thought. That’s why we have suffered so much. But they only think in a concrete way—they only think about their daily food and their animals. They don’t think beyond that. That’s why they haven’t suffered like we have. They aren’t capable of it.” Evidently, being such concrete thinkers, “they” only have access to a range of primary emotions, while the loftier sentiments—love for a child, grief for the murder of a loved one, hope for a different sort of future—are reserved for “us.”
There is no way to approach the themes of mental health, political violence, and its legacies without addressing ethnic discrimination, a form of psychological violence that cuts across every aspect of daily life for Quechua-speaking campesinos. Nelson Manrique has noted there is no sense of national tragedy in Peru, and this has to do with the characteristics of those who were killed or disappeared during the violence.16 In the politics of death in Peru, loss of life is measured according to a hierarchy of cultural and ethnic differences. So, evidently, is suffering. Pain and its expression are deeply cultural, and how one suffers and makes that suffering manifest will be contoured by the structures of discrimination that shape bodily experience, social hierarchies, and access to services. It is necessary to discuss ethnic discrimination, how this maps onto a geography of difference, and then situate “talking trauma” within this discussion.
I recall the campesinos who described their experiences as internally displaced people during the violence. They found it agonizing to “wander in foreign lands,” and their poverty was extreme. As one woman recalled, “In the cities everything is money—even to urinate, they charge you fifty céntimos. We didn’t even have money for food.” However, although lamenting the poverty and hunger that characterized those years, what was poignant was her tearful insistence that “The poverty was terrible, but the mistreatment was worse. Chuto nikurawanchik they called us—chutos, filthy chutos.” In many conversations with “returnees,” the discriminatory treatment they endured in the cities enters into their motives for returning to their communities or for reconstructing them.
According to the Diccionario de la Lengua de la Real Academia Española, the word chuto comes from the Aymara ch’utu, which means “of thick lips.” The definition continues: “Said of a crude, uncultured, dirty person; insulting; Indian of the puna.” There is a fusion of physical and geographical characteristics, constructing both the puna and its inhabitants as wild, as savage. However, the dictionary definition is relatively mild when compared to how the word chuto is used in daily life. Among ethnic insults, chuto is a word that is especially lacerating, and Quechua speakers learn at an early age how deeply the insult can cut.
* * *
The children came piling into our room in Huaychao and began enthusiastically spreading the colored pieces of a jigsaw puzzle across our rickety table. Active hands grabbed the pieces, locating them one way and another until a design began to emerge inside the wooden frame.
The children completed the puzzle and then dumped the pieces upside down to start all over again. While they scrambled the pieces, Edith and Juanjo explained there would be a drawing competition in Huanta, part of a commemorative event that would take place in the municipal stadium. The children were invited to paint murals on the walls of the stadium as part of an effort to reinscribe the space following the years La Marina (navy) had used it as a detention and torture center.
Their faces lit up with the idea: a trip to the city, painting, mandarin oranges, ice cream. They began to talk all at once about what they were going to paint, the volume increasing with their excitement. Suddenly, in the midst of the happiness provoked by the idea of a trip to the city, Edgar posed a question that silenced this group of boys—just little guys ranging from six to ten years old. “But if we go to Huanta, what if they call us chutos?”17
* * *
Ethnic hierarchies are mapped onto geography in Peru, and despite the massive movement of people, there is a tenacious cartography underpinning discrimination.18 While campesinos also mark territory and difference in a variety of ways, the capacity to define and assign inferior status to certain regions and their inhabitants follows broader power dynamics. Quechua speakers are acutely aware of where they are located (literally and metaphorically) in Peru’s ethnic hierarchy. Enter “talking trauma.”
One institutionalized site of racism is the Peruvian health care system.19 In each community, people complain about the ill treatment and expired medications they receive in the health posts. During one visit to Cayara, I headed to the health post in search of a remedy for stomach cramps. In the waiting room a large sign declared the results of a needs assessment the medical staff had conducted:
It is necessary to mention that the idiosyncrasy of the villagers makes it difficult to carry out the activities of health professionals. This is due to the still persistent taboos, myths and other customs of the community, as well as other sociological factors.20
There is a tendency to assume that cosmopolitan medicine—that is, biomedical models—are outside of culture, transparently reflecting a universal biology without cultural mediation. From this perspective, culture is something belonging to the “other” and serves as an obstacle to the advance of science and its double, modernity. In my interviews with personnel in rural health posts, the “beliefs” and baja cultura of the campesinos were frequently cited as barriers to service provision and compliance. As the sign hanging in that waiting room proclaims, “abandon your myths and taboos at the doorstep, all ye who enter here.”
This thinking infuses program design and delivery. For instance, the government agency established to coordinate postwar reconstruction efforts—the Programa de Apoyo al Repoblamiento (PAR)—compiled the results of focus groups held throughout Ayacucho on the theme of sequelae and reparations.21 On page 68 of the report, the authors assert it was a great “advance” that participants in their focus groups spoke of “being traumatized” and located mental health within their priorities.
The assertion that this is an “advance” is perplexing. Evidently, if before campesinos had their taboos and myths, now they were suffering in scientific style. If campesinos say they need elixirs for daño, offerings for the apus, qayapa (“calling the soul”) for susto, perhaps they have not suffered, or perhaps their suffering is simply inconceivable.
One day during the TRC process I discussed my research project with a group of young men in Uchuraccay. They were dressed in tennis shoes, jeans, and cheap ski jackets; baseball caps sat snugly atop the brightly colored chullos they wore to keep their ears warm. Older people, particularly the women, referred to these young men as moderña warmakuna (modern young people). Often as not, the term was a lament! Several of these moderña warmakuna had spent part of their lives in the city, just children when their parents packed up what they could and fled during the internal armed conflict.
I discussed some of the themes that had surfaced in the research, such as daño and llakis, and was interested in hearing what they thought about these ailments. They laughed a bit, kicking the ground with their tennis shoes. Julian, one of the moderña warmakuna, shook his head and scoffed: “You know, I’ve studied in the city. I lived there and I went to school. Daño, llakis—all that’s just belief. Only the ignorant and illiterate believe all that. I studied in the city and I know what we have is trauma.”22
How one is ill both reflects and establishes social status.23 With the influx of state and NGO interventions throughout Ayacucho, campesinos learned to express suffering in a language that could make their suffering legible to the experts, to “outsiders.” Talking trauma legitimates their pain in the face of those who discard their afflictions as mere superstition or survivals from some distant
