Julio Ríos-Figueroa, Constitutional Courts as Mediators. Armed Conflict, Civil–Military Relations and the Rule of Law in Latin America (New York and Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. xv + 238, $110.00; £69.99, hb.
point to the silences in testimonial accounts: silences often produced