The idea of a tranquil heart appeared in many of our conversations and serves as one motivation for reconstructing social relationships that were distorted during the violence. Perhaps it is useful to consider the opposite—corazoniypas irritasqa, or irritation of the heart—which is an illness in its own right, as mama Zenaida explained to us in Hualla:
I’m sick with irritation of the heart. It grabs you when you cry, when you have pensamientos, sadness, rage. Before I used to be grabbed by fainting—oh, I died [wañurqani] for an hour at a time! That was when my irritation was just starting—it wasn’t mature yet like it is now. Because of my poverty, I died without even realizing it. I would even wake up like I was in a dream. I didn’t remember absolutely anything that had happened. Now I feel like my irritation has accumulated like blood, accumulated in my stomach. It doesn’t let me eat. That’s why I’m drying up [charkiqa kachkani]. Look at my hand—I’m like a skinny cow!
Several things can produce irritation of the heart. Mama Zenaida mentioned pensamientos, sadness, and rage.61 Many women lamented the toll that rage had taken on their bodies; mal de rabia (the illness of rage) was most often described as the sensation that one’s nerves were throbbing uncontrollably, crawling just under the surface of the skin, refusing to leave the person in peace. Sadness and rage, when they grab the person and mature, result in serious, life-threatening afflictions.62
Finally, there is the verb wañurqani (“I died”). The first time a woman used this term, I was at a loss to understand her. She insisted she had died several times but now died only once in a while. As I would learn, fainting and losing consciousness are understood to be states similar to death. Both sadness and poverty can provoke fainting, as can the presence of defiant perpetrators who walk the streets of these pueblos.
Epidemic: Witches, Gods, and Bones
Several months after don Teofilo had put me in my place, he did begin to share a bit of his knowledge, although I was never fully trusted by this powerful, tiny man. He assured me there was an epidemic in the alturas of Huanta: there was daño (witchcraft); alcanzo, an illness caused by the apus (mountain gods) who punish the person who sits or steps where they should not; and aya, caused by coming into contact with the bones of the gentiles (ancestors). The gentiles were the people who lived before the time of Christ, and God sent down a rain of fire to punish them for being envious (envidiosos). They attempted to save themselves by entering the mountains, where their remains continue to cause illness to the unfortunate people whose bones they invade.63
These illnesses began to increase uncontrollably in 1984 when the fighting became so intense that both life and the landscape were in upheaval. People began fleeing, sleeping in caves for fear of attacks. As El Piki explained, “In those times we escaped to the mountains, we slept in the caves. That’s why we’re sick. We’re always getting sick. Alcanzo grabbed us—aya grabbed us. We were sleeping in caves with the bones of the gentiles. That’s why so many people died with weakness. It’s a slow wasting, until you die because the illness matures inside you.”
Once military bases were established throughout the countryside, campesinos were obligated to live in nucleated settlements for security purposes. This new spatial practice gave rise to more envidia as neighbors now lived next door as opposed to a steep slope away. The fighting also made it too dangerous for El Piki to head out regularly to the mountains and place pagapus (offerings or sacrifices) on behalf of villagers who were requesting godly intervention in resolving problems. “I could no longer speak regularly with Madre Rasuhuillca [Mother Rasuhuillca, the highest mountain in the region]. She is la senõra de la medicina, la señora abogada [the lady of medicine, the lady lawyer].”
In a time of profoundly conflictive social relationships—envious neighbors as well as different alliances during the war, which generated tremendous distrust—Madre Rasuhuillca grew angry that villagers had forgotten their commitments to her and to the past. She sided with the Senderistas, allowing them to hide in the clouds surrounding her peak, the shrubs clustered on her slopes, and the holes in the earth that she opened for the guerrillas when they were pursued by the rondas campesinas. As numerous ronderos recalled, “When we went out to Rasuhuillca on patrol, we found flowers, cigarettes, limes—the Senderistas took pagapus. They had a pact with the mountains and that was why they could hide in the hills. The mountains opened up to let them in, and then hid them.”
Daño was rampant, and virtually every villager was currently suffering from alcanzo or had recently recovered.64 Don Teofilo was called upon on a daily basis to climb up to the puna and try to repair villagers’ relationships with the gods, as well as cure them of the witchcraft performed by all-too-human perpetrators. El Piki treats social strife and conflictive relations. Madre Rasuhuillca is both doctor and lawyer; healing the individual body means administering justice in the social sphere.
Curanderos are memory specialists. In diagnosing patients, they listen carefully to determine which past event might be causing illness, as well as to determine which person in the patient’s life might wish to harm them via witchcraft.65 They weave between the past and present, reminding fellow villagers of their debts to the dead and to the gods. As El Piki insisted, “The gods were angry that we forgot them during the sasachakuy tiempo. So I go out every day and talk with them. You must always remember them or they get angry.” Curanderos treat tenuous relationships—between the present and the past, between human beings, and between human beings and their capricious gods.
This chapter began by asking how best to respond to the psychological after-math of war. I have presented local idioms of suffering and resilience, demonstrating that ethnographic studies of postwar social worlds may not lead to psychological diagnoses but rather to the cultural logics involved in social strife and repair. People in these Andean communities are reconstructing a human way of life—the collective dimension—as well as individual lives. What is it that makes a life distinctly human?
Chapter 3
Being Human
Being is … not only a belonging but a becoming.
—Michael Jackson, The Politics of Storytelling
MY EXPERIENCES IN Peru have convinced me that the work of postconflict social repair involves reconstructing the human. Although it may sound clichéd to speak about “dehumanizing violence,” listening to how campesinos describe the sasachakuy tiempo confirms that dehumanizing is precisely the word that best captures how people experienced the war. People tearfully recall that “we lived and died like dogs” and “we had to leave our dead loved ones wherever they were. They ended up as animals”—referring to having seen dogs and pigs gorging themselves on the cadavers. In the aftermath of fratricidal violence—in contexts in which people are fully aware of what they and their neighbors are capable of—people ask what it means to be a human being now.1
In Andean communities, the status of “human being” is acquired.2 One accumulates the characteristics that transform criaturas (babies and small children) into runakuna. Most people concurred that babies are not born with souls. With the exception of the “very Evangelicals”—as opposed to the chawa (halfway) Evangelicals—villagers explained that babies acquire their souls when they are about two years old. It is because their souls are not “well stuck” to their bodies that babies are very susceptible to susto (soul loss due to fright). In this stage, babies and toddlers are considered sonsos (senseless).3
Another characteristic criaturas acquire is the uso de razón—the use
