Justice in Transition

• Published date: 01 June 2006
• Date: 01 June 2006
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002706286954
• Author: Kimberly Theidon
• Subject Matter: Articles

433

AUTHOR’S NOTE: My research has been funded by the Social Science Research Council, the

Wenner Gren Foundation, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.

Time for reflection and writing was made possible by the Institute on Violence and Survival at the

University of Virginia, the Shaler-Adams Foundation, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. I am

deeply grateful for this generous support and for the collegial relationships I have enjoyed with represen-

tatives of each of the above institutions. For keen conversation on the themes addressed in this article,I

thank José Coronel, Efraín Loayza, Elizabeth Jelin, Billie Jean Isbell, Barry O’Neill, Edith Del Pino,

Leonor Rivera Sullqa, and Kathleen Dill. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful sugges-

tions. Finally, I thank the editors of this special issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution for the invita-

tion to contribute to these debates.

JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION, Vol. 50 No. 3, June 2006 433-457

DOI: 10.1177/0022002706286954

© 2006 Sage Publications

Justice in Transition

THE MICROPOLITICS OF RECONCILIATION IN POSTWAR PERU

KIMBERLY THEIDON

Department of Anthropology

Harvard University

This article draws on anthropological research conducted with communities in Ayacucho, the region

of Peru that suffered the greatest loss of life during the internal armed conflict of the 1980s and 1990s.

One particularity of internal wars, such as Peru’s, is that foreign armies do not wage the attacks: fre-

quently, the enemy is a son-in-law,a godfather, an old schoolmate, or the community that lies just across

the valley. The charged social landscape of the present reflects the lasting damage done by a recent past

in which people saw just what their neighbors could do. The author contributes to the literature on tran-

sitional justice by examining the construction and deconstruction of lethal violence among “intimate

enemies” and by analyzing how the concepts and practices of communal justice have permitted the devel-

opment of a micropolitics of reconciliation in which campesinos administer both retributive and restorative

forms of justice.

Keywords: Peru; reconciliation; political violence; transitional justice; memory

AYACUCHO, PERU 1997

The brightly colored speck in the distance kept coming closer without increasing

much in size. I stood still with a large sack of kindling slung over my shoulder, not cer-

tain who it was. It was still dusk, so I was more curious than frightened. People had

assured me the guerrillas only walked at night, as did the other frightening creatures

I had been warned about. There were the jarjachas—human beings who had assumed

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the form of llamas as divine punishment for incest. There were the pishtacos—beings

that suck the body fat out of the poor people who cross their paths. There were also the

condenados—the condemned dead who were sentenced to an afterlife of wandering

the earth and never finding peace. All these beings derive pleasure from inflicting their

vengeance on the living. But it was still dusk. I just wanted to know who the speck in

the distance was.

I finally heard a voice call out, but the wind carried the words upward to the peaks

of the mountains. I dropped down to the dirt highway and began calling out my own

greeting. Finally an elderly man came into focus. He wore threadbare pants and a

green wool sweater, and was stooping beneath the weight of a brightly colored blan-

ket brimming with wood. Standing as upright as his heavy load would allow him,

this tiny man pushed back his hat and looked straight up at me: “Gringacha—little

gringa—where is your husband?” So I met don Jesus Romero, an altogether differ-

ent sort of creature to be wary of on isolated paths.

don Jesus was also headed to Carhuahurán, so we walked back home together. It

was the time of day when cooking fires sent smoke curls up from the roofs of the

houses, and animals crowded into their corrals for the night. The smoke curls were

a prelude to intimate evening hours, when stories from that day or years past were

told as families gathered around blackened cooking pots.

Efraín, my research assistant, already had our fire going by the time we arrived.

I invited don Jesus to come in for a cup of coffee and a chapla—round wheat bread I

had brought with me from the city a few days earlier. I slathered a chapla with butter

and strawberry jam, instantly making me someone worth visiting on a regular basis.

That first evening don Jesus began talking about el tiempo de los abuelos—the

time of the grandparents. “But that was before. Traditions change because times

change. Before, we never raised the flag like we do now. This is recent, just since the

terrorists appeared. In el tiempo de los abuelos, we didn’t even have a flag.”

“Why do they raise the flag now?” I asked.

“We have laws now, laws to civilize us. To make us understand each other.”

“And before, how was it then—weren’t there laws?”

“Yeah. But everything changed.”

“Changed how, don Jesus? When?”

“When the violence appeared. Before, there were laws. Before, it was forbidden

to kill,” he replied, wiping some jam from his face with his scratchy green sleeve.

“They didn’t kill before?”

“No, it was forbidden—only with thieves who came to steal animals. But the vio-

lence appeared and people began to kill. People were dying like dogs; there was no

controlling it. Like dogs people were dying and there wasn’t any law.”

“And now?” prompted Efraín.

“Now is another time. In our assemblies, in the Mother’s Clubs—everything is

changing again. It’s against the law to kill now, even to attack someone. It’s forbid-

den. Everything is changing—time changes.”

“Was there a time before el tiempo de los abuelos?” I asked.

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