Andean Truths 5 Rosa Cuchillo

Liverpool University Press
Chapter Title: Towards a Narrative Pachacutic: Rosa Cuchillo
Book Title: Andean Truths

Book Subtitle: Transitional Justice, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production in Post-Shining
Path Peru
Book Author(s): Anne Lambright
Published by: Liverpool University Press. (2015)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1gpcbmx.9
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chapter 4
Towards a Narrative Pachacutic

Rosa Cuchillo
Rosa Cuchillo change this
Yuyachkani are not the only ones to embrace the concept of Pachacutic.
Oscar Colchado Lucio’s Rosa Cuchillo (1997) is a novel that aims to create
a truly Andean universe, presenting a complex and thorough understanding
of Andean mythology and world vision. I propose Rosa Cuchillo, one of the
few texts studied here that was produced before the processes and Final
Report of the CVR, as a precursor and alternative to the official transitional
justice mechanisms. The novel insists on interpreting the conflict through
Andean points of view, relying almost exclusively on Andean characters who
in turn call upon indigenous discourse, knowledge, and spirituality to create
a historical, political, and affective archive that contrasts with that created
and disseminated by the state through the CVR and other processes. In
recounting the past and imagining the future, Rosa Cuchillo turns to Andean
subjects who speak without mediation of the state, elaborates a new geopolit-
ical landscape based on Andean mapping and understandings of space, and
promotes Andean cultural categories. Through these mechanisms, I propose
the novel becomes a model of ‘intercultural communication’ and ‘episte-
mological decolonization’ (Quijano),1 and by channeling the therapeutic
processing of the conflict through Andean modes of interpretation, it suggests
that one possible outcome of the situation could be a cultural, if not political,
Pachacutic—an Andean revolution. Furthermore, Colchado Lucio through
his writing elaborates what we might call an aesthetics of reconciliation, an
act of ‘literary redress’ (Irizarry)2 for centuries of real and symbolic violence
experienced by the indigenous peoples of Peru.
A prolific poet and writer of narrative fiction, Colchado Lucio is what
Marisol de la Cadena would term an ‘indigenous mestizo’ intellectual3—
bilingual/bicultural, he is the author of numerous novels (most written
for children), collections of short stories, and poetry. While he has been
1 Aníbal Quijano develops these concepts in several essays. See, for example,
‘Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.’
2 Guillermo Irizarry, ‘Marcos de guerra y resarcimiento estético.’
3 Marisol de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos.
108 an dean truths
awarded several literary prizes, including the Prize for the Novel from the
Federico Villarreal National University (Peru) for Rosa Cuchillo in 1996 and
the internationally prestigious Juan Rulfo International Short Story Award
(France) for ‘La casa del cerro El Pino’ in 2002, his literary stature is
shadowed by the likes of Santiago Roncaglio, Iván Thays, or Mario Vargas
Llosa, though he is widely considered an intellectual and artistic successor
of José María Arguedas.4 Besides Rosa Cuchillo and a fine collection of
short stories, Cordillera negra (1985), he is perhaps best known for the figure
of Cholito, an Andean boy who travels through time in a series of books
dedicated to teaching children about the vast diversity of the country.
Rosa Cuchillo provides a model for a therapeutic processing of the internal
conflict that takes into account Andean culture and categories of analysis. If
official transitional justice efforts neglect the country’s cultural heterogeneity
and promote national homogenization disguised as multiculturalism, while
promoting neoliberal economic and political policies disadvantageous to the
indigenous populations (as I argue in the introduction to this volume), Rosa
Cuchillo rejects Western-centric analyses and solutions. Rather, the novel
privileges indigenous modes of interpretation and proposals for resolutions,
while criticizing the suppression of Andean epistemologies by dominant
national culture throughout Peruvian history.
In the introduction to his edited volume, Another Knowledge is Possible,
Boaventura de Sousa Santos observes that while there has been recognition
of the ‘cultural diversity’ of the world, that same recognition has not been
extended to its ‘epistemological diversity.’ De Sousa Santos notes that:
The epistemological privilege granted to modern science from the
seventeenth century onwards, which made possible the technological
revolutions that consolidated Western supremacy, was also instrumental
in suppressing other, non-scientific forms of knowledge and, at the same
time, the subaltern social groups whose social practices were informed
by such knowledges. In the case of indigenous peoples of the Americas and of
African slaves, this suppression of knowledge, a form of epistemicide … was the
other side of genocide.5
De Sousa Santos proposes replacing the ‘monoculture of scientific knowledge’
with an ‘ecology of knowledges’: ‘The ecology of knowledges is an invitation
to the promotion of non-relativistic dialogues among knowledges, granting
4 Vargas Llosa is mentioned twice in Rosa Cuchillo and not in very complimentary
terms. In one instance (110), an unidentified voice of a dead victim of the conflict
accuses Vargas Llosa of encouraging the notorious ‘Comandante Huayhuaco,’ a
leader of the rondas campesinas accused of human rights abuses. A later instance
(166) references Vargas Llosa’s leadership of the Uchuraccay commission and Vargas
Llosa’s expressed support for Huayhuaco during the former’s 1989 presidential
campaign.
5 Boaventura de Sousa Santos, ‘Introduction,’ xix; emphasis mine.
ros a cuch i l l o 109
“equality of opportunities” to the different kinds of knowledge engaged

in ever broader epistemological disputes aimed both at maximizing their
respective contributions to build a more democratic and just society and
at decolonizing knowledge and power.’6 For de Sousa Santos, the recogni-
tion of this ecology of knowledges opens up new ways of thinking against
the oppressive discourse of multiculturalism and new routes to solidarious
cooperation among subaltern groups. Such collaboration requires a recogni-
tion of a multiplicity of marginalizations and experiences of oppression that
could in turn lead to new possibilities of mobilization by radically diverse,
seemingly irreconcilably different, marginalized groups, leading to more
powerful, effective forms of resistance.
However, given the epistemological diversity that underlies and informs
these experiences, successful cross-cultural cooperations and emancipatory
practices require, ‘a politics of cultural diversity and mutual intelligibility
(marked by) a complex procedure of reciprocal and horizontal translation
rather than a general theory.’7 Much like his predecessor Arguedas, Colchado
Lucio seeks a literary language that accommodates Andean epistemologies
… translation but not consumption, an intercultural communication, to use
Aníbal Quijano’s term, which might encourage solidarity within difference.
This mutual intelligibility requires recognition and acceptance of certain
impenetrable zones, that is, acknowledgement of the impossibility of absolute
communication. In my previous book on Arguedas, I suggest a certain call
for solidarity among Peru’s marginalized and oppressed within Arguedian
narrative, and an articulation of what I call a ‘hybrid intellectual’ capable
of realizing the translations and mutual intelligibility suggested by de Sousa
Santos.8 In Rosa Cuchillo, Colchado Lucio reveals himself as just such an
intellectual.
It is important to point out here that what Colchado Lucio (like Arguedas)
presents is not a ‘pure,’ unadulterated, Andean indigenism—though I would
argue that it is ‘authentic’—nor is the culture presented to be considered
(merely) mestizo, or even transculturated à la Ángel Rama.9 Walter Mignolo
6 Ibid. xx.
7 Ibid.
8 See Lambright, Creating the Hybrid Intellectual. In this study, I point out a series
of characters that emerge in Arguedian narrative, Andean mestizo and indigenous
figures, who, like Arguedas, spend time on the coast and learn from Western
discourses of resistance (through reading Mariátegui or participating in workers’
unions, for example) and then return to the highlands. Arguedas portrays these
characters as being in a unique subjective position, able to comprehend and place in
dynamic dialogue Andean and Western cultural systems. For Arguedas, these figures,
often organic intellectuals in the Gramscian sense, are the best posed to articulate
a coherent vision for Peru that incorporates its pluricultural diversity in a uniquely
Peruvian (Andean-based) modernizing project.
9 Many terms and theories have been put forth in attempts to define or explain the
cultural phenomena resulting from five centuries of contact between the Americas
110 an dean truths
speaks of ‘modern colonialities’ and ‘border gnosis’ or ‘border thinking,’ terms

