” 183.145  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 107.146  Interview with Ramiro, ex-CAD member, district of Kimbiri, 25.06.2018.147  INEI cited in: Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State,” 184.148  Heuser, 190. For example, a few years ago, the government encouraged peasants to switch from coca to pineapple. Once the pineapples were harvested, however, the state did not ensure the demand and exportation. Nobody wanted to buy the pineapples and tons of fruit rotted away, leaving the peasants indebted. Fieldnotes, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018.149  Official numbers are not available, but the number of 10.000 was mentioned several times to Christoph Heuser during his field research. Personal communication with Christoph Heuser, 21.03.2019.150  The so-called Quispe Palomino Clan is the main remnant of the Shining Path. It still has an ideological façade but its main purpose is drug trafficking. They mostly attack the police. Heuser, 230.409VI Hidden Heroesdel Ene, in the Northwestern part of the VRAEM, who fled their villages after several assassinations committed by remnants of the Shining Path.151 Nevertheless, the image of the VRAEM as a violent war zone dominated by drug gangs and terrorists that is common in the media and in Peruvian society in general contrasts highly with the ease and calm that one perceives on the ground. Drug-related violence exists but is rather rare. Official statistics on crime rates in the VRAEM are not available, but the impression of a relatively quiet and peaceful region, especially in the valley of the Apurímac river, is mostly confirmed by the local population.152 Moreover, the population is frustrated with the negative image depicted by journalists and politicians who have often never even visited the valley. As it is said by one of the local authorities in Pichari, who dreams of turning the VRAEM into a hotspot for tourism:It looks as if the VRAEM were Syria but in reality, it’s marvelous.153Indeed, the presence of the army and the police seems at least out of proportion. Additionally, ironically enough, Heuser’s research shows that the presence of the state forces increases rather than decreases the population’s feeling of insecurity, because they are 151  “Familias enteras llegan a Huancayo huyendo del terrorismo,” Diario Correo, September 19, 2018, https://diariocorreo.pe/edicion/huancayo/familias-enteras-llegan-huancayo-huyendo-del-terrorismo-842783/; “Desplazamiento convierte a La Libertad en pueblo fantasma,” Diario Correo, September 22, 2018, https://diariocorreo.pe/edicion/huancayo/desplazamiento-convierte-la-l ibertad-en-pueblo-fantasma-843261/; El Comercio, “Testimonios desde el destierro,” March 25, 2019, https://especiales.elcomercio.pe/?q=especiales/testimonios-desde-el-destierro/.152  Interview with Rosa, ex-CAD member whose father was killed by the Shining Path, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018.153  My translation of original citation: “El VRAEM parece Syria pero en realidad es una maravilla.” Interview with Eduardo, Pichari, 12.05.2017.410VI Hidden Heroesgenerally perceived as corrupt and incompetent.154 One research participant in the district of Pichari stated that the police only comes “to traumatize the children and to check out the girls”.155 Moreover, several research participants suggested that state representatives are (highly) involved in the drug economy and therefore have an interest in maintaining the emergency zone in the VRAEM. An ex-CAD commander in the district of Pichari describes the state’s involvement in the drug economy and the problem of corruption in general:A big part of our governors are narcos. They are narcos with suits and ties. […] That is why they keep the VRAE as an emergency zone, because that is where the resources of the armed forces come from. […] The narcos from the population are only the arms, the state is the head.156It is true what they say that in my country we are sitting on a bench of gold157, it is true, but only few are gaining from it. The authorities, they gain from Peru’s golden bench. […] If Peru would take part in a corruption contest than we would become world champion without even having to score goals.158154  Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State,” 228. 155  Interview with Oliver, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018.156  My translation of original citation: “Gran parte de nuestros gobernantes son narcos. Son narcos de saco y corbata. […]  Por eso aquí al VRAE lo mantienen como zona de emergencia. Porque así sale el recurso económico para el comando conjunto de las fuerzas armadas. […]  Los narcos de la población son los brazos, el estado es la cabeza.” Interview with Alejandro, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 08.07.2018.157  “El Perú es un mendigo sentado en un banco de oro” (“Peru is a begger on a bench of gold”) is a quote ascribed to the Italian explorer Antonio Raimondi who arrived to Peru in the 19th century, and refers to the contrast between the natural resources of the country and the poverty of the population.158  My translation of original citation: “Si bien es cierto lo que dicen que en mi país estamos 411VI Hidden HeroesIn the district of Llochegua, an ex-commander refers as follows to the continuing military presence in the VRAEM:And now for the army, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other ministries, the Shining Path is their little piece of chocolate. Do you know how many millions have entered the VRAEM in order for the region to make progress? And look at  how it is, full of dust, as you can see.159Another ex-commander in the district of Pichari answered the question whether the community experienced problems because of narcotráfico as follows:No, even worse, for the government of course the entire VRAE is narco, but we aren’t, pues. Here, as you can see, we work in what we can. Rather, the government is devastating the VRAE. What we have is coca, but the coca has defended the pacification. In the first place, the coca was for buying arms and for the self-defense.160This negative perception of the state and its representatives is one of the main reasons why the CADs are still important providers of sentados en un banco de oro, sí es cierto pero solo se benefician unos cuantos. Las autoridades, ellos se benefician de ese banco de oro del Perú […] Si lo metemos a una competencia de corrupción el Perú sale campeón mundial sin ni siquiera meter goles.” Interview with Alejandro, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 08.07.2018.159  My translation of original citation: “Y ahora el ejército, el ministerio del interior y otros ministerios, ya su chocolatito es sendero. Usted sabe cuántos millones de dinero ha entrado al VRAEM para que esto salga adelante? Y mira cómo está, mira usted, lleno de polvo.” Interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 09.07.2018.160  My translation of original citation: “No, peor, claro para el gobierno todo el VRAE es narco, pero nosotros no somos pues. Aquí como estás viendo trabajamos en lo que podemos. Más bien el gobierno está malogrando al VRAE. Lo que tenemos es coca, pero la coca ha defendido la pacificación. Número uno, la coca era para comprar armamentos y para la autodefensa.” Interview with Oliver, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018.412VI Hidden Heroesauthority, order and security for the population of the VRAEM. While the self-defense committees thus continue to exist and carry arms, their role has changed significantly since the end of the Shining Path’s revolutionary war. To begin with, participation is no longer obligatory. In most of the villages, the next generation is now organizing the CADs which mainly function as a local security force handling general crimes such as robbery and domestic violence. During festivities and other public events, the CADs patrol and intervene in skirmishes. They mostly hold an administrative office somewhere in the center of the village, where they hold regular meetings.The legitimacy of the CADs relies heavily on the heroic collective memory of their successful struggle against the Shining Path (cfr. infra 6.3). Nevertheless, times have changed and so have the (often violent and repressive) methods of the CADs. During fieldwork, a member of the actual CAD in Pichari complained about the fact that the CADs cannot practice their former ways of punishment anymore “because of human rights”, which according to him makes their work more difficult:It is not easy. They have changed the law in favor of the criminals, you cannot touch them anymore or they will prosecute you.161Both during and after the war, several CAD commanders were indeed prosecuted for human rights violations.162 Many of the ex-commanders who ended up in jail nevertheless enjoyed a timely release because of their close relations with the military.163 Fujimori’s 1995 Amnesty Law furthermore protected the CADs from prosecution for human rights violations committed between 161  My translation of original citation: “No es fácil. Han cambiado la ley a favor de los delincuentes, ya no les puedes tocar o te denuncian.” Interview with Adrián, local authority, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.162  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 85.163  Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.Training of CADs by the military in the district of Samugari (2018)Boats on the Apurímac River in the district of Kimbiri (2017)414VI Hidden Heroes1980 and 1995.164 In some places, the CADs gradually seize to exist. Some of the ex-commanders suggest that the state intends to deactivate the self-defense committees because they perceive them as a threat.165 Nevertheless, the CADs still receive military training from the army and sometimes assist them in their missions.166 The police also organizes joint patrols with the CADs.167 The majority of the first-generation of commanders were young men when the war started. Antonio Cardenas, the leader of the central self-defense committee of Pichiwillca, was only nineteen years old when he assumed his task as a coordinator of the CADs of the entire valley. Their personal projects, as those of many other survivors, were thwarted by the war. An entire generation of young adults gave up their personal education to engage in the tasks of self-defense. They now project their hopes for a better future on their children and grandchildren. Many of the ex-commanders and members of the self-defense committees furthermore indicate that they still suffer from mental health problems due to the war. An ex-commander in the district of Llochegua states that the war has destroyed the social fabric of the VRAEM:The VRAEM needs mental healthcare to restore confidence. We have seen terrible things.168 164  CVR, “Comité de Autodefensa 2,” 66.165  This probably partly holds true, in the sense that the state knows that most of the CADs are cocaleros. If the government would decide on a complete eradication of coca crops in the VRAEM, as happened in the Alto Huallaga region, the fear is that the CADs will violently defend the coca. 166  I was present at such a training in Pichiwillca, which mainly consisted of physical training and shooting practice. Fieldnotes, district of Samugari, 22.06.2018.167  Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State,” 238.168  My translation of original citation: “El VRAEM necesita salud mental para que se le devuelva la confianza. Hemos visto cosas atroces.”  Interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 10.05.2017.415VI Hidden HeroesAnother ex-commander states that he sometimes suffers from violent anger attacks because of what he has lived through during the war.169 Among other psychosocial consequences, alcoholism is a widespread problem among ex-CAD commanders and members. During fieldwork, we found several potential interviewees drunk at their homes, or we were warned in advance that they were borrachitos (alcoholics).170 The leader of the central self-defense committee of Pichiwillca, Antonio Cardenas, died from liver cirrhosis at the age of 48.171 Another emblematic ex-CAD commander lives in Huamanga near the cemetery and, as one research participant claims, attends the funerals for the alcohol that comes with them.172 Many CAD members are furthermore physically mutilated for the rest of their life, like one of the ex-commanders in the district of Pichari:I have broken three ribs, regular stuff, but I survived. I have ammunition here, and here [points at body]. I have seventeen scraps in my entire body. A bullet in my leg. That’s why I limp a little. […] I lost my sight, they blew me up here, all this [points at body]. I still had my teeth, they blew me up, I threw up blood for three days. Just last year I had surgery. I had a lump inside and also pieces of wood, from what the terrucos [the terrorists, i.e. the Shining Path] had blown up, and I did not know until last year.173169  Interview with Humberto, ex-CAD commander, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018.170  Fieldnotes, district of Santa Rosa, 27.06.2018.171  Gustavo Gorriti, “Muere Antonio Cárdenas,” IDL Reporteros, accessed April 22, 2019, https://idl-reporteros.pe/muere-antonio-cardenas/.172  Interview with Humberto, ex-CAD commander, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018.173  My translation of original citation: “Yo me he roto tres costillas, normal, pero he vivido. Tengo munición por acá, tengo por acá. Tengo 17 perdigones en todo el cuerpo. Una bala en la pierna. Por eso cojeo un poco. [...] Perdí la vista, me reventaron acá, todito esto. Tenía mi dentadura ya, me volaron, yo boté tres dias de sangre. […] Recién el año pasado me han operado. Se había hecho una bola así y había madera, de lo que había reventado los terrucos, y no sabía, 416VI Hidden Heroes6.2 Diffusion of transitional justice Between “hero and villain” and “tribune and tribunal” 174Already during the conflict, intellectuals and human rights activists pronounced their worries about the participation of armed civilians in the struggle against the Shining Path. One of the concerns was that the CADs might convert into Colombian-style paramilitary organizations.175 Mario Fumerton points out how the events in the village of Ucharaccay in 1983 sparked the public opinion’s disapproval of peasant self-defense.176 In this small community in the highlands of Huanta, eight journalists who wanted to report on the conflict were mistaken for Shining Path members and murdered by the villagers upon their arrival. The narrative of the subsequent parliamentary commission of inquiry led by novelist Mario Vargas Llosa portrays the peasants as savages for whom “this violence is the normal sphere in which they live from the moment they are born until their death”.177 Furthermore, the fact that the CADs counted with the support of president Fujimori and a significant part of the military sectors increased their unpopularity in the eyes of the human recién el año pasado.” Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.174  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 2” (Lima, 2003), 288; CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 74. CVR, “Comité de Autodefensa 2,” 61. 175  CVR, “Comité de Autodefensa 3,” 2002, 36, SCO34510, Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos.176  Fumerton, “Beyond Counterinsurgency: Peasant Militias and Wartime Social Order in Peru’s Civil War,” 76.177  This quote was translated into English from the Dutch translation of a text which presumably originally was written in Spanish. Mario Vargas Llosa, “De Geschiedenis van Een Moordpartij,” in Het Continent van de Eenzaamheid (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1992), 79; for the entire report of the commission of inquiry, see: Mario Vargas Llosa, Abraham Guzmán Figueroa, and Mario Castro Arenas, “Informe Sobre Ucharaccay” (Lima, 1983).417VI Hidden Heroesrights community.178 In 1989, historian Carlos Iván Degregori - who would also become a commissioner of the TRC – expressed his disapproval of the CADs in a reaction to a controversial interview with the notorious CAD commander Huayhuaco in the newspaper Expreso:Because although in the Apurimac river the organization [of the CADs] is reborn from its ashes [i.e. from the older tradition of peasant organization], it does so to a certain extent like zombies, also converted, like the Shining Path, into a war machine, no matter how much they invoke peace and make a profession of democratic faith. The proof: they believe that they will solve the problem with rifles.179From the outset, the existence of the CADs indeed proved to be a thorny question in the transitional justice process. While, as mentioned, self-defense committees also existed in many other parts of the country during the war, the TRC states that the CADs of Vinchos180 and especially those of the VRAEM were the most important and violent ones, and “therefore the most relevant for the TRC.”181 As stated in the introduction to this chapter, the TRC 178  CVR, 36.179  My translation of original citation: “Porque si bien en el río Apurímac la organización renace de sus cenizas, lo hace en cierta medida como los zombis, convertida también, como Sendero Luminoso, en máquina de guerra, por más que invoquen la paz y hagan profesión de fe democrática. La prueba: creen que con fusiles solucionan el problema.” Carlos Iván Degregori, “Sendas Peligrosas. La Guerra Del Comandante Huayhuaco,” in Jamás Tan Cerca Arremetió Lo Lejos: Sendero Luminoso y La Violenica Politica, IEP (Lima, 2015), 127.180  Vinchos is one of the fifteen districts of the province of Huamanga, department of Ayacucho. It is situated in the highlands Northwest of the capital city of Huamanga.181  My translation form original citation: “En este sentido, son las más relevantes para la CVR.” CVR, “Comité de Autodefensa 2,” 23. The TRC thus both makes generalizations on the phenomenon of the CADs and specifies the different regional variations that existed, among which the CADs of Vinchos and those of the VRAEM are considered by the TRC as the most problematic ones. 418VI Hidden Heroespresents the self-defense committees in the final report as an actor balancing on the fragile divide “between hero and villain”.182 The CADs of the valley of the Apurímac river are mentioned in two different parts of the TRC’s final report. Firstly, they are mentioned in the first chapter of the second volume, which deals with the armed actors of the civil war. Here, the TRC considers the CADs as the fifth armed actor of the civil war, after the Shining Path, the police forces, the army and the MRTA.183 The fact that they are ranked together with the other armed actors suggests that the TRC categorizes the CADs in the first place as perpetrators. While the TRC also points to their role in the defeat of the Shining Path, it foremost considers the CADs responsible for the escalation of the war: Despite the merits that they undoubtedly have for the restoration of peace, there can be no doubt that the rondas contrasubversivas [contra subversive rounds, i.e. the CADs] have contributed to the spiral of violence beyond what in a war context could be considered inevitable.184 Secondly, the first chapter of volume four, which describes the course of the civil war in different regions of the country, distinguishes the valley of the Apurímac river as a separate region marked by the presence of the CADs as an additional actor in the war.185 Here, the TRC also stresses the human rights violations and the “bad reputation” of the CADs.186182  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 2,” 288; CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 74.183  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 2,” 288–304.184  My translation from original citation: “No obstante los méritos que indudablemente tienen para el restablecimiento de la paz, no puede haber dudas de que las rondas contrasubversivas han contribuido a la espiral de la violencia más allá de lo que, en un contexto de guerra, se podría considerar inevitable.” CVR, 299.185  CVR, “Informe Final, Tomo 4,” 73–86.186  CVR, 83.419VI Hidden HeroesFurthermore, in the preliminary in-depth thematic study of the TRC187 on the role of the CADs, the possibility of holding a public hearing in which the CADs can testify is treated with caution: To cancel it [the public hearing] would mean damaging the “tense calm” relationship that currently exists between the ronderos [members of the CADs] and the TRC. The challenge, as for all public hearings, is to find a balance between tribune and tribunal; that is, a forum cannot be provided to the ronderos to justify their abuses, but at the same time the importance of their participation in the pacification must be recognized.188In the discussion preceding the in-depth study, commissioner Sofía Macher stressed that during the public hearings, the witnesses reveal “their truth” (“su verdad”) and not that of the TRC. At the same time, she stated that, in order to be legitimate, the conclusions of the final report should include both victims and perpetrators.189 In the internal preparatory documents for a two-day workshop with 35 invited members of the CADs, organized by the TRC in the city of Huanta in June 2002, the TRC expressed its concern with regards to the position of the CADs towards the work of the commission:Regarding the work of the TRC, we have perceived that 187  The TRC conducted 19 in-depth studies of “significant cases”. The redaction of the final report was based on these in-depth studies. The content therefore partly overlaps with the text of the final report, but the in-depth studies are more detailed and extensive. 188   My translation from original citation: “Cancelarla significaría estropear la relación de ‘tensa calma’ que actualmente existe entre ronderos y CVR. El reto, como para todas las audiencias institucionales, es encontrar el balance entre tribuna y tribunal; es decir, no se puede facilitar un foro a ronderos para que justifiquen sus abusos, pero a la vez hay que reconocer la importancia de su participación en la pacifiación.” CVR, “Comité de Autodefensa 2,” 61. The public hearing did take place, but the recording was not available when I visited the archive. 189  CVR, 1.420VI Hidden Heroesthere is much ignorance and even fear for alleged persecution of members of the CADs, although we did not perceive an outspokenly contrary position. Knowing that the CADs are actors of primary importance in the process of violence of the last decades and that they represent current leaders and an important part of the population that the TRC has been working with, the presence of the mentioned positions is worrisome because it can hinder the work of the TRC, encourage contrary positions in the population, take away legitimacy.190With regards to the general willingness of survivors to engage with the TRC, the population of the valley of the Apurímac river was said to be remarkably taciturn in comparison to other parts of the Ayacucho region.191 Despite the initial doubts, a thematic public hearing192 on “political violence and self-defense committees” (violencia política y comités de autodefensa) did take place in Lima on May 16th 2003. Nine representatives of self-defense committees and rondas campesinas from all over the country gave their testimony.193 190  My translation from original citation: “Respecto a la labor de la CVR hemos percibido que existe mucho desconocimiento e incluso temor por la presunta persecución a miembros de los CADs aunque no una posición claramente contraria. Sabiendo que los CADs son actores de primera importancia en el proceso de la violencia de las últimas décadas y que representan líderes actuales y parte importante de las poblaciones con las que viene trabajando la CVR, la presencia de las posiciones mencionadas es por demás preocupante porque puede entorpecer la labor de la CVR, incentivar posiciones contrarias a ella en la población, restarle legitimidad.” CVR, “Taller Con Comités de Autodefensa,” 2002, SR2-46-01, Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos.191  Literal citation: “[...] a diferencia con el VRAE donde, como dijimos, existe todavía mucho hermetismo en la población.” CVR, “Comité de Autodefensa 2,” 21.192  In addition to the eight public hearings with victims in different parts of the country, the TRC organized five thematic public hearings. CVR, “Informe Sobre Las Actividades Realizadas Por La Comisión de La Verdad y Reconciliación y Convocatoria Al País.”193  CVR, “Audiencia Pública Temática Violencia Política y Comités de Autodefensa,” accessed April 10, 2019, http://www.cverdad.org.pe/apublicas/421VI Hidden HeroesIn his closing speech of the public hearing, commissioner Carlos Iván Degregori recognized the state’s failure to protect its citizens as an important explanatory factor for the existence of the CADs. Nevertheless, he stated that[…] the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reaffirms that the end does not justify the means. Even if the end has been self-defense and pacification, as Peruvians, civilians and soldiers, we must learn that it is not possible to condone the so-called “excesses”. We know that it is extremely difficult, that in a war situation “you cannot wait for the enemy with bouquets of flowers,” as Mr. Germán Anaya [one of the testifying self-defense committee members] said. However, the challenge for all Peruvians is to learn from the mistakes of the past and to face any challenge that may arise in the future, respecting the law of war, human rights and international humanitarian law.194Not surprisingly, the excessive use of violence which resulted in human rights violations, constituted the main difficulty for the TRC in dealing with the role of the CADs. Nevertheless, in the in-depth study, the only attempt that was made to understand and contextualize the use of violence by the CADs resulted in a questionable cultural explanation: audiencias/atematicas/atcads_index.php.194  My translation of original citation: “[...] la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación se reafirma en que el fin no justifica los medios. Aun cuando el fin haya sido la autodefensa y la pacificación, los peruanos y peruanas, civiles y militares, debemos aprender que no es posible condonar los denominados ‘excesos’. Sabemos que es sumamente difícil, que en una situación de guerra ‘no se puede esperar al enemigo con ramos de flores’, como dijo el señor Germán Anaya. Sin embargo, el desafío de todos los peruanos es justamente aprender de los errores del pasado y poder enfrentar cualquier desafío que se presente en el futuro, respetando las leyes de la guerra, los derechos humanos y el derecho internacional humanitario.” CVR, “Clausura de Audiencia Pública de Balance ‘Violencia Política y Comités de Autodefensa,’” accessed April 10, 2019, http://www.cverdad.org.pe/apublicas/audiencias/atematicas/atcads_clausura.php.422VI Hidden HeroesWithout wanting to justify, we want to recall the sociocultural context in which the internal war developed; a context in which there have always been different strategies to resolve conflicts, both democratic and violent, and where the historical tradition, marked by gamonalismo [exploitation by big landowners], manifests itself in a conception in which the use of violence is considered legitimate, “natural” and, more than anything, inevitable.195Furthermore, the TRC’s discussion on accountability for