Controlling victims: forced exhumations in the Peruvian Andes

Abstract

ABSTRACT Exhumations were considered part of the Peruvian State’s reparation policies to victims of the internal armed conflict. On the basis of an in-depth ethnography conducted in Andean peasant communities, this article analyses the forced nature of certain exhumations done in post-TRC Peru and the doubts cast on the testimonies of the surviving victims. This essay posits that the exhumed body has become a site for the production of “truth” in a context in which the recipients of economic reparations have the veracity of their testimonies questioned, and at times are deemed fraudulent. Through the analyse of the bureaucratic implementation of exhumations and of their effects on an intimate level, its demonstrates how State-controlled exhumation policies continue its historic requirement of Andean peasantry submission when any socio-economic aid is provided. This article highlights the paradoxes of reparation policies that produce a institutional violence forms of discrimination against the Andean peasantry.