alternative plan.
When I arrived in Huamanga, I spoke with some of my Peruvian colleagues, mentioning Teodoro’s eye and his request for help. They immediately asked me what in the world I was thinking. Now, this “what in the world” was not referring to what one might assume—a “what in the world” bafflement that I could actually believe all that. On the contrary, my colleagues were concerned that I was involving myself in forms of power and politics I clearly did not understand. They shook their heads and asked why I would want to get involved with forces I did not know how to command. As they insisted, healing such afflictions is highly specialized, and the curanderos zealously guard their secrets and their clientele. If I did succeed in healing don Teodoro, this would confirm my status as competition for their services and as someone to be reckoned with. They convinced me I was walking into an explosive situation, and I was both frightened by my ignorance and ashamed of what must have struck them as arrogance.
When I returned to Carhuahurán, I relayed these conversations to Efraín. He looked profoundly relieved; he also had some new information. Several villagers had come by to let him know that Teodoro Huanaco was a powerful brujo—one of the most powerful witches in the region. Teodoro said he used el libro de los hermanos, but others implied the book he used was not the Bible.35 We were warned to be very careful—he was a dangerous man. I felt responsible for having gotten us into this mess; Efraín had a wife and a small daughter, and I apologized for placing all of them at risk. I assured him I would take care of this. I think I was also trying to reassure myself.
Sure enough, Teodoro came by later in the day. After we exchanged greetings and invited him in, I brought out the bottle of rum I had carefully carried with me from the city. I poured the first shot for Teodoro, thus sending the tin cup on its way around our small circle. Two rounds into the rum, I knew I needed to give the clumsy speech I had been practicing over and over in my head. I explained that I had felt so much sympathy for him when he first asked for help—that I could only imagine how difficult it must be to maintain his family given how much he was suffering.
“Don Teodoro, I give people some pills when they have headaches—sometimes I clean wounds with rubbing alcohol. That’s really all I know how to do. I have no idea how to cure daño but hoped I could somehow figure it out because I wanted to help you. But I’m far too ignorant and the apus would never pay attention to me. I don’t know the palabras íntimas [intimate words] to use—the apus would never listen to me. I’m so sorry. I’m just a gringa with some pills. I don’t have any power to cure something like daño.”
Teodoro sat back in his chair looking at me with his one unblinking eye. Slowly an expansive smile worked its way across his face. He nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
Why had he sought me out? Why didn’t he go to El Piki, to Manuco—why me? As an outsider, why did he think I would know how to cure daño? Whereas El Piki did not want to talk to me—and when he did, he used the opportunity to assure me he could do away with me simply by uttering the right words—Teodoro had another way of sizing me up.
I was being challenged to a witchcraft duel: he wanted to test me. I thought I had cured Jesús of pneumonia; as I subsequently found out, his symptoms resembled those of daño, and there were a number of people who were convinced I was more than just a gringa with a first aid kit. I had been climbing the hills, scrounging for kindling, in complete disregard for where I stepped or sat. And yet the angry gods had not grabbed me for my lack of respect—I was not ill, and that made me suspect. I had also been treating people’s ailments, within my own limited understanding of their etiology. Teodoro wanted to see what others sorts of magic I might work. Was I truly powerful or simply a gringa with miski yaku, some pills, and a very large dog? The Senderistas had made pacts with the apus—did I have some sort of relationship with them as well?
But I did not have palabras íntimas that would cause the apus to recognize me. I can still see that big smile on Teodoro Huanaco’s face when I told him I was both ignorant and powerless: he was delighted.
So in the midst of such painful and dangerous times, why should people speak at all? What is the researcher’s responsibility in light of how much is at stake? If I wanted to stay, I had to take a stand and make it explicit. I had to demonstrate that I would put the knowledge shared with me to good use or get out.
Obviously I am not the first anthropologist to note the implausibility of neutrality in the face of struggle.36 However, I am not simply noting the need to take a position as an ethical imperative; rather, I am arguing that one’s presence, one’s speech, elide neutrality. We are, to paraphrase Favret-Saada, already caught. Conducting fieldwork during times of armed conflict requires tremendous time—people will not speak with you if you arrive asking. Additionally, one simply cannot observe. You will not be permitted to if you ever intend to open your mouth. There will come a point when you must take a stand. People will remind you that you are far too implicated not to, just as they reminded me.
One morning I was called out of my room by gunshots and shouting. A crowd had gathered outside the calabozo—the room the ronderos (peasant patrollers) used to lock up prisoners overnight. I made my way through the crowd and found soldiers using their rifles to push away the women who were attempting to shove past them into the calabozo. I saw mama Juliana and mama Sosima, shouting at the soldiers. As I made my way to Juliana, I learned that her partner, Esteban, was one of the young men locked inside. La leva had made its way to Carhuahurán—the illegal forced “recruitment” by the army of young and primarily undocumented men. However, “men” seemed a euphemism for the adolescent boys locked inside. Juliana was distraught: Although several years her junior, Esteban was a good partner for her, bringing bright pink plastic shoes to her little daughter Shintaca. He was a kind stepfather and a hard worker. Juliana was not going to allow these soldiers to take him away. The mothers of the other two young men were also protesting, and before too long the women were grabbing the soldiers’ rifles and attempting to pull them out of their hands.
People knew I had a camera and told me to run and get it. Villagers began exhorting me to take pictures of the soldiers as they struggled with the women. I began shoving my camera up close and photographing their faces. I joined in the shouting and the grabbing. The soldiers began to back down: being photographed shoving unarmed women around with their rifles may have disturbed them. The mayor came down and in front of the soldiers agreed that I should take the photos to the Defensoría del Pueblo and show them what had happened. Mayor Rimachi and the women succeeded in freeing the young men—the women simply refused to back down.
I had previously been hesitant in my dealings with the soldiers, always conscious that my actions might have unintended consequences for the villages in which I lived and worked. Although an airplane could deliver me to safety, for villagers flight would not be airborne. However, in this situation, there was only one thing to do. Had I not stood side by side with the women as they grabbed those rifles out of the soldiers’ hands, who would I have been in that context when the soldiers moved on? I had spent many evenings around small cooking fires and blackened pots, listening to how the soldiers had treated the women and young girls when the military base was fully operational and positioned on the slope overlooking the village. The panopticon had brought daily life under the power of its gaze. I had heard the stories; I could choose a side or have one chosen for me.
I did indeed meet with the Defensor del Pueblo en Huamanga, as well as with the director of the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CONADEH) in Lima. These groups knew that la leva continued despite official denial of the practice. Photos provided some proof, and the events of that day could become something more than just the routine abuse of rural villagers in the countryside. The women had made the difference; the photos were testimony to that.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes has asked, “What makes anthropology and anthropologists exempt from
