“How we learned to kill our brother” ? : memory, morality and reconciliation in Peru

Abstract

In this article we explore how campesinos in Ayacucho (Peru), understand both the political violence that has contoured daily life since 1980 as well as the mandate to kill that arose within the context of the armed conflict between the Shining Path guerrilla, the Peruvian Armed Forces and the peasant civil defense patrols. Since 1995 we had conducted anthropological research in various rural communities in Ayacucho. We investigated how war shapes moral life, challenging concepts of acceptable human conduct and the very sense of what it means to live in a human community. We utilized a genealogical approach to analyze the origins of moral interpretations that are forged in specific contexts. Indeed, the moral frameworks that villagers recount syncretize elements of militant Christianity, psychocultural themes, and the appropriation of extra-local discourses in the process of both militarizing and demilitarizing daily life.