Política del testimonio y reconocimiento en las comisiones de la verdad guatemalteca y peruana: En torno a la figura del “indio subversivo”

Abstract

This text analyses the politics of testimony in the Truth Commissions in Guatemala (the Historical Clarification Commission – CEH) and Peru (the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – CVR) and its effect on the narratives contained in their respective final reports. Recognition for victims involves taking into consideration the established narratives in order to interpret the process of violence that decisively influences the production of ideas and the practices of citizenship central to the discourse of both Commissions. In these narratives, ideological representations of the “subversive Indian” directly affect the status, as such, of the main victims/individuals affected by the conflict (the peasant-indigenous populations) as well as the role which ethnic and racial inequality, and racism in particular, plays in the interpretation of the armed conflicts offered by the Commissions. Thus, the work of both Commissions and the preceding academic debates reveal the complex relationship – deeply rooted in history – between indian-ness and politics.

Keywords

• Truth and Recognition commissions
• Guatemala
• indians
• Peru
• indigenous population
• racism