In his book La Historia como campo de batalla (2011), historian Enzo Traverso posited that the world in the dawn of the twenty-first century, “mutilated from its horizon of expectations for the future and its utopias,” visualized the twentieth century not as century of revolutions but as “an era of wars, totalitarianisms and genocides.” In a noticeable shift that still marks our era, “a formerly modest and discrete figure moved to the center of stage: the victim.”
Whereas much has changed ever since, and scholars are increasingly moving away from rigid binary schemes and paradigms of “absolute victimhood,” in memory studies, the focus on the victims still outweighs that of the revolutionaries recalled by Traverso. In Peru, revolutionary memories are further complicated by the bloody nature of the Shining Path Maoist armed insurgency (1980-1992), and its endless political manipulation from power.
Building on Traverso’s enticing insight, this panel analyzes contending memories of war and revolution in Peru by interweaving three historical “memory moments” in four different presentations: the memories of the Tupac Amaru anti-Spanish rebellion (1780-1783) in its aftermath and into the early republic (Méndez); general Juan Velasco Alvarado’s self-proclaimed “Revolution of the Armed Forces” (1968-1970), which vindicated Túpac Amaru as the country’s official hero and icon of his social reforms (Cant and Pereyra); and the present moment, in which Granados follows the struggles of the Army veterans (licenciados), who fought the Shining Path in the 1980s, only to be forsaken by the State, who, paradoxically, went on to brand them as “terrorists.” The papers highlight the importance of listening to regional, and “provincial” voices and the centrality of Andean indigenous peasants and other provincial actors as political actors in their own right.
Anna Cant
London School of Economics & Political Science
"The Contested Historical Memory of Peru’s Agrarian Reform"
Peru’s 1969 Agrarian Reform was one of Latin America’s most radical land reforms, redistributing over 40% of the country’s agricultural land and dismantling the hacienda system. The reform was a central part of the so-called ‘Peruvian Revolution’ led by the military government of Juan Velasco Alvarado. This paper argues that the reform remains contentious today both because of the conflicts it generated at the time and because of its symbolic importance in contributing to a more inclusive political system. While conservatives criticise the reform as an economic disaster inflicted on the country by a resentful military dictator, among other population sectors General Juan Velasco Alvarado holds hero status and the agrarian reform is celebrated as a turning point in struggles for greater social equality. Using oral history interviews and analysis of the mass media, I look at how these different versions are constructed and circulated, and how their construction can be understood as a response to contemporary social and political challenges. Using Elizabeth Jelín’s idea of historical memory as a political resource, I show how and why different groups within Peruvian society have tried to control popular perceptions of the reform. While the ‘neoliberal turn’ tended to marginalise the history of the agrarian reform, it retains political currency among the population and is frequently invoked in debates on apparently unrelated issues.
Cecilia Méndez University of California Santa Barbara. "Between Historiography and Memory: Túpac Amaru and the Itineraries of a Proscribed Hero." Few historical characters outweigh Túpac Amaru as a symbol of resistance to colonial rule and the fight for justice in Peruvian national imagination. At the same time, the violence of the uprising (1780 1781), which targeted not just the Spanish but some of their American born children and their descendants (criollos), made his memory difficult to swallow for the criollo elites who ruled over the country after independence 40 years later. But the brunt of his memory also affected his indigenous followers, for the harshness of the colonial State repressive measures not just entailed a mortal blow to indigenous elites but tempered indigenous commoners’ political aspirations. It took nearly 200 years and a left leaning military government (Velasco, 1968 1975) for the Peruvian State to vindicate the Inca rebel as national hero and main icon of independence struggles. But this official memory did not last for long. It fell alongside Velasco and the counterrevolution that ousted him, when, no long after, a leftist armed group, the MRTA, took the rebel’s name to unleash a series of terrorist attacks that, along with those of the bloodiest Shining Path, linger heavily in the country’s most recent history. This paper delves into an early moment of this shaky memory itinerary by focusing on the 1836 1839 writings of forgotten Cuzco lawyer and journalist José Palacios, who, I argue, penned the first articulate narrative of Túpac Amaru as the initiator of Peruvian independence. In analyzing Palacios’s public activation of a long suppressed memory in the vey cradle of the events, I heed Trouillot ’s call to theorize the fact that “history is also produced outside academia”, while destabilizing the boundaries between historiography and memory.
20260730T140020260730T1530America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires6.13. Memories of War and Revolution in Peru: From Túpac Amaru to Velasco and the Army Licenciados SV304MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
The impact of the concepts “reparation” and “victim” on the implementation of the Policy for the search for victims of disappeared persons during the armed conflict in Peru (1980-2000)
Individual paperMemory Politics and Policies02:00 PM - 03:30 PM (America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires) 2026/07/30 17:00:00 UTC - 2026/07/30 18:30:00 UTC
Following the internal armed conflict in Peru (1980–2000), the State adopted transitional justice measures to address the legacy of violence. Among them, the search for disappeared persons became central to restoring dignity to victims and their families. However, victims’ organizations remain dissatisfied, arguing that the policy has failed to deliver full recognition and meaningful reparations. This research seeks to answer the question: How do the definitions of “reparation” and “victim” affect the implementation of the policy for the search for disappeared persons in Peru? In order to answer the question, the research adopts a qualitative approach. It combines documentary analysis of legal frameworks, institutional reports, and academic literature with semi-structured interviews with public officials and representatives of victims’ organizations. This methodology enables a deeper understanding of how institutional definitions and social meanings interact throughout the policy cycle, and allows for an analysis of how both perspectives often differ from each other. The findings reveal that the State’s interpretation of reparation as an administrative process, rather than a symbolic or restorative one, restricts the policy’s transformative capacity. Which explains why the organizations of victims tend to be unsatisfied with the implemented programs. Similarly, the definition of “victim” limits recognition to certain affected groups and hinders a comprehensive approach to justice and reconciliation. Furthermore, the study identifies tensions between institutional and social understandings of these concepts, which have generated asymmetries in participation and weakened the legitimacy of the process. Also, actions by the State and its authorities have weakened the symbolic and recognition dimensions of reparations, as they often deny the events of the armed conflict and reinforce polarization around that historical period in Peru. By examining these conceptual foundations, the research contributes to the broader discussion on the quality and inclusiveness of post-conflict public policies in Peru.