that I find useful when approaching this novel, as well as other autochthonous
Andean cultural products, which I study in the following chapters. Mignolo
finds in recent sociopolitical realities in Latin America, ‘a powerful and
emergent gnoseology, absorbing and displacing hegemonic forms of knowledge
into the perspective of the subaltern.’10 Like de Sousa Santos, whom he never
cites, Mignolo recognizes a centuries-long repression of forms of knowledge
and modes of creating knowledge by the West over its colonial possessions.
Optimistically, Mignolo argues that this ‘long process of subalternatization
of knowledge is being radically transformed by new forms of knowledge in
which what has been subalternized and considered interesting only as object
of study becomes articulated as new loci of enunciation.’11 Mignolo labels
these sites as ‘border gnosis,’ which he further defines as ‘the subaltern reason
striving to bring to the foreground the force and creativity of knowledges
subalternized during a long process of colonization of the planet, which
was at the same time in which modernity and the modern Reason were
constructed.’12 I read Rosa Cuchillo as a novel that straddles borders, then,
while precisely foregrounding the ‘force and creativity’ of subalternized
Andean knowledges as it explores the Shining Path period and envisages a
post-conflict future, which in 1997 is just beginning to become imaginable
for the majority of Peruvians.
In their study of Latin American popular cultures, William Rowe and
Vivian Schelling look at ‘significant moments and practices which … show
that in important senses it is “their” culture which is processing “ours,”
rather than vice versa.’13 They point to ‘extreme’ examples, such as the
writings of Guaman Poma and José María Arguedas, ‘where native culture
confronts the other upon its chosen ground of written texts, using the
technology of writing to preserve and transmit a cultural archive which had
previously been predominantly unwritten.’14 This chapter proposes and reads
and the rest of the world, though namely with Europe. Mestizaje generally refers
to the racial mixing between those of European and indigenous descent, which has
resulted inevitably in a cultural mestizaje. Ángel Rama (Transculturación narrativa),
drawing on Fernando Ortiz, articulates a theory of transculturation which contem-
plates how both Spanish/European and indigenous cultures are mutually transformed
by the contact. Antonio Cornejo Polar (Universos narrativos) preferred to speak of
cultural heterogeneity, especially within literary discourse; cultural heterogeneity
emphasizes irreconcilable differences and tensions among radically different cultures
that share a geo-social sphere. Néstor García Canclini (Hybrid Cultures) theorizes
Latin America as marked by a cultural hybridity which plays out on coexisting
temporalities (the pre-modern, the modern, and the post-modern).
10 Walter Mignolo, Local histories, 12.
11 Ibid. 13.
12 Ibid.
13 William Rowe and Vivian Schelling, Memory and Modernity, 53.
14 Ibid.
the work of Colchado Lucio, most particularly Rosa Cuchillo, as another of

these extreme examples.
Novelizing the Conflict

The novel is narrated primarily by three deceased characters—Rosa Cuchillo,
her son Liborio, and an indigenous neighbor, Mariano (near the end, a fourth
omniscient narrator and a fifth first-person plural narrator, that represents a
group of soldiers, enter the novel). Rosa is an indigenous woman who has died
of sorrow after losing her son and is traveling through the Andean afterlife,
searching for her dead child as she makes her way to hanaq pacha, the Andean
upper world and realm of the gods. There she finds Liborio who, like many
young men in the highlands, had been forcibly recruited by Shining Path and
was eventually killed. Rosa’s narration follows a Dante-esque path as Rosa
travels across an intermediate life or purgatory, through hell, and then on
to a heaven-like afterlife. Accompanied most of the time by her (previously
departed) dog Wayra, who serves as both guide and protector, Rosa encoun-
ters various Andean spiritual beings and sacred objects and spaces, as well
as the souls of many other victims of the conflict, some of whom she had
known during her lifetime. Once in hanaq pacha, Rosa discovers that she is
actually the goddess Cavillaca, who had asked the gods’ permission to live
on earth as a human.
Liborio’s sections narrate his recruitment, initiation, and work as a
member of Shining Path. Through Liborio we learn Shining Path ideologies,
social practices, and war tactics. We also experience his political awakening
as an Andean subject, as Liborio begins to notice the disconnect between
Shining Path teachings and practices and Andean cosmologies and ways of
life. At the end of the novel, while Rosa remains in hanaq pacha, Liborio
returns to earth, sent by the gods to lead a battle to initiate a truly Andean
revolution, a Pachacutic, in contrast with the Maoist revolution being waged
by Shining Path.
Mariano narrates from the perspective of an older village member who
resists Shining Path and eventually becomes a rondero. Most of Mariano’s
section is narrated from his deathbed, as he has been shot by members of
Shining Path and is lying hidden in a hut, remembering his activities and
his betrayal of Liborio. Through Mariano we learn much about village life
and social organization before the conflict, and of the devastating effects of
the violence on the same.
The narrative structure reflects an Andean notion of space and time.
Rather than following a linear structure (though a certain historical account
of events can be assembled), the plot is presented in intertwining fragments
that begin with Rosa’s embarking on her journey through the afterlife
and end with her physical death in her human life. The circularity of the
narrative, combined with the intertwining of earthly and mythic time, reflect
a particular Andean understanding of the circular nature of time. Within this
112 an dean truths
conception, the past and the future interact in an almost spiraling fashion,
as the future turns back on itself, is shaped by elements of the past, and
continues onward. As Catherine J. Allen poetically describes the Andean
experience of time, Quechua people ‘experience a world full of circulating
currents … Time moves ahead like a river to drop from view into a subter-
ranean interior that contains both past and future. Future time does not lie
ahead of us, but comes up at our backs.’15 Scholars have noted the intersection
of space and time in the form of the concept of pacha, which might be most
accurately translated as space–time. In general terms, the Andean universe is
divided into hanaq pacha, which is the upper world, the heavens and celestial
beings, and also the realm of the gods; kay pacha, which is this world and
this time, the perceptible, physical world that human beings inhabit; and
ukhu (or hurin) pacha, which is the underworld or the inner earth. In the
novel, the manner in which the characters circulate among the pachas and
through different manifestations of time allows the novel to paint the period
as horrific, but not tragic, that is, not as an end, but as a formative part of a
cycle (perhaps a Pachacutic, a turning over of space/time) that may well lead
to a new Andean age.16
One of the greatest achievements of Rosa Cuchillo is its emphasizing the
complexity of the indigenous experience during the Shining Path period.
Unlike other popular and creative accounts (such as Paloma de papel),
the novel does not portray indigenous people as innocent, and, moreover,
powerless, victims caught in the crossfires of a foreign (to them incomprehen-
sible) conflict.17 While Colchado Lucio certainly portrays injustices suffered
by indigenous people under Shining Path and under the counterinsurgency
(at best, forced conscription, loss of property and dignity, disrupted daily
life, interrupted social relations, political reorganization, culturally inadequate
‘education’; at worst, rape, torture, and massacres), the emphasis is on
indigenous indignation at what they were suffering and active, intentional,
well-grounded (historically and culturally informed) resistance.
As many critics have noted, Rosa Cuchillo is marked by intertextuality
with fundamental works of Western literature.18 Rosa’s voyage to hanaq pacha
15 Catherine J. Allen, The Hold Life Has, 194–195.

16 For more on Andean notions of time, see Martina Faller and Mario Cuéllar,
‘Métaforas del tiempo en quechua’; Douglas Gifford, Time Metaphors in Aymara
and Quechua; William Rowe and Vivian Schelling, Memory and Modernity; and Paul
R. Steele, Handbook of Inca Mythology.
17 In this sense, I must strongly disagree with the assessment of Manuel Prendes
Guardiola, who maintains that in the novel ‘nothing takes the Indian from his eternal
condition of victim, since he finds no place to accommodate his particular form of
thought and organization’ (Prendes Guardiola, ‘Constantes temáticas,’ 231).
18 See, for example, Juan Carlos Galdo, ‘Algunos aspectos de la narrativa regional
contemporánea’; Prendes Guardiola, ‘Constantes temáticas’; Víctor Quiroz, ‘Dualidad
y diálogo poscolonial’ and ‘El yanantin y la intertextualidad transcultural’; Vervaeke,
recalls Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, as Rosa, lead by her Virgil-like
guide Wayra, passes through Andean equivalents of hell and purgatory before
eventually arriving in heaven. Jasper Vervaeke points out that her search
for lost family members in times of war also recalls Homer’s Odyssey,19 and
Manuel Prendes Guardiola adds Orpheus as another possible reference.20
Furthermore, the novel contains strong biblical undertones. Rosa is a virgin
mother—after successfully fending off male suitors (wielding the knife that
would earn her the nickname, Rosa Cuchillo—Rosa knife), she is impreg-
nated by the mountain god Pedro Orcco,21 who later appears several times
throughout the novel to help his son Liborio, who, in turn, is portrayed as
a Christ-like savior-god.22
At the same time, Colchado Lucio relies heavily on Andean oral tradition
and myth. As Vervaeke states, ‘what Colchado asks of the reader is that
he leave behind the narrative precepts of Western modernity, to enter into
a different literary tradition and confirm that the vision of the world that
the latter expresses is no less valid that the Western one.’23 The fusion of
Andean modes of communication and the Western literary tradition, along
with the linguistic hybridity proffered by the fluid intermixing of Andean-
inflected Spanish and Quechua (which will be discussed later), point to a
de-hierarchization of knowledge within the text, and an egalitarian duality
which is absent in all other mainstream novels about the era. Víctor Quiroz
argues that ‘the activation of duality in this text contributes to the demargin-
alization and decolonialization of Andean rationality with the purpose of
proposing it as a mode of alternative thought from which to reconsider the
terms of the dialogue between Western culture and Andean culture, beyond
colonial hierarchies.’24 Certainly, by bringing to the novel a perspective
generally absent in Peruvian narrative fiction (Colchado Lucio’s emphasis on
‘Figuración de la heterogeneidad sociocultural’; and Elisa Carolina Vian, ‘El Inkarrí

entre los senderistas.’
19 Vervaeke, ‘Figuración de la heterogeneidad sociocultural.’
20 Prendes Guardiola does not clarify this reference; perhaps we can see links between
Orpheus’s search for Eurydice in the underworld to Rosa’s search for her son. One
might also see similarities between Orpheus’s travels as an Argonaut, saving Jason
and his crew, to Liborio’s labors. Prendes Guardiola, ‘Constantes temáticas.’
21 Pedro Orcco represents an instance of Andean-Christian syncretism, as a mountain
god whose very name draws upon both traditions. Pedro, Peter, is the rock upon
whom the Christian church is founded. Orcco means ‘rock’ in Quechua.
22 Vervaeke has also suggested a connection between Rosa Cuchillo and Saint Rose of
Lima. Vervaeke, ‘Figuración de la heterogeneidad sociocultural.’
23 Ibid. 13–14. For the critic, ‘if Rosa Cuchillo is able to establish a complementary
intertextuality between Andean culture and the Western texts, it is due to the fact that
all of the latter are pre-modern texts, expressions of visions of the world in a certain
sense comparable to the Andean mythico-religious world view. Western modernity,
however, breaks radically with that form of thought’ (ibid. 19).
24 Víctor Quiroz, ‘Dualidad,’ 103.
114 an dean truths
the centrality of Andean culture goes beyond Arguedas’s, even), the author
is demanding a central role for Andean culture in the national imaginary.
The Novel as Testimony