human rights violations revolved around the question whether the CADs acted as civilians, i.e. protected by the Geneva Convention and under the jurisdiction of the Peruvian state; as an independent institution, i.e. a separate actor participating in hostilities which can be held accountable for war crimes; or as representatives of the state forces, i.e. volunteers in the Peruvian army as defined by international humanitarian law. In any case, the TRC concluded that “those citizens who have violated rights protected by the Peruvian state should be judged.”196 The TRC took a clear stance against any form of amnesty for the CADs and reminded that the 1995 Amnesty Law issued by Fujimori, which also protected the CADs from prosecution for abuses committed between 1980 and 1995, was revoked by the Inter-American Court in 2001.197 On the contrary, the TRC stated that the Special Investigations Units of the commission should try its best to judicialize more cases involving members of the CADs.198 195  My translation from original citation: “Sin afán de justificar, queremos recordar el contexto sociocultural en el cual de (sic) desenvolvió la guerra interna; un contexto donde siempre han existido diferentes estrategias para resolver conflictos, tanto democráticas como violentas, y donde la tradición histórica, marcada por el gamonalismo, se manifiesta en una concepción en la cual el uso de la violencia es considerado legítimo, ‘natural’ y, más que nada, inevitable.” CVR, “Comité de Autodefensa 2,” 28.196  My translation from original citation: “[…] aquellos ciudadanos que han violado derechos protegidos por el estado peruano deben ser juz gados.” CVR, 60.197  CVR, 66.198  CVR, 61.423VI Hidden HeroesThe issue of human rights violations also dominated the TRC’s recommendations on reparations for (relatives of) CAD members who were injured or who died in combat. While the TRC stated that the government had to recognize the contribution of the CADs through symbolical acts, it also argued that a specific reparation program for the CADs was not a good idea:The inclusion of reparation programs specifically for ronderos [members of the CADs] can cause frictions in cases where the CAD is integrated in the communal structure  […] furthermore, it could collide with international law in the event that it has ronderos who have committed human rights violations among its beneficiaries.199Instead, the TRC recommended that the compensations which had been promised to the CADs by the state since 1992200 also had to be awarded retrospectively, i.e. for events that occurred since the beginning of the civil war, and that the procedure had to become more accessible.201 Despite this recommendation, and 199  My translation from original citation: “La inclusión de programas de reparación específicamente para ronderos puede causar desavenencias en casos donde el CAD está integrado a la estructura comunal […] además, puede chocar con el derecho internacional en caso que entre sus benficiarios haya ronderos que han cometido violaciones a los derechos humanos.” CVR, 58.200  Compensations varying from 20.000 to 39.000 PEN were stipulated in supreme decree 077-92 (1992) and 068-DE-S/G (1998) based on a list of conditions that the petitioner should meet corresponding to the type of damage suffered (death, disability or material damage). These compensations only apply for harm inflicted by members of the Shining Path upon the CADs, and not for perpetration by the armed forces. Defensoría del Pueblo, “La Indemnización a Los Miembros de Los Comités de Autodefensa y Rondas Campesinas Víctimas Del Terrorismo,” Informes Defensoriales (Lima: Defensoría del Pueblo, 2000), 7.201  According to the TRC, only 29 members of the CADs or their relatives had received compensation in 2000, while in 1989 only at least 345 CADs would have died. CVR, 48, 61. The TRC’s recommendation to enhance the compensations stipulated in supreme decree 077-92 in a way contradicts its recommendation not to create a separate reparation program for the CADs because of possible frictions in 424VI Hidden Heroesnotwithstanding the TRC’s stress on the human rights violations perpetrated by the CADs, the Integral Reparation Plan (PIR) that was designed in the wake of the TRC does include CAD members as potential beneficiaries, even if they were injured during active combat or confrontation and regardless of their previous conduct or the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator.202 This differs from the clean hands doctrine that is applied to members of the Shining Path to exclude them from the PIR (cfr. chapter 3.3).203 The PIR does, however, not provide a special category for the CADs. As Jemima García-Godos states:The PIR makes no specific mention of peasant ronderos casualties because their dead and injured are included in the universe of victims and beneficiaries. The expanded definition of ‘victim of violation,’ which includes Peruvian armed forces, police and CAD members in combat or in confrontation with guerrillas, allows the identification of CAD casualties as victims and beneficiaries and entitles them to various forms of reparations on equal terms with other victims and beneficiaries.204The CADs in the blind spot of civilian participation in violenceIndeed, while the TRC considers the CADs in the first place as the communities, because the amounts of compensation stipulated in the supreme decree are a lot higher than those that can be claimed by beneficiaries of the PIR (up to 10.000 PEN maximum). 202  García-Godos, “Victim Reparations in the Peruvian Truth Commission and the Challenge of Historical Interpretation,” 75.203  The PIR does however exclude CAD members who have already been beneficiaries of the abovementioned compensation decree. What is more, the PIR recommended the complete withdrawal of the compensation decree and the integration of the CADs in the PIR. It should be noted, however, that the maximum compensation in the PIR (10.000 PEN) is a lot lower than that of the compensation decree. García-Godos, 76.204  García-Godos, 77.425VI Hidden Heroescombatants and thus potential perpetrators, the PIR in contrast identifies the CADs primarily as civilians and potential ‘innocent’ victims of human rights violations. Consequently, both the TRC and the PIR describe the agency of the CADs in terms that contrast victims and perpetrators; and civilians and combatants. The two most important transitional justice mechanisms thus make no significant attempt to further scrutinize or conceptualize the issue of civilian participation in violence, which in this specific case appears in the form of self-defense militias.205 In fact, the agency of the CADs thus corresponds to a blind spot in the transitional justice process which results from the categorization of survivors described in chapter 2.2. As explained, trauma and human rights are transitional justice’s most important parameters for defining the (post-)conflict identity of survivors of war and violence. This generally results in two opposed and highly moralized ways of describing that identity: the innocent victim of human rights violations who has the right to truth, justice and reparation as opposed to the vicious perpetrator who needs to be held accountable for human rights violations. As Erica Bouris points out, when it comes to describing (non)combatant status, “a chain of equivalence” runs from non-combatant status to innocence which “is intended to widen the moral gap between the perpetrator and victim, to assist in moral calculations that make it easier to recognize and sympathize with the victim and condemn the perpetrator.” Moreover, this dichotomy is gendered because women and children are likely to be identified as noncombatants and adult men as combatants.206 These (post)conflict identities described by the opposition between civilians vs. combatants and victims vs. perpetrators are typically static and ignore the fluidity of roles that characterizes war contexts. Accordingly, the properties which they are assigned are often considered exclusive. For example, the issue 205  For a detailed assessment of peasant’s incentives for organizing self-defense during the civil war in the VRAEM, see chapter five of: Zech, “Between Two Fires: Civilian Resistance during Internal Armed Conflict in Peru.”206  Bouris, Complex Political Victims, 36, 37.426VI Hidden Heroesof perpetrator trauma is largely ignored, as trauma is a feature that in the first place defines victimhood. While, ironically enough, the concept of PTSD was originally developed to conceptualize the suffering of combatants (more specifically Vietnam war veterans), it became primarily associated with victimhood during the subsequent decades.207 Indeed, as Stef Craps and Lucy Bond point out:While, in strictly clinical terms, it makes sense to argue for the recognition of the phenomenon of perpetrator trauma, in the real world such recognition will effectively be interpreted as making a dubious case for exonerating perpetrators, considering them ‘legitimate victims’, which amounts to a betrayal of the memory of the real victims.208 In its pursuit of a moral separation between good and evil, transitional justice puts innocent victims and their rights center-stage. The perpetrators’ active narrative of inflicting violence is thus subordinate to the victim’s passive narrative of undergoing violence. This means that (post-)conflict agency and identity are defined by the effects of violence rather than by its causes. The violence in itself is consequently described as ‘meaningless’ and ‘irrational’ and lacks (historical) contextualization. Lars Waldorf identified similar problems for the case of ex-combatants who testified before the South-African TRC:The South African TRC missed several opportunities when it came to those ex-combatants who did testify at hearings. First, it failed to ask questions about chains of command that could have helped document broader patterns of abuse. Second, it focused on noncombatant victims, while treating ex- combatants as perpetrators and criminals […] Having 207  Alan Gibbs, Contemporary American Trauma Narratives (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 166.208  Lucy Bond and Stef Craps, Trauma (Routledge, 2019), 120.427VI Hidden Heroescategorized participants as either victims or perpetrators, the TRC ‘[left] ‘ordinary’ soldier experiences largely invisible.’ Finally, by treating combatants as perpetrators or “wishing them away,” it made their reintegration more difficult.209In case of the CADs, the TRC was explicit about why they constituted a ‘difficult’ group of survivors that does not fit the category of the ‘ideal’ innocent victim: In sum, there is no room for the CADs in the post-war world. Their reputation is bloodstained and their authoritarianism and the male values they hold are unattractive to international agencies or to NGOs which promote a culture of peace and gender equality.210 Two important obstructions for the identification of the CADs as victims are mentioned here: their gender and the fact that they are an armed - and thus bloodstained - actor. Indeed, as stated in chapter 3.3, the victim-perpetrator dichotomy often translates in a female-male opposition: the dominant victim identity that is constructed is female, and the dominant perpetrator identity is male. The fact that the CADs actively cherish their masculine warrior identity while the TRC takes a gender-sensitive approach in favor of women increased their unpopularity before the TRC: The identity of the anti-subversive warrior that the commanders 209  Lars Waldorf, “Ex-Combatants and Truth Commissions,” in Disarming the Past: Transitional Justice and Ex-Combatants, ed. Ana Cutter Patel, Pablo De Greiff, and Lars Waldorf (New York: ICTJ, 2009), 115.210  My translation of original citation: “En suma, en el mundo posguerra no hay lugar para los CAD. Su reputación está manchada con sangre, y su autoritarismo y los valores masculinos que guardan, no son atractivos para agencias internacionales y ONG que promuevan la cultura de paz y la equidad de género. […]  El Estado, por su lado, da la impression que el tema le es desagradable y prefiere callar.” CVR, “Comité de Autodefensa 2,” 49.428VI Hidden Heroesconstruct during the conflict will not only bring them in trouble in the post-war period […], it also marginalizes women in the construction of the official history of the counter-insurgency war that emphasizes masculine heroism.211The question of masculinity furthermore returned in the discussion on the future of the CADs, where the TRC considered their reorientation from self-defense to tasks related to socio-economic community-building:The question thus is what to do with them [the CADs]. […] On the other hand, the marginalization of the CADs by support agencies, like the international cooperation and NGOs, makes it even more unlikely that they [the CADs] will assume development tasks. To change this, they would have to abandon the masculine and militarized authoritarianism that characterizes them.212While the TRC argued that “sooner or later, the self-defense committees should disappear” and pointed to the “demilitarization of daily life” and the “demilitarization of the minds” as “maybe the biggest challenge”, the discussion on the future of the CADs did not lead to concrete proposals for their disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR)213. This is probably due to the missing link 211  My translation of original citation: “La identidad del guerrero antisubversivo que los comandos construyen durante el conflicto no solo les traerá problemas en la época posguerra […] sino margina a las mujeres en la construcción de la historia oficial de la guerra contrainsurgente que enfatiza el heroísmo masculino.” CVR, 31.212  My translation of original citation: “La pregunta, entonces, es qué hacer con ellos. […] Por otro lado, la marginación de los CAD por parte de organismos de apoyo, como la cooperación internacional y las ONG, hace más difícil aún que asuman tareas de desarrollo. Para que ello cambie, tendrían que renunciar al autoritarismo masculino y militarizado que los caracteriza.” CVR, 56.213  The UN defines disarmament, demobilization, reinsertion and reintegration as follows: “Disarmament is the collection, documentation, control and 429VI Hidden Heroesbetween DDR and transitional justice that characterizes many (post-)conflict contexts. While DDR and transitional justice share many of their long-term goals, “there is little, if any, coordination between the two.” According to Lars Waldorf, “this is largely explicable because of their different beneficiaries and aims: ex-combatants and security, on the one hand, and victims and justice, on the other.”214 In the case of (post-)conflict Peru, no separate DDR program was set up to complement the existing transitional justice measures. While the TRC did express its concern about the disarmament and demobilization of the self-defense committees, the CADs on their turn made clear to the TRC that they did not perceive the conflict as finished and did not even consider disarming (cfr. 6.3). According to the TRC, however, it was definitely the state and disposal of small arms, ammunition, explosives and light and heavy weapons of combatants and often also of the civilian population. Disarmament also includes the development of responsible arms management programmes. Demobilization is the formal and controlled discharge of active combatants from armed forces or other armed groups. The first stage of demobilization may extend from the processing of individual combatants in temporary centres to the massing of troops in camps designated for this purpose (cantonment sites, encampments, assembly areas or barracks). The second stage of demobilization encompasses the support package provided to the demobilized, which is called reinsertion. Reinsertion is the assistance offered to ex-combatants during demobilization but prior to the longer-term process of reintegration. Reinsertion is a form of transitional assistance to help cover the basic needs of ex-combatants and their families and can include transitional safety allowances, food, clothes, shelter, medical services, short-term education, training, employment and tools. While reintegration is a long-term, continuous social and economic process of development, reinsertion is a short-term material and/or financial assistance to meet immediate needs, and can last up to one year. Reintegration is the process by which ex-combatants acquire civilian status and gain sustain- able employment and income. Reintegration is essentially a social and economic process with an open time frame, primarily taking place in communities at the local level. It is part of the general development of a country and a national responsibility and often necessitates long-term external assistance.” UN, “Operational Guide to the Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Standards,” 2014.214  Waldorf, “Introduction,” 16.430VI Hidden Heroesnot civilians that had to assume the responsibility for the struggle against the remnants of the Shining Path.215 At the same time, the TRC admitted that the government did not necessarily take this responsibility and described the position of the state towards the self-defense committees as follows:The state, on its turn, gives the impression that it finds the topic unpleasant and prefers to silence it.216Indeed, a first obvious reason for the state to avoid the topic of the CADs was the inconvenient truth that the state’s failure to defend its citizens against the Shining Path was the first reason of existence for the self-defense committees.217 Secondly, the CADs did not only undermine the state’s monopoly on the counter-insurgency campaign, they also proved to be more successful in fighting the Shining Path.218 In sum, the TRC encountered ambiguous and contrary positions towards the CADs from the state as well as from the human rights community. The CADs of the VRAEM thus resulted to be a ‘difficult’ actor in a ‘difficult’ region, where there did not even seem to be a consensus yet on whether the conflict was actually over when the transitional justice process took off. Consequently, transitional justice with its underlying ideas on memory, victimhood and time was not as actively diffused in the VRAEM as in the highlands of Ayacucho. To begin with, the absence of human rights 215  My translation of original full citation: “Un reto aparte es la desmilitarización de la vida cotidiana (la “desmilitarización de las mentes”, como dijimos arriba), y la construcción de una cultura de paz que rompa el círculo de reproducción de la violencia política en la vida cotidiana. Eso, por cierto, es quizás la parte más difícil y requiere de una acción concertada entre el Estado, ONGs y la sociedad civil organizada.” CVR, “Comité de Autodefensa 2,” 56.216  My translation of original citation: “El Estado, por su lado, da la impresión que el tema le es desagradable y prefiere callar.” CVR, 49.217  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 141.218  Fumerton, “Beyond Counterinsurgency: Peasant Militias and Wartime Social Order in Peru’s Civil War,” 63.431VI Hidden HeroesNGOs that focus on (post-)conflict related topics is remarkable. The ICRC is the only humanitarian institution in the VRAEM working in the area of transitional justice. More specifically, their work is concerned with the search for the disappeared. They have, however, not more than one responsible staff member for the entire region.219 As a result of the absence of NGOs - which in many remote parts of the country take over the state’s responsibility of informing citizens about their rights - disinformation and confusion about the TRC and the PIR seem even more remarkable in the VRAEM than in most parts of the highlands of Ayacucho.220 For example, some research participants in the VRAEM point out that they did not have the opportunity to testify because the TRC never came.221 Similar to many research participants in the highlands, others state that they did not want to testify before the TRC out of fear or distrust.222 Several research participants were unaware of the fact that they can still register in the RUV and there is general confusion about the administrative procedure and the type of reparations that can be claimed.223 Some state that they have claimed reparations but did not receive anything, while in principle they should be entitled.224 The administrator in charge of the RUV in a town in the district of 219  Fieldnotes, conversation with ICRC representative, district of Pichari, 11.05.2017.220  This is a general impression that I gain from my fieldwork, which would need further in-depth comparative research in order to be proven.221  Interview Camilo, ex-recruit of the Shining Path, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018; interview with Alejandro, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 08.07.2018; interview with Humberto, ex-CAD commander, district of Kimbiri, 13.05.2017. 222  Interview with Nilda, ex-CAD member and widow, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018; interview with Ladislao, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018; interview with Nelson, ex-CAD commander, district of Samugari, 30.06.2018.223  Interview with Victoria, widow of local authority killed by the Shining Path, district of Samugari, 29.06.2018; interview with Nilda, ex-CAD member and widow, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018; interview with Rosa, ex-CAD member whose father was killed by the Shining Path, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018.224  Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.432VI Hidden HeroesSamugari admits that disinformation, the replacement of authorities and the lack of political will generate major problems in the follow-up of the reparation program in the VRAEM.225 Furthermore, some research participants explicitly refer to the VRAEM as a context that makes testifying or claiming reparations more difficult: Until now [we have received] nothing, miss. Zero. The people, and especially here in the jungle, have not received anything. Of course, those who have asked for it, they received some support, some animals to breed, but that was in the highlands, here nothing. […] But also, the government could give [something], but because of this coca the government does not think good of us, the people of the jungle. They tell us we are narcotraficantes, that everyone has a lot of money and therefore all the support goes to the highlands.226It is because you are in the VRAEM. So, when you are in the VRAEM, this means that there is more fear […] there is still more fear to give information […] it’s mostly to protect our 225  Fieldnotes, conversation with RUV officer, district of Samugari, 27.06.2018. The reports of the CMAN list the implementation of individual and collective reparations per department. As the VRAEM is a region that entails several departments, it is hard to deduce advancements in the VRAEM from these reports. While I requested official numbers on the implementation of the PIR in the districts of the VRAEM to the CMAN, I never received them. With regards to the implementation of collective reparation projects in the VRAEM, Lisa Bunselmeyer’s research for the district of Santa Rosa states that a collective reparation project was designed for that district, but never implemented. Bunselmeyer, “Trust Repaired?”, p. 189.226  My translation of original citation: “Hasta ahorita nada, señorita. Cero. La gente y sobre todo aquí en la selva no ha recibido nada. Claro los que han pedido, se les ha dado apoyo, algunos animalitos para que críen pero eso en la sierra, pero aquí nada. […] Pero también el gobierno puede dar, pero con esto de la coca el gobierno no nos mira bien aquí a los de la selva. Nos dicen que somos narcotraficantes, que todos tienen mucho dinero y en ese sentido el apoyo va para la sierra.” Interview with Ivan, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 27.06.2018.433VI Hidden Heroesfamilies. […] Like every country has its war, Peru’s little war is the VRAEM.227Finally, the position of the CADs themselves as the potential ‘receivers’ of transitional justice and human rights discourse should also be taken into account when analyzing its diffusion. The TRC’s accusations of human rights violations are met with bitterness by the CADs. An ex-commander in Llochegua stated that the TRC was “leftist” and “not neutral”. Besides, he feels bothered by the bad image that the TRC created of the CADs:[The TRC] says that we have violated human rights, but the Shining Path was worse!228While they openly admit that they have committed ‘excesses’, the CADs justify their acts as self-defense and seem to be frustrated by the framing in the language of human rights. They refer to human rights as something that did not exist in the VRAEM before and during the war and that ignores the reality of combat:We applied the law of retaliation, an eye for an eye, who kills has to die, like it is said in the Bible.229227  My translation of original citation: “Es por la misma naturalidad de que estas en el VRAEM. Entonces cuando estas en el VRAEM, significa que hay mayor temor […] hay temor todavía aun entre dar información […] es una protección familiar mayormente […]. Como cualquier país tiene su guerra, su pequeña guerra del Perú, creo, su pequeña guerra lo hace el VRAEM.” Interview with Sandra (daughter of Ladislao), district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.228  My translation of original citation: “Dice que los CADs han atropellado los derechos humanos, pero si Sendero era peor!” Interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 10.05.2017.229  My translation of original citation: “Aplicamos la ley del Talión, ojo por ojo, quién mata debe morir, así como dice la biblia.” Interview with Alejandro, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 08.07.2018.434VI Hidden HeroesYes, there was killing, but in defense, pues. This is what I tell you, but I don’t have anything to hide. I don’t have to lie about this or mislead you. But look, yes, there were killings. We are not going to say there were none. […] But they [the Shining Path] caught you and ambushed you and…230Where do human rights exist? Where someone is watching you. And where no one is watching? Where no one sees it? There is no Mister Human Rights there. They [the Shining Path] grab you here and no one is watching you. They take you like that. There are no human rights. There should be human rights for us, the ones who were injured.231Gabriela: Señor Nelson, what do you think of human rights? nelSon: Well, I think that they [the human rights ‘people’] accuse you, sometimes people tell you: ‘It was like that, it was like this.’ They practically say: ‘Let’s see, who did you kill?’ No, we didn’t kill, we always defended ourselves […] We are not that crazy here that we just kill like that. What are we, crazy because we take lives? If they confront you with a weapon, you don’t want to be killed either. It’s a war; what falls, falls.232230  My translation of original citation: “Sí se ha matado pero en defensa pues. Eso yo les enseño a ustedes pero no tengo nada que ocultar. No tengo porqué mentir, ni engañarlos. Pero mira, sí se ha matado. No vamos a decir que no. […] Pero ellos te agarraron y te emboscaban y…” Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.231  My translation of original citation: “Derechos humanos existen dónde? Cuando el otro te ve. Y si donde no ve? Donde no ve? No está el señor de derechos humano. Te cogen por acá, no te ha visto nadie. Te llevan nomás. No hay derechos humanos. Derechos humanos debe haber para nosotros que hemos quedado heridos.” Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.232  My translation of original citation: “Bueno creo que ellos te inculpan, a veces la gente te dice: ‘esto ha sido así, que es esto’. Ellos dicen prácticamente: ‘a ver, donde, a quienes le has matado?’ No, nadie le ha matado, siempre se ha defendido […] Acá ni loco para matar así. 435VI Hidden HeroesIn those times you could not even denounce [human rights violations]. Where? There were no authorities. Even here we recently have a prosecutor and a judicial system. […] That’s why the charges have to be fresh or at least after a year, but already twenty or thirty years have passed. […] Those things do not count anymore, because after going through a war, which surely has left a dark history, it is not worth the quarrel anymore. That’s why they speak of national reconciliation, if it is like that than we better burry it before it becomes the only thing that is left for history.233In sum, the fact that the CADs were in many cases unsympathetic to human rights discourse contributed to the gap between them and the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ concerned with transitional justice. 6.3 Appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation of transitional justice The law of the jungle? The CADs as providers of local governance and social orderShedding light on the local processes of governance and social order that are both cause and consequence of the organization of peasants in self-defense committees during the war can help us to both ¿Qué somos nosotros, locos para quitar la vida? Cuando te enfrentan con arma, no vas a querer que te maten también. Es una guerra, que se cae, se cayó.” Interview with Nelson, ex-CAD commander, district of Samugari, 30.06.2018.233  My translation of original citation: “Ese tiempo no podías ni denunciar, ¿Dónde? No había autoridades. Aquí mismo recién tenemos fiscalía, poder judicial. […] Por eso las denuncias tiene que ser calientitos o por lo menos después de un año, pero ya han pasado 20 a 30 años. […] Esas cosas ya no valen, porque después de haber pasado una guerra, que si bien es cierto ha quedado una historia negra, ya no vale hacernos leña por eso. Por eso se habla de la reconciliación nacional, si eso es así es mejor echarlo tierra porque si no solo queda para la historia.” Interview with Alejandro, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 08.07.2018.436VI Hidden Heroesconceptualize and contextualize civilian participation in violence. This enables us to counter the idea of a peasantry helplessly caught between two fires turning into predatory warlords.  The organization of self-defense committees during the civil war drastically changed the local governance structure of the peasant society in the valley of the Apurímac river. As Mario Fumerton points out, the Shining Path’s strategy of targeting existing governmental and authority structures left a “governance vacuum” which was filled by the CADs. While the indiscriminately violent intervention of the state forces was the main catalyst for the organization of peasant self-defense234, the Shining Path was “the actor primarily responsible for creating the opportunity for peasant self-defence committees to assume governance functions within their villages”.235 In the midst of the cross-fire, peasants started building an alternative and strong local governance structure. Indeed, until the beginning of the war, most peasants had lived dispersed on their lands or in small hamlets.236 As an ex-CAD commander in the district of Pichari describes:In that time [before the war], we all lived separately in our house on our land. There was no village, it is not like how it is now. Each one of us lived on his land. And for the meetings, for the faenas [collective communal work] we had an inspector, someone who communicated, a chasqui [messenger].237However, the self-defense committees forced the population to centralize in fortified nucleated settlements, so-called bases civiles 234  Fumerton, “Beyond Counterinsurgency: Peasant Militias and Wartime Social Order in Peru’s Civil War,” 68.235  Fumerton, 79.236  Interview with Nilda, ex-CAD member, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018; interview with Julia, ex-CAD member, district of Kimbiri, 24.06.2018. 237  My translation of original citation: “En ese tiempo, cada uno vivíamos en nuestra casa en nuestra chacra. No había pues población, no es como ahora. Vivíamos cada uno en nuestra chacra. Y para las reuniones, para las faenas teníamos un inspector, alguién que comunicaba, un chasqui.” Interview with Oliver, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018.437VI Hidden Heroesantisubversivas238 where the population often lived in provisional carpas239 before building more permanent houses.240 The newly founded base committees received clear orders from the headquarter on how to organize:First of all, your base has to be well organized. Second, all the personnel of your base has to live in huts or tents, both men and women, without any exception, everyday,  but they will leave to their work during the day. Third, all the personnel has to do their service, obligatory, day and night, strictly. Forth, capture all the unknown persons that are walking around your base with firearms and bring them or hand them over to the organized bases.241The centralization in strictly guarded bases allowed the CADs to control every movement of people leaving or entering the territory. Peasants had to ask written permission to the CADs to leave 238  Civil anti-subversive bases239  Tents240  Interview with Oliver, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018; interview with Alfonso, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 10.07.2019; interview with Ramiro, ex-CAD member, district of Kimbiri, 25.06.2018. This is how the constellation in the VRAEM fundamentally differs from districts in the highlands of Ayacucho where self-defense was also strong, such as the district of Tambo. In these communities, the already existing community organization was replaced by the CADs/CDCs. García-Godos García-Godos, “Citizenship, Conflict and Reconstruction: A Case-Study of the Effects of Armed Conflict on Peasant-State Relations in Tambo, Peru,” 125.241  My translation of original citation: “Premero [sic] su base tiene ser bién [sic] organizado, Segundo todo el personal de su base tiene que vivir en chusas[sic]  o carpas tanto barones [sic] y mujeres sin ninguna deferencia [sic] alguna todos los dias pero saldran a sus trabajos de dia. Tercero todo el personal tienen que hacer su cirvicio[sic], obligatoriamente dia y noche estrectamente[sic], Cuarto captorar[sic] a las personas desconocidas que están caminando al rededor de su base con sus armas de juego[sic]  y treyerlo[sic]  o entregarlo a las bases organizadas.” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Oficio N°42°6-S-C-C-D-C-V-R-A-B-P, Pichiwillca, 06.11.1986.438VI Hidden Heroesand enter the base, for example to travel to Huamanga or to find refuge in the valley after fleeing the violence in the highlands. In some cases, the CADs asked an entrance fee to finance the self-defense committees.242 At the height of the war, the task of self-defense, which generally consisted of patrolling through the valley and safeguarding the bases, became the main occupation of most peasants. Throughout the years, these larger concentrations of population centralized in the base committees led to the formation of new communities and towns who became legally recognized as such.243 The town of Santa Rosa, for example, emerged from such a centralization of fourteen dispersed hamlets.244 Indeed, documents from the archive demonstrate how non-organized hamlets decided to regroup and organize in self-defense committees, hereby always asking permission from the central headquarter to found a new base committee.245 Because every active member of the community participated in the tasks of self-defense, the CAD and the community converged into one single entity. As Fumerton states, “[...] the militia members were none other than the villagers themselves.”246 The fact that in their writings the peasants refer to their communities as “base” or “civil defense” (“defensa civil”), also when it comes to non-242  Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Solicita: Autorización, San Francisco, 07.01.1985; Constancia para permanecer en el CDC, Monterrico, 25.04.1985; interview with Alfonso, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 10.07.2018; interview with Rosa, ex-CAD member whose father was killed by the Shining Path, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018.243  Gabriela Zamora Castellares, “Los Comités de Autodefensa y Las Comunidades Del VRAEM En El Conflicto Armado Interno 1980-2000” (Latin American Studies Association “Diálogos de saberes,” Lima, Perú, 2017).244  Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes : Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000, 118; Zamora Castellares, “Los Comités de Autodefensa y Las Comunidades Del VRAEM En El Conflicto Armado Interno 1980-2000.”245  For example: Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Solicita autorizacion para la creasion de nuestra defensa civil, sector barrio Miraflores Pichari, 06.11.1992; Oficio No. 008-92-PCDF/SA, Chuvibana, 20.06.1992. 246  Fumerton, “Beyond Counterinsurgency: Peasant Militias and Wartime Social Order in Peru’s Civil War,” 70.439VI Hidden Heroeswar-related issues, demonstrates the militarization of community life. The self-defense committees thus defended the interests of the community, which was one of their organizational strengths as it enhanced their legitimacy. Moreover, the network structure that allowed small entities to join forces provided for an efficient model of mobilization. The correspondence between the bases and the headquarter shows the constant communication and collaboration between the bases:[...] we send our members accompanied by their escort and three detainees accompanied by an infant and their respective charge of suspects of the ExtremistSubversion [i.e. the Shining Path]. On the other hand, we send [our members] with the finality of coordinating and receiving indications about our difficulties and fighting fraternally hand in hand until reaching our demands.247The hierarchical network structure of the self-defense committees thus became the principal governing body for the entire valley. While clearly emerging in a war context, the governance function of the CADs went beyond war affairs as the self-defense committees became the main organizers of daily life in the valley, including public services such as health and education. Moreover, the governance of the CADs ranged from managing rather banal daily local affairs (such as, among others, the transportation of 150 beer crates from one base to the other248, the organization of fairs and 247  My translation of original citation: “[...] enviamos nuestros miembros acompañado de su Escolta y tres detenidos acompañado de una criatura y su respectivo atestado como sospechosos de la Suberción [sic] Extremista, por otro lado enviamos con la finalidad de coordinar y recibir indicaciones sobre nuestras dificultades y luchar fraternalmente mano a mano hasta alcansar [sic] nuestra reinvendicaciones [sic].” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Dialogo de relaciones de nuestra organisación, Rinconada Baja, 03.12.1984. 248  Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Comunicado, s.d. 440VI Hidden Heroesfootball tournaments249 or requests for intervention in cases of theft250 and adultery251), to administering war affairs (proof hereof are, among many other documents, letters to the military252 or lists of self-defense patrols and their armament253) and communicating with (representatives of) the national government and international institutions such as the UN. While being an example of a local and bottom-up independent organizational structure, the governance of the CADs did not take place in isolation but explicitly related to a position in the nation and even the international community. To begin with, the fact that the CADs generated their own bureaucracy in Spanish - the language of power - shows their relation to national politics and governance.254 Furthermore, the CADs actively maintained their diplomatic relations with the state, for example by sending representatives to Lima to negotiate certain problems or demands with the central government. The relation between 249  Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Se invita a participar a un campeonato relámpago de minifútbol y gran kermess, Pichiwillca, 18.06.1986. The first price of the tournament was a bull of six years old, the fifth price a box of beer. 250  Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Denuncia por delito, Palmapampa, s.d.251  Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Oficio N°001 Informe sobre el problema de esta base, Palestina, 10.01.1985. This letter concerns a community member who is maintaining sexual relationships with several women despite being married and asks the headquarter to intervene. A handwritten note on the bottom of the letter says that a patrol of four to five self-defense members will be send out to punish the men on the 13th of January 1985 at five in the morning. 252  Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Oficio N°116-87-S-C-C-D-C-V-R-A-E-B, Pichiwillca, 18.11.1987.253  Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Relación de las patrullas de la defensa civil de Pichihuillca para realizar patrullaje asia Marintari son los siguientes personas, Pichiwillca, 10.06.1988.254  On this topic, see also: García-Godos, “Citizenship, Conflict and Reconstruction: A Case-Study of the Effects of Armed Conflict on Peasant-State Relations in Tambo, Peru,” 144.441VI Hidden Heroesthe CADs and the government was particularly close during the presidency of Fujimori, who, as mentioned, legally recognized the self-defense committees. For example, as evidenced by the archive, a commission was sent to Lima in 1992 after Fujimori’s autocoup. During this visit, the CADs had a personal meeting with economist and presidential advisor Hernando de Soto to discuss the antidrug policy for the Apurímac valley designed in accordance with the United Nations and the US State Department.255 In 1993, the president of the headquarter of the self-defense committees wrote a personal letter to president Fujimori calling for the design of the amnesty law that would absolve members of the self-defense committees for human rights violations committed in the context of self-defense:[We ask] that the Council of Ministers designs a bill granting AMNESTY TO ALL THOSE DENOUNCED AND JURIDICALLY ACCUSED members of the Self-defense [...] As you know Mister President, many fighters for the PACIFICATION OF THE COUNTRY, during the previous government, we were mistakenly denounced for a series of crimes by the Democratic Lawyers and the so-called Human Rights Defenders, only for the fact that we defended our lives, the lives of our sons, of our family and the community against the attack of the bloodthirsty hordes of the Shining Path.256255  Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Informe Nro. 09-92, Pichiwillca, 1992. 256  My translation of original citation: “Que el Concejo [sic] de Ministros elabore un Proyecto de Ley otorgando la AMNISTIA PARA TODOS LOS DENUNCIADOS Y PROCESADOS JUDICIALMENTE que son miembros de la Autodefensa [...] Como usted sabe Señor Presidente, muchos luchadores por la PACIFICACION DEL PAIS, durante el Gobierno anterior fuimos denunciados por una serie de delitos, injustamente por los Abogados Democráticos y los llamados Defensores de los Derechos Humanos, solamente por el hecho de defender nuestras vidas, la vida de nuestros hijos, de nuestra familia y la comunidad por la aremetida s [sic] de las hordas sanguinarias de Sendero Luminoso.” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Pedimos solucion a 442VI Hidden HeroesA letter dated in 1994 directed from the headquarter to the president of the constituent congress announces the arrival of a commission of representatives of the CADs with the purpose of  [...] solving our problematic and searching once and for all the Pacification and the  Development that our region needs after ten years of struggle against the terrorist subversion of the “Shining Path”.257 In the same year, the national TV channel América Televisión broadcasted a reportage that, according to the president of the central headquarter of the self-defense committees, portrays the CADs as narcotraficantes and brutes in a sensational way. In a letter to the provincial prosecutor, the president fiercely counters these allegations:[...] we are humble peasants who live in abandonment and backwardness and to date we are the victims of the negative appetite of the enemies of the entire NATION [i.e. América Televisión].258A letter concerning the same question is also directed to the Attorney General of the Nation, which concludes with the following statement:problemas policiales y judiciales, Pichiwillca, 19.11.1993.257  My translation of original citation: “[...] solucionar nuestra problemática y buscar definitivamente la Pacificación y el Desarrollo que necesita nuestra región, después de diez años de lucha contra la subversión terrorista de “Sendero Luminoso”.” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Oficio N°068-DECAS-94, Pichiwillca, 17.08.1994.258  My translation of original citation: “[...] somos humildes campesinos que vivimos en el abandono en el atraso y a la fecha somos víctimas de los negativos apetitos de los enemigos de la PATRIA entera [...] “ Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Oficio No 058-94-CAD-DECAS, Pichiwillca, 19.08.1994.443VI Hidden HeroesWe call the Attention, to a profound reflection of the Governing Entities and International [entities] (UN, Human Rights, Amnesty International) and the mass  Media; who when they had the chance turned a deaf ear closing their doors in the most critical moments of the struggle against the terrorist subversion of the Shining Path, who was the first violator of the Human Rights of our villagers.259Furthermore, through their governance of both war-related and other daily affairs, the CADs became the main providers of social order260 during the civil war in the Apurímac valley: in the midst of the chaos of the war, the population developed strategies for survival and coexistence through the self-defense committees. Most interesting, in light of this study, is how the peasants dealt with the infiltration and reintegration of (ex-)Shining Path members in the community in an autonomous way, this is without appealing to the state forces. The CADs were constantly aware of the potential threat from within. They developed their own intelligence and reported any suspicious activity to the headquarter:[...] we inform you about the declaration of our villager: that yesterday a man has  turned up who was going to palmapampa 259  My translation of original citation: “Llamamos la Atención, a una profunda reflexión a las Entidades Gubernamentales e Inernacionales (O.N.U., Derechos Humanos, Amnistía Internacional) y los Medios de Comunicación masiva; que en su oportunidad hicieron oidos sordos cerrando sus puertas en los momentos más álgidos de la lucha contra la subversión terrorista de Sendero Luminoso quienes fueron los primeros violadores de los Derechos Humanos de nuestros comuneros.” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Oficio No 058-94-CAD-DECAS, Pichiwillca, 19.08.1994.260  Fumerton borrows Ana Arjona’s concept of “wartime social order”, which she defines as “the set of rules that structure human interaction in a given community during wartime, allowing for [...] predictability to exist”, Ana Arjona, “Wartime Institutions: A Research Agenda,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 58, no. 8 (December 1, 2014): 1374; Fumerton, “Beyond Counterinsurgency: Peasant Militias and Wartime Social Order in Peru’s Civil War,” 64.444VI Hidden Heroescoming from the locality of atalaya specially to spy on the organized bases [...]261 As mentioned above, Shining Path members who were captured were not handed over to the military but incorporated (by force) into the self-defense committees. As the self-defense committee and the community were one single entity, to be incorporated meant to be (re)integrated in the community through the process of arrepentimiento262: the arrepentidos263 had to make a statement264 expressing their remorse, after which they sometimes received public corporal punishments. Subsequently, by demonstrating their loyalty to the community through active participation in self-defense, the arrepentidos could gain or restore confidence.265 An ex-CAD member in the district of Samugari describes the process as follows:For example, there were always persons who met [arrepentidos] while they were working on their land, so they brought them to the self-defense, and they informed them that they had found 261  My translation of original citation: “[...] informamos su manifistación [sic]  de nuestro comuniro [sic]: que el dia de ayer a suvido [sic]  un hombre con destino a palmapampa de la lucalidad [sic] de atalaya espicialmente [sic] como expiar [sic]  a las bases organisadas [...]”, Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Comunicado, s.d.s.l.262  Repentance263  Repentants264  García-Godos elaborates on such testimonies given by arrepentidos in the community of Huayao, district of Tambo, which were recorded in the registry book of the local CDC/CAD and are very similar to the kind of statements that I found in the archive of the CAD headquarter in Pichiwillca. García-Godos points to the importance of the testimony as a time-marker indicating a ‘before’ and ‘after’. García-Godos, “Citizenship, Conflict and Reconstruction: A Case-Study of the Effects of Armed Conflict on Peasant-State Relations in Tambo, Peru,” 136.265  Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017; interview with Alejandro, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 08.07.2018; Fumerton, “Beyond Counterinsurgency: Peasant Militias and Wartime Social Order in Peru’s Civil War,” 73.445VI Hidden Heroesan arrepentido. And then they [the arrepentidos] confessed: ‘I have come from that place, and this is how things were, and I could not bear it any longer, and that is why I have left.’ [...] And if you have a possibility to escape, you do it, and if you die while trying, well then you die. But there are two options: you die, or they forgive you. But the self-defense did forgive.266The arrepentidos could be former members of the same community that reintegrated them, but due to the course of the war and the recruitment strategy of the Shining Path, many arrepentidos landed in communities where they did not originate from. For example, one research participant recounts how arrepentidos arrived from the highlands to seek refuge in the VRAEM:A lot of times they came from the highlands, plenty of people with their white flag, carrying a baby, the other one of age, or a heavily pregnant woman. And the command waiting for them and we shouting: ‘Are the terrucosarriving, or what?’ - ‘No, these are arrepentidos’, that’s what they said at the time. They arrived in herds, like animals, to every village.267He also describes how, after several days or even weeks of patrolling, the self-defense committees came back to the village accompanied 266  My translation of original citation: “Por ejemplo siempre hay pues las personas que están en las chacras y se encontraban, entonces lo habían llegar a las autodefensas y les informaban que yo he encontrado a esta persona y es un arrepentido, o se ha arrepentido. Y así avisaban ‘yo he venido de tal sitio, y así eran las cosas, y ya no soportaba más y por eso me he salido.’ [...]  Y si tienes una posibilidad de escapar, lo haces, y si tienes que morir en el intento pues mueres. Pero son dos cosas, mueres o te perdonan. Pero las autodefensas si perdonaban.” Interview with Ivan, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 27.06.2018.267  My translation of original citation: “Muchas veces llegaban de la sierra, gente bastante con su banderita blanquito, bebé cargado, el otro anciano, o la señora embarazada a las justas. Y comando esperan, llamamos pe ‘¿Están llegando terrucos o no?’ - ‘Esos son arrepentidos’, decían esa fecha. En manadas llegaban como animal pe, a cada pueblo.” Interview with Ladislao, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.446VI Hidden Heroesby arrepentidos and prisoners. Upon their arrival to the village, the arrepentidos were separated from the prisoners and lodged in the school building, where they were fed and had to make a statement. Subsequently, the proprietarios would stand guarantee for a family of arrepentidos in order to facilitate their reintegration process by granting them access to a piece of land or by offering them a job as peón on their own land. Once the community had decided that they could stay, the arrepentidos were inscribed in the civil register and had to participate in self-defense.268 According to Kimberly Theidon’s research in the highlands of Huanta in the 1990s, where peasants were also organized in self-defense committees, the process of arrepentimiento [...] evaded the watchful eyes of the soldiers stationed in the military bases or other state representatives who made their way to these rural villages. Concerns that the military would denounce their villages as zonas rojas (“red zones” - sympathetic to the guerrilla) kept these processes occult.269Indeed, as stated above, the peasants’ urge to distance themselves from the Shining Path in front of the state forces was one of the primary reasons of existence for the self-defense committees. At the same time, pragmatic reasons, such as the need to maintain coexistence and the possibility of obtaining valuable information concerning the position of the enemy, motivated the peasants to 268  Interview with Ladislao, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.269  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 230. On p. 234, Theidon points to the history of the concept of arrepentimiento, which predates the conflict. Furthermore, in 1992, president Alberto Fujimori passed the so-called Repentance Law (Ley de Arrepentimiento) as part of his counterinsurgency strategy, which encouraged Shining Path members to turn themselves in and, in exchange for information about other suspects, receive reduction of sentence. While this motivated some 6.630 Shining Path members to come forth, the law also led to many false accusations and arbitrary detentions. 447VI Hidden Heroesresort to local reintegration strategies.270 Moreover, as is often stressed by research participants as well as in the declarations of prisoners found in the archive271, a significant part of the arrepentidos were forcedly recruited by the Shining Path and thus did not join the movement voluntarily. These recruits, who often lived in terrible conditions in the Shining Path camps in the jungle for many years, were often approached with compassion upon their return to the community. An ex-CAD commander in Pichari is moved when he recalls the arrepentidos:There [in the Shining Path] the people involved were humble persons, those were  not prepared persons. They were humble peasants, poor mocositos [snot-nosed children]. They were recruited. What were they do blame? So, we could not kill them either. The only thing we had left to do was to try to rescue them. [...] When I remember what [happened], such sorrow... [starts crying] We brought them very  ill, how could we kill them? You had to save them.272One of these notorious Shining Path camps was the one in Sello de Oro, in the district of Santa Rosa, which was liberated by the 270  Kimberly Theidon uses the term ‘micro-reconciliation’ to refer to mechanisms such as arrepentimiento and analyzes the relation with Christian notions of compassion, confession and forgiveness. Theidon, 225-50. In light of the present study, I prefer to speak of reintegration instead of reconciliation, because reconciliation is a term that implies references to certain underlying personal processes which I find hard to grasp.  271  For example: Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Manifestación de un reclutado, Canal, 17.05.1988.272  My translation of original citation: “ Y bueno ahí estaban metidos las personas humildes, no eran pues personas preparadas. Eran humildes campesinos, pobres mocositos. Eran pues reclutados. Y ellos qué culpa tenían? Entonces tampoco los podíamos matar. Y lo que nos quedaba era tratar de rescatarlos. [...] Cuando recuerdo lo que, qué pena...[llora] Los hemos traído muy enfermos. Que vas a poder matarlos? Tenías que rescatarlos.” Interview with Oliver, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018.448VI Hidden Heroesself-defense committees in 1993. A video broadcasted by VRAE TV shows the Shining Path members – including many women and children - coming out of the forest with white flags, handing over their weapons to the commander of the self-defense committees who, according to the voice-over, “orders to give a good treatment to those who return to society.”273 Furthermore, Theidon points out how the self-defense committees increased the population’s feeling of security and “[...] allowed people to feel less threatened by [...] those who lived next door.”274 By eliminating direct feelings of fear and distrust, the CADs enhanced the population’s social capital for reintegrating ‘intimate enemies’.All these different elements - taking distance from the Shining Path in the eyes of the army, the need for local coexistence, the development of intelligence as a war strategy, feelings of compassion and enhanced security - contributed to the peasant’s motivation for developing internal strategies of reintegration that did not involve external intervention from the government or judiciary. The infiltration of Shining Path members and the process of arrepentimiento are recurring topics in interviews as well as in the documents found in the archive of the CADs, which demonstrates the population’s need for managing relations in a war context that generates pressure on existing structures and expectations of social cohesion. For example, several lists of “presumed terrorists” found in the archive show how the peasants differentiated between the many different ways of collaborating with or actively participating in the Shining Path: “collaborator with his boat”, “combatant”, “former combatant”, “soldier combatant villain”, “the best collaborator”, “responsible of the Shining Path members”, “collaborator with 273  My translation of original citation:“ordena dar un buen trato a los que vuelven a la sociedad.” https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=122771488084100&id=100010537472680&sfnsn=mo, last consulted 18.03.2019. 274  Theidon, Intimate Enemies, 250.449VI Hidden Heroesfoodstuff”, “consciousness-raiser”.275 A declaration of a forcedly recruited arrepentido concludes with the phrase: “now I come here to declare my mistakes”, hereby demonstrating the importance of showing remorse.276 Nevertheless, requests for reintegration were sometimes also resisted by the community. For example, one of the base committees writes to the headquarter concerning the case of a family of “fugitivos” (“fugitives”) who want to re-enter the community: The abovementioned family is one of the fugitives, one of the ideologists of the Shining Path [...] He was the enemy in our organization with the peasants of our  community. For this reason, all the inhabitants of this community do not agree with the entry of this element to the base.277Indeed, the process of arrepentimiento could not always mend what had been broken. A note from one of the base committees to the headquarter concerns the faith of a prisoner, who, according to the writer, should be released and left to believe that he can stay in the community. Then, after several days, a conspiracy should be set up to kill him because:275  My translation of original citation: “colaborador con su bote”, “combatiente”, “combatiente anterior”, “soldado combatiente maton”, “el mejor colaborador”, “responsable de los senderos”, “colaborador con viveres”, “conscientisador” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Declaración de persona capturada en la base de Mapitunari, Mapitunari, s.d.276  My translation of original citation: “Ahora vengo a declarar mis errores.” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Manifestación, Iribamba, 12.08.1988.277  My translation of original citation: “La familia arriba mensionado [sic]   es uno de los fuguitivos  [sic] , como uno de los ediólogos [sic]   del sendero Luminoso  [...]  Era el hombre enemigo en nuestra organizacion con los campesinos de nuestra comunidad. Por esta razon todos los moradores de esta comunidad, no estan de acuerdo con el engreso  [sic]  de este elemento a la base.” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Oficio N°044.D.C.M-85, Manitea, 10.02.1985.450VI Hidden Heroes[...] he can condemn us with his parties [Shining Path members] we have to do this [the killing] in complete secrecy without people being aware of it, because this kind of person has to die because he betrays our organization [the CAD].278Nevertheless, arrepentimiento was a key-element of the war strategy and of the CAD’s governance, as is reflected in the description of their mission in a letter sent by the headquarter to the Attorney General of the Nation:[...] the liberation of the people of the entire Valley of the River Apurímac and Ene  [by] expelling and retaking the terroristas arrepentidos [...]279Myths and machos: The (hidden) heroes of the pacificationOn the main square of the town of Kimbiri stands a monument depicting a CAD commander who stands on a high tree-like column and triumphantly holds his riffle up in the air. On the rocks below him stand four other characters: an Asháninka man ready to release an arrow from his bow, a combative peasant man waving a machete and holding a stick, a peasant woman with a basket and an Asháninka woman breastfeeding her baby. The men stand on the first level below the commander; the women on the second level, hereby reflecting the gendered hierarchy of self-defense. The CAD 278  My translation of original citation: “[...] nos puide [sic] condenar con sus partedos [sic] esto tenemos que hacer complitamente [sic]  en forma muy secreto sen [sic]  que sepa gente enconciente [sic], porque este tipo de persona debe de murer [sic]  porque nos ase [sic]  la traecion [sic] ha [sic] nuestra organisacion [sic]” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Nota, 15.05.1987.279  My translation of original citation: “[...] la liberación de los pueblos de todo el Valle de Río Apurímac y Ene expulsando y recuperando a los terroristas arrepentidos [...]” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Oficio No 058-94-CAD-DECAS, Pichiwillca, 19.08.1994.451VI Hidden Heroesis protecting the population and its environment: the column is surrounded by water and all kinds of wild animals, among which, most noteworthy, a jaguar ready to attack the spectators of the monument. A plaque on the column holds the following inscription:In honor of the men who fought for our pacification, and who day by day continue in the struggle for the grandeur of Kimbiri - VRAE.280The monument in Kimbiri does not stand alone. The CADs and their collective memory are embedded in the public space of several towns throughout the valley. When entering Pichwillca, a signboard welcomes visitors to the cuna de la pacificación nacional281. In Pichari, huge coca leaves with the inscription Pichari bastión de la pacificación282 stand solemnly on the main square, reminding passers-by of the strong link between coca and self-defense. The building of the actual CAD in Llochegua is decorated with a wall painting depicting the shield of the CADs right above the entrance door. The shield consists of two riffles crossed above the Apurímac river and surrounded by mountains, carrying the slogan por la pacificación venceremos283 underneath on a red-white ribbon which represents the Peruvian flag. On the inside, the building is decorated with portraits of the ‘heroes of the pacification’, former CAD commanders who have died in battle. In a corner of the main square of the town of Santa Rosa stands a statue of Antonio Cárdenas, the emblematical leader of the central self-defense committee of Pichiwillca. The monument was erected in 2016. Antonio, who according to the stories had a remarkable charisma, holds his riffle in one hand and a sling with a rope and 280  My translation of original inscription:“En honor a los hombres que lucharon por nuestra pacificación, y que día a día continuan en la lucha por la grandeza de Kimbiri - VRAE.”281  Cradle of the national pacification282  Pichari, stronghold of the pacification283  For the pacification we will win452VI Hidden Heroesstone in the other. The inscription says: Monument in honor of Antonio Cárdenas Torres  1 OCT 1964 - 31 OCT 2012  Central President DECAS - CAD - VRAE284Antonio Cárdenas and his legacy are also the central theme of the yearly celebration of the anniversary of the foundation of the central self-defense committee of Pichiwillca on the 21st of June, which brings together hundreds of ex- and actual members of the self-defense committees of the entire valley. The leaflet of the invitation does not only include the detailed program of the commemorative activities, but also a short biography of el líder histórico285. When attending the commemoration in 2018, we were invited to join the actual and former leaders, the local authorities and the general commanders of the VRAEM unit of the Peruvian army in the romería286 to Cárdenas’ grave before the start of the public ceremony on the main square. Like many peasants in the VRAEM, Cárdenas was buried on his land, which lies right at the entry of the village. During the gathering at his burial site, Cárdenas and the self-defense committees were honored for their contribution to the pacification in the speeches of the respective representatives and through a musical tribute of the military orchestra. In the meantime, the crowd started gathering at the main square for the central ceremony, which was solemnly opened by singing the national anthem. The anthem was followed by more speeches of the abovementioned representatives in which patriotism, memories of the war and reflections on the actual situation in the region were interwoven, as reflected in the following fragment of the speech of a local authority:284  My translation of original inscription: “Monumento en homenaje a Antonio Cardenas Torres 1 OCT 1964 - 31 OCT 2012 Presidente Central DECAS - CAD - VRAE”285  The historical leader286  Pilgrimage453VI Hidden HeroesToday 21st of June we commemorate one more year of the foundation of our glorious self-defense [...] that has fought for the pacification of our VRAEM, and why not say of our dear Peru. Let us remember these times when things were very different. Let us thank our older brothers, maybe some of them are disabled, others have passed away, some widows [are] helpless, [there are] orphans who have not had the chance to study, but we are still here. We have defended democracy with the self-defense, we have defended la bicolor [the red and white Peruvian flag] like good Peruvians. [...] The self-defense committees do not have a salary, we worked ad honorem. Using our sacred plant [coca] we have financed ourselves to find peace. Today we thank the Peruvian Army and the Marine forces who were also involved in the pacification. [...] In this region, we have been marginalized, we have not even been taken care of by public services [...] but today we are free, and we can say that we are VRAEM, we can say that we are present, ladies and gentlemen, present!287After the speeches, the desfile Civico Patriótico288, consisting of delegations of self-defense committees from the entire region - both 287  My translation of original citation: “Hoy día 21 de junio conmemoramos un año mas de la fundación de nuestro glorioso autodefensa [...] que ha luchado en las areas de la pacificación de nuestro VRAEM, y porque no decir a nuestro Perú querido. Recordarle aquellas épocas cuando las cosas eran muy diferentes. Agradecerles a nuestros hermanos mayores, tal vez algunos ya son inválidos, algunos ya son finados, algunas viudas desamparados, niños huérfanos ni siquiera han podido estudiar, pero estamos. Hemos defendido la democracia con la autodefensa, hemos defendido la bicolor como buenos peruanos [...]. Los comités de autodefensa no tienen sueldo, trabajamos ad honorem [...] utilizando nuestra planta sagrada nos hemos autofinanciado para estar tranquilos. Hoy por hoy agradecemos también al Ejército peruano a La Marina que también se han involucrado para llegar a esta pacificación [...] Esta región hemos sido marginados, ni siquiera hemos sido atendidos en las instituciones publicas [...] pero hoy por hoy ya somos libres y podemos decir que somos VRAEM, podemos decir que estamos aquí presentes señores, presentes.” Field recordings, speech of a local authority at the commemoration ceremony of the self-defense committees, Pichiwillca, 21.06.2018.288  Civil Patriotic paradeEx-CAD commanders at the grave of Antonio Cárdenas in Pichiwillca (2018)CADs singing the national anthem during the commemoration ceremony in Pichiwillca (2018)Welcome sign at the entrance of Pichiwillca (2018)Building of the CADs in the town of Llochegua (2018)Statue in Kimbiri (2015, 2017)Statue of Antonio Cárdenas in Santa Rosa (2018) A coca leaf-shaped monument in honor of the pacification in Pichari (2017)Portrait of a fallen commander in the office of the CADs in Llochegua (2018)458VI Hidden Heroesfrom the old and new generation, men as well as women - and school children dressed up as self-defense committee members, marched around the main square and through the village. The parade was followed by a communal meal and a party with a band playing live music. Pichiwillca is not the only town in the VRAEM where this kind of commemoration is held.  The town of Puerto Mayo in the district of Pichari, for example, celebrates the anniversary of the beginning of the population’s armed struggle against the Shining Path every year in the first week of July.289 In the town of Llochegua, the anniversary of the CAD is celebrated each year in the beginning of August during a two day festival including, among other activities, a parade with delegations of several self-defense committees of the region and reenactments of interventions of the CADs during the war.290 As pointed out in 6.2, the TRC referred to the “male values” cherished by the CADs as problematic and “unattractive” to the international community. The protagonists of the heroic memory of the CADs are indeed warriors whose identity is shaped at the intersection of militarization and machismo. The idea that men have to protect their family is a central element of machismo that in this respect can be related to the emergence of self-defense. For example, the mother whom I mentioned earlier in this chapter, who did not want her son to join the self-defense patrols, was a single parent. At the age of sixteen, her son decided that “he was now a macho” (“ya era macho ya yo”) and had to take up the role of the father (“yo soy el padre”), which is why he decided to join the self-defense committee rather than finishing school.291 Throughout the war, this macho warrior identity was progressively constructed as activities related to self-defense became a priority. As mentioned, both men and women participated in these activities. Despite the fact that tasks were 289  Interview with Alejandro, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 08.07.2018.290  Field recordings, Meeting with board of directors of the self-defense committee of Llochegua, Llochegua, 10.07.2018. 291  Interview with Ladislao, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.459VI Hidden Heroesmostly gendered, women in some cases also assumed male roles such as patrolling. As communities were labeled ‘bases’ and peasants became soldiers, “military life came to the VRAEM”.292 Values such as discipline, obedience, strength and loyalty became central elements of the organization of daily life. The nicknames of the commanders, such as Beast or Dragon, represented their dauntless military alter ego. Both the fact that many of the commanders were licenciados, and the firm alliance with the Peruvian army that emerged in many places, contributed to the construction of this military identity. Moreover, through their emblematical leadership, some of the CAD commanders became legendary figures in the eyes of the population and were perceived with a mixture of fear and admiration.293 As Zech’s research on civilian resistance during the war in Peru suggests, community narratives of pride and resistance featuring the celebration of a heroic warrior identity played a key role in the mobilization of peasants in self-defense committees.294 The construction of heroes and living legends thus became one of the many strategies of survival in the midst of war. Today, the ‘heroes of the pacification’ have become the protagonists of the myths and narratives about self-defense that play an important role in shaping (post-)conflict identities in the VRAEM. New communities were founded as self-defense bases and thus, the genesis of these communities is inevitably rooted in the war. For an entire generation, the war was their primary formative experience. As Kimberly Theidon stated about the Colombian ex-combatants she conducted research with, “these men embody their violent pasts in enduring, albeit often unconscious, ways.” For combatants, the psychological experience of the war is inevitably interrelated with the physical capacity of their body which has been trained for, and 292  My translation of original citation: “La vida militar llegó al VRAEM.” Interview with Francisco, ex-CAD commander and licenciado, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.293  Zech, “Between Two Fires: Civilian Resistance during Internal Armed Conflict in Peru,” 229.294  Zech, 107.460VI Hidden Heroesin many cases mutilated by, the war. Many ex-commanders still hold on to their warrior identity, for example by cherishing their weapons or by expressing military views on order and authority. One of the ex-commanders stated, for example, that Peru needed “un gobierno pero que sea un buen macho” (“a good macho government”), preferably “someone like Pinochet” to solve its problems with corruption.295 Many ex-commanders, as well as many people in general in the VRAEM, express nostalgia for the authoritarianism of Fujimori. Another ex-commander complained about the fact that his merits are not recognized by his fellow villagers by stating that he is no longer perceived as a macho.296 As to be expected, the heroic memory of the pacification coexists with memories that stress the abuses of the CADs. During one of our visits to the town of Santa Rosa, a woman selling chicha and anticuchos297 on the main square, who was not a local from the VRAEM herself, pointed at the statue and entrusted us that ‘people talk bad about that man’ and that ‘he was said to have killed innocent people’.298 During interviews and informal conversations, several research participants shared memories of violence perpetrated by the CADs against civilians, although this did not necessarily impede their recognition of the CADs as heroes.299 Indeed, the dominant narrative that is celebrated and displayed in public space honors the CADs as pacifiers of the valley rather than as perpetrators of war crimes.300 It is a glorious narrative that 295  Interview with Alfonso, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 10.07.2018.296  Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.297  Chicha: a drink made from fermented corn, anticuchos: grilled meat skewers.298  Fieldnotes, district of Santa Rosa, 11.07.2018.299  Interview with Flora, daughter of ex-CAD commander, district of Santa Rosa, 11.07.2018; interview with Nilda, ex-CAD member, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018; interview with Franco, ex-CAD member, district of Kimbiri, 24.06.2018.300  The heroic role of the CADs was almost unanimously confirmed by research participants. There is, of course, an important potential bias in the research participants, as nearly all the interviewees were closely involved with the CADs, as was most of the population during the war. The main focus of my research 461VI Hidden Heroesidentifies heroes rather than victims. This heroic memory fostered by the CADs conflicts in two interrelated ways with the kind of commemorative discourse and practice that stands center-stage in transitional justice and its underlying assumptions on prevention and recognition. First, the memory duty in transitional justice is based on the assumption that keeping a memory of human rights violations alive will prevent similar violations from happening in the future. The memory of the CADs, however, puts an active narrative of participation center-stage rather than telling a story of trauma and suffering. In this public narrative, the memory of the positive outcome of their participation - namely victory over the Shining Path - prevails over the negative consequences of the war. Consequently, their narrative glorifies rather than condemns (certain aspects of) the war. For the CADs, one of the underlying ideas of this heroic memory is that their active contribution should be remembered in order to enable similar participation in present and future conflicts. One of the assumptions behind their commemorative practice is that the experience of self-defense during the civil war serves as a learning process that will help the actual and future leaders to take up an active role in problems related to crime and drug trafficking. As the current regional leader of the self-defense committees affirmed in his speech during the commemoration ceremony in Pichiwillca:Now indeed the Shining Path is not what it used to be back then, in 1984, but now there is another enemy, which is criminality, so we have to apply the same experience against this evil enemy, which is why, once again, I thank the men and women that have given their time, their struggle, their blood, their tears. This is why we are taking up this responsibility in honor of them, [...] to continue with this same goal of pursuing in the VRAEM was the dominant narrative on the war of those who still live in the valley. To scrutinize the counter-memories that live beneath the surface of the public domain and intersect this dominant narrative, further research is necessary.462VI Hidden Heroespeace for our people [...]301Another current leader of the self-defense committees, who also played an active role during the conflict, expressed similar views during his speech:We have pacified what no one has been able to [pacify] and we have saved human lives, we have taken care of human lives for free but for the favor, for the blessing of God we are not dead yet and we will continue forward while this glorious organization exists [...] We will continue to eliminate our enemies, as there still is a group of senderistas [Shining Path members] and now war is being declared to us by crime, corruption and environmental contamination in the VRAEM [...] As we have foughtto pacify, do not dedicate yourself to drinking, do not dedicate yourself to smoking  drugs. Today, dear authorities, there is drug addiction in the VRAEM, there is child prostitution, to all of this we are saying ‘enough!’ We have to save the lives of this new generation. [...] Long live the self-defense!302 301  My translation of original citation: “Ahora efectivamente ya no hay  el Sendero como en ese año, en el año 84, pero ahora viene otro enemigo que es la delincuencia, entonces esa misma experiencia tenemos que aplicar contra ese enemigo del mal, entonces por lo tanto, una vez más, doy las gracias a los hombres y mujeres que han dado su tiempo, su lucha, su sangre, su lagrima que han derramado y por eso estamos llevando este cargo en honor a ello para [...] seguir con ese mismo objetivo de querer la paz para nuestro pueblo [...]” Field recordings, Speech of the regional leader of the self-defense committees at the commemoration ceremony of the self-defense committees, Pichiwillca, 21.06.2018.302  My translation of original citation:“Nosotros hemos pacificado lo que no ha podido nadie y hemos salvado vidas humanas, hemos cuidado vidas humanas gratis pero por el favor, por la bendición de dios todavía no estamos muertos y seguiremos adelante mientras existe este glorioso organización todo comité de defensa antisubversiva [...] seguiremos eliminando a nuestros enemigos que todavía  hay un grupo de senderistas y ahora que la guerra nos está declarando es la delincuencia, la corrupción y la contaminación ambiental en el VRAEM [...] mientras que nosotros hemos peleado para pacificar, no se dediquen a tomar, no se dediquen a fumar la droga, hoy en día señores autoridades hay drogadicción en el VRAEM, hay prostitución infantil 463VI Hidden HeroesThe CADs conception of history as a life teacher thus differs from transitional justice’s assumption of memory as a prevention of future conflict, in which victims and their traumatic experience of violence stand are the living proof of the fact that similar events should never happen again. For the CADs, their heroic memory serves as an example to act similarly in case violence happens again. Second, while in transitional justice memory is considered as a moral duty in order to recognize the suffering of the victims, the heroic memory of the CADs stands in function of the recognition of their contribution to the defeat of the Shining Path. While the CADs do not disregard that the population has suffered during the war, they perceive themselves in the first place as heroes and not as victims. Moreover, these heroes actively cherish a macho warrior identity which is diametrically opposed to the kind of victim identity constituted by transitional justice. Nevertheless, as argued in 6.2, the agency of the CADs corresponds to a blind spot in the transitional justice process which results in a failure to conceptualize the active participation of civilians in the violence. The ‘heroes of the pacification’ thus remain hidden in the categorization of agency put forward by transitional justice mechanisms such as the TRC and the PIR. This is much to the frustration of the CADs who strive for the recognition of their contribution. The last paragraph of this chapter will return to this point.The VRAEM’s contemporary pastAs pointed out in the foregoing paragraph, the entanglement of the memories of the war with references to the current situation in the VRAEM is remarkably present both in interviews and in public discourses, such as the speeches delivered at the commemoration a todo eso estamos diciendo alto  [...] hay que salvaguardar su vida de esta generación nueva. [...] ¡Que viva la autodefensa!” Field recordings, Speech of current self-defense leader at the commemoration ceremony of the self-defense committees, Pichiwillca, 21.06.2018.464VI Hidden Heroesceremony. Indeed, several aspects can be identified that contribute to a sense of ‘contemporary past’ in the VRAEM: a temporality that challenges the ruptures between past, present and future proposed by transitional justice, and which helps us to relate recent human rights violations to longer historical processes of injustice that have not yet concluded, and potentially spark new outbreaks of social conflict and violence (cfr. chapter 2.3).First of all, there is the question of (dis)armament of the CADs and their perception of the end of the war. During the TRC’s mandate, many of the CADs perceived the conflict with the Shining Path as still ongoing and they did not count on the state to protect them. This is clearly demonstrated in the report that summarizes the interventions of the CADs during the workshops organized by the TRC:They [the CADs] questioned tangentially the investigative work of the TRC and held up that the ronda [read CADs] is the only mechanism to pacify the country.303They [the CADs] affirm that the conflict with the Shining Path has not ended.304They [the CADs] propose that the TRC enters the zone of the Ene [river] to collect testimonies and verify the situation of political violence.305303  My translation of original citation: “Cuestionaron tangencialmente la labor investigatoria de la CVR y sostuvieron que la ronda (léase CADs) es el único mecanismo para pacificar el país.” CVR, 2.304  My translation of original citation: “Afirman que el conflicto con Sendero Luminoso aún no ha terminado.” CVR, 3.305  My translation of original citation: “Propone que la CVR entre a la zona del Ene para recoger testimonios y verificar la situación de violencia política.” CVR, 5.465VI Hidden Heroes[According to the CADs] the topic of security corresponds to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Nevertheless, [according to the CADs] all policemen are corrupt.306The CADs fiercely defended the right to carry arms during the mandate of the TRC and, as mentioned, they were never officially disarmed.307 On the contrary, some of the CADs even asked the TRC for more armament.308 Today, the right to carry arms is still considered self-evident by the CADs and they still do so when patrolling and providing security during communal parties and other events.309 The arms that were once used to fight the Shining Path, whether purchased or donated by the state, are now applied in defense of criminals, as a local authority in the district of Samugari explains:This armament that they have given to us is to defend us from common criminality, to scare them, to protect our community.310Some research participants furthermore complained about the military collecting the rifles of the CADs, supposedly for maintenance, and not giving them back.311 Many rifles are in bad condition or lack ammunition but nevertheless, the ex-commanders mostly still cherish their weapons and express to be ready to use 306  My translation of original citation: “El tema de la seguridad corresponde al Ministerio del Interior. Sin embargo, todos los policías son corruptos.” CVR, 5.307  CVR, “Comité de Autodefensa 3,” 39.308  CVR, “Comité de Autodefensa 2,” 55.309  Fieldnotes, district of Kimbiri, 13.05.2017; district of Samugari, 21.06.2018; district of Santa Rosa, 27.06.2018; district of Llochegua, 10.07.2018.310  My translation of original citation: “”Ese armamento que nos han dado es para defendernos de la delincuencia común, para asustarlos, para resguardar nuestra comunidad.” Interview with Renzo, local authority, district of Samugari, 26.06.2018.311  Fieldnotes, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018; interview with Mariano, boatman, district of Samugari, 29.06.2018.466VI Hidden Heroesthem if necessary. As one of the ex-commanders affirms: Until today I have riffles in my house. It is for my defense. [...] There are no ex[-commanders] here. We are not ex, we continue.312For the CADs, their guns were and are an essential part of their macho warrior identity, especially in a context where other armed actors are still present, and vigilance is required. This brings us to the second point. Despite the fact that the constellation of the current security situation fundamentally differs from the civil war in many aspects, the same violent actors - both the Shining Paths converted into narcoterroristas and the state forces - are still present and active in the territory of the VRAEM. While deadly confrontations are rare, the fact that the emergency zone is still officially declared in the context of the struggle against narcoterrorism, sustains the idea of the VRAEM as a conflict zone in media and public opinion. For the local population, the idea prevails that the Shining Path “is still walking” (“siguen caminando”).313 At the same time, as I have explained in 6.1, the majority of the actual and ex-CADs are cocaleros - as are most of the peasants in the VRAEM. They are therefore part of the base of the pyramid of the illicit drug economy that dominates the region. The possibility that the anti-drug policy of the government will result in a complete eradication of coca crops in the VRAEM, as has happened in the Alto Huallaga region, worries many cocaleros.314 While in the past, coca has financed 312  My translation of original citation: “Hasta ahora tengo escopetas yo en mi casa. Es para mi defensa. [...] Acá no hay ex. No somos ex, seguimos.” Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.313  Interview with Nelida, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 30.06.2018.314  Interview with Ruth, survivor whose brother was disappeared by the Shining Path, district of Kimbiri, 25.06.2018; interview with Ladislao and Sandra, ex-CAD member and his daughter, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018; Zech, “Between Two Fires: Civilian Resistance during Internal Armed Conflict in Peru,” 280; For a comparison between the illicit economy in the VRAEM and the Alto Huallaga, 467VI Hidden Heroesthe struggle of the self-defense committees against the Shining Path, today the CADs will not hesitate to stand up in defense of coca, their main source of income.315 The relation between the state forces and the CADs is thus, once again, ambiguous. On the one hand, as pointed out, the CADs are in some places still trained by the military to assist them in their missions. Joint patrols are organized by both the police and the military. In the actual base of the CADs in Llochegua, for example, the announcement board at the entrance included a letter from the Ministry of Defense addressed to the CADs, dated on September 21st, 2017, asking for the self-defense committee’s reorganization and support in patrolling. The letter stated that:[...] the self-defense committees are organizations, of the rural and urban population, that have originated freely and spontaneously to develop activities of self-defense against delinquency, terrorist infiltration and drug trafficking, to defend themselves from attacks of these [actors] and to support the Armed Forces and the PNP [Policía Nacional del Perú] in the tasks of Pacification and Socio-economic Development of the zones in which they operate.”316On the other hand, the possibility of an alliance between the CADs and the strong and well-organized cocalero movement makes the see: Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State.” 315  Interview with Alfonso, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 10.07.2018; interview with Ivan, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 27.06.2018.316  My translation of original citation: “[...] los Comités de Autodefensa son organizaciones, de la población rural y urbana, surgidos espontáneamente y libremente para desarrollar actividades de autodefensa contra la delincuencia, inflitración del terrorismo y del narcotráfico, defenderse de los ataques de estos y apoyar a las Fuerzas Armadas y PNP en las tareas de Pacificación y Desarrollo Socioeconómico de las zonas en las que operan.” Ministerio de Defensa, Oficio N°796/BCT-42/S-5/13.00, Sobre autorización para reorganizar a las comunidades que pertenecen al Distirto de Llochegua, Pichari, 21.09.2017.468VI Hidden Heroesgovernment cautious in their position towards the CADs and is an incentive to stimulate their demobilization and disarmament. Nevertheless, for the population, the persisting distrust towards the state forces as providers of order and security sustains the essential idea of self-defense, namely the need to provide for their own security and to be prepared to react against violence and criminality. A third element that contributes to a sense of contemporary past in the VRAEM is the socio-economic marginalization and isolation of the region within the national context. While the idea of the VRAEM as an ongoing conflict zone might be more perception than reality, this strong perception by outsiders also has an influence on the self-perception of the population. The fact that the VRAEM is labeled as a territory in state of emergency isolates the region from the rest of the country which is ‘pacified’. Research participants often link this sense of isolation to the socio-economic situation of the region, which, as I have pointed out in the beginning of this chapter, is very poor. The persistence of the emergency zone is seen as an obstruction to development and inversions in the region. The massive presence of the state forces does, ironically enough, not compensate for the sense of abandonment by the state. As the dramatic figures on basic services such as education, health care and malnutrition show, the feeling of abandonment by the state is in the first place based on a painful reality and not just on perception. An ex-CAD member and former major in the district of Samugari furthermore stresses the importance of development and education to prevent future outbreaks of violence in the region:The pupils have several diseases, it looks as if we cannot accomplish anything. First, we need nutrition, first we need water and basic sanitation, nutrition, if not, how are we going to talk about education? [...] So, analyzing all these things  [...] the situation is disastrous, and with all the more reason any delinquency, any dirty dark politics can appear.317317  My translation of original citation: “Los alumnos tienen diferentes enfermedades, 469VI Hidden HeroesHis daughter, a woman in her early twenties who is engaged in local politics, expressed her frustration about the negative perception of the VRAEM by national politicians: They don’t want to see it in a better way, but in a bad way, yes, as if the VRAEM is  horror, terror, death, narcoterrorism, narcotráfico. [For them] it [the VRAEM] is a world that excels for the bad, but to excel with the good, not that much.318This present-day marginalization is entangled with the consequences of the war which in the VRAEM, as in all affected regions, has thwarted the personal development and future perspectives of an entire generation. As an ex-commander in the district of Pichari, who is now in his early sixties, puts it:I have spent my entire youth fighting. And now that I am injured, I am already old and injured, I don’t see well anymore. [...] I have used up my entire youth in the bush.319Another ex-CAD commander in the district of Pichari describes the precarious situation of many survivors and the intergenerational consequences of the war as follows:parece que no se puede lograr nada, primero es alimento, primero es agua, saneamiento básico, alimentación, ¿sino de que educación vamos a hablar? [...] Entonces todas esas cositas analizando [...] estamos total, y con más razón cualquiera delincuencia, cualquiera política sucia oscura, puede aparecer.” Interview with Ladislao, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.318  My translation of original citation: “No quieren verlo de una mejor forma, pero como de las malas si, como que el VRAEM es horror, terror, muerte, narcoterrorismo, narcotráfico. Es un mundo donde sobresalen con lo malo, pero sobresalir con lo bueno, no es tanto.” Interview with Sandra (daughter Ladislao), district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.319  My translation of original citation: “Toda mi juventud me lo he pasado combatiendo. Y ahora que ya estoy herido, ya estoy viejo y herido, ya no veo bien. [...] He terminado toda mi juventud en el monte.” Interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.470VI Hidden HeroesWe are going to return to the same problem of before because let’s say that la subversión Sendero [the Shining Path] would have killed like twenty people, but their children, their wives, some of them widows or widowers, the husbands of whom the wives were killed, they have left orphans who did not have a good education nor any support from the government. One day, they will feel the sorrow because they have seen the dead body of their parents. Candy, chocolate, ten soles, twenty soles, some chicken to eat, but the next day you have absolutely nothing. So, these girls today are single moms and the boys are delinquents. [...] I know that with these problems ahead, the same situation will rise again. The people will not have anything to live from and they will dedicate themselves to assaulting, stealing, some will maybe go to other places, I don’t know, but for the majority who will stay, this conflict will not end.320In the VRAEM, this frustration of personal lives by the outbreak of the war is inevitably linked to the phenomenon of self-defense and the active role of civilians in the struggle. More than in other areas, daily life in the VRAEM became militarized. Instead of learning how to read, youngsters learned how to handle a gun. This generation of ex-CAD members now stresses the importance of education for their children in order to strive for a better future. In the VRAEM, the key to obtaining this education is - once again - coca. While in the past coca was the pacifier, it is now seen as the 320  My translation of original citation:“Vamos a volver al mismo problema de antes porque la subversión sendero habrá matado como 20 personas… pero ellos, los hijos, las esposas, algunas viudas o viudos, los esposos y han matado a la esposa, pero han dejado huérfanos y estos no han tenido una buena formación ni apoyo del gobierno. Un día tendrán pena porque han visto el cadáver de sus padres. Caramelo, chocolate, diez soles, veinte soles, comida pollo, pero al día siguiente ya no tienes absolutamente nada. Entonces esas niñas ahora son madres solteras y los niños son delincuentes [...] Yo sé que con este problema que viene se va suscitar la misma situación. La gente no va tener de que vivir y se van a dedicar a asaltar, a robar, otro de repente se irá a otros lugares no sé, pero la mayoría que se queden, no vamos a terminar ese conflicto.” Interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018.471VI Hidden Heroesresource that will finance the education of the next generation. A woman whose brother was disappeared by the Shining Path during the war expresses her fear for the possible eradication of coca crops as follows: They say that planes will come, helicopters will come, and they will search for all the pozas [puddles, i.e. laboratories where coca is processed to cocaine paste], whatever, and they will attack all the hills [on which coca is grown] and they will make it [the crops] disappear. And how then are we going to make money? With which money are we going to educate the children?321“Esas armas son del Estado y ustedes son el Estado”: Citizenship and recognition At this point in my story, it should already be clear that the emergence of self-defense in the VRAEM during the civil war was not just an application of ‘the law of the jungle’. Despite its geographical isolation, the struggle of the CADs was embedded in their relationship with the state. Consequently, their militia service became a way to claim their belonging to the nation. An ex-CAD commander in the district of Pichari puts it as follows: When we started our armed struggle, they borrowed us their weapons. [...] The marine forces said: ‘These weapons are from the state and you are the state. Take the weapons, a lance, a grenade, take it.’ The captain gave me a box of grenades, his ten FALs [Fusil Automatique Léger]322, his mines [...] and in that way, 321  My translation of original citation: “Dice avioneta va entrar, helicópteros van a entrar y van a buscar pues todas las pozas, lo que sea, y todos los cerros va atacar pues y lo va desaparecer. ¿Y de dónde va entrar la plata? . ¿Con qué se van a educar los niños?” Interview with Ruth, survivor whose brother was disappeared by the Shining Path, district of Kimbiri, 25.06.2018.322  The FAL is a semi-automatic rifle produced by the Belgian company FN 472VI Hidden Heroeswe started to reconquer all the spaces of the villages, creating new villages, putting people there, and we reconquered all of this.323The abovementioned citation demonstrates quite literally how the CADs became representatives of the Peruvian state by taking up arms against the Shining Path to ‘liberate’ the local population. Weapons were hence not only an essential part of a macho warrior identity, they also turned into a means for peasants to ‘become Peruvians’. Another ex-commander expresses how, in the end, the different parties in the war were all Peruvians, no matter which side they were on: It is like seeing a movie... of the Indians and the apaches, more or less like that, right? That’s what it was like. They identified themselves and all of the sudden you could tell from the abuses that the apaches were good and the gringos were bad, but maybe the apache was a rebel and a deserter [...] but we were all from the same blood, we were, in essence there was no difference in anything.324An ex-commander in the district of Samugari refers to the relation between the CADs and the state forces as follows:Herstal. 323  My translation of original citation:”Cuando iniciamos nuestra lucha nos prestó sus armas. [...] La Marina dijo: “esas armas son del Estado y ustedes son el Estado. Tomen las armas, una lanza, granada, tomen.” El capitán me dio una caja de granadas, sus 10 FALs, sus minas [...] y así, arrancamos a recuperar todos los espacios de los pueblitos, creando nuevos pueblitos, poniendo gente, y recuperamos todo esto.” Interview with Alejandro, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 08.07.2018.324  My translation of original citation: “Como le digo es como ver una película… de los indios y los apaches así maso menos, no, así era. Se determinaron y de repente se podía ver del abuso apache era bueno y el gringo era malo, pero de repente el apache era rebelde y renegado [...] pero éramos de la mismas sangre, éramos, no había diferencia en nada en absoluto.” Interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 09.07.2018.473VI Hidden HeroesWhen a Peruvian heart beats, a Peruvian soldier exists. That soldier is the best soldier in the world, the Peruvian soldier, injured but not defeated. [...] They are soldiers of our fatherland; we are their soldiers.325The language used in the documents from the archive of the CAD headquarter in Pichiwillca confirms that the organization of self-defense as a local survival strategy was intrinsically linked to patriotism. For example, in a letter to the headquarter, one of the base committees asks for donations of food and money and closes with the formulation:We thank you in advance for your patriotic collaboration [...]326Another letter concerning the foundation of a new base committee ends with the sentence:Expecting your willingness to be a good combatant against the subversion for the greatness of our dear Peru.327For a group whose citizenship had been (and in many ways still is) historically thin due to discrimination and socio-economic exclusion, militia service became a foundation for claiming a thicker citizenship. In line with the findings on the CADs as providers 325  My translation of original citation: “Cuando late un corazón peruano existe un soldado. El soldado es el mejor soldado en el mundo, el soldado peruano herido, pero no vencido [...] Ellos son soldados de nuestra patria, nosotros somos soldados de ellos.” Interview with Francisco, ex-CAD commander, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.326  My translation of original citation: “Agradecemos por anticipado su colaboración patriotica y nos despedimos de ud. [...]” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Of. no. 28, Chirumpirari, 30.11.1984.327  My translation of original citation: “Esperando su inquietud de ser un buen luchador contra la subverción [sic] por la grandesa [sic] de nuestro queredo [sic] Perú [...]” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Oficio No. C08-92-PCDF/SA, San Antonio, 20.06.1992.474VI Hidden Heroesof local governance and social order, it needs to be stressed that militia service as a basis for claiming citizenship goes beyond the military aspect of the self-defense committee. It cannot be untied from the strong local governance structure of the CADs and how it related to the national level. The highly centralized nature of the Peruvian state and the socio-economic and cultural breaches that exist between Lima and the provinces often leads to an image of the Peruvian countryside as a place where the state is largely absent. While holding truth, as the presence of the state is in some places very thin, this image needs some nuance. As García-Godos states, peasant-state relations intensified during the agrarian reform of 1968, which is why, at the time of emergence of the Shining Path, “it cannot be argued that peasant populations lived in total isolation and/or without knowledge of the nation-state.”328 In addition, Heuser points out that states are mostly analyzed from the national perspective, resulting in oppositions such as strong and weak states to describe the (lack of) monopoly on governance or the use of violence. However, this image is, thus Heuser, highly reductionist and fails to conceptualize the “variety of local structures [...] which are parallel [to] or entangled with the “state”.”329 The wartime governance of the CADs clearly constitutes such a structure. The archive of the headquarter of the CADs in Pichiwillca shows how the local governance structure of the self-defense committees - notwithstanding its high degree of autonomy - is embedded within the larger project of the nation-state. For example, several pieces in the archive demonstrate the population’s concern with the possession of identity documents, which are essential for claiming citizenship and belonging to the national community. A letter directed from one of the base committees to the headquarter concerns the case of 52 passport photographs that were lost or mixed up by the 328  García-Godos, “Citizenship, Conflict and Reconstruction: A Case-Study of the Effects of Armed Conflict on Peasant-State Relations in Tambo, Peru,” 1.329  Heuser, “Contested State Formation? The Effect of Illicit Economies in the Margins of the State,” 2.475VI Hidden Heroesphotographer, who seems to have disappeared. The letter states that:[...] we are very concerned about this barter of New Passbooks, our villagers are very worried about their photographs [...]330Another letter asks the headquarter for help in obtaining passbooks for the villagers:[...] at the present moment, most of the villagers we do not have this indispensable document, we beg you mister President of the central headquarter to give us a concrete answer with regards to this case.331In case of the CADs in the VRAEM, militia service as a basis for claiming citizenship entails the paradox that the violence exercised by the state forces was at least an equally important trigger for organizing self-defense as was the violence of the Shining Path. Nevertheless, the context of the civil war created a space for negotiation between the state and its rural populations as the state eventually realized that it could not win the war without its support. Consequently, as García-Godos has argued, “the armed conflict brought peasants and state together in an alliance that exchanged support for recognition.”332 Indeed, the CAD’s claimed position within the Peruvian nation 330  My translation of original citation: “[...] encontramos muy preocupado para el canje de Libretas Nuevas, que nuestros comuneros están muy preocupados por sus fotografías [...] “ Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Of. N°076-84-B.C.D.C.I.A., Isoqasa, 23.12.1984. 331  My translation of original citation: “[...] en estos momentos estamos la mayoría de los comuneros sin este documento indespensable, rogamos señor Presidente de la sede central darnos una respuesta concreta sobre este asunto.” Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Solicita: Inscripción en el Registro Militar, Paquichari Baja, 23.07.1988.332  García-Godos, “Citizenship, Conflict and Reconstruction: A Case-Study of the Effects of Armed Conflict on Peasant-State Relations in Tambo, Peru,” 40.476VI Hidden Heroescould or can only fully come into being if recognized as such within the larger unity of the nation-state. As mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, the self-defense committees were recognized by law under the name Comités de Autodefensa and allowed to use firearms by the Legislative Decree 741 issued in 1991, under the first government of president Alberto Fujimori.333 A year later, the Supreme Decree 77-DE-92 complemented this law by providing regulations on the organization and functions of the CADs.334 This finally provided a legal framework for peasant self-defense organizations which, by then, had been participating in the armed struggle for almost a decade. As García-Godos has stressed, the impact of this legal framework on issues of legitimacy, identity and citizenship of the CADs was huge.335 At last, the agency of the CADs was considered legitimate. They had succeeded in demonstrating that they were ‘on the right side of history’ and that they were fighting the same enemy as the state. As Fumerton affirms, “this piece of legislation gave them a stronger sense of having a real stake in contributing to the future wellbeing of la Patria, for which every rondero death was now wrapped in a new discourse of “sacrifice for the father- land.”336 The notions of contribution and sacrifice are crucial here: the CADs were now officially no longer just fighting a local cause, they were fighting for the entire nation. Jemima García-Godos’ argument that “peasant citizenship and identity in Tambo are defined by the peasant contribution to victory over the Shining Path during the armed conflict” can also be applied to the CADs of the VRAEM. García-Godos clarifies this as follows:333  “Reconocen a Comités de Autodefensa, como organizaciones de la población para desarrollar actividades de auto defensa de su comunidad” (Decreto Legislativo 741).334  García-Godos, “Citizenship, Conflict and Reconstruction: A Case-Study of the Effects of Armed Conflict on Peasant-State Relations in Tambo, Peru,” 170.335  García-Godos, 172.336  Fumerton, “Beyond Counterinsurgency: Peasant Militias and Wartime Social Order in Peru’s Civil War,” 77.477VI Hidden HeroesThe conflict and peasants [sic] participation in it, have become not only the point of reference for demands for public goods and services and the discourse of reconstruction and development [...], but also the basis for self-definitions of identity among the peasant population of areas affected by violence.337For example, when the CADs sent a commission to Lima in 1992 to meet with government representatives, they stated in their report of the visit that, because of their role in the pacification:[...] the [valley of the] River Apurímac and Ene are now engraved in the mind of our governors and they listen to our demands, which in the past was almost impossible.338Consequently, in addition to both the military and the governance aspect performed by the CADs during the war, the recognition of their contribution after the war became an essential aspect for the CADs’ appropriation of citizenship. The hope that this recognition would become reality was sparked by the legal framework of 1991 and 1992. This framework in the first place institutionalized the CADs as a legitimate actor in the present more than recognizing its contribution during the past decade. However, in subsequent years, the expectation that the latter would also become reality was not met. Today, the heroic memory of the CADs in the VRAEM is interwoven with bitterness and disillusionment. The lack of recognition for their contribution ran as a red thread through conversations with ex-CAD members and their relatives:The state doesn’t remember how we have fought, nothing. We lost. [...] We inverted our life in the pacification and that’s why 337  García-Godos, “Citizenship, Conflict and Reconstruction: A Case-Study of the Effects of Armed Conflict on Peasant-State Relations in Tambo, Peru,” 212.338  Archivo de la Sede Central del Comité de Autodefensa del Valle Apurímac-Ene, Informe Nro. 09-92, Pichiwillca, 1992.478VI Hidden Heroeswe don’t have anything now.339Nothing, nothing, there is nothing for us, it is totally forgotten. It is not only me, there are several mothers, several families, several families like that, several combatants like that, there are several widows, that’s how it is, señorita.340As self-defense, we went all the way, so that time, often we have fought in exchange for nothing, señorita. Up until now, the government doesn’t give us any recognition, we simply have this legal regulation, nothing more [...] Everyone is valorized, the army, the national police, they are valorized, but we, the self-defense, we are not, because they receive compensations in education, in every aspect they have [compensations], but the self-defense, no, we don’t receive anything.341339  My translation of original citation: “El Estado no se acuerda de lo que hemos luchado, nada. Hemos perdido. [...] Nuestra vida hemos invertido en la pacificación por eso no tenemos nada nosotros.” Interview with Humberto, ex-CAD command, district of Samugari, 27.06.2018.340  My translation of original citation: “Nada, nada, no hay nada para nosotros, total está olvidado. No solo soy yo, hay varias mamás, varias familias, hay varias familias así, hay varios así combatientes, hay varios, no solo soy yo sola, hay varios así combatientes, así estos, hay varias viudas, así es señorita.” Interview with Nelida, ex-CAD member and widow of CAD-commander, district of Samugari, 30.06.2018. 341  My translation of original citation: “Autodefensa normal nos metemos a donde sea, entonces a veces muchas veces nosotros hemos luchado, aquel tiempo señorita, a cambio de nada pues. Hasta ahora el gobierno, no nos hace ningún reconocimiento, simplemente estamos con una norma legal nada más [ ...] Todo es valorado, el ejército, la policía nacional, ellos valorados, nosotros la autodefensa no, porque ellos tienen indemnizaciones en educación, en todos aspectos tienen ellos, pero autodefensa no, no recibimos nada.” Interview with Sebastián, ex-CAD member, district of Santa Rosa, 27.06.2018.479VI Hidden HeroesThe national reconciliation was not put in a document [i.e. institutionalized] [...] There are no institutions that want to [...] support the self-defense committees, but in fact, [we brought about] the pacification in the VRAEM, and this is known in the entire world, that is the truth... The army they did little or nothing, maybe they served as a shield, but who was the cannon fodder? Who has marched? Who has captured? Who has gone to jail like Huayhuaco [a notorious ex-commander]? It was us, complying their duties [...] Honestly, until this moment, it gives me a lot of sorrow.342 In order to understand this lack of recognition of the contribution of the CADs to the defeat of the Shining Path, I have to return to the blind spot of civilian participation in violence that characterizes transitional justice, on which I have elaborated in 6.2.  Before doing so, it is necessary to mention that, in 1998, the Supreme Decree 068-98-DE-S/G issued compensations for CAD casualties, which already had been promised in the Supreme Decree of 1992. As I have already briefly pointed out in 6.2, and as García-Godos has analyzed in-depth, this compensation decree - which predated the transitional justice process - turned out to be a disappointment as the criteria were so strict that but very few (29 persons by 2000 according to the TRC) could benefit from it. One of the most problematic characteristics of the compensation decree was that it only issued compensations from 1992 onwards, when the CADs were officially recognized, herewith ignoring the casualties of the 342  My translation of original citation: “No se ha hecho reconciliación nacional en un documento [...] No hay instituciones que quieran [...] apoyar a los de los comités de autodefensa, porque muy deveras la pacificación en el VRAEM, y eso le reconocen a nivel mundial, porque eso es la verdad… Pero el ejercito poco o nada ha hecho, claro ubicados como un escudo si han servido, pero quién ha sido carne de cañón? Quién ha caminado? Quién ha capturado? Quién ha ido preso [...]? Hemos sido nosotros, cumpliendo sus funciones [...] Sinceramente hasta el momento a mi me da mucha pena.” Interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018.480VI Hidden Heroesfirst and bloodiest decade of the war.343 The compensation decree thus failed as an opportunity to recognize the contribution of the CADs. Shortly after this failure, a new opportunity to consider the role of the CADs presented itself when the TRC was established in 2001, followed by the design and implementation of the reparation program. Nevertheless, as explained in 6.1, the TRC considered the CADs in the first place as combatants while the PIR included them in the universe of victims. With regards to the PIR, to be recognized as a victim of suffering is not the same as to be recognized for an active contribution to a victory that has been widely claimed by the state. As García-Godos has pointed out: [...] the legal figure of ‘victim of violation’ strips peasant ronderos of the active role they played in support of the state during the conflict. The focus shifts from agency, participation and contribution to victimization, passivity and suffering.344A parallel claim can be made for the TRC’s categorization of the CADs as perpetrators: a focus on their destructive nature obfuscates the merits of their contribution which, at least as much as their human rights violations, define their role in the war. Consequently, this blind spot of civilian participation in violence impedes a recognition of the CADs’ contribution, which, as García-Godos has pointed out, is a missed opportunity “to carve a place in Peruvian national history for the people who made peace possible.”345 Indeed, in the beginning of this chapter, I have stated how the tendency to assign a passive role to the peasantry has long been predominant in the Peruvian historiographic tradition. It seems that, be it unintentionally, the transitional justice process 343  García-Godos, “Citizenship, Conflict and Reconstruction: A Case-Study of the Effects of Armed Conflict on Peasant-State Relations in Tambo, Peru,” 212.344  García-Godos, “Victim Reparations in the Peruvian Truth Commission and the Challenge of Historical Interpretation,” 79.345  García-Godos, 82.481VI Hidden Heroesreproduced this tendency by failing to conceptualize the agency of the peasantry in organizing self-defense. Furthermore, as the above-mentioned citations on the lack of recognition demonstrate, the CADs immediately link this lack of recognition to their ‘contemporary past’ of socio-economic marginalization. Despite the fact that the TRC identified this exclusion as one of the major causes of the outbreak and proliferation of the war, the transitional justice process has not succeeded in bringing about a significant change in the socio-economic situation of the majority of survivors in the VRAEM. It thus seems that the aim of ‘reconciling the two Peru’s’ and restoring the social contract that stood center-stage in the Peruvian transitional justice process has, at least in case of the CADs in the VRAEM, gone wrong on two fronts. In looking backward, it has failed to recognize the contribution of the CADs to the victory over the Shining Path, which on its turn is a missed opportunity to thicken the citizenship of an historically excluded population group in the present. In looking forward, it did not succeed in bridging the socio-economic gap, which is a necessary prerequisite for bringing about fundamental changes for the future generation. Conclusion: Towards a multi-layered survivor identityThis chapter analyzed the diffusion and contestation of transitional justice for a ‘difficult’ actor in a ‘difficult’ region: the comités de autodefensa in the VRAEM. By doing so, I have identified five processes that challenge transitional justice’s underlying ideas on memory, victimhood and time.First, by looking at the work of the TRC and the implementation of the PIR with regards to the CADs in the VRAEM, it has become clear that the two most important transitional justice mechanisms made no significant attempt to conceptualize the question of civilian participation in violence. The agency of the CADs thus corresponds to a blind spot in the transitional justice process, which results from the typical categorization of survivors as victims (civilians) or 482VI Hidden Heroesperpetrators (combatants). This simplistic categorization of agency in war emerges at the intersection of trauma and human rights discourse and is still predominant in transitional justice. Second, to respond to this blind spot, I have shown how the CADs became the most important providers of local governance and social order during the war in the VRAEM. In the midst of the chaos of the war, an endemic body arose that, besides its military functions, provided order in daily life and regulated processes of reintegration as crucial strategies of survival and coexistence. Consequently, a more comprehensive image of the CADs has emerged that goes beyond the abovementioned simplistic categorization of survivors by transitional justice and which contests its underlying ideas on victimhood.Thirdly, the heroic memory fostered by the CADs plays an important role in shaping (post-)conflict identities in the VRAEM. This heroic memory conflicts with the kind of commemorative discourse and practice that stands center-stage in transitional justice and challenges its underlying assumptions on prevention and recognition. The memory of the CADs puts forward an active narrative of participation rather than telling a story of trauma and suffering. This narrative stands in function of the recognition of their contribution to the defeat of the Shining Path and identifies heroes rather than victims. Moreover, these heroes cherish a macho warrior identity which is diametrically opposed to the kind of victim identity constituted by transitional justice.Fourthly, I identified several aspects that contribute to a sense of ‘contemporary past’ in the VRAEM and challenge the linear temporality of transitional justice. On the one hand, the absence of disarmament and demobilization of the CADs is entangled with the current situation of (a perception of) ongoing conflict and emergency which impedes further development of the region. On the other hand, research participants link the poor socio-economic conditions in the VRAEM to the consequences of the war, which has thwarted the personal development and future perspectives of 483VI Hidden Heroesan entire generation.Lastly, I have highlighted the intersection between the CAD’s militia service as a means to claim citizenship on the one hand, and the (lack of) recognition for their contribution to the defeat of the Shining Path on the other. The lacking conceptualization of the agency of the peasantry resulted in a failure to recognize their contribution. Consequently, the transitional justice process missed an important opportunity to thicken the citizenship of an historically excluded population group.These findings have several conceptual and methodological implications for the study of transitional justice and (post-)conflict dynamics in general. First of all, despite the many criticisms that have already been formulated against the binary conceptualization of victims versus perpetrators, there is an urgent need to develop the idea of a multi-layered survivor identity which embraces the fact that victimhood, violation, resistance and heroism are no mutually exclusive features.346 Studying the (post-)conflict role of self-defense militias such as the CADs - who are not an exclusively Peruvian phenomenon - can help us to move beyond descriptions of (post-)conflict realities in which conceptualization of agency is limited to armed actors as potential perpetrators and civilian populations as potential victims. While the CADs indeed were an armed actor that to a certain extent, as the TRC states, contributed to the spiral of violence, their role fundamentally differs from that of the state forces or the Shining Path. It is at least as important to understand the constructive nature of their agency - their capacity to provide order and governance in the heat of battle - as it is to condemn their human rights violations. In fact, a focus on the constructive potential 346  For a recent example of such a criticism grounded in empirical research, see: Amy Rothschild, “Victims versus Veterans: Agency, Resistance and Legacies of Timor-Leste’s Truth Commission,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 11, no. 3 (November 1, 2017): 443–62. The author argues that transitional justice needs “alternative and more expansive ways of conceiving of resistance, heroism and agency.”484VI Hidden Heroesof militias such as the CADs - however controversial - is likely to teach us more about (post-)conflict dynamics than a focus on their destructive nature, especially if the latter goes without any attempt to scrutinize the motivation behind the violations. Therefore, the study of processes such as self-defense and resistance as common forms of civilian participation in war violence can help us to move beyond a limited human rights-based scope that a priori condemns any form of violence and therefore fails to see the agency behind it, whether legitimate or not. An approach that integrates the study of militias in (post)-conflict reconstruction furthermore needs to bridge the gaps between transitional justice and DDR. As Theidon has pointed out, [...] traditional approaches to DDR have focused on military and security objectives, which have resulted in these programs being developed in relative isolation from the field of transitional justice and its concerns with historical clarification, justice, reparations, and reconciliation.”347 Transitional justice on its turn, while focusing on victims, has failed to see the potential of self-defense militias such as the CADs in facilitating processes of reintegration, social reconstruction and (post-)conflict coexistence.  It must be emphasized that the multi-layered survivor identity that I propose here will only become visible through a truly intersectional lens. Transitional justice’s one-sided approach to gender, which all too often results in an exclusive focus on women, obfuscates the importance of phenomena such as machismo in defining (post-)conflict identities. At the same time, the (post-)conflict identity and agency of the CADs cannot be disconnected from their socio-economic situation within the Peruvian nation. To end on a methodological note, locally produced written documents, such as the archive of the headquarter of the CADs, 347  Theidon, “Reconstructing Masculinities,” 2.485VI Hidden Heroescan be a very rich source to gain insight in civilian participation in violence. Without ignoring the fact that these documents were always produced with a certain motivation that we might not always be able to grasp, they are still snapshots that directly reflect wartime dynamics and provide a different perspective than a post-factum testimony. All too often, when studying marginalized groups, especially in ‘the Global South’, it still seems to be assumed that they have no written records. In addition, García-Godos has suggested that initiatives to recognize the contribution of the Peruvian peasantry during the civil war could include the reconstruction of local histories of the self-defense committees.348 In case of the CADs of the VRAEM, there are enough stories to be told from their archive to fill another book. 348  García-Godos, “Victim Reparations in the Peruvian Truth Commission and the Challenge of Historical Interpretation,” 82.GENERAL CONCLUSIONS488General Conclusions“In the past as today, the vocation of social scientists often emerges from a combination of interest in the permanent process of invention of which societies are both the source and the product, and judgment about the state of affairs as they encounter them in the social world. Critical thinking sits at the crossroads between the two, between curiosity and indignation, between the desire to understand and the will to transform.”1Hoy más que nunca pienso en una mesa larga, en un banquete; en una familia de desconocidos, en mis amigos extraviados, en una patria, si se quiere; en una justicia, en una paz.2In 2000, after two decades of civil war initiated by the revolutionaries of the Shining Path, Peru became one out of many countries worldwide that chose to implement transitional justice. This study set out to investigate how the paradigm of transitional justice - with its underlying normative ideas on memory, victimhood and time - modeled Peru’s process of dealing with the legacies of the civil war. Now that we have come to the end of this dissertation, it is time to reflect on where my “curiosity and indignation” concerning the diffusion of transitional justice in Peru and its appropriations, reaffirmations and contestations by survivors have brought us. The desire to understand: Violence and citizenship in AyacuchoThe first set of reflections concerns ‘the desire to understand’ mentioned by Fassin: what is the essence of the claims articulated by survivors? Let us start by briefly returning to the context in which 1  Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason (University of California Press, 2012), 243.2  My English translation of Spanish original: “Today more than ever I think of a long table, a banquet; of a family of strangers, of my lost friends, of a homeland, if you like; of a justice, a peace.” Quote taken from a facebook post by Peruvian writer Eduardo Loayza Díaz on April 17, 2019, the day former president Alan García committed suicide while being arrested for corruption.489General Conclusionsthese claims arise. While Peru’s process of coming to terms with the legacies of the civil war is internationally seen as a successful example of transitional justice, it did not succeed in accomplishing its goal of ‘reconciling the nation’. Despite the TRC’s emphasis on socio-economic exclusion as one of the main causes for the escalation of violence, the implementation of its recommendations in many cases proved to be Band-Aids on historical wounds. Until today, Peru is a country of different worlds separated by breaches that run alongside class, race, gender and geography. Place and context are thus of utmost importance here. In order to understand the civil war and its aftermath, this dissertation turned to three rural field settings in the Ayacucho department, the (former) epicenter of the conflict. Two of the settings are situated in what was the Shining Path’s zona liberada: Sacsamarca and Hualla. These villages are both peasant communities situated in the Andes that were founded in the sixteenth century as conglomerations of indigenous settlements. From early on, these communities possessed their own land and were not subservient to large haciendas. The area pertaining to the province of Huancasancos was historically richer due to a strong tradition of cattle-breeding, whereas the province of Victor Fajardo disposed of less resources. From the 1960s onwards, the secondary school Los Andes in Huancasancos played a key-role in disseminating the Pensamiento Gonzalo designed by Abimael Guzmán and his followers at the UNSCH throughout the region. When the Shining Path gained a foothold in Sacsamarca, its revolutionary struggle got entangled with existing power imbalances and slumbering conflicts over land and resources among the community elite. In this village, the course of the war was defined by both collaboration with and resistance against the Shining Path. Hualla, in turn, was a hotbed of Shining Path militancy during the early years of the armed struggle. Due to the Shining Path’s recruitment of fighters for the ejército guerrillero popular on the one hand, and the extrajudicial detention and execution of suspects by the state forces on the other, the history of the war in Hualla is marked by one crime in particular: enforced 490General Conclusionsdisappearance. The historical and geographical context of the third setting, then, fundamentally differs from that of Sacsamarca and Hualla. The jungle of the Valley of the Apurímac River was colonized by settlers from the highlands of Ayacucho from the beginning of the 20th century onwards. These colonos reduced the territory of the native Asháninka population and imported the Andes culture into the valley. In the early 1980s, many of these new settlers were refugees from the highlands that had fled the violence of the Shining Path. By the time the revolutionaries also made their way into the jungle, few community structures existed since most of the peasants in the VRAEM still lived dispersed on their lands. The increasing insecurity caused by violent incursions of both the state forces and the Shining Path forced the population to centralize and organize. Consequently, the comités de autodefensa emerged as both a military institution to organize civilian self-defense, and a political body that governed daily life and social order in the newly founded agglomerations of peasant settlements. The history - and the raison d’être - of communities in the VRAEM is thus intrinsically linked to the history of the civil war and the organization of peasant self-defense militias. At the same time, the valley is an area of protracted conflict where the struggle against the narcoterroristas of the Shining Path continues.The findings from the three case studies generate a series of insights concerning the practice of remembering the past in communities in Ayacucho, the identity and (post-)conflict agency of survivors in these localities, and their approach to the process of (not) closing the violent past. The common thread that runs through the appropriations, reaffirmations and contestations of transitional justice by survivors is the pursuit of citizenship: recognition of equality, protection by the state and inclusion into the nation. These citizenship claims do not only tell us something about survivors’ strategies of dealing with the past. They also show how survivors make use of the process of coming to terms with the civil war to denounce present injustices and raise expectations for the future. A 491General Conclusionsbrief threefold recapitulation of the findings from the different case studies further clarifies this.First of all, in Sacsamarca and in the VRAEM, the desire for inclusion is the central tenet of the heroic memory that emphasizes the peasants’ contribution to the defeat of the Shining Path: to be recognized as defenders of the Peruvian nation is to become part of it. This heroic narrative of resistance contests the notions of prevention, redemption and recognition that underlie transitional justice’s memory duty in several ways. In Sacsamarca, the heroic narrative of resistance conceals the history of collaboration with the Shining Path, which is surrounded by open secrets. These processes of concealment and secrecy, which help the Sacsamarquinos to maintain a tense coexistence between ‘intimate enemies’, contest the idea of redemption and recognition through truth-telling and memory. The heroic memory in the VRAEM, on its turn, contests the idea of prevention through remembrance: for the CADs, the past serves as an example to act similarly in case violence happens again instead as a lesson to avoid repetition. By cultivating a heroic narrative, both the Sacsamarquinos and the CADs claim recognition of their (post-)conflict identity and agency on the basis of an active narrative of contribution, rather than a passive narrative of victimhood and suffering. One of the reasons for the fact that this recognition is lacking is the general underestimation of the agency of peasant communities and survivors, which is reaffirmed by the passive victim identity extended by the ‘well-meaning outsiders’ of transitional justice. The contestation of this identity is most outspoken in the case of the self-defense committees in the VRAEM. The CADs foster a macho warrior identity that is diametrically opposed to the innocent (and predominantly ‘female’-value-driven) victim identity that is central to transitional justice. By failing to conceptualize the (post-)conflict agency of survivors in peasant communities and falling short in recognizing their contribution, the transitional justice process missed an important opportunity to thicken the citizenship of an historically excluded population group. 