Dead Body Politics
Dead Body Politics
Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani at the CVR Hearings1
This chapter examines the theatrical interventions by Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, Peru’s premier popular theater collective, at the CVR’s public hearings in Huanta and Huamanga. From an established repertoire on Peruvian cultural heterogeneity, ethnic and gendered violence, and the war, Yuyachkani presented two plays whose protagonists are dead (one indigenous male, one mythic female) and called upon more (indigenous) dead when creating new pieces to accompany the endeavor, suggesting that after years of sustained—real and symbolic—violence, only the dead can embody the national situation, serve as the nation’s memory, and bridge individual and collective trauma. Challenging the therapeutic efforts of the CVR, dead bodies of marginalized subjects, and their ghosts, serve to explore collective and individual trauma, and mediate between the people and the state.
Keywords: Yuyachkani, indigenous culture, dead bodies, Adiós Ayacucho, Rosa Cuchillo, Antígona, CVR public hearings, human rights theater, performance, mourning
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