Andean Truths: Transitional Justice, Ethnicity, and Cultural Production in Post-Shining Path Peru

A charitable interpretation of Andean Truths would proclaim that Anne Lambright has written two books. At the core, she provides a fine analysis of the diverse ways that individuals and communities processed, commemorated, or remembered the gruesome violence of Peru from 1980 to 1992, when the Shining Path and the Peruvian state outdid one another in human rights violations. She examines cinema, literature, theater, and art (individual and collective) to explore the many ways that people understood the violence and its aftermath as well as potential paths toward reconciliation or justice. She frames this project, however, by casting the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR) and its final report as a conformist or mainstream version of events written from the perspective of the powers that be in Lima. The works that she studies, from her perspective, radically diverge from and question the...