In the tradition of indigenism or neo-indigenism, Rosa Cuchillo presents a
perspective that is virtually exclusively Andean.25 Unlike the novels examined
in Chapter 1, here the point of view of the three main characters is decidedly
Andean, as is the symbolic imagery, literary language, and geo-temporal
setting. Much like his predecessor Arguedas, Colchado Lucio transforms the
Western form of the novel and the Spanish language, obliging both to make
room for Andean discourse, imagery, and categories of space and time. The
effect is a sort of novelized series of testimonies woven into what I would call
an Andean aesthetics of reconciliation.
Indeed, Rosa Cuchillo could be considered a precursor to the CVR and
its celebrated public tribunals. The novel emphasizes the acts of witnessing,
testifying, and testimony-gathering in multiple ways. On the one hand, Rosa
and Mariano tell their own stories over the course of the novel, in what could
be considered a more natural, authentic setting than that of the CVR. Rather
than providing testimony elicited in a formal, court-like setting, by suited
limeños through an interpreter, Rosa and Mariano recount their experiences
directly (albeit through a novelized, Andeanized Spanish) in a form that
pays homage to Andean oral tradition and in a more traditional, quotidian
Andean venue.
Furthermore and significantly, one of Rosa’s principal activities as she
travels through the afterlife is to overhear stories of diverse experiences of
the war. On the one hand, Rosa is like a commissioner in that she collects
information and gathers stories, but she is different in that she speaks the
language, lives the culture, and shares the history of those whose stories she
hears. The information is not always complete or direct, and there are often
competing discourses. Travelling through ukhu pacha, for example, Rosa
hears voices of multiple suffering souls. Their speeches are fragmented and
muffled, but all refer to the suffering caused by the war. Almost two full
pages reproduce speech like the following:
– … Nos decían cachacos robagallinas, rateros, abusivos …
– … por una calle de Ayacucho, claro …
25 I would argue that the intertextuality with classic Western texts does not diminish the
novel’s ‘Andeanness,’ but rather points to the cultural complexity of the region. After
almost five centuries of occupation, it is impossible to contemplate an ‘unadulter-
ated’ indigeneity in the central highlands. Arguedas was very clear about this in his
narrative and in his anthropological essays. Critics such as Ángel Rama and Cornejo
Polar produced many pages attempting to understand the ‘transculturated’ (Rama)
or ‘heterogeneous’ (Cornejo Polar) character of the region.
– … tenía guardada en su casa la calavera del mando …

– … la matanza de los comuneros de Runguyocc …
– … habló del cretinismo parlamentario de la izquierda …
– … se llenó de rabia: ahí mismo organizó una patrulla … (etc.)
– … They called us chicken-stealing scruffs, thieves, bullies …

– … down a street in Ayacucho, of course …
– … he had the skull of the leader hidden in his house …
– … the killing of the comuneros of Runguyocc …
– … he talked of the parliamentary cretinism of the left …
– … he was filled with rage: he organized a patrol party right then and
there … 26
The fragmentation and partiality of the diverse speeches project the impossi-
bility of establishing a totalizing narrative to express the complex and varied
personal experiences of the war. If the role of a Truth Commission is, as
suggested by Molly Andrews, Richard Wilson, and others, to establish
a coherent, consensual, and conclusive narrative of a national trauma,27
the voices reproduced in Rosa Cuchillo, in their very incompleteness and
fragmentation, point to the futility of such an effort. Neither the individual
nor collective experiences will ever be fully apprehended.
These voices mysteriously disappear once Rosa recognizes one of them,
but shortly thereafter she comes across more ‘witnesses,’ this time in the
form of heads that have emerged from a large muddy lagoon. One begins:
– Yo, Mañuco Julca, de Uchuraccay, más conocido como Iquichano, no me
arrepiento de haber matado terrucos como cancha, a hachazos y machet-
azos, cuando éstos, después de haber llegado a la hacienda San Antonio y
haber victimado a golpes a los patrones, nos obligaban a los campesinos a
formar todos los días para hacer ejercicios, y sólo porque uno de nosotros
dijo, Yo haciendo ejercicios no gano nada, tengo mujer e hijos, necesito
trabajar; sólo por eso … fue que lo agarraron los terrucos … le colgaron
en el pecho varias cargas de dinamita y lo hicieron volar.
I, Mañuco Julca, of Uchuraccay, better known as Iquichano, do not regret
having killed terrorists, loads of them, with axes and machetes, when they,
after having arrived at the San Antonio hacienda and having beaten the
26 Colchado Lucio, Rosa Cuchillo, 109. Subsequent citations will be referenced in the
text as RC. Because no translation to English is yet available, all translations are mine.
27 See Andrews, ‘Grand National Narratives,’ and Wilson, The Politics of Truth and
Reconciliation.
116 an dean truths
owners to death, forced us campesinos to line up every day for (military)

exercises, and just because one of us said, I get nothing out of doing
exercises, I have a wife and children, I need to work; just for that … the
terrorists grabbed him … they hung several charges of dynamite around
his chest and blew him up. (RC, 111–112)28
His discourse provokes the wrath of another head, who responds calling him
a traitor and liar. When another claims to be the one who killed Mañuco
Julca, a fight ensues among the dead that continues the battle previously
waged during their lifetime. Through this scene, the novel narrates a truth
noted by Kimberly Theidon (Intimate Enemies), that the internal conflict
was very complex, and that the polar categories of (indigenous) victim/
(non-indigenous) perpetrator are hardly sufficient to explain the variety of
subject positions deployed during the war.
In another instance, Rosa overhears the souls of men who had been
conscripted by Shining Path, as they speak about having been forced by
the insurgents to kill their own dogs. The novel stresses the importance of
animals in general, and dogs in particular, in the lives of these indigenous
men (and we remember that Rosa is being guided through the afterlife by
her own dog as well). The men comment:
– Quién iba a pensar que los mataríamos … si eran nuestras mascotas,
nuestros animalitos queridos, que reemplazaban al hermano menor, a la
madre o a la novia que estaban lejos.
– Cierto, nos daban calor de familia, ternura, sentimiento.
…
– Yo lo tenía siempre bañadito, bien cuidadito y hasta talqueado y
perfumado.
– Y yo hasta sacrificaba mi ‘rancho’ para tenerlo gordito, papeadito.
– Who would have thought that we would kill them … they were our pets,
our beloved little animals, who replaced our older brother, our mother, our
girlfriend who was far away.
28 Here the novel is referencing the 1983 killing of Shining Path members by comuneros,
an act that was glorified nationally as a valiant act of resistance by campesinos against
terrorists. It was that incident that the journalists were endeavoring to investi-
gate when they were brutally murdered in Uchuraccay. By referring to himself as
iquichano, the character is referencing the use of this term by Vargas Llosa to describe
the local Uchuraccay villagers. Through the words of Mañuco Jalco, Colchado Lucio
is poking fun at Vargas Llosa and his culturally and historically uninformed report.
The character admits to enjoying brutally murdering the Shining Path members,
but also contextualizes comunero violence with nuances that the Vargas Llosa report
omits in its assessment of the attacks on the journalists.
– True, they gave us family warmth, tenderness, feeling.

