Geopoetics, Geopolitics, and Violence: (Un)Mapping Daniel Alarcón’s Lost City Radio

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19856877
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• Date: 01 September 2019
• Author: Tamara L. Mitchell
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X19856877

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 228, Vol. 46 No. 5, September 2019, 186–201

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19856877

© 2019 Latin American Perspectives

186

Geopoetics, Geopolitics, and Violence

(Un)Mapping Daniel Alarcón’s Lost City Radio

by

Tamara L. Mitchell

Daniel Alarcón’s 2007 novel Lost City Radio positions post-civil-conflict Peru in rela-

tion to episodes of violence from across the globe by deploying two opposing cartographic

impulses. First, the unnamed fictional nation of the novel shares historical, topographical,

and sociopolitical traits with modern Peru. At the same time, the text refuses tidy associa-

tion with Peru, principally by folding violent conflicts from a host of geopolitical spaces into

the fictional nation via journalistic ekphrasis. This results in a unique geopoetics that

serves to catalyze the localized reality of postconflict Peru as a means of interrogating the

efficacy of human rights discourse in the neoliberal era on a global scale and bringing into

focus the current inequity of responses to the global refugee crisis.

En la novela Lost City Radio (2007) de Daniel Alarcón, el Perú de la posguerra se repre-

senta en relación con episodios de violencia de diversos países a través de dos impulsos cartográ-

ficos contradictorios. La nación ficticia (sin nombre) comparte rasgos históricos, topográficos

y sociopolíticos con el Perú contemporáneo. A la vez, la novela no permite asociación simple

con el Perú al incorporar conflictos violentos en diversos espacios geopolíticos a través de la

écfrasis periodística. El resultado es una geopoética única que sirve para catalizar la realidad

local del Perú de la posguerra con fin de interrogar la eficacia del discurso de los derechos

humanos en la época neoliberal a escala global y puntualizar la crisis global de refugiados.

Keywords: Peru, Human rights, Neoliberalism, Globalization, Ekphrasis, Geopoetics,

Refugee crisis

Postwar Peru has been the site of a methodical excavation to uncover crimes

against humanity and the unknown fate of thousands of disappeared Peruvians.

Since the end of the armed conflict of the 1980s and 1990s, demands have been

made to account for the human rights violations committed by both Sendero

Luminoso (Shining Path), the primary guerrilla insurgency group involved in

the civil war, and the Peruvian state’s armed forces. Decades after the effective

defeat of the Senderistas in 1992 and President Alberto Fujimori’s self-coup of

the same year,1 as well as the official conclusion of the armed conflict and the

Fujimori regime in 2000,2 political candidates continue to position the abuses

and terror of the period as central to their campaign platforms. This has been

evidenced as recently as the consecutive 2011 and 2016 presidential elections in

Tamara L. Mitchell is an assistant professor of Hispanic studies at the University of British

Columbia. She specializes in contemporary Latin/o American narrative fiction. Her current

research considers twentieth- and twenty-first-century Mexican and Central American literature

as a means of understanding the role of aesthetics in burgeoning postnational globalization.

856877LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X19856877Latin American PerspectivesMitchell / Geopoetics, Geopolitics, And Violence

research-article2019

Mitchell / GEOPOETICS, GEOPOLITICS, AND VIOLENCE 187

which Ollanta Humala (Partido Nacionalista Peruano) and Pedro Pablo

Kuczynski (Peruanos por el Kambio), respectively, narrowly defeated Keiko

Fujimori (Fuerza Popular) on promises of democracy and the defense of human

rights (Becerra, 2016; Saona, 2012).

Equally revelatory is the government-sanctioned 2001–2003 investigation by

the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR, 2003), which was mandated

to investigate the crimes against the Peruvian people by the state, the Shining

Path, and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement during the years of

conflict (1980–2000). Concurrent with this state-supported authority, various

private and international initiatives have arisen with the explicit objective of

salvaging the collective memory of the Peruvian people and pursuing truth

and justice in the postconflict period. Foundations like the Lugar de la Memoria,

la Tolerancia y la Inclusión Social (2018) seek to encourage reflection and dia-

logue about the civil conflict, generate knowledge and information about the

causes and consequences of the war, and recognize and honor victims. Similarly,

the Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (2011) bears the burden of search-

ing for the estimated 15,000 disappeared Peruvians whose whereabouts have

yet to be ascertained. Finally, the establishment in 1985 of the Coordinadora

Nacional de Derechos Humanos, the umbrella organization for more than 60

nongovernmental organizations and human rights groups active in Peru

(Youngers, 2003: 14), marked an important moment for human rights discourse

as a partner in the pursuit of justice following internal conflicts.

The search for truth and the clamor for reconciliation are in no way unique to

modern Peru. From apartheid South Africa to Montenegro and Panama to

Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland disturbances, official truth commissions have been

created to investigate and expose large-scale repression and violence. The U.S.

Institute of Peace (2011) lists 33 such commissions and 12 related commissions of

inquiry. Often these commissions are also tasked with providing recommenda-

tions for preventing future occurrences of similar abuses, evidencing the impor-

tance of both uncovering the extent of past human rights violations and

determining a pathway to avoiding their repetition. The earliest of these 45 enti-

ties was established in 1974, and the most recent are still actively receiving fund-

ing for ongoing investigations. Given the sustained perceived need for truth and

reconciliation commissions and their increasing number, two conclusions become

clear. First, the social violence and state oppression that precipitated them have

yet to be remedied. Second, there is a continued dependence on human rights

discourse as a means of grappling with violence in the current epoch.

This brief detour expounding on the localized violence that has afflicted

Peru over the past 40 years and reflecting on similar crimes against humanity

across the globe throughout the past century is a pertinent antecedent to the

following analysis of Daniel Alarcón’s novel Lost City Radio (2007). Set in an

unnamed country enduring the aftershocks of a terror-filled civil war, Lost City

Radio is punctuated by analeptic leaps that unveil the violent bloodshed

wrought by both revolutionary and state forces during a prolonged civil con-

flict. Moreover, it meditates on the long-term effects of civil war, particularly

the persistent displacement of affected communities—typically indigenous

people and individuals from the lower economic classes—that generates inter-

nal migration in the narrative present. The following analysis examines the