ASHES
During the 80s and 90s, the Peruvian terrorist group Shining Path induced the country into a permanent state of fear. After hundreds of attacks and more than seventy thousand deaths, the police were able to capture the leadership formed by Abimael Guzmán and Elena Iparraguire.
The terrorist label has been used, during and after the internal conflict, as a tool to deligitimate and, above all, dehumanize not only the perpetrators of those acts, but also anyone who approaches a critical analysis of the events and their motives. Their humanity has been reduced to ashes. No atrocity deserves to be forgotten, however, I ask myself if there is, or was, something human in these people. Using a video the police found of Guzman and his followers dancing in an apartment they used to hide, and a song by the mythical Peruvian singer Chabuca Granda, I question if there is perhaps something that could bring us closer to people so irrevocably distant to us.