…
– I always had mine bathed, well cared-for, even powdered and perfumed.
– And I even gave up my ‘mess’ to keep mine fattened, fueled up. (RC, 98)
The dead men go on to describe the brutal military training they underwent
with Shining Path, which included crossing over a puddle of excrement
while balancing on a thin cord, killing cats with their bare hands, bathing
in dogs’ blood, and then ‘mirarse en un espejo y dar gritos de coraje como
si tu propia figura fuera el enemigo’ [looking in the mirror and screaming
with rage as if your own image were the enemy] (RC, 99). These training
exercises culminated in their having to kill and gut their dogs and return
carrying the animals’ hearts in their teeth. Afterwards the men were obliged
to dance as if they were happy with what they had done. The scene described
is heart-wrenching, as the men recount the emotional pain involved in killing
their own dogs, and their sympathies for the betrayal their animals must
have felt.29
At the same time, the training was effective in transforming the men
psychologically:
Por eso será que después, en Accomarca, luego de encerrarles en tres
chozas, meterles fuego cruzado con las metralletas y arrojar granadas a los
cadáveres de los sesentitantos comuneros que arrestamos, entre hombres,
mujeres y niños, acusándolos de terrucos, prendimos fuego sin ningún
reparo a las chozas y, tranquilamente, nos pusimos a hacer pachamanca
con sus animales y empezamos a beber y bailar con música a todo volumen
del tocacinta.
That must be why later, in Accomarca, after shutting them up in three
huts, firing at them with machine guns and throwing grenades on the
cadavers of the sixty-something comuneros that we arrested, men, women,
and children, accusing them of being terrorists, we set fire to the huts
without a thought, and, calmly, we set about having a barbecue with their
animals and we began to drink and dance with the music on the highest
volume of the cassette player. (RC, 100)
Through these and other examples, we see how Rosa begins to emerge as
a catalyst, a vehicle for memory and for discovering the truth. It is through
her unwitting testimony-gathering that Colchado Lucio begins to provide
one of the first lengthy and detailed accounts of the atrocities of the internal
conflict.
29 Similar scenes are described in other Andean artistic processings of the era, such as
Edilberto Jiménez’s drawings depicting testimonies from the province of Chungui
(to be discussed in Chapter 5).
118 an dean truths
Inserting ‘lo andino’ in Literary Discourse

Again, one of the major contributions of the novel is not only the informa-
tion it provides (the ‘truths’ it recounts), but the form in which these truths
are conveyed. With this in mind, we can take a closer look at exactly how
Colchado Lucio brings Andean culture to the text. Of primary importance
is the question of language. In his excellent study of the novel, Víctor Quiroz
argues convincingly that ‘Colchado’s writing offers a critical alternative to
the failure of the modern criollo system to articulate a national plan. Thus,
the literary language used in Colchado’s discursive production becomes an
inclusive norm that confronts the exclusive character of the Peruvian state.’30
Among the expressions of an Andean-inflected literary language, Quiroz
notes the overall orality of the text, enhanced and emphasized by the prolif-
eration of words like decir (to say or tell), oír (to hear), and escuchar (to listen),
as well as certain examples of alliteration and onomatopoeia characteristic of
Andean speech.
Indeed, Colchado Lucio builds on earlier efforts by Arguedas at creating
a literary language in Spanish that accurately portrays a reality lived and
communicated in Quechua. The result is a Spanish that attempts to duplicate
what Arguedas called the ‘sweetness’ and ‘softness’ of spoken Quechua,
including alliteration that would evoke certain preferred euphonies in spoken
Quechua.31 As well, we find multiple examples of onomatopoeia from
Quechua, such as the sounds emitted by mythical creatures (the ‘qar, qar,
qar …’ of a jarjacha, the spirit of those who have committed incest; the ‘oggg!
¡oggg!’ of a condemned soul). Quechua syntax is often imposed on Spanish,
as when Rosa recounts her fear upon seeing a group of shrouded women,
approaching her: ‘Almas condenadas a lo mejor serán diciendo tuve miedo’
[‘Condemned souls they must be,’ saying, I feared] (RC, 39). The use of the
gerund ‘diciendo’ (saying) is a literal translation of the Quechua term nispa,
used to mark reported speech, and the overall grammatical structure of the
sentence is transferable to a recognizably Quechua syntax.
Furthermore, the characters incorporate many Quechua terms into their
speech. Those same shrouded women, who turn out to be Almas de la
Sentencia, women charged with guiding recently dead souls to the afterlife,
are described by Rosa as having their heads ‘shucalpida’ (RC, 39), covered
or wrapped, by black shawls. Rosa refers to Wayra as her ‘huallqui’ (RC, 15),
her companion. When Rosa and Wayra come across Domingo in the afterlife,
he presents himself as Rosa’s ‘cuchi’ (RC, 21), her husband. These are just
three instances; because the text is narrated principally by Andean indigenous
characters, the examples are truly too many to list, but the following quote,
30 Quiroz, ‘Dualidad,’ 105.

31 For example, in Los ríos profundos (Deep Rivers), Arguedas notes ‘las ces suavísimas
del dulce quechua de Abancay’ [the soft c’s of the Quechua of Abancay] (Los ríos
profundos, 98; Deep Rivers 91).
from a young woman Rosa meets during her journey, provides a good example
of how Quechua is integrated into the text: ‘Nosotros nos estamos yendo a la
chacra de los aukis a cosechar kusais, esas papas grandes, amarillosas. Vamos
a hacer pachamanca celebrando el nacimiento de las críitas de la venada
shilpi rinri’ [We are going to the aukis’ chakra to harvest kusais, those big,
yellowish potatoes. We are going to have a pachamanca celebrating the birth
of the shilpi rinri dear’s little ones] (RC, 32). The word chacra refers to a plot
of farmland, aukis are demi-gods, kusais, as the narration explains, refers to
a type of potato.32 Pachamanca is a traditional barbecue-like form of cooking,
and the narration makes clear that shilpi rinri is a deer. Some Quechua terms
are explained within the text and others are left for the reader to discern from
context. Notably, Quechua is never placed in quotations or italics. Rather,
it is given the same status within the text as Spanish. On the other hand,
as Vervaeke notes, there are terms that are indicated as foreign through the
use of quotation marks—those related to foreign terms and categories that
have been introduced into Spanish, namely, Maoist and military idioms:
‘quesos rusos’ (Russian cheeses, homemade explosive devices), tactics ‘del
perro y de la liebre’ (dog and hare tactics), ‘legiones de hierro’ (legions of
iron), ‘colaboración’ (monetary and foodstuff contributions demanded of
local peasantry by the insurgency), ‘landes’ (makeshift shelters), ‘linces’
(infantrymen), ‘cabitos’ (corporals, diminutive).33 For Vervaeke, ‘by offsetting
the Maoist-communist terminology in quotation marks, the author suggests
that the foreign language is not Quechua but all of those terms imported and
translated literally to Spanish.’34 Through its use of Quechua and Quechua-
inflected Spanish and its marginalization of certain ‘foreign’ terms, the novel
comes to present and privilege Andean speech, even transposed to Spanish,
as a literary language and as the most adequate means of expressing a trauma
that primarily affected Andean people.
The narrative emphasizes this point through its presentation of competing
discourses. Beyond the discourses of power—those of the Shining Path,
government, and military leaders—which are roundly discarded as inoperable
in an Andean world, there are the three discursive alternatives of the main
characters. Significantly, it is Mariano’s discourse that eventually breaks down
completely; by the end of the novel, his delirium is expressed by incompre-
hensible, fragmented speech, grammatically marked by an excessive use of
ellipses, denoting his state of suspension between life and death. Indeed, while
32 Note that Colchado Lucio opts for the Spanish form of the plural, ‘s’, rather than the
Quechua plural marker, ‘kuna.’ This is one of many linguistic hybridizations common
in contemporary Quechua.
33 One exception to this generalized practice in the novel is the setting off of ‘vida
michiq’, a courting ritual marked by song, dance, and some sexual activity, which
Liborio explains was prohibited by Shining Path, which labeled the tradition a type
of orgy. It is unclear why this particular term is set off in quotation marks.
34 Vervaeke, ‘Figuración de la heterogeneidad sociocultural,’ 17.
120 an dean truths
Rosa and Liborio are both dead, they are also alive—the narration presents
them during their lives as indigenous peasants and during their death/life as
Andean gods. Mariano, however, recounts and relives his experience while
agonizing. The first reference to Mariano comes when Rosa crosses paths
with the Almas de la Sentencia, who are travelling to claim Mariano; the
narration never shows him after death. Rather, for the entire novel, Mariano
remains in this agonizing state, hovering between life and death, never free
from his earthly marginalization, fear, and suffering. The suggestion, then,
is that of the three characters, Mariano is not a strong alternative for a
post-conflict future. The marginalized indigenous man subservient to state
power—that is, a status quo return to the past—is not a viable direction.
Regarding Rosa, representative of Andean femininity and spirituality, her
discourse moves from fear, insecurity, and dependence to security, identity,
and strength. In hanaq pacha, she has recovered her true identity through
experiencing the trials of the voyage through the afterlife, and also while
gathering the diverse memories of those she encounters along the way.
Through Rosa’s discourse, the novel claims the centrality of the voice of the
Andean campesina, among the most directly affected by the violence, turning
her not into a victim but into collector and guardian of past truths and forger
of an alternative future. In this regard, Rosa presents an important link
between memory and identity, which will be discussed later.
Liborio’s discourse is one of awakening and, as his name suggests, libera-
tion. Liborio’s story is narrated in the tú (second person singular) form. In
a sense, the reader is positioned as object of discourse. The reader becomes
Liborio and is guided into his life through narration. Thus, the strongest
identification between reader and text is in the form of Liborio, where reader
and character are virtually fused. Moreover, this tú has the effect of Liborio
talking to himself. It does not seem to be an outside narrator imposing actions
(in the form of commands) on Liborio, rather Liborio guides and interprets
his own thoughts and actions. Thus, the reader experiences an even greater
intimacy with Liborio; with Rosa and Mariano, we feel they are telling
us their story, but with Liborio we feel we are in his thoughts. So, unlike
the previously analyzed novels where we are asked to identify with a male,
criollo character, where the reader is always positioned, along with the main
characters, as an outsider to Andean culture, and Andean culture is always
portrayed as other, here the reader is positioned as Andean, not only Andean,
but as an indigenous peasant with an awakening political consciousness,
who defies both ‘authorities’ in the conflict—Shining Path and the Peruvian
government—and is ultimately sent by the gods to realize a Pachacutic.
In privileging an Andean interpretation of the conflict though the employ-
ment of a Quechua-inflected literary language and a literary discourse that
stresses identification with certain Andean characters, Colchado Lucio is
anticipating a truth-gathering process which in the end looks very different
from the official one that would commence four years after the publication
of Rosa Cuchillo. Not only does the novel present specific Andean subjects
articulating their memories of the internal conflict, it also begins to elaborate

an alternative vision of Peru, an alternative national imaginary, through
the literary recreation of Andean-centric geographies, social and political
discourses, and subjectivities.
Alternative Geographies
The novel begins with Rosa departing from the land that had been her
home during her lifetime and embarking on her journey to hanaq pacha. As
she ascends a hill, she looks down upon the Pampas River and describes
her village, Illaurocancha. The narration hones in on the small houses with
their tiled roofs and white walls, ‘incendiadas por la luz roja del sol’ [lit
up by the red light of the sun] (RC, 9). Rosa notes the smell of the bean
plants, the feel of the wind, and the sound of passing partridges. ‘Pobre mi
pueblo, dije, pobre mi tierra. Ahí te dejo (¿para siempre?). Y miré los molles
de las lomas, las piedras de alaymosca rodando por la quebrada, los altos
eucaliptos que bordeaban las huertas, los tunales con sus espinas erizadas y
los magueyes estirándose sobre las cabuyas’ [my poor town, I said, my poor
land. I leave you there (forever?). And I looked at the pepper trees on the
hills, the purple stones rolling down the ravine, the tall eucalyptus trees that
bordered the orchards, the prickly pear cactuses with their sticky thorns, and
the agaves stretching up over other agaves] (RC, 9–10). Finally, an unidenti-
fied voice informs Rosa of the direction she should travel: ‘A Auquimarca,
hija, la montaña nevada donde moran nuestros antepasados’ [To Auquimarca,
daughter, the snowy mountain where our ancestors live] (RC, 10). Rosa is
directed towards the Auquimarca (lands of the gods) mountain, where she
is to reunite with her ancestors.35
It is at Wañuy Mayu, ‘este río torrentoso, de aguas negras … que separaba
a los vivos y muertos’ [that torrential river, of black waters … that separated
the living and the dead] (RC, 11) that Rosa finds Wayra, who will be her
guide to Auquimarca, where, after being received by the gods, she may
continue on to join the stars in Koyllur Mayu, the Milky Way. The journey
will pass through ukhu pacha, the underworld, including a visit to supayhuasi
(literally, the devil’s house, or hell), and on to hanaq pacha. Through the
description of Rosa’s journey, Colchado Lucio brings to the text an alterna-
tive, Andean, geography that contrasts significantly with other literary
descriptions of the highlands. The world of the gods closely resembles that of
the humans in the Andean highlands, as both worlds share mountains, rivers,
plants, and wildlife. Afterlife and earthly life, the sacred and the profane,
closely intermingle and penetrate each other.
The narration denotes an entirely new mapping of the nation through
its emphasis on Andean geographies; in this novel, Lima and the coast
35 There is a real Cerro Auquimarca in the southern Peruvian highlands.
122 an dean truths
barely exist in the imagination, and even highland ‘urban’ centers such
as Ayacucho are subordinated to villages, natural spaces, and the Andean
afterlife. Indeed, the longest reference to Lima occurs in one of Mariano’s
delirious episodes. He experiences a confusing hallucination in which the
Peruvian president, Abimael Guzmán, and a notorious rondero leader,
‘Comandante Huayhuaco,’ face crowds of people clamoring for food, clothes,
and arms. Escaping from the violence emerging in this encounter, Mariano
narrates his arrival in Lima: ‘¿con que ésta es Lima, no? … Ah, pucha,
esos edificios se pierden entre las nubes … carros también por todos lados,
qué cantidad … ¿Y ese que dirige el tránsito no es Abimael? … me guiña’
[So this is Lima, is it? … Oh, man, those buildings get lost in the clouds
… and there are cars everywhere, so many … And isn’t that guy directing
traffic Abimael? … he winks at me] (RC, 174, the ellipses are from the
original text). Suddenly, the city is plunged into darkness; ‘los terroristas
están tomando la ciudad, dicen’ [terrorists are taking over the city, they say]
(RC, 174). Searching for the presidential palace, Mariano makes his way to
what he imagines is ‘la Plaza San Martín tal vez, de la que siempre hablaban
mis paisanos que habían visitado Lima’ [San Martín Square maybe, the one
my fellow countryfolk who had visited Lima always talked about] (RC, 175).
Lima, then, rather than being the political and cultural center of Peru, exists
in this novel only in the hallucinations of a dying man, and the city and the
head of state are under siege. In fact, this section ends with Mariano being
shot in real life. The next section narrated by him, where he recounts being
lead to the afterlife by the Almas de la Sentencia, begins, ‘¿Cómo? … ¿Qué
dice usted? … ¿Un japonés quiere ser Presidente?’ [What? … What are you
saying? … A Japanese man wants to be president?] (RC, 194), in a reference
to Fujimori’s presidential campaign. At that point the brief connection to
the capital and to national political life is truncated, as the shrouded women
pull Mariano towards death against his will.
The geography evoked in the novel, then, privileges Andean geography,
and specifically the rural and spirit worlds, as the core, not periphery, of
Peruvian culture. Rosa Cuchillo presents a geography of resistance (Pile),
that defies marginalization by dominant national culture and subsumption
by Western cultural norms and values. It is within and from this location
that Colchado Lucio articulates an ideological critique of the Maoist tenants
of Shining Path and the neoliberal agenda of the Peruvian government and
presents an alternative national vision grounded in Andean epistemologies.
Andean Political Critique

The greatest challenges to non-Andean (government and Shining Path)
political and social discourse and practice come through Liborio. Forcibly
conscripted by Shining Path, Liborio begins his ‘service’ somewhat open to
the ideology and goals of the Maoist-oriented rebels. The novel describes the
indoctrination of new members, who are required to learn revolutionary songs
and military maneuvers. Lessons include veneration of Abimael Guzmán and

the following explanation of the history of Shining Path:
en 1980 un sol rojo iluminaba el planeta, y ése era el Partido, que iba a
iniciar el largo camino de la liberación. Pues en la China de Mao Tse
Tung, ¿sabían?, había durado veinte años; aquí continuaría hasta las
últimas consecuencias a fin de consolidar la República Popular de Nueva
Democracia sobre las ruinas del Perú actual. Iban a abatir, compañeros,
el capitalismo burocrático y el semifeudalismo.
in 1980 a red sun lit up the planet, and that was the Party, that would
begin the long path to liberation. Well, in Mao Tse Tung’s China, did
they know?, it had lasted twenty years; here, it would continue to its logical
conclusion, to consolidate the Popular Republic of the New Democracy
over the ruins of contemporary Peru. They were going to conquer, friends,
bureaucratic capitalism and semi-feudalism. (RC, 29)
Here the narration continues: ‘Ay, caracho, eso sí que nadita entiendes’ [Oh,
damn, you really understood nothing of that] (RC, 29)—this ideological
education is foreign and thus incomprehensible to the Andean subject. At this
point, the narration begins to emphasize the absolute disconnect between the
Shining Path’s Maoist ideology and indigenous political and social thought.
Liborio, who choses the name Túpac as his new identity upon joining Shining
Path, is the vehicle for introducing both the tenants of Shining Path and an
Andean critique of the rebel group’s ideology into the novel. Like previous
Túpacs—Túpac Amaru I, the last Inca; Túpac Amaru II, the eighteenth-
century Peruvian revolutionary; and Túpac Katari, the eighteenth-century
Bolivian revolutionary leader—Liborio/Túpac resists the subordination of
indigenous people and, even more so, the suppression of indigenous social,
political, cultural, and spiritual practices and thought.
His political awakening begins upon observing the Shining Path leaders:
‘Había quienes usaban lentes, relojes y anillos. Y eran blancos, medio rubios
algunos. No eran campesinos. Resentidos parecían más bien de los otros
de su casta que estaban en el gobierno’ [Some used glasses, watches and
rings. And they were white, some even blondish. They were not campesinos,
rather they seemed resentful of the others of their caste that were in the
government] (RC, 82). He notes that they are mistis, an Andean term for
‘whites’ or Western-leaning mestizos,36 even while they dress as campesinos.
And he begins to ask what would happen to Andean beliefs under a Shining
Path rule:
36 Of the concept of misti, Arguedas writes: ‘the misti is not white, it is a name used
to designate men of Western or almost-Western culture who traditionally, since
Colonial times, dominated the region politically, socially, and economically. None of
them is still, of course, purely white or purely Western. They are creoles’ (Arguedas,
Formación, 35).
124 an dean truths
¿Seguirían creyendo en los dioses montañas? ¿En la Pachamama, en

Wirakocha?37 Más parecía que no. Ni los dioses cristianos tal vez, porque
en ocasiones les habías oído hablar mal de los curas y hasta del Papa …
¿hasta qué grado la revolución sería para los naturales? ¿O era sólo para
tumbar a los blancos capitalistas como decían y luego ellos serían los
nuevos gobernantes, sin que en la conducción de ese gobierno nada tengan
que ver con los runas? Lo deseable sería, piensas, un gobierno dónde
los naturales netos tengamos el poder de una vez por todas, sin ser sólo
apoyo de otros. Ahí sí, caracho, te entusiasmas, volveríamos a bailar sin
vergüenza nuestras propias danzas, en vez de esos bailes del extranjero;
hablaríamos de nuevo runa simi, nuestro propio idioma; adoraríamos sin
miedo de los curas a los dioses en los que tenemos creencia todavía. Sólo
si así era la condición, valía la pena luchar; si no, ¿para qué pues? ¿Para
que otros blancos sigan haciéndonos vivir como a ellos les gusta?
Would they still believe in the mountain gods? In Pachamama, in
Wirakocha? Likely not. Maybe not even in Christian gods, because
sometimes you had heard them talk badly about priests and even the Pope
… to what extent would the revolution be for indigenous people? Or was
it just to topple the white capitalists, as they said, and then they would be
the new governing class, and the running of that government would have
nothing to do with the runas (indigenous people). The best would be, you
think, a government where we true indigenous people have power once and
for all, not just support others. Then yes, you get enthusiastic, we would
once again dance our own dances without shame, instead of those foreign
dances; we would speak runa simi once again, our own language;38 we
would adore the gods we still believe in, without fearing the priests. Only
under this condition would the struggle be worth it; otherwise, why, then?
So that other white men can keep making us live as they like? (RC, 83).
Liborio begins to flesh out his ideas in a group meeting led by Omar, a misti,
ex-professor from Huancayo. Liborio asks if, at the end of the conflict, the
‘comuneros campesinos’ will govern the country; Omar replies that, no, the
leaders will be the (factory) workers, in alliance with the peasants, following
communist ideology. When Liborio asks why workers are considered better fit
to lead the country than the indigenous peasants, Omar replies that peasants,
who own or aspire to own small plots of land, are apt to become bourgeoisie
because of a tendency towards private property. Liborio corrects him, ‘los
naturales no aspiramos, compañero, a la posesión de un terreno propio de
cada uno, sino de todo lo que nos quitaron los blancos invasores’ [indigenous
people do not aspire, friend, to individual ownership of land, but to (recover)
everything that the white invaders took from us] (RC, 93), to which Omar
37 Pachamama is the earth goddess, or Mother Earth. Wirakcocha is the god of creation.
38 Runa simi is the Quechua word for the Quechua language. Literally, it means ‘tongue/
language of men.’
replies, ‘pero hoy la lucha no era de indios’ [but today the struggle was not the
Indians’] (RC, 93). Omar, arguing that the country houses a mix of different
races, promotes a mestizo socialism.
Liborio, unconvinced, counters that even among mestizos the majority
have an ‘Indian spirit,’ and that ‘se hallarían gustosos de pertenecer a una
nación de ayllus campesinos y obreros, donde se tienda al trabajo colectiv-
ista, como en tiempos de nuestros antepasados’ [they would be happy to
belong to a nation of peasant and worker ayllus, where the tendency was
toward collectivist work, as in the times of our ancestors] (RC, 93). When
admonished that it is impossible to return to the past, that modern times
require modern measures, Liborio replies, ‘No es volver al pasado … porque
nuestras costumbres comuneras no la [sic] hemos perdido nunca los naturales.
Sólo que hasta estos días estamos resistiendo las imposiciones de los blancos
que quieren borrar todo lo nuestro’ [it’s not a return to the past … because
we indigenous people have never lost our peasant customs. Rather, to the
present day we have resisted the impositions of whites who want to erase all
that is ours] (RC, 94). Among the most important of the customs to which
Liborio refers is the ayllu system, which has been the basic political organiza-
tion of Andean society since pre-Colombian times. Gary Urton defines ayllus
as ‘named, clanlike groupings of people whose internal unity and differentia-
tion from each other are based on a variety of factors, including landholding,
kinship, festival sponsorship, and the performance of public labor projects.’39
Highland villages or rural communities tend to be made up of several ayllus in
close proximity. While they have been important concrete social organizers,
and were officially recognized a legal entities in 1920, Urton emphasizes their
values as ideological constructs.40 Urton distinguishes between the social
category of class and the concept of the ayllu, arguing that class depends on
relations of production and that an individual may or may not identify with
others in similar material conditions, while in an ayllu, ‘solidarity among
individuals … is, at least ideally, the condition of the existence of the ayllu.’41
He also notes that ayllus are not necessarily readily identifiable in daily life,
but rather exist as ‘potentialities,’ ready to be ‘activated’ when needed, such
as to work on community projects.42
Urton observes a dialectic of communalism and differentiation in village life
39 Gary Urton, ‘Communalism and Differentiation,’ 230.

40 In the 1920 Constitution, President Augusto Leguía (1863–1932) recognized the legal
personality of the ayllus. While Urritia makes a convincing argument that contempo-
rary ayllus should be seen more as colonial rather than purely pre-Hispanic creations,
it is clear that they derive from forms of familial and social organization the pre-date
even the Inca. See Jaime Urritia, ‘Comunidades campesinas.’ For a fine analysis of the
state of these communities under the Fujimori regime, see del Laureano del Castillo,
‘Property Rights and Peasant Communities.’
41 Urton, ‘Communalism and Differentiation,’ 231–232.
42 Ibid. 234–235.
126 an dean truths
that manifests itself in the work of the ayllus. There is, on the one hand, the
idea that certain properties as well as certain tasks belong to the community
and should be attended to jointly, generally through labor organized by the
ayllus (communalism). On the other hand, there is a differentiation among
ayllus, ‘the distinction among entitites according to specific characteristics
or forms, which often provides a basis for social discrimination.’43 Liborio
appears to be calling upon this dialectic as he elaborates how the ayllu system
could function on a regional and national level, in the countryside and in
the cities, creating specialized ayllus that would produce goods and services
to be traded for the goods and services of other ayllus and within which, ‘se
ayudarían unos a otros, se socorrerían, viviendo como en familia, repartién-
dose las ganancias entre todos’ [they would help one another, they would aid
one another, living like a family, sharing profits among all] (RC, 94). Liborio
even has an idea for how this system could support an export economy.
José Carlos Mariátegui, of course, elaborated a famous argument that the
ayllu (which he also calls simply the ‘community’) underscores a socialist/
communist disposition in Andean cultures. He writes, ‘hardy and stubborn
habits of cooperation and solidarity still survive that are the empirical expres-
sion of a communist spirit. The ‘community’ is the instrument of this spirit.’44
The fact that, despite Shining Path’s expressed indebtedness to Mariátegui as
well as Mao, the renowned Peruvian socialist thinker is never mentioned by
name in the novel, while Mao is repeatedly cited by Shining Path characters,
reveals Colchado Lucio’s belief that Shining Path had strayed far from an
Andean-oriented, Peruvian solution to the nation’s social ills. Liborio’s ideas,
while not attributed to Mariátegui, echo the latter’s socio-political vision
in many ways, while adding an indigenous spiritual and cultural element
de-emphasized in Mariátegui’s writings.
Omar ultimately dismisses Liborio’s plan as ‘socialismo mágico’ [magical
socialism] (RC, 94). While the rebel leader uses the term as an insult,
he unwittingly adopts a term coined by Peruvian anthropologist Rodrigo
Montoya. For Montoya:
43 Ibid. 230–231. Certain ayllus are more prosperous than others, for example, and may
see themselves as superior. As well, Urton notes that individual motives may influence
a member’s participation in ayllu activities, such that the ayllu is not immune to the
effects of desire or ambition. That is, it would be naive to promote ayllus as an ideal
communal structure without faults, superior to all other possibilities.
44 Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays, 58. Lewis Taylor provides an excellent analysis
of the appropriation of Mariátegui and Mao in Shining Path publications. He
observes that, in response to Peru’s culturally heterogeneous and socially complex
reality, ‘Mariátegui’s non-dogmatic brand of Marxism led him to adopt a number
of unorthodox positions’ (Taylor, Shining Path, 12). For Taylor, Shining Path read
Mariátegui (and Mao) very superficially; perhaps a different, more informed and
nuanced, reading would have helped Shining Path better engage Andean populations.
Certainly Liborio’s character suggests this possibility.
The ideal of magical socialism is a subversive proposal with a double

