Rupay: Graphic Histories of Violence in Peru, 1980-1984

This is not a book of History but of some stories about the political violence experienced in Peru between 1980 and 1984. It is the chronicle of a tragedy, of the barbarism that affected and confronted above all the poorest people in this country, whether they were coastal dwellers, peasants, Quechua speakers, indigenous people, soldiers, or members of Sendero Luminoso; all of them belonged to the "lower," subaltern, popular strata. The fact that the so-called "internal armed conflict" fundamentally affected the perennially subordinated reveals its fierce racist and classist character, as well as the profound indifference and contempt of the country's elites toward what was happening during the years of violence. It also helps explain why politicians, media outlets, business groups, senior military commanders, and former armed combatants want to "forget" this conflict. And they want to forget because they know they too are responsible - whether politically or criminally - for the conflict having reached the levels of barbarism that it did. These comic strips, from their modest place, would like to contribute to that historical memory. They address the first years of the painful armed conflict between Peruvians and attempt to reconstruct it through the fiction of images that is the comic.