The militarized Andes: geographic imaginary of genocide in contemporary peruvian narrative

Abstract

The present article problematizes the geographical imaginary of the sierra in Peruvian novels that fictionalize the present and post-conflict period between Sendero Luminoso and the Peruvian state. The novels Un lugar llamado oreja de perro (2008) by Iván Thays and Sangre de la aurora (2013) by Claudia Salazar elaborate the imaginary of the sierra as a post-war territory that responds to contemporary biopolitical and geomilitary paradigms of extreme violence (Mbembe). These narratives are connected with a vast tendency of Peruvian literature that has fictionalized the Andean highlands as a constituent element of the national imaginary and transmutes an imaginary of locus amoenus into a locus horridus. In the novels analyzed, the geography of the sierra is transformed into a space for extermination of indigenous communities and a militarized territory that exerts violence on the memory of genocide; therefore, the experience of space becomes repulsive.