Human Rights Counterpublics in Peru

In 2003, Perú’s Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (CVR) issued its groundbreaking final report on the human rights abuses perpetuated by two revolutionary groups and the country’s armed forces and police from 1980 to 2000. Sylvanna M. Falcón examines how local communities in Lima have formed oppositional spaces, movements, and communities to challenge a status quo that erases Perú’s history of internal violence. These counterpublics focus on human rights-oriented memory that acknowledges the legacies of racism and misogyny underlying the violence. Falcón’s decolonial feminist analysis challenges the rise of authoritarianism in democratic societies while exploring the limits of liberalism to counteract it. As she shows, projects shaped by counterpublic memory best equip Perúvians to enact real, liberatory, and transformative justice for human rights violations both past and present. Engaging and intimate, Human Rights Counterpublics in Perú illuminates the power of human rights and memory work.