Elaboration of Remembrance and Identity Under Political Violence: Ashánika Narratives in the Peruvian Amazon

Abstract

Between the years 1980 and 2000, the Republic of Peru experienced violent years of interna! conflicts, leaving deep wounds in its population. After three years of field work and gathering narrations on this period by Amazons communities -of Asháninka ethnicity, located by the Tambo river in the Region of Ucayali-, this article seeks to understand the modes of remembrance characteristic of these communities. From two types of narration registered -testimony and myth- we analyze the relationship between memory and identity, the importance of form and gen re particularities that their narrations adopt, and the function that each one of these literary forms have for the Asháninka communities