In this article, I seek to demonstrate how the 1986 massacre of nearly 250 at El Front on and Lurigancho prisons can shed light on the political and social exclusion faced by Shining Path militants, during and since Peru's internal armed conflict (1980-2000). I will analyse how Peruvian prisons have been historically used as sites of exclusion for political opponents of the Peruvian state. Then, through an analysis of literary responses to the massacres and the wider conflict, I will demonstrate how cultural producers have sought to recover Shining Path memories of violence, in order to highlight both the persistent socioeconomic conditions that precipitated Shining Path's insurrection and the continuing impunity for perpetrators of state violence. Finally, I will show that the recuperation of Shining Path memories in literary sources is undermined by the continuing silence of El Front on in Lima's memoryscape, and say what this tells us about the limits of acceptable memory discourse in present day Peru.
The Centro de Documentación e Investigación (CDI) is an online archive which provides free access to over 20 collections on Peru’s internal armed conflict (1980–2000), a conflict which was distinctly shaped by racial and social inequalities. The digital nature of the archive is presented as an opportunity for democratising access to these historical sources and for promoting commemoration as a means of cultural reconciliation. However, there is a risk that pre-existing social geographies and material concerns will mean that the CDI replicates offline exclusions. This article argues that, whilst the CDI has made these documents accessible to a broader geographical audience, usage of the digital archive is still largely mediated through social hierarchies. Through its online archive and offline engagement activities, the CDI appears to have generated a more geographically distributed network of content producers, but one which remains biased towards university-educated participants in urban areas.
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