Description
This paper analyses the weaponization of the 'terrorist' discourse, known as 'terruqueo' in post-war Peru, as a memory-based form of repression that legitimises state violence and undermines democracy. It argues that this practice is a product of both 'slow memory' (attritional harm) and 'memoria larga' (colonial legacies).
Methodologically, the paper draws on a decade-long collaborative ethnographic study with the sons and daughters of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), an insurgent group during the internal armed conflict (1980-1990s). It analyses their evolving testimonial narratives in the face of an inherited stigma, looking at how their resistance strategies can, at times, reproduce the terrorist discourse. Through a theoretical dialogue between 'Slow Memory' as a politics of pace (Wustenberg 2023; Teichler 2023; Davies 2022) and 'Memoria Larga' as a decolonial politics of time (Cusicanqui 1987, 2010; del Pino 2021), this approach embraces both the slow, reflective process of engaging with the past and the long, interconnected histories of violence and resistance to interrogate the difficulties of working through political violence in Peru outside of this discourse.
The findings underscore the failures of Peru’s democratic transition to question the construction of the ‘terrorist subject’. By critically examining the ongoing violent effects of ‘terruqueo’, the paper claims it: (1) inflicts a ‘slow’ attritional violence on those stigmatised, foreclosing paths to justice; (2) is a product of ‘long’ memory, re-living deep-seated colonial-racial logics to dehumanise those deemed as threats; and (3) is continually redeployed to justify ‘fast’ repressive violence against contemporary dissent, rendering protesters ‘disposable’. The paper concludes this is a memory-based repression that becomes lethal to particular bodies and serves as a warning for societies that mobilise the terrorist discourse, as it perpetuates the State’s right to kill.
Keywords: Memory Politics; State Violence; Terrorism Discourse; Stigma; Peru; Slow Memory; Decolonial Theory
