This weeks reading was extremely depressing as it focused on the numerous amount of wars that took place in South America during the late 1900s. These were all interfered with by the US because of the countries lack of money and also the US’s desire for their ideology to be prevalent in the continent below them.

The description in Mario Vargas Llosa’s extract from “Inquest in the Andes: A Latin American writer explores the political lessons of a Peruvian massacre”, shows the brutality and almost inhumane behaviour that was taking place in many Latin American countries.

The reasoning behind the violent outburst by the villagers is that ‘the reporters were murdered because they walked into Uchuraccay with a Communist flag’ (pg 305). There is a sense of confusion in the report, as the author quotes that it is very unlikely for the reporters to walk into a village holding a communist flag because of the danger that it would put them in. But still, this shows how anxious many Latin American villages were. The idea that outsiders were not welcome in small communities, and that the political environment was so tense that even the idea of reporters coming into the village was so frightening that they needed to be killed. Not just killed, but completely mutilated in order to stop any effort of them getting revenge from the grave: ‘The bodies were especially mutilated around the mouth and eyes, in the belief that the victim should be deprived of his sight, so he cannot recognise his killers, and of his tongue, so he cannot denounce them. Their ankles were broken, so they could not come back for revenge. The villagers stripped the bodies; they washed the clothes and burned them in a purification ceremony known as pichja.'(Pg 304). 

This article conveys an exceptionally cannibalistic representation of the Peruvian villagers, and could be viewed as portraying the violence in Peru as a very negative thing. However, it is clear from the article that ‘The peasants always suffer the greatest number of victims. At least 750 of them have been killed in Peru since the beginning of 1983.’ (Pg 306). I think this shows that the violence acted out by the villagers is a by-product of the violence that was taking hold of all of Peru, because of the threat to democracy and therefore, their lives.