492General ConclusionsSecond, the way in which survivors deal with the absence of the bodies of the disappeared in Hualla reflects their search for the body politic: they claim the space generated by the absence to vocalize their desire for inclusion and protection vis-à-vis the state. According to the ‘forensic turn’ in transitional justice, the bodies of the disappeared constitute the key to establishing historical truth and hence, the historical memory of the desaparecidos. Nevertheless, the Huallinos developed an alternative way of remembering the disappeared by including them into the space of the dead at the cemetery, despite the fact that their bodies are absent. This enables them to vocalize their political demand to make the disappeared ‘grievable’; to revalue their lives as that of human beings and citizens.3 The deadlock in which the search for the disappeared has stranded constitutes a failure to recognize the ‘grievability’ - the citizenship - of the desaparecidos and their relatives. Moreover, while the Sacsamarquinos concealed their involvement in the Shining Path with heroism, the Huallinos had to resort to the victim identity extended by ‘well-meaning outsiders’ to cover themselves with innocence and enable them to claim rights concerning reparations and exhumations. The appropriation of an ‘innocent’ victim identity is therefore most pronounced in Hualla. This research has demonstrated that the appropriation and reaffirmation of this identity as a precondition for claiming rights can have serious implications for survivors and their struggles for justice; such as the reassertion of gender stereotypes that facilitate sexual violence (mostly against women), the exclusion of certain groups of survivors (mostly men) and the failure to consider the political agency of survivors during and after the conflict. All these implications weaken survivors’ pursuit of citizenship instead of reinforcing it. Thirdly, in all three case studies, survivors link the feeling of being abandoned by the government to a contemporary past of ongoing structural violence in the form of poverty and socio-economic exclusion: despite their heroism or their suffering during the 3  Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, 1.493General Conclusionsconflict, they still face the same difficult living conditions. These conditions were not significantly improved by the implementation of transitional justice policies. Survivors’ perception of the ruptures between past, present and future are thus less clearly delineated than proposed by the linear temporality of transitional justice, in which the transitional moment aims to contain the violence of the past by turning it into history. In this view, obtaining a clean slate - by implementing transitional justice - forms the prerequisite for a better future. Survivors’ perceptions of the process of dealing with the past, however, reflect continuity rather than change. They consider the pursuit of citizenship as a first step towards the improvement of socio-economic living conditions. This continuity between past and present takes place in the most literal sense in the VRAEM. The CADs were never disarmed, nor did they perceive the war as over at the moment the TRC was established, which obstructed the diffusion of transitional justice in this region in the first place. The protracted conflict between the state forces and the narcoterroristas of the Shining Path sustains the idea of the VRAEM as a war zone. The involvement of all parties in the illicit drug economy moreover results in a complex entanglement of old and new feuds and alliances. At the same time, the population is frustrated with the lack of alternatives to coca production and the negative image of the VRAEM, which impedes development and investments in the region. This deadlock caused by the illicit economy, in combination with the very poor socio-economic situation, sustains the population’s perception of being hostages of the past. In Hualla, the continuity between past and present takes the shape of non-physical violence - racism and discrimination against rural indigenous peasants - which is perpetrated by the state upon survivors during the process of searching for the disappeared. The mechanisms of structural violence that fomented the escalation of the civil war are once again inflicted upon survivors and add insult to injury. 494General ConclusionsThe will to transform: Implications for transitional justice research and practiceLet us now shift from ‘the desire to understand’ to what Fassin calls ‘the will to transform’: what are the implications of this study for research and policy concerning transitional justice? Before turning to these implications, I shortly want to go back to the start of this dissertation: the genesis of transitional justice and the discussions at its core. Arthur has argued that the birth of transitional justice must be situated in a historical context characterized by a global decline of the radical Left during the Cold War. While the term ‘transition’ was originally recycled from Marxist discourse on social transformation, it was now used to describe political reform on the legal-institutional level, more specifically democratization.4 This decline of the radical Left and the emergence of ‘humanitarian government’ caused a shift from describing injustice in the socio-economic language of class warfare to a new universalist language of human rights which primarily resorts to narratives of suffering and trauma to describe (the aftermath of) violence.5 This is why issues concerning social and distributive justice, such as socio-economic rights and development, featured less prominently in the paradigm of transitional justice when it first originated. Nevertheless, discussions on the inclusion of social, cultural and economic rights next to civil and political rights caused an immediate proliferation of the original narrow legal-political conception of transitional justice. In this respect, scholars such as Lambourne, Gready and Robins have advocated a shift from transitional to transformative justice to emphasize local agency and resources, to prioritize process over preconceived outcomes and to take into account power imbalances 4  Paige Arthur, “How ‘Transitions’ Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice,” Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. 2 (2009): 338.5  Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason (University of California Press, 2012); Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman, The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry Into the Condition of Victimhood (Princeton University Press, 2009).495General Conclusionsand mechanisms of exclusion.6 Others recommend, however, to be modest and realistic about the aims and potential of transitional justice. According to Duthie, transitional justice cannot be expected to be transformative. He argues that “transitional justice efforts make up but one set of tools for effecting social change in a particular context, one that on its own can make an important contribution to but will not bring about a radical transformation of society.” 7 The findings from the present research can be situated within this debate on the transformative potential of transitional justice. By analyzing survivors’ appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation of transitional justice in precarious rural contexts affected by civil war on the one hand, and by poverty and structural socio-economic violence on the other, it makes an empirically tested contribution to this discussion. Furthermore, by putting survivors’ responses to and uses of transitional justice center-stage, this study has generated insights that can be applied to the debate on victim participation in transitional justice. Turning back to Peru, it would indeed be too ambitious to expect from transitional justice that it could heal all the country’s deep historical wounds and re-conciliate a nation that was never really conciliated. Nevertheless, when taking into account the critiques of the paradigm of transitional justice that this dissertation entails, there seems to be some room to rethink priorities, methodologies and concepts in order to enhance the transformative potential of transitional justice. The most urgent question that arises from these critiques, then, is how transitional justice can become more responsive to calls for recognition, inclusion and protection articulated by survivors. This requires, as Gready and Robins 6  Wendy Lambourne, “Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding after Mass Violence,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 3, no. 1 (March 1, 2009): 28–48; Gready and Robins, 340.7  Roger Duthie, “Afterword,” in Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence, ed. Alexander Laban Hinton (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 256.496General Conclusionssuggest, an approach that underscores on-the-ground agency and that is sensitive to long-term processes of structural violence that come on top of - and often formed the breeding ground for - the human rights violations addressed through transitional justice policies. Therefore, I will end by formulating three implications of this dissertation that can contribute to such an approach.Reconsidering (post-)conflict agency The first implication relates to the conceptualization of agency of survivors in (post-)conflict settings. The presumption that ‘innocent victims’ are and should be the main subjects of transitional justice policies has been at the expense of the conceptualization of the (political) agency of survivors. Many scholars have critiqued the simplistic conceptualization of victims and perpetrators, for example by pointing to the existence of ‘complex political victims’.8 As Amy Rothschild states, transitional justice needs alternative and more complex ways of conceiving agency.9 These should not overlook the fluidity and obscurity of roles in (post-)conflict situations, how they might be combined in one person and the way they change over time. Michael Rothberg’s notion of the ‘implicated subject’ forms an important contribution to the vocabulary available to describe agency in (structural) violence. However, this notion only concerns those “aligned with power and privilege without being themselves direct agents of harm.”10 No significant attempts have been made 8  Erica Bouris, Complex Political Victims (Kumarian Press, 2007).9  Amy Rothschild, “Victims versus Veterans: Agency, Resistance and Legacies of Timor-Leste’s Truth Commission,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 11, no. 3 (November 1, 2017): 443–62.10  “Implicated subjects occupy positions aligned with power and privilege without being themselves direct agents of harm; they contribute to, inhabit, inherit, or benefit from regimes of domination but do not originate or control such regimes. An implicated subject is neither a victim nor a perpetrator, but rather a participant in histories and social transformations that generate the positions of victim and perpetrator, and yet in which most people do not occupy such clear-cut roles.” 497General Conclusionsto establish a conceptualization that covers the messiness of (post-)conflict agency, including direct participation in violence, such as self-defense or involvement in subversive groups. The present study shows that there is an urgent need to develop the concept of a multi-layered survivor identity which embraces the fact that victimhood, violation, resistance and heroism are no mutually exclusive features. One of the findings to emerge from this research is that establishing victimhood and innocence as exclusive preconditions for claiming rights can have serious consequences for survivors. These consequences, such as disempowerment or the reassertion of gender stereotypes, are counter-productive for the long-term goals of transitional justice. One of the keys to establishing this concept of a multi-layered survivor identity is the study of civilian participation in violence. Scrutinizing local and regional processes of resistance and self-defense allows us to move beyond a narrow human rights-based scope that a priori condemns the use of violence rather than trying to understand the motivations behind it. The findings from the case studies on Sacsamarca and the CADs in the VRAEM have demonstrated that these motivations are often more complex and unpredictable than they appear to be at first sight. The macho warrior identity cherished by the CADs, in combination with their bloodstained reputation as human rights violators in the eyes of ‘well-meaning outsiders’, led to a focus on the destructive character of their agency during the war. Scholars such as Jentzsch, Kalyvas and Schubiger have however pointed out that the study of militias can lead to a better understanding of post-conflict dynamics, “including postwar violence, inclusiveness and citizenship.”11 In line with this claim, this study has elaborated on the constructive force of the self-defense committees in providing local governance and social Michael Rothberg, The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators, 1st edition (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2019), 1.C11  Corinna Jentzsch, Stathis N. Kalyvas, and Livia Isabella Schubiger, “Militias in Civil Wars,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 5 (August 1, 2015): 1001.498General Conclusionsorder during wartime. By doing so, it has generated insights that can be applied for the design of transitional justice policies concerning reintegration, social reconstruction and (post-)conflict coexistence. Hereby, this dissertation makes a contribution to existing efforts to close the gap between transitional justice and DDR.12 Furthermore, the ‘innocent’ and rather passive victim identity extended to survivors by transitional justice risks to intersect with already existing conceptions of marginalized groups as incapable of political agency. This can result in a paternalistic attitude of ‘well-meaning outsiders’ towards survivors. Developing the concept of a multi-layered survivor identity that moves beyond a morally inspired simplistic conceptualization of agency in (post-)conflict situations is therefore a necessary prerequisite for establishing genuine on-the-ground participation of civilian populations affected by violence in transitional justice. To imagine such a multi-layered survivor identity, we can look at how the Sacsamarquinos shift their identity on the axis between victimhood and heroism and embrace the contradictions that their experiences of the war entail. The conceptualization of this multi-layered survivor identity should not be taken as a denial of the existence of situations in which clear-cut victims and perpetrators can be identified. Rather, it is an attempt to cover the messiness of (post-)conflict agency and go against the negative consequences of the reduction of this complex agency to the diametrically opposed roles of victims and perpetrators.12  See, for example: Ana Cutter Patel, Pablo De Greiff, and Lars Waldorf, Disarming the Past: Transitional Justice and Ex-Combatants (New York; Chichester: Social Science Research Council ; John Wiley [distributor, 2010); Kimberly Theidon, “Reconstructing Masculinities: The Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration of Former Combatants in Colombia,” Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. 1 (2009): 1–34.”499General ConclusionsRethinking (post-)conflict dynamics The second suggestion relates to the approach and methodology applied to study violence and its aftermath. History is remarkably absent in transitional justice, notwithstanding its concern with dealing with the past. The vocabulary of victimhood and perpetration that emerges at the intersection of trauma and human rights discourse produces “histories without history”.13 Violence and its consequences are homogenized, universalized and decontextualized. These decontextualized descriptions of war and conflict are reaffirmed by transitional justice’s inherently short-term approach in which conflict is in the first place considered as a politically rather than a historically rooted phenomenon. One of the ways to go against this decontextualization is to integrate a historical approach into the study of (post-)conflict dynamics. This call to ‘take history seriously’ complements the pleas for context-bound and culturally sensitive approaches to transitional justice that have been formulated by scholars such as Lieselotte Viaene.14 History is an essential component of context and culture that often remains under exposed in the analysis of violence and its aftermath.This historical approach can have varying geographical, thematical or temporal scopes. By writing a microhistory of the civil war in Sacsamarca, for example, this study has demonstrated that the villagers were not the subject of a coincidental outbreak of violence caused by external forces. Rather, the Sacsamarquinos in the first place are the protagonists of their own history. Their (post-)conflict strategies of remembrance, concealment and coexistence cannot and should not be separated from the (pre)history of the conflict. In addition, locally produced written documents - such as those found in the archive of the headquarter of the CADs - can provide for a rich 13  Fassin and Rechtman, The Empire of Trauma, 214.14  Lieselotte Viaene and Eva Brems, “Transitional Justice and Cultural Contexts: Learning from the Universality Debate,” Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 28, no. 2 (2010): 199–224.500General Conclusionssource of information with regards to the (post-)conflict agency of civilians. These written records are often neglected, especially when studying marginalized groups within the framework of a paradigm that values post-factum testimonies of victims as the ultimate key to establishing historical truth. Moreover, as Jemima García-Godos has suggested for the CADs, writing the history of these marginalized groups can be a first step towards the recognition of their agency.15 The historical lens furthermore allows us to highlight historical processes of ongoing and structural violence which in many (former) transitional justice contexts have roots that go back to colonialism. By doing so, this study has proposed an alternative approach for one specific transitional justice mechanism, namely the search for the disappeared. Taking into account the difficult circumstances in which this process of search takes place, this approach suggests a shift in emphasis from ‘how can we find the bodies of the disappeared?’ to ‘how can we achieve recognition and citizenship for the relatives of the disappeared in absence of their bodies? ’. This shift in emphasis is not a plea against exhumation and restitution as mechanisms that have the potential to bring about recognition and justice. Rather, it is a proposal to rethink priorities. Redefining the ‘local’ in transitional justiceFinally, the local versus global dichotomy remains predominant in studies that aim to grapple with the frictions between international policies and the local realities in which they are implemented.16 However, frictions on the ground prove to have a versatile character that cannot easily be reduced to top-down versus bottom-up or local versus global dynamics. The entanglement of international, 15  García-Godos, “Victim Reparations in the Peruvian Truth Commission and the Challenge of Historical Interpretation,” 82.16  See for example: Alexander Laban Hinton, Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities after Genocide and Mass Violence (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010).501General Conclusionsnational and local actors and ideas can only be unraveled by taking a multidirectional and multiscale approach that integrates horizontal and vertical movements across local, national and international scales. Emphasizing the entanglement of actors and ideas moreover enables us to go against the presumption that ‘ideas’ and ‘politics’ (exclusively) belong to the global or international realm, and ‘experience’ and ‘culture’ to the local. This is crucial if we want to make transitional justice more responsive to the calls for recognition, inclusion and protection articulated by survivors instead of implementing ready-made mechanisms that are expected to accomplish ambitious goals such as truth, justice and reconciliation. The ‘local’ context is not the just the domain of reception of transitional justice policies. As this research has demonstrated, it is a vivid scenery in which a wide range of actions including diffusion, appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation take place. Redefining the ‘local’ in this fashion is therefore a necessary first step towards putting on-the-ground agency center-stage. Only then, the real protagonists of stories of war and its aftermath - including open secrets, absent bodies and hidden heroes - become visible.ANNEXES504List of abbreviations AFAVISPH Asociación de Familiares Víctimas de la Violencia Sociopolítica de Hualla - Association of Relatives Victims of the Socio-political Violence of HuallaANFASEP Asociación Nacional de Familiares de Secuestrados, Detenidos y Desaparecidos del Perú - National Association of Family members of the Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared of Peru (Huamanga)APRA Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana - American Popular Revolutionary AllianceAPRODEH Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos - Association for Human Rights (Lima)CAD Comité de Autodefensa Civil - Civil Self-Defense CommitteeCALS Centre for Applied Legal Studies ( Johannesburg)CEAS Comisión Episcopal de Acción Social - Episcopal Commission for Social Action (Lima)CEJIL Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional - Center for Justice and International Law (Buenos Aires, Río de Janeiro, San José, Washington) CELS Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales - Center for Legal and Social Studies (Buenos Aires)CICR / ICRC Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja - International Committee of the Red Cross (Geneva)CMAN Comisión Multisectorial de Alto Nivel / High-Level Multisector Commission (Lima)CONADEP Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas - National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Argentina)505CONAVIP Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones de Afectados por la Violencia Política - Coordinator of Organizations of Persons Affected by the Political Violence COMISEDH Comisión (Nacional) de Derechos Humanos - National Commission of Human Rights (Lima) CORAVIP Coordinadora Regional de Organizaciones de Afectados por la Violencia Política - Regional Coordinator of Organizations of Persons Affected by the Political Violence CNDDHH Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos - National Human Rights Coordinator (Lima)CSVR The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation ( Johannesburg)CVC Comité de Defensa Civil - Civil Defense CommitteesCVR Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación - Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru)DARS Dirección Académica de Responsabilidad Social de la Pontífica  Universidad Católica del Perú - Academic Direction of Social Responsibility of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (Lima)DDR Demobilization Disarmament and ReintegrationDECA Comité de Defensa Civil Antisubversiva - Anti-Subversive Civil  Defense CommitteeECCC Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (Phnom Penh)EFE Equipo Forense Especializado - Specialized Forensic Team (Peru)EPAF Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense - Peruvian Forensic Anthrolopology Team (Lima)506EU European UnionFAL Fusil Automatique Léger FECVRA Federación Campesina del Valle del Río Apurímac - Peasant Federation of the Valley of the Apurímac RiverFEDEFAM Federación Latinoamericana de Asociaciones de Familiares de Detenidos y Desaparecidos - Latin American Federation of the Detained and Disappeared (Caracas)FIDH Federación Internacional de Derechos Humanos - International Federation for Human Rights (Paris) H.I.J.O.S. Hijos por la Identidad y la Justica contra el Olvido y el Silencio - Sons and daughters for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence (Buenos Aires and Guatemala City)HRW Human Rights Watch (New York)IACHR  Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Washington)ICC International Criminal Court (The Hague)ICJ International Commission of Jurists (Geneva) ICMP International Commission on Missing Persons (The Hague/Sarajevo)ICTJ International Centre for Transitional Justice (New York)ICTR International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (The Hague)ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (The Hague)IDEHPUCP Instituto de Democracia y Derechos Humanos de la Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú - Institute of Democracy and Human Rights of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru507IDL Instituto de Defensa Legal - Institute for Legal Defense (Lima)IDP Internally Displaced PersonIJTJ International Journal of Transitional Justice INEI Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática - National Institute of Statistics and Information science (Lima)LUM Lugar de la Memoria, la Tolerancia y la Inclusión Social - Place of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion (Lima)MINJUS Ministerio de Justicia - Ministry of Justice (Lima) MOVADEF Movimiento por la Amnestía y Derechos Fundamentales - Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights MRTA Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru - Túpac Amaru Revolutionary MovementOHCHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations (Geneva)PCP-SL Partido Comunista del Perú - Sendero Luminoso - Communist Party of  Peru - Shining PathPIR Plan Integral de Reparaciones - Integral Reparation Plan PNIAF Plan Nacional de Investigaciones Antropológico Forenses - National Plan for Forensic Anthropological Investigations PUCP Pontífica Universidad Católica del Perú - Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (Lima)PJTT Project on Justice in Times of Transition (Current name: Beyond Conflict, Boston)PTSD Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 508SCSL Special Court for Sierra Leone (Freetown)SER Asociación Servicios Educativos Rurales - Asociation Rural Educational Services (Lima/Huamanga)SIS Sistema Integral de Salud - Integral Healthcare SystemTRC Truth and Reconciliation CommissionRUV Registro Único de Víctimas / Unique Victim Register UN United NationsUNDP United Nations Development ProgramUNDPKO United Nations Department of Peace Keeping Operations (Current name: UNDPO, United Nations Department of Peace Operations)UNSCH Universidad Nacional San Cristobal de Huamanga - National University San Cristobal of Huamanga (Huamanga)USIP United States Institutes of Peace (Washington)VRAEM Valle de los Ríos Apurímac, Ene y Mantaro - Valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro RiversWOLA Washington Office on Latin America (Washington) 509GlossaryAdobe Sun-dried bricks made from sand, clay and strawArrepentido Repentant; ex-Shining Path members who were reintegrated in the communityChiChA (Fermented) drink on the basis of corn or barleyCholo,-A Term used in Peru to refer to the Andean population, can have a derogatory meaning CoCAlero/-A Coca farmerColono SettlerComité ZonAl Zonal committee, central support base of the Shining Path in AyacuchoCompAdre / ComAdre Godfather or godmother of one’s child, mostly an intimate friendComunidAd CAmpesinA Peasant communityCriollo,-A Term used to refer to white Peruvians from the coastdesApAreCido(s) Disappeared person(s)direCtivA ComunAl Communal board of directorsiChu (Quechua) Peruvian feather grassejérCito guerrillero populAr Popular Guerrilla ArmyesCuelA populAr Popular school; school on the countryside where the ideology of the Shining Path was taughtestAnCiA A small farmer’s house in the highlands mostly surrounded 510by a cattle pen built in stone to house llamas, alpacas, cows or sheepFAenA Collective communal work in function of the public space of the communityjuiCio populAr Popular trial; the ad hoc trials of the Shining PathgAmonAl Large landowners who exploit the indigenous population, also used in general to refer to the rich elite of the community gringo, -A Term used in Latin America to refer to US citizens, and by extension also to (white) EuropeansmesnAdA MilitiamestiZo Person with combined European and indigenous American descentminiFundiA Small farm, the opposite of a haciendaminkA Collective communal work in function of agriculturemoChileros Backpackers, reference to young men who smuggle cocaine  (paste) by foot through the jungle montoneros Self-defense militias form the area of ChunguinArCotrAFiCAnte Drug traffickerpAgApu (Quechua) Andean ritual to pay tribute to Mother Earth pAChA mAmA (Quechua) Mother EarthpensAmiento gonZAlo Gonzalo Thought, ideology of the Shining Path based on Marxist, Leninist and Maoist thought, developed by Abimael Guzmánpeón Seasonal wage worker511(el) perú proFundo The deep Peru, reference to Peru’s rural areas in opposition to LimaproprietArio,-A Owner; reference to peasant who owns land (in contrast to a peón)punA (Quechua) HighlandsrondAs CAmpesinAs Peasant roundsrondero Member of a ronda campesina, also used to refer to CAD  members senderistA Member of the Shining PathsinChis Nickname of the anti-terror unit of the Guardia CivilterruCo,-A Terrorist; reference to Shining Path memberstinterillo Inkpot, derogatory term to refer to clerkstutA puriqkunA (Quechua) Those who walk at night, reference to Shining Path militiasvArAyoCs / vArAdos Governing body of elderly members of the community that existed since colonial times and watched over the maintenance of land and cattleyAnA umA (Quechua) Black head; reference to the black balaclavas worn by the self-defense committees or the Shining PathZonA liberAdA Liberated zone; the territory controlled by the Shining PathArchival work in the jungle of the VRAEM © Gabriela Zamora (2018)SOURCES & BIBLIOGRAPHY514Interviews (chronologically per chapter, personal archive of the author, Ghent)All names of research participants are pseudonyms, unless marked with (*).Interviews marked with (Q) were conducted in Quechua, all the others were conducted in Spanish. Chapter 3Interview with Sofía Macher, ex-commissioner of the TRC, Lima,  24.05.2017. (*)Chapter 4interview with Victor, one of the participants in the battle against the Shining Path on 21 May 1983, Sacsamarca, 28.03.2015.interview with Francisco, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 10.04.2015.interview with Carlos, victim whose father was assassinated by the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 11.04.2015interview with Maria, daughter of one of the participants in the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 13.04.2015.interview with Daniel, ex-authority and participant in the rebellion against the Shining Path,  Sacsamarca, 13.04.2015.interview with Alonso, witness of the events of 1983, Sacsamarca, 13.04.2015.interview with Jesús, ex-authority, Sacsamarca, 14.04.2015.interview with Elena, widow whose husband was killed by the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 15.04.2015.interview with Mauricio, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 15.04.2015.interview with Suyana, widow whose husband was disappeared by the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 16.04.2015.interview with Manuel, Hualla, 30.04.2015interview with Barbara, widow, Sacsamarca, 20.05.2015.interview with Andrés, ex-authority, Sacsamarca, 21.05.2015.515interview with Daniela, widow, Sacsamarca, 21.05.2015. (Q)interview with Veronica, widow whose husband was killed by the military, Sacsamarca, 21.05.2015. (Q)interview with Sara, direct witness of the events of February 1983, Sacsamarca, 22.05.2015.interview with Julio, participant in the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 22.05.2015.interview with Pablo, one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Shining Path, Sacsamarca, 29.06.2015.Chapter 5interview with Tania, relative of victim of enforced disappearance, Hualla, 05.03.2015.interview with Isabel, relative of victim of enforced disappearance, Hualla, 05.03.2015. (Q)interview with Joaquin, local authority whose father was disappeared by the military, Hualla, 05.03.2015. interview with Luís, village authority and witness of the events of 11 July 1982, Hualla, 06.03.2015.interview with Edilberto, local authority, Hualla, 06.03.2015.interview with Deborah, whose husband was disappeared by the military, Hualla,  06.03.2015.interview with Erika, widow of disappeared husband, Hualla, 01.05.2015. (Q)interview with Flavio, Lena and their son Lucho, victims of torture and internal displacement, Hualla, 02.05.2015.interview with Emilio, victim of torture by the military, Hualla, 02.05.2015.interview with Elsa, widow of disappeared husband, Hualla, 02.05.2015. (Q)interview with Tomás, victim of forced displacement and returnee, Hualla, 03.05.2015.interview with Milushka, victim whose husband and three daughters were killed by the military, Hualla, 03.05.2015. (Q)516interview with Carolina, mother of two disappeared children, Hualla, 03.05.2015. (Q)interview with Juan, witness of torture, relative of victims of en-forced disappearance, victim of forced displacement, Hualla, 04.05.2015.interview with Gisela, victim of sexual violence perpetrated by the military, Hualla, 04.05.2015.interview with Alicia, relative of victims burial site Hualla, 25.06.2015.interview with Zaïra, survivor whose father was killed by the Shining Path during the massacre of August 1984, Hualla, 26.06.2015 (Q)interview with Katarina, widow whose husband was kidnapped by the Shining Path, Hualla,  26.06.2015Chapter 6interview with Rafael, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.interview with Adrián, local authority, district of Pichari, 12.05.2017.interview with Humberto, ex-CAD commander, district of Kimbiri, 13.05.2017; 23.06.2018.interview with José Pablo, ex-CAD commander, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018.interview with Nilda, ex-CAD member and widow, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018interview with Rosa, ex-CAD member whose father was killed by the Shining Path, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018.interview with Ladislao, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.interview with Sandra (daughter of Ladislao), district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.interview with Franco, ex-CAD member, district of Kimbiri, 24.06.2018.interview with Julia, ex-CAD member, district of Kimbiri, 24.06.2018.517interview with Francisco, ex-CAD commander and licenciado, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.interview with Diana, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 25.06.2018.interview with Ramiro, ex-CAD member, district of Kimbiri, 25.06.2018.interview with Ruth, survivor whose brother was disappeared by the Shining Path, district  of Kimbiri, 25.06.2018.interview with Renzo, local authority, district of Samugari, 26.06.2018.interview with Sebastián, ex-CAD member, district of Santa Rosa, 27.06.2018.interview with Ivan, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 27.06.2018.interview with Sergio, ex-CAD commander and licenciado, district of Samugari, 27.06.2018interview with Mario, ex-CAD member, district of Santa Rosa, 27.06.2018interview with Humberto, ex-CAD command, district of Samugari, 27.06.2018.interview with Lalo, ex-CAD commander, district of Kimbiri, 28.06.2018. interview with Juana, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 29.06.2018.interview with Mariano, boatman, district of Samugari, 29.06.2018.interview with Victoria, widow of local authority killed by the Shining Path, district of  Samugari, 29.06.2018.interview with Nelida, ex-CAD member, district of Samugari, 30.06.2018;interview with Nelson, ex-CAD commander, district of Samugari, 30.06.2018.interview with Alejandro, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 08.07.2018.interview with Percy, ex-CAD commander, district of Llochegua, 51809.07.2018.interview with Camilo, ex-recruit of the Shining Path, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018.interview with Oliver, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 09.07.2018.interview with Alfonso, ex-CAD commander, district of Pichari, 10.07.2018.interview with Flora, daughter of ex-CAD commander, district of Santa Rosa, 11.07.2018.Fieldnotes and personal correspondence (chronologically, personal archive of the author, Ghent)FielDnoteS, Hualla, 16.03.2012.FielDnoteS, Hualla, 23.06.2014.FielDnoteS, Hualla, 24.06.2014.FielDnoteS, Mama Sara festival, Hualla, 25.06.2014.FielDnoteS, Día de la Memoria, Hualla, 26.06.2014.FielDnoteS, Localization burial site, Hualla, 27.06.2014.FielDnoteS, Conversation with the mayor and representatives of the victims’ association, Sacsamarca, 27.06.2014.  FielDnoteS, Conversation with representatives of the victims’ association, Sacsamarca, 28.06.2014.FielDnoteS, Taller y coloquio IFEA, Lima, 15.07.2014.FielDnoteS, Reunión autoridades de Cayara con APRODEH, Huamanga, 28.02.2015.FielDnoteS, Conversation with village authority, Hualla, 04.03.2015.FielDnoteS, Hualla, 05.03.2015FielDnoteS, Reunión ANFASEP y Centro Loyola sobre la Hoyada, Huamanga, 10.03.2015.FielDnoteS, Seminario Desaparición Forzada y Ejecución Extrajducial EPAF, Huamanga,  14.03.2015.FielDnoteS, Visita Ollanta Humala, Huancasancos, 27.03.2015.FielDnoteS, Visit to the graves of Putaccasa I y II, Sacsamarca, 51928.03.2015.FielDnoteS, Conversation with local authority, Sacsamarca, 10.04.2015.FielDnoteS, Communal assembly, Sacsamarca, 12.04.2015.FielDnoteS, Hualla, 30.04.2015.FielDnoteS, Hualla, 02.05.2015FielDnoteS, Hualla, 03.05.2015.FielDnoteS, Hualla, 04.05.2015.FielDnoteS, Hualla, 05.05.2015.FielDnoteS, Huamanga, 09.05.2015.FielDnoteS, Exhumation, Hualla, 06.05.2015.FielDnoteS, Conversation with relatives grave Putaccasa I, Hualla, 18.05.2017.FielD recorDinGS, Mass for the victims, Sacsamarca, 21.05.2015.FielDnoteS, Commemoration ceremony, Sacsamarca, 21.05.2015.FielDnoteS, Exhumation Putaccasa II, Putaccasa, 16-19.06.2015.FielDnoteS, Conversation with a local authority, Sacsamarca, 19.06.2015.FielD recorDinGS, Día de la memoria: inauguración de la cruz, intervention by a relative of the disappeared, Hualla, 26.06.2015.FielDnoteS, Conversation with local authority, Hualla, 17.11.2015.FielDnoteS, Visita a Chimpapampa, Hualla, 25.06.2015.FielDnoteS, Exhumation bis, Hualla, 11.08.2015FielDnoteS, Coloquio internacional IDEHPUCP: Impactos de las reparaciones a las víctimas en las sociedades posconflicto. Memoria de los cuerpos, conmemoración y patrimonialización, Lima, 24.08.2015.FielDnoteS, Meeting relatives burial site Hualla, Lima, 27.08.2015.FielDnoteS, Conmemoración CVR+12 Ojo Que Llora, Lima, 28.08.2015.FielDnoteS, Hualla, 17.11.2015.FielDnoteS, Conversation with local authority, Hualla, 17.11.2015.FielDnoteS, Conmemoración batalla de Trigopampa, Hualla, 18.11.2015.520FielDnoteS, Seminario SER, Huamanga, 19.11.2015.FielDnoteS, Reunión residentes Accomarquinos, Lima, 09.12.2015.FielDnoteS, Restitution massacre Chungui, Huamanga, 16.12.2015.FielDnoteS, district of Llochegua, 10.05.2017FielDnoteS, conversation with ICRC representative, district of Pichari, 11.05.2017.FielDnoteS, district of Kimbiri, 13.05.2017.FielDnoteS, Meeting of the vicims’ association, Hualla, 18.05.2017.FielDnoteS, Conversation with relatives grave Putaccasa I, Hualla, 18.05.2017.FielDnoteS, Pacha Pupum festival, Sacsamarca, 19.05.2017.FielDnoteS, Conversation with the ex-president of the victims’ association, Sacsamarca, 19.05.2017.FielD recorDinGS, speech of a local authority at the commemoration ceremony of the self-defense committees, Pichiwillca, 21.06.2018.FielD recorDinGS, speech of the regional leader of the self-defense committees at the commemoration ceremony of the self-defense committees, Pichiwillca, 21.06.2018.FielD recorDinGS, speech of current self-defense leader at the commemoration ceremony of the self-defense committees, Pichiwillca, 21.06.2018.FielDnoteS, district of Samugari, 21.06.2018.FielDnoteS, district of Samugari, 22.06.2018.FielDnoteS, district of Kimbiri, 23.06.2018.FielDnoteS, district of Kimbiri, 24.06.2018.FielDnoteS, district of Samugari, 24.06.2018.FielDnoteS, district of Kimbiri, 25.06.2018FielDnoteS, district of Santa Rosa, 27.06.2018FielDnoteS, district of Santa Rosa, 11.07.2018.FielDnoteS, conversation with RUV officer, district of Samugari, 27.06.2018.FielD recorDinGS, meeting with board of directors of the self-defense committee of Llochegua, Llochegua, 10.07.2018.FielDnoteS, district of Llochegua, 10.07.2018.521leaFlet, Invitación XXXV Homenaje a Los Mártires y Héroes Del 21 de Mayo 1983 (Comisión Organizadora, 2018)PerSonal coMMunication with Gabriela Zamora, 11.11.2016 (*)PerSonal coMMunication with Ricardo Caro, 17.05.2019. (*) PerSonal coMMunication with Ricardo Caro, 18.06.2019. (*)PerSonal coMMunication with Gisela Ortiz, 02.09.2019. (*)Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos (Lima)CVR. Caso 1003020CVR. Caso 1003271CVR. Caso 1000345CVR. Caso 1004745CVR. Caso 1004639CVR. Caso 1014517CVR. Caso 1001246CVR. Caso 1005392CVR. Caso 1006505CVR. “Comité de Autodefensa 2,” 2002. SCO34509. CVR. “Comité de Autodefensa 3,” 2002. SCO34510. CVR. “Taller Con Comités de Autodefensa,” 2002. SR2-46-01?CVR, Testimonio 203686CVR, Testimonio 201114CVR, Testimonio 201723Burneo Labrín, José, and Marianne Eyde. “Ronda Campesina y Defensa Civil : Cuadro Comparativo.” SER, 1986. Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos.Defensoría del Pueblo. “La Indemnización a Los Miembros de Los Comités de Autodefensa y Rondas Campesinas Víctimas Del Terrorismo.” Informes Defensoriales. 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New York: Routledge, 2015.549550551Resumen de la tesis doctoral En el año 2000, después de dos décadas de guerra civil iniciada por el grupo maoísta Sendero Luminoso, Perú se convirtió en uno de los muchos países del mundo que optaron por implementar la justicia transicional. Bajo presión de la sociedad civil se creó la Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación, que hizo recomendaciones sobre reparaciones, exhumaciones de fosas comunes y reformas institucionales. Esta disertación es un estudio del paradigma internacional de la justicia transicional y la forma en que este paradigma modeló el proceso de lidiar con las consecuencias de la guerra civil en el Perú. Más precisamente, desentraña cómo este proceso está formado por la participación de actores locales, nacionales e internacionales y sus respectivas ideas y prácticas para lidiar con un pasado violento. La presente investigación estudia esta participación al observar dos clústeres de acciones. El primero es la difusión de la justicia transicional: ¿cómo y por quién se propaga y pone en práctica el paradigma internacional de la justicia transicional? ¿Qué tipo de interacciones e intercambios tienen lugar a nivel local, nacional e internacional a lo largo de estos procesos de difusión? El segundo clúster de acciones se refiere a la apropiación, la reafirmación y el cuestionamiento de la justicia transicional: ¿cómo los sobrevivientes se involucran, resisten o transforman estas ideas y prácticas internacionales en función de objetivos específicos y luchas (políticas)? Trascendiendo el binario local-global y enfatizando el entrelazamiento de actores e ideas a escala local, nacional e internacional, este estudio tiene como objetivo ir en contra de la presunción de que las ‘ideas’ y la ‘política’ (exclusivamente) pertenecen al ámbito global o internacional, y la ‘experiencia’ y la ‘cultura’ al ámbito local.La primera parte de la disertación investiga el surgimiento del paradigma de la justicia transicional (capítulo uno), sus ideas normativas subyacentes sobre memoria, victimización y tiempo (capítulo dos) y su implementación en el Perú (capítulo tres). La 552segunda parte envuelve un análisis empírico en profundidad de la difusión y contestación de la justicia transicional a través de tres estudios de caso de diferentes contextos rurales en la región de Ayacucho. En el pueblo de Sacsamarca (provincia de Huancasancos), la tensión entre la participación en y la resistencia contra Sendero Luminoso durante la guerra civil dio lugar a una dinámica particular del (post)conflicto entre la narrativa pública, por un lado, y los secretos a voces y los silencios que lo rodean, por el otro (capítulo cuatro). En la comunidad de Hualla (provincia de Víctor Fajardo), la guerra civil y su legado se caracterizan por un delito en particular: la desaparición forzada (capítulo cinco). En el valle del río Apurímac (VRAEM), los Comités de Autodefensa Civil desempeñaron un papel clave en la derrota de Sendero Luminoso. La experiencia de la autodefensa configura la identidad y la agencia de los actores (post)conflicto en esta área de conflicto prolongado contra el narcoterrorismo (capítulo seis). El hilo común que atraviesa los cuestionamientos de justicia transicional de los sobrevivientes es el reclamo de ciudadanía e inclusión, que aparece como el talón de Aquiles del proceso de lidiar con los legados de la guerra civil peruana. Además, este estudio desarrolla la noción de un ‘pasado contemporáneo’ para referirse a experiencias de violencia de forma continua y estructural: violencia que ha sucedido en el pasado y que todavía está sucediendo en el presente, aunque de distintas formas.Los resultados de esta disertación tienen tres implicaciones conceptuales y metodológicas para el estudio de dinámicas (post)conflicto y la implementación de políticas de justicia transicional. La primera implicación se relaciona con la conceptualización de la agencia de sobrevivientes en entornos (post)conflicto, y propone la conceptualización de una identidad de sobreviviente que va más allá de la oposición entre víctimas y perpetradores, y que abarca el hecho de que victimización, perpetración de violaciones, resistencia y heroísmo no son características mutuamente excluyentes. La segunda recomendación se refiere al estudio de la violencia y sus secuelas, y aboga por la integración de un enfoque histórico que responda 553mejor a las nociones de violencia estructural. La tercera sugerencia, finalmente, es una invitación a repensar lo ‘local’ como algo más que un campo de recepción de políticas de justicia transicional, tomando en cuenta el entrelazamiento de actores e ideas locales, nacionales e internacionales.554Samenvatting van het doctoraat In 2000, na twee decennia van burgeroorlog ontketend door de Maoïstische rebellen van het Lichtend Pad, werd Peru één van de vele landen wereldwijd die ervoor kozen om transitional justice of overgangsgerechtigheid te implementeren. Onder druk van het middenveld werd een waarheids- en verzoeningscommissie opgericht die aanbevelingen formuleerde met betrekking tot herstelbetalingen voor slachtoffers, opgravingen van massagraven en institutionele hervormingen. Dit proefschrift bestudeert het internationale paradigma van overgangsgerechtigheid en de manier waarop dit paradigma Peru’s omgang met de nalatenschap van de burgeroorlog vormgaf. Het stelt de vraag hoe dit proces gevormd wordt door de betrokkenheid van lokale, nationale en internationale actoren en hun respectievelijke ideeën en initiatieven om met het gewelddadige verleden in het reine te komen. Deze betrokkenheid wordt onderzocht door te kijken naar twee verschillende clusters van acties. De eerste cluster is de verspreiding van overgangsgerechtigheid: hoe en door wie wordt het internationale paradigma van overgangsgerechtigheid gepropageerd en in de praktijk gebracht? Welke interacties en uitwisselingen vinden plaats tussen het lokale, nationale en internationale niveau tijdens deze verspreidingsprocessen? De tweede cluster van acties betreft de toe-eigening, herbevestiging en contestatie van overgangsgerechtigheid door nabestaanden in Peru: hoe zijn zij betrokken bij deze (inter)nationale ideeën en praktijken, in welke mate verzetten ze zich ertegen, of instrumentaliseren ze deze voor specifieke (politieke) doeleinden? Door de binaire tegenstelling tussen het lokale en mondiale niveau te overstijgen, en de nadruk te leggen op de verstrengeling van lokale, nationale en internationale actoren en ideeën, wil dit onderzoek ingaan tegen de assumptie dat ‘ideeën’ en ‘politiek’ (exclusief) tot het mondiale of internationale terrein behoren, en ‘ervaring’ en ‘cultuur’ tot het lokale.Het eerste deel van dit proefschrift onderzoekt de opkomst van het paradigma van overgangsgerechtigheid (hoofdstuk één), de 555onderliggende normatieve ideeën over herinnering, slachtofferschap en tijd (hoofdstuk twee), en de implementatie van mechanismen van overgansgerechtigheid in Peru (hoofdstuk drie). Het tweede deel omvat een diepgaande empirische analyse van de verspreiding en contestatie van overgangsgerechtigheid door middel van drie verschillende gevalstudies van rurale contexten in de regio Ayacucho. In het dorp Sacsamarca veroorzaakte de spanning tussen betrokkenheid bij en verzet tegen het Lichtend Pad tijdens de burgeroorlog een specifieke post-conflict dynamiek tussen het publieke narratief over het verleden enerzijds, en de geheimen en stiltes die dit narratief omringen anderzijds (hoofdstuk vier). In de Andesgemeenschap Hualla worden de burgeroorlog en de nasleep ervan gekenmerkt door één specifiek type misdaad in het bijzonder: gedwongen verdwijning (hoofdstuk vijf ). In de vallei van de Apurímac rivier (VRAEM) speelden de Comités de Autodefensa Civil of zelfverdedigingscomités een sleutelrol in het verslaan van het Lichtend Pad tijdens de burgeroorlog. Deze ervaring van zelfverdediging vormt de (post-)conflictidentiteit van nabestaanden in dit gebied, waar de strijd tegen narcoterrorismo verder duurt (hoofdstuk zes). De rode draad die door de contestaties van overgangsgerechtigheid door nabestaanden loopt, is de roep om burgerschap en inclusie, die de achilleshiel van Peru’s verwerkingsproces blijkt te zijn. De bevindingen van dit proefschrift hebben drie conceptuele en methodologische implicaties voor de studie van (post-)conflict dynamieken en de implementatie van overgangsgerechtigheid. De eerste implicatie heeft betrekking tot de conceptualisering van agency van nabestaanden in (post-)conflictsituaties, en stelt de ontwikkeling van een gelaagde nabestaanden-identiteit voor: een identiteit die de tegenstelling dader-slachtoffer overstijgt en de realiteit omarmt dat slachtofferschap, daderschap, verzet en heldhaftigheid geen elkaar uitsluitende eigenschappen zijn. De tweede aanbeveling betreft het onderzoek naar (post-)conflictsituaties, en pleit voor de integratie van een historische benadering die aandacht besteedt aan noties van structureel geweld. De derde suggestie, ten slotte, is een uitnodiging 556om het ‘lokale’ niveau te beschouwen als meer dan enkel het domein van implementatie en receptie van overgangsgerechtigheid door de verstrengeling van lokale, nationale en internationale dynamieken in acht te nemen.557Abstract of the dissertationIn 2000, after two decades of civil war initiated by the Maoist rebels of the Shining Path, Peru became one out of many countries worldwide that chose to implement transitional justice. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up which formulated recommendations concerning reparations, exhumations of mass graves and institutional reform. This dissertation is a study of the international paradigm of transitional justice and the way in which this paradigm modeled Peru’s process of dealing with the legacies of the civil war. More precisely, it unravels how this process is shaped by the involvement of local, national and international actors and their respective ideas on and practices of coming to terms with the past. This involvement is studied by looking at two different clusters of actions. The first is the diffusion of transitional justice: how and by whom is the international paradigm of transitional justice propagated and put into practice? What kind of interactions and exchanges take place between the local, national and international level throughout these processes of diffusion? The second cluster of actions concerns the appropriation, reaffirmation and contestation of transitional justice: how do survivors engage with, resist or transform these (inter)national ideas and practices in function of specific aims and (political) struggles? By transcending the local versus global approach and emphasizing the multi-scale and multi-directional entanglement of local, national and international actors and ideas, this study aims to go against the presumption that ‘ideas’ and ‘politics’ (exclusively) belong to the global or international realm, and ‘experience’ and ‘culture’ to the local. The first part of the dissertation investigates the emergence of the paradigm of transitional justice (chapter one), its underlying normative ideas on memory, victimhood and time (chapter two) and its implementation in Peru (chapter three). The second part entails an in-depth empirical analysis of the diffusion and contestation of transitional justice by means of three different case studies from rural contexts in the 558Ayacucho region. In the village of Sacsamarca, the tension between involvement with and resistance against the Shining Path during the civil war resulted in a particular (post-)conflict dynamic between the public narrative on the past on the one hand, and the (open) secrets and silences that surround it on the other (chapter four). In the highland community of Hualla, the civil war and its aftermath are characterized by (the legacies of) one specific crime in particular: enforced disappearance (chapter five). In the valley of the Apurímac River (VRAEM), the Comités de Autodefensa Civil or civil self-defense committees played a key-role in defeating the Shining Path. The experience of self-defense shapes (post-)conflict identity and agency in this area of protracted conflict against narcoterroristas (chapter six). The common thread that runs through survivors’ contestations of transitional justice is the claim for citizenship and inclusion, which appears as the Achilles’ heel of Peru’s process of coming to terms with the legacies of the civil war. This study furthermore develops the notion of a ‘contemporary past’ to refer to survivors’ experience of ongoing and structural: violence that has happened in the past and is still happening in the present - albeit in different forms.The findings of this dissertation entail three conceptual and methodological implications for the study of (post-)conflict dynamics and the implementation of transitional justice policies. The first implication relates to the conceptualization of agency of survivors in (post-)conflict settings and proposes the notion of a multi-layered survivor identity that goes beyond the opposition between victims and perpetrators and embraces the fact that victimhood, violation, resistance and heroism are no mutually exclusive features. The second recommendation relates to the study of violence and its aftermath and pleads for the integration of a historical approach that is more responsive to notions of structural violence. The third suggestion, finally, is an invitation to rethink the ‘local’ as more than a mere domain of reception of transitional justice policies by taking the entanglement of local, national and international actors and ideas into account.

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