Peruvian thanatoscape and posthumous biographies of prisoners: dispersion and re-appropriation of undesirable corpses

* Translated by Cadenza Academic Translations

Abstract

This article examines the necropolitical significance of the posthumous biographies of the inmates who were executed in the repression of the Santa Barbara, Lurigancho, and El Frontón prison riots of 1986 in Lima. Of the estimated 250 victims, only 22 have been handed over to their families. The path taken by the bodies is traced, along with the means employed by state agents to conceal them. We then analyze the modalities of their recovery, identification, and return (or otherwise), beginning in the 2000s. We coin the concept of “thanatoscape” to evoke the places and dynamics of a landscape in flux, encompassing the physical circulation of the deceased and the associated imaginary. The material dimension of the body is considered, along with how it is created symbolically by society and power relations. We discuss the means used to justify and legitimize whether these mortal remains deserved to be properly mourned or would remain missing and deprived of the opportunity to receive funeral rites. The management of these undesirable bodies can be better understood by studying the process of “de-citizenization” to which prisoners held for terrorism-related offenses were subjected, and which also extends to their families.

Notes

Notes

* Translated by Cadenza Academic Translations

1 The basements of the Army Intelligence Service (Servicio de Inteligencia del Ejército; SIE) in Lima, or the Cabitos military base in Ayacucho, constitute further examples of this space of death. However, these extrajudicial executions took place in secret, whereas the prison massacres occurred almost “live,” due to media coverage of the uprising and the brutal revelations that followed.

2 The notion of the “internal enemy,” developed by French military doctrine during the Indochina and Algerian wars in order to serve the “counter-terrorist” or “anti-subversive” struggle against Marxist revolutionary independence groups, was later adopted by the Latin American armies during the Cold War. It was also adopted by the Peruvian military in their fight against the Shining Path (Granados Moya, 2022).

3 The majority of those held for terrorism-related offenses and then extrajudicially executed had not been tried before a court, and several were innocent.

4 Translator’s note: Unless otherwise stated, all translations of cited foreign-language material in this article are our own.

5 This was the prevailing version of events in Peru until after the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. However, when working with partial skeletal remains or soft tissues in an advanced state of decomposition, attempts are made to determine the “most probable cause of death” and not its pathophysiological mechanism (see Baraybar & Gasior, 2006).

6 See the attempts to conceal evidence following the Srebrenica massacre (1995) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After the massacre of more than 8,000 men, the perpetrators distributed the bodies in mass graves in the various locations where the victims were executed and then buried. Shortly afterward, they decided to exhume them and deposit the fragmented remains in other pits (United Nations, 2005, 2010; see Elisabeth Anstett’s article in this special report). In Kosovo in 1999, Serbian military forces recovered the human remains of civilians killed in different municipalities and transported them to Serbia, where they were reburied in mass graves inside centres belonging to the Ministry of the Interior (United Nations, 2011).

7 The simplest example of an MNI is achieved by counting skulls. If there are 30 skulls, there are at least 30 people.

8 This would also explain why the human rights organizations and state institutions responsible for implementing the search for disappeared persons were not proactive in demanding the search, exhumation, identification, handing over, and dignified burial of extrajudicially executed Shining Path prisoners.