Peruvian Photography: Yuyanapaq

Yuyanapaq. Para recordar
Visual account of the internal armed conflict in Peru, 1980-2000
Truth and Reconciliation Commission

When the leadership of Sendero Luminoso (Shinning Path) decided to start an armed struggle in 1980, nobody could possibly imagine that it would turn into the most "intense, extensive and prolonged episode of violence in the entire history of the Republic". The ferocity and cruelty unleashed by the Maoist terrorist group destroyed the country's democratic order, worsened poverty, fostered distrust among the population, and -most importantly- caused more victims than all the foreign and civil wars occurred in Peru since it's independence, in 1821.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, indeed, has estimated in 70,000 the number of human losses during the conflict: 54 percent attributed to Sendero Luminoso, and a significant fraction of the rest to the often arbitrary repression of the Police and Armed Forces.

Yuyanapaq. Para recordar ("To remember" respectively in Quechua and Spanish) is an exceptional photographic chronicle of those 20 years of violence and terror in Peru. In the belief that "a country that forgets its history is condemned to repeat it", the book recounts the conflict through a selection of some 100 breathtaking photographs that, although depicting tragic circumstances, remain sober and compassionate with the victims.

The pictures immortalize both the everyday life during the armed struggle and its more significant episodes, such as the massacre of 8 journalists in Uchuraccay, the car-bomb against the Tarata building in Lima, and the capture of Shinning Path's leader Abimael Guzmán in 1992 (which meant the beginning of the end of theterrorist group).

This volume is a painful testimony of Peru's recent history, but an essential document to prevent oblivion and indifference, and a tribute to the victims.

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