purpose: on one hand, to save the concept of socialism despite all of its
problems and difficulties; and, on the other, to redefine it, to affirm its
liberating content, in order to reject any commitment to the totalitarian
way of the past, in order to try to produce an encounter of politics with life,
with song, with dance, with poetry, safeguarding the essential elements
of the first dream of modernity: justice and liberty, and, finally—at the
same time—to assure that politics and ethics walk together in the same
direction.45
The concept of socialismo mágico respects Andean culture, knowledge, and
spirituality while retaining the best of Western modernity—for Montoya, the
ideals of emancipation and social justice—with the goal that ‘socialism be
in Peru a meeting place for all races and nations, all cultures and beliefs.’46
Montoya puts forth socialismo mágico as a ‘utopia of diversity.’47 While Omar
uses the term ironically, and paternalistically ends the conversation by
sending everyone to bed, Liborio’s recollection of the conversation subverts
Omar’s dismissal. Liborio is, in fact, calling for a new form of socialism
articulated within an Andean world view. His is, to borrow from Dussel, a
‘transmodern paradigm’ that ‘embraces both modernity and its alterity.’48
Indeed, Liborio sees the implementation of an indigenous-Andean
economic structure as more than just a political gain. For Liborio, it would
also be a chance to return to ‘nuestras costumbres, nuestro idioma, nuestra
religión. Volveríamos a adorar, sin miedo de los cristianos, a la Pachamama,
a los jirkas, al dios Rayo y, quién sabe, si al dios Sol’ [our customs, our
language, our religion. We would once again adore, without fearing the
Christians, Pachamama, the jirkas (mountains or hills), the Lighting god,
and who knows, even the Sun god] (RC, 94). Indeed, the novel repeat-
edly demonstrates that Andean political thought is imbued with Andean
spirituality; certainly there is an inherent desire to demarginalize Andean
cosmology, as Liborio expresses above, but, more radically, the political
and the spiritual are shown to interact dynamically. Like the mingling of
mythological and earthly geography, ideal Andean social life would be both
godly and wordly, both spiritual and political. This concept is shown in
several key examples in the text.
At one point, Liborio’s group has been suffering from hunger when three
are sent to hunt a herd of vicuña. They return with a dead mother and a
live newborn vicuña. Liborio becomes furious, claiming that the apus, the
mountain gods, will punish the group: ‘ellos permiten que las cacemos, que
aprovechemos su carne, su lana, su sebo; mas no que las agarremos vivas ni
45 Rodrigo Montoya, De la utopía andina, 12.

46 Ibid. 219.
47 Ibid. 221.
48 Enrique Dussel, The Invention of the Americas, 139.
128 an dean truths
las criemos. Los dioses se encolerizan. Castigan con sequías, con terremotos’
[they allow us to hunt them, to use their meat, their wool, their tallow; but
we are not allowed to capture them alive and raise them. The gods become
angry. They punish with droughts, with earthquakes] (RC, 127). The
‘senderos mistis’ [misti Shining Path members] are surprised by Liborio’s
anger and respond, ‘En estos tiempos ya los dioses no hacían milagros. Ahora
sólo había que creer en las masas, nuestro único y verdadero dios, a las que
había que entregarse con harta fe y devoción. Ya lo comprenderías mejor
cuando hayan penetrado en ti los sagrados principios de la revolución’ [These
days the gods no longer make miracles. Now one just had to believe in the
masses, our only and true god, to whom we had to devote ourselves with
much faith and devotion. You would eventually understand it better when
the sacred principles of the revolution had penetrated you] (RC, 127). Almost
immediately an intense hailstorm begins, as a rainbow dominates the sky.49
While the Shining Path leader tries to convince Liborio that this is just a
natural phenomenon, his fellow indigenous companions agree with him that
they have provoked the wrath of the gods. The group takes cover, and watches
the storm as a flash of lightening reveals an unmistakable image:
clarito vieron en un resplandor que duró unos instantes, alzarse sobre un
nevado difuminándose hacia el cielo, el espantoso rostro del tamaño de una
montaña, de un hombre terrible, siniestro, que alargó sus tentáculos hacia
el techo bajo el que se refugiaban, dejándolo convertido en un montón de
cenizas, humeante.
clearly they saw, in a splendor that lasted a few moments, a frightening
face, the size of a mountain, rise up over the snow-capped mountain,
fading into the sky. The face of a terrible, sinister man, who stretched out
his tentacles toward the roof under which they’d sought refuge, converting
it into a pile of smoking ashes. (RC, 129)
Faced with this fury, Liborio tears the vicuña from the arms of the woman
49 While José Antonio Mazzotti notes colonial references to rainbows indicating the
coming of a new age for some pre-Colombian Andean contexts (see Mazzotti, ‘The
Lightening Bolt’), rainbows in Andean culture are often associated with evil (see John
E. Staller and Brian Stross, Lightening in the Andes and Mesoamerica and Gary Urton,
At the Crossroads of the Earth and the Sky). Just two pages later, Rosa comes upon
Sachamama, a two-headed serpent and mother of the forests, whom Rosa describes
as ‘la gigantesca amaru de siete colores’ [the giant amaru (serpent) of seven colors]
(RC, 130). Indeed, according to Andean tradition, when Sachamama moves to the
afterlife she becomes a k’iuchi, a rainbow. In the novel, she is guarding the gates
of the Supayhuasi, the devil’s home. The proximity of this rainbow serpent to the
rainbow in Liborio’s section, described as a ‘culebra de siete colores’ [snake of seven
colors] (RC, 128) points to the importance of the rainbow as a symbol of evil and
divine wrath. It also begs the question of whether both characters, within the flexible
geo-temporal reality of the novel, have not come across the same rainbow.
who had captured him and places him on the ground to return him to the
gods. At the same time, Liborio identifies himself as the son of Pedro Orcco
and asks the divinities for special consideration. Within moments, the storm
dies down and the vicuña disappears; above, a white hawk circles. Despite
the evidence, however, the misti members insist the hawk is an optical illusion.
Later reflections emphasize Liborio’s understanding of the intense connec-
tion between nature and the supernatural, as well as the growing importance
of Andean spirituality in his political thought. He despairs at the thought that
the Shining Path leaders from Lima and other cities would never be able to
accept Andean religious beliefs:
Estaba visto que para ellos su religión era la política. No tenían más
dioses que sus líderes y las masas. La naturaleza sólo era naturaleza en sus
mentes. Nunca podrían aceptar que las cochas, los cerros, los ríos, tuvieran
vida. Que en la piedras mismas se alojaran espíritus … Como tampoco
tendrían creencia en la vuelta de ese inca-dios cuya cabeza, según los
abuelos, se hallaba enterrada en el Cuzco y que se estaba recomponiendo
hacia los pies. Y que una vez completo, iba a voltear el mundo poniéndolo
al revés. Entonces la noche se haría día y los que ahora sufren, gozarían;
los que hoy gozan, padecerían. Esos tiempos ya se estaban viviendo con el
Pachacuti: el gran cambio, la revolución. Sólo que esta revolución era de
mistis y no de naturales. Era urgente hacerla de éstos entonces.
It was clear that for them religion was politics. They did not have gods
beyond their leaders and the masses. Nature was just nature in their minds.
They could never accept that the lagoons, the hills, the rivers, had life.
That the stones themselves housed spirits … Just as they’d never believe
in the return of that Inca-god whose head, according to the elders, was
buried in Cusco and was regenerating to its feet. And once complete, he
was going to turn the world upside down. Then night would be day and
those that now suffered would enjoy life; those that now enjoyed life, would
suffer. Those times were already being lived with the Pachacuti: the great
change, the revolution. Just that this revolution was of the mistis and not
the indigenous people. Making it of the latter, then, was urgent. (RC, 136)
We see Liborio begin to interpret different signs that the time might be ripe for
a Pachacutic, and that he might be the one called to lead it. He takes advantage
of leadership positions he is given within Shining Path to begin educating
child conscripts ‘sobre la formación de un ejército de puros naturales y con
un programa de neto corte Tahuantinsuyo que ustedes pensaban aplicar en
caso de salir finalmente victoriosos’ [about the formation of an army of pure
indigenous peoples and of a clearly Tahuantinsuyu-influenced plan, that you
could think about applying if you finally emerged victorious] (RC, 167). He
and fellow indigenous insurgents read signs of the inevitable Pachacutic in ‘las
manchas en el cuerpo de la Mama Killa’ [the stains on the body of Mama
Killa (the moon/moon goddess)] (RC, 167).
130 an dean truths
In developing and refining his convictions, Liborio introduces various

elements of Andean history as well. He recalls the eighteenth-century revolu-
tion of Túpac Amaru II (José Gabriel Condorconqui, 1742–1781), who led
indigenous uprisings against the Spaniards in 1780. He references ‘el amauta
indio Guaman Poma’ [the amauta (wise man) Indian Guaman Poma], who,
like Marx (Liborio recounts) spoke of five ‘ages’ of humanity:
Sólo que éstas—las que analizaba Marx: comunismo primitivo, esclavismo,
etc., no eran las mismas que anunciaban (sic) aquél. Las edades de las que
hablaban nuestros padres incas eran otras, en las que cada cierto tiempo,
que duraba quinientos o mil años, se producía un pachacuti para borrar
todo vestigio de corrupción, de degradación moral, de maldad, dando lugar
a una nueva época, de hombres limpios, puros.
Just that these—the ones Marx analyzed: primitive communism, slave
society, etc., weren’t the same ones that Guaman Poma announced. The
ages that our Inca forefathers spoke of were others, in which every so often,
every five hundred to one thousand years, a Pachacuti would erase every
vestige of corruption, moral degradation, evil, giving way to a new era, of
clean, pure men. (RC, 196)
Liborio resorts to figures such as Túpac Amaru II and Guaman Poma to
rescue a heroic, resisting, revolutionary Andean history, which he views as
the proper source from which to draw a viable alternative to the armed
rebellion assaulting his homeland, a revolution based on tenants alien to
Andean culture.
Towards the end of the novel, Liborio travels with his group to ‘Nuevo
Pekín’ (New Peking), a secret Amazonian base where Abimael Guzmán
is hiding. The description of the trip includes long accounts of Shining
Path practices and descriptions of doctrine, as well as Liborio’s thoughts
and critiques. Repeatedly, Shining Path ideology is presented and then
undermined immediately by some aspect of Andean culture. While Liborio
witnesses the common practice of rebels stopping buses in order to steal
from the passengers, often killing travelers found to be on the Party’s ‘black
list,’ he insists that his subordinates observe the Incan law of ama sua, ama
kella, ama llula—do not rob, do not be lazy, do not kill.50 He finally meets
‘el Presidente Gonzalo’ and is disappointed by the leader’s apparent disregard
for the suffering of the people living in the so-called ‘freed zones.’ Upon his
return from Nuevo Pekín, Liborio finds himself even more convinced that
the revolution should be an indigenous one.
Shortly thereafter Liborio is caught and subsequently executed by a military
firing squad. The third-person plural, ‘nosotros’ (we), narrator describes his
50 This commandment is popularly known and associated with an indigenous code of

ethics. It is also quoted in Abril rojo and in other novels on the era, such as Daniel
Alarcón’s English-language novel, Lost City Radio.
dying after refusing to give information about Guzmán and other leaders.
Liborio, along with some companions, is shot, his body plummeting to the
bottom of an abyss, when ‘entre los despojos humanos una hermosa paloma
blanca emprende el vuelo hacia los nevados para perderse después entre las
nubes’ [from among the human remains a beautiful white dove takes flight
toward the snow-capped mountains, only to lose itself later amongst the
clouds] (RC, 213–214); a soldier affirms it emerged from Liborio’s body.
Narratively, Liborio’s death occurs almost contemporaneously with Rosa’s
encounter with her son in hanaq pacha, as Liborio is returning to earth to
realize a Pachacutic. The suggestion is that Liborio’s death does not signal the
end of an Andean revolutionary vision, but rather that his sacrifice heralds
a new age.
Recovering Andean Memories

Written in a time marked by willful olvido (forgetting) on the part of the
state and the nation at large, Rosa Cuchillo begins and ends with significant
acts of memory. Embarking on her journey through the afterlife, Rosa looks
down on her town and remembers an idyllic youth, a happy time spent in
communion with nature, before the internal conflict began:
recordando mi mocedad, cuando alegre correteaba entre los maizales

jugando con mi perro Wayra, haciéndolos espantar a los sirguillitos, esas
menudas avecitas amarillas que entre una alborozada chillería venían a
banquetearse con los choclos. Me llegó también el recuerdo lejano de las
cosechas de junio, de mis juegos en las parvas alumbradas por la luna, de
mis años de pastora tras el ganado, soportando a veces el ardiente sol de
la cordillera o mojadita por las lluvias suaves.
remembering my youth, when I happily ran about among the corn fields
playing with my dog Wayra, frightening the sirguillitos, those tiny little
yellow birds that with a delighted squawking came to enjoy a banquet of
corn. I remembered too a faraway recollection of the June harvests, of my
games in the piles of unthreshed grain lit up by the moon, of my years as
a shepherdess following the cattle, bearing the sometimes ardent sun of
the highlands or dampened by the soft rains. (RC, 10)
By focusing on Rosa’s childhood memories, the novel establishes a specifically

Andean geography and experience as the core of national memory.
Towards the end of the novel, Rosa again remembers; this time, she
recovers the memory of having been a goddess, an identity of belonging to
the pantheon of Andean divinity. As she begins to recover this identity, she
feels lighter and looks younger. Wayra tells her not to worry, ‘estás volviendo
a ser lo que en verdad eres: alguien que siempre habitó estos lugares y que
sin embargo lo olvidó’ [you are once again becoming what you really are;
someone who always lived in these places and who nevertheless forgot] (RC,
132 an dean truths
185). Little by little she recovers her memories and becomes reacquainted with
her place of origin, while still searching for her earthly son and husband. The
goddess Zaramama tells her, ‘Aún están frescos tus recuerdos, pero al pasar
al otro lado del puente donde habita tu Padre, sólo pensarás como la diosa
que eres’ [your memories are still fresh, but by crossing the bridge where your
Father lives, you will only think like the goddess that you are] (RC, 200).
The narration makes clear that it is through remembering, recovering the
truth, that one recovers one’s rightful identity. The novel critiques a historical
covering-up (Dussel’s encubrimiento) of Andean subjectivity and serves as a
narrative unveiling of the same.51
If indeed the rest of the novel is about the recovery of the memory of a
certain historical time, these two acts of memory, which serve as bookends
in the narration, are noteworthy derivations. Rosa, while she has lived and
witnessed the horrific times of the internal conflict, remembers herself signifi-
cantly as a happy child growing up in the Andes and then, permanently, as an
Andean goddess, one who will never lose her connection with the people on
earth for, as Zaramama notes, ‘¿Alguna vez cuando estuviste acá te olvidaste
acaso de ellos?’ [Did you ever forget them when you were here?] (RC, 200).
Thus, the national subject we are being asked to consider, while marked
by the war, is not necessarily someone whose fundamental identity is that
of a victim of the conflict. Rather, the internal conflict comes almost as a
parenthesis, a brief interruption in a long and continually evolving indigenous
Andean history.
Conclusion
By imagining a processing of the internal conflict articulated by diverse
Andean subjects, with distinct experiences, situated in the Andes both
geographically and culturally, and transmitting that imagination to a broader
audience in the form of a Spanish-language novel, Colchado Lucio models the
type of intercultural communication called for by Quijano, ‘an interchange
of experiences and meanings, as the basis of another rationality which may
legitimately pretend to some universality.’52 This intercultural communication
would be essential for the type of paradigm shift necessary for the ethnic-
oriented, symbolic and material violence of the internal conflict (as well as the
preceding 450+ years) truly to be avoided in the future. Because the novel
highlights Andean epistemologies (working towards epistemological decolo-
nization), reading the novel requires work, and a willingness to do the work.
In the end, that is the kind of solidarity Colchado Lucio seeks, a commit-
51 Dussel refers to 1492 and its various ‘figures’ (invention, discovery, conquest, coloni-
zation, and the euphemistic ‘encounter’ of two worlds) as more appropriately defined
as an encubrimiento, a ‘covering over’ of the radical otherness of autochthonous
peoples and cultures (Dussel, The Invention of the Americas).
52 Quijano, ‘Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,’ 177.
ment to existing within an epistemologically diverse geopolitical state, and to

the intellectual and affective labor required for non-hierarchical coexistence,
on the part of the (Western) reader. It could also be argued that this is the
kind of solidarity sought by victims of the conflict, rather than the various
options modeled (from empathetic listening to acts of charity) in the novels
in Chapter 1.
The novel, written before the investigations of the CVR, provided a
model, however utopic, for an Andean-driven processing of a violence that
primarily assaulted Andean peoples, but that demands a response at the
national level, a paradigm shift, that has yet to be seriously contemplated by
the metropolis. The following chapter explores further Andean-based artistic
renderings of the internal conflict and its consequences, created after the
release of the Informe final, that further emphasize the fundamental role of art
in providing essential routes for intercultural communication and generating
new paradigms.

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Liverpool University Press

Chapter Title: Towards a Narrative Pachacutic: Rosa Cuchillo

Book Title: Andean Truths

Towards a Narrative Pachacutic

“equality of opportunities” to the different kinds of knowledge engaged

speaks of ‘modern colonialities’ and ‘border gnosis’ or ‘border thinking,’ terms

the work of Colchado Lucio, most particularly Rosa Cuchillo, as another of

Novelizing the Conflict

15 Catherine J. Allen, The Hold Life Has, 194–195.

‘Figuración de la heterogeneidad sociocultural’; and Elisa Carolina Vian, ‘El Inkarrí

The Novel as Testimony

– … tenía guardada en su casa la calavera del mando …

– … They called us chicken-stealing scruffs, thieves, bullies …

owners to death, forced us campesinos to line up every day for (military)

– True, they gave us family warmth, tenderness, feeling.

Inserting ‘lo andino’ in Literary Discourse

30 Quiroz, ‘Dualidad,’ 105.

articulating their memories of the internal conflict, it also begins to elaborate

35 There is a real Cerro Auquimarca in the southern Peruvian highlands.

Andean Political Critique

and military maneuvers. Lessons include veneration of Abimael Guzmán and

¿Seguirían creyendo en los dioses montañas? ¿En la Pachamama, en

39 Gary Urton, ‘Communalism and Differentiation,’ 230.

The ideal of magical socialism is a subversive proposal with a double

45 Rodrigo Montoya, De la utopía andina, 12.

In developing and refining his convictions, Liborio introduces various

50 This commandment is popularly known and associated with an indigenous code of

Recovering Andean Memories

recordando mi mocedad, cuando alegre correteaba entre los maizales

By focusing on Rosa’s childhood memories, the novel establishes a specifically

ment to existing within an epistemologically diverse geopolitical state, and to

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15 Catherine J. Allen, The Hold Life Has, 194–195.