Editor, Special issue: Latin American Perspectives.

Prospectus:

Politics, Society and Culture in Post-Conflict Peru

In November 2000, the man who ruled over Peru for a decade, Alberto Fujimori, fled the country in disgrace, faxing his resignation from Japan, the homeland of his parents. A transitional government was sworn in and elections held the following year, inaugurating a transition process that promised to bring an end to the massive corruption that had characterized the Fujimori decade, restore democratic institutions and citizenship, and address the legacy of a twenty-year period marked by insurgent and state-sponsored political violence, polarization, and authoritarian rule.

A decade on from this transitional moment, superficially Peru seems to be a model of post-conflict reconstruction. Democracy has been restored, with free and fair elections since 2001, a fairly robust separation of powers, and a vibrant if cacophonous free press. The economy is booming; over the past several years Peru has been one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and the impact is felt throughout the country with a dramatic rise in consumer spending, construction projects, mega shopping centers, and the like. Poverty levels have been reduced significantly as well. The most damning legacies of the Fujimori period —corruption and human rights violations— were tackled head-on, with high-profile prosecutions of former presidents, ministers, and advisers; high-ranking members of the military; and high-profile business elites.

Scratch below the surface however, and the mirage of post-conflict success story fades away. Democratic restoration notwithstanding, Peruvian democracy receives very low approval ratings from its citizens. Political parties have not re-emerged from the ashes of the 1980s, leading to the domination of politics by amateur and semi-professional politicians, on the one hand, and powerful de facto institutions including powerful media groups, the military, business elites, and conservative Church authorities, on the other. The absence of a strong, organized political force is especially notable on the left.  Authoritarian practices persist, including influence-peddling, executive interference in the judiciary, and use of security forces and states of emergency to repress social protest. The media continues to be dominated by right wing owners and tainted by the manipulation to which much of it was subject –and in many cases, willing participed in—during the Fujimori decade. Poverty remains deeply entrenched in some regions, particulary the Andes and the jungle regions, and inequality remains as entrenched as ever. Serious issues of ethnic and gender inequality remain.  And the mechanisms to address the legacy of conflict in Peru have faltered: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, considered internationally to be a model of transitional justice and post-conflict reconstruction, is widely maligned, and its policy proposals, from reparations for victims to trials of perpetrators of human rights violations, have faltered dramatically. In this context, it is perhaps not surprising that the former dictator’s daughter, Keiko Fujimori, nearly won the 2011 elections, or that  armed groups once believed defeated are in resurgence, or the state –promises of “grand transformations” not withstanding— is reaching for repressive methods to quell social protest, maintain social order, and inhibit opposition groups.

This issue of Latin American Perspectives will evaluate political, economic, social and cultural developments in post-conflict Peru and address theoretical issues relevant to these topics. It invites reflections on the nature of the Peruvian political system and the difficulties and challenges of consolidating democratic governance in Peru. It also invites examination of the legacy of Peru’s neoliberal turn under Fujimori. How can we understand the persistence of the neoliberal hegemony in Peru, particularly given the shiftss in other Latin American countries towards other models of social and economic organization challenging the Washington Consensus? This is particularly puzzling given the fact that, as Peruvian commentators have wryly noted, presidents since 2001 have been elected thanks to their anti-neoliberal electoral platforms, but they conform to the neoliberal hegemony once in office. What are the consequences of the neoliberal hegemony for development and for democratic representation and citizenship?

Peru has a vibrant history of social movements. While political violence and the Fujimori dictatorship largely silenced social movement activism, the return of democracy has opened new spaces for collective action. Moreover, the context of neoliberal hegemony has given rise to numerous local and regional movements challenging neoliberalism and its effects on the ground, from local communities challenging the exploitation of their land and resources without prior consultation to regional efforts to prevent disruptive mega “development” projects such as the Trans Oceanic Highway. The issue of Latin American Perspectives welcomes contributions that evaluate the nature of social movement activism in Peru today, particularly focusing on movements that emphasize indigenous rights; environmental protection, especially relating to extractive industries; movements addressing issues of gender and sexual orientation; cultural movements and artists collectives; and the role of the non-profit sector in negotiating the terrain of state-society relations in post-conflict, neoliberal Peru.

The issue also welcomes manuscripts that reflect on the human rights question. These could address the legacy of the CVR and its historical interpretation of political violence in Peru, or examine the implementation of the specific public policies proposed by the CVR (reparations, memorial sites, criminal prosecutions of perpetrators of human rights abuses); or the unfulfilled promises of institutional and structural reforms proposed by the CVR. Essays could consider the human rights question in Peru today, given the widespread use of repression against social protest, the widespread abuse of practices such as preventive detention, extensive police violence, and the persistence of torture. Is the use of repression and states of emergency to “control” social protest simply a reflex of the past, or does it respond to a new logic of capitalist development in which foreign interests –particularly revolving around the extractive industries— hold a prime position in Peruvian politics and society? What if any are the connections between structures of impunity of the past and structures of impunity in the present?

This special issue of Latin American Perspectives calls for theoretically grounded, empirically rich papers from any disciplinary field working on the politics, society and culture of Peru.

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Co-editor (with Clara Garavelli), Latin American Perspectives.

Prospectus:

Gender, Sexuality, Film and Media in Latin America:
Challenging Representation and Structures

Latin America is a region of contradictions in terms of gender and sexuality. While the US failed to elect its first female president in 2016, Latin America has seen more female presidents than any other part of the world, starting with Isabel Peron in 1974 and continuing with a boom in female political leaders between 1990 and 2014. While some like anti-Sandinista Violeta Chamorro in Nicaragua in 1990 represented a setback for progressive forces, others symbolized their advance.  Some made women’s rights and gender equality a priority. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet has worked to legalize abortion against strong opposition. Under Cristina Kirchner’s leadership, in 2012 Argentina passed the most progressive gender-identity law in the world, requiring doctors provide free hormone treatments and gender-reassignment surgery and allowing people to change their gender on official documents even without surgery. Since then, many laws to protect LGBTQ communities have been approved throughout the region, such as equal marriage or adoption. However, Latin America is also home to 7 of the 10 countries with the highest rates of femicide and is also one of the most precarious regions in terms of LGBTQ discrimination. Abortion remains illegal in seven countries. Based on these liminal positions, we believe the time is right to explore the contemporary role of women film and video makers as well as the cultural impact of gender and sexuality norms in film and other media.

In the 1960s, films emerged in several Latin American countries as a vital cultural front in struggles against underdevelopment, economic and cultural dependency, and injustice. From the Cinema Novo movement in Brazil, to the Santa Fe School in Argentina, the ICAIC (the Cuban Institute of Film Art and Industry) in Havana, and the nationalized Chile Films under Allende, the 1950s through the 1970s saw not only the spread of cinema as a powerful rhetorical tool of self-expression, identity, and ideology, but wide-scale resistance to the Hollywood imperialist mode of filmmaking and distribution. Latin American filmmakers influenced world cinema not only as creators but as theorists, asserting the need for a Third Cinema (Solanas and Getino), Revolutionary Cinema (Sanjinés) and Imperfect Cinema (García Espinosa.) They also sought to create new modes of production and distribution and to develop ties among filmmakers across the continent. While many leading filmmakers went into exile or were disappeared during the dictatorships in Latin America, the politicized climate of filmmaking they created spread throughout the hemisphere and survives into the current era. While this film movement was initially largely male-dominated, more recently many Latin American countries have seen a proliferation of female directors and perspectives in documentaries, many that examine memory and dictatorship through autobiography, and in feature films that emphasize hitherto under-explored realms of female and queer experience.

In spite of persistent inequality, women and LGBTQ communities have played a crucial, steady role in Latin American activism and resistance movements in the wake of human rights violations committed during the 70s and 80s. Women occupy a wide range of roles in the power structures in contemporary Latin American democracies: as former guerrilla combatants, grassroots organizers, political activists, legislators, high-ranking officials in government agencies, and diplomats. The 1990 – 2014 rise in female administrations in Latin America parallels a rise in media representation of issues related to gender and sexuality, and a rise in female participation in film and video making at all levels of production. This special issue of LAP will look at the many contradictions pertaining to gender, sexuality, access, community, and production in Latin America through a film and media perspective. It will situate the analysis in the current political landscape and conflicts in the region. In many countries this involves neoliberalism and the resulting growth in informal and precarious employment and deepening inequality. In others where governments have resisted neoliberalism, the attempt to achieve greater social and economic justice has engendered intense conflicts.  In all cases, we recognize the impact of the broader social and political context on women and LGBTQ communities and on media production.

Films like Camila (María Luisa Bemberg, 1984), Suzana Amaral’s A hora da estrela (‘The Hour of the Star’, 1986), Lucia Puenzo’s XXY (2007), the films of Albertina Carri, Paz Encina, Natalia Almada, Carmen Castillo, Marilú Mallet and Lucrecia Martel, are just a few examples of ways in which the envelope of New Latin American cinema has been pushed to respond to a wider range of gendered and trans-gender experience in recent decades. ​

Female film and video makers often bring attention to human rights and other issues affecting women and marginalized communities when traditional media outlets fail to cover them. For example, Mexican-American filmmaker, Lourdes Portillo, was brought international attention to the activist struggles of Argentine women searching for their disappeared family members with her award-winning 1985 documentary Las Madres: the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (co-written and directed with Susana Muñoz).  Similarly, Portillo was first on the scene to document the grizzly femicides in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in her 2001 documentary Señorita extraviada (Missing Young Woman), helping to propel a then-local issue into a broader discussion of the alarming rise in femicide and gendered violence in the Americas. Argentine director, Lucrecia Martel has made her mark on the international film community with her fictional dramas about survival, mourning and witnessing in the post-dictatorship years with films like La ciénaga (2001) and La mujer sin cabeza (2008). In addition to her own work on indigenous issues, Chilean Mapuche filmmaker Jeanette Paillán is a founding member of CLACPI, an organization that coordinates and promotes Indigenous video and film material and also heads the biggest Indigenous film festival in South America.

This issue will focus on women as media makers and consider questions related to gender and sexuality in film, video, and other media.

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Co-editor.

Documental: teorías, praxis, tecnologías, Edited by Javier Campo, Clara Garavelli, Pablo Piedras, Tomas Crowder-Taraborrelli and Kristi Wilson, Editorial Prometeo, Buenos Aires (forthcoming, 2018).

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Co-author.

“The Global Impact of Italian Neorealism.” Co-written with Laura E. Ruberto. Forthcoming in 2018 from Continuum Press in a volume on Italian Film edited by Joseph Luzzi.

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Co-author.

“‘The Hour of the Furnaces’,May 1968, and the Pesaro International Film Festival,”  co-written with Laura E. Ruberto. Forthcoming in The Hour of the Furnaces, edited by  Javier Campo and Humberto Perez-Blanco (University of Chicago Press/Intellect, 2018).