Abstract

JOHANSSON, María Teresa. Peruvian testimony of Quechua-speaking female victims: peoples, languages and motherhood. Letras [online]. 2023, vol.94, n.139, pp.33-45.  Epub May 29, 2023. ISSN 0378-4878.  http://dx.doi.org/10.30920/letras.94.139.3.

The process of social memory generated in Peru after the armed conflict has deepened the reflection on the testimonial genre in Latin American literary studies. This paper analyzes the testimonies of Angélica Mendoza and Giorgina Gamboa presented as statements before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and later filmed to be exhibited at the Place of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion (LUM), in Lima. These testimonies are interpreted from two theoretical frames: the first is linked to studies on testimonialism and the indigenous subject in Latin America, and the second refers to the category of witness and survivor from Auschwitz. Based on this double approximation, it is argued that in these testimonies a political, ethnic and gender victim converges who denounces the extreme conditions of violence and at the same time resists through the linguistic affirmation of Quechua and Andean Spanish. In this sense, from a gender perspective, the figure of the surviving witness is interpreted in terms of gine-sacra (Denegri) and the notion of mater peregrina is proposed to conceive the prolonged act of searching for disappeared persons carried out by mothers in the Peruvian highlands. Finally, it is argued that these testimonies problematize gender dimensions linked to motherhood through the extreme figurations of monstrosity and the corpse, which disrupt the thresholds of the human.

Keywords : Women; Armed conflict; Testimony; Quechua-speaking survivors; Peru.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )