Doctoral Dissertation Research: Law, Transitional Justice and National Reconciliation in Post-war Peru

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This project studies the place of ordinary criminal law in the process of national reconciliation in post war-Peru. It comprises an ethnographic study of a selection of 47 paradigmatic legal cases filed by the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2003, to prosecute unpunished perpetrators of state-sponsored crimes during the internal war in Peru (1980-1995). It seeks, in particular, to examine how victims of human rights violations come to acknowledge new forms of suffering and the possibilities of law as a means for obtaining both justice and reparation. The study consists of an ethnographic analysis among Quechua peasant victims of state crimes, legal personal, human rights activists, and members of the TRC. By following cases as they move through the Peruvian judicial system and the everyday lives of the victims involved, this study will make use of technologies of data-collection such as textual analysis and archival work, ethnography of discourse, open-ended interviews, and participant observation. The work will contribute to theories of transitional justice through the exploration of areas hitherto unexamined, such as the cultural elaboration of law in the aftermath of violence. It will also contribute to discussions of preventing violent conflict by means of an ethnographic exploration of the problems of access to justice and the everyday working of law in the aftermath of violence. This award was co-funded by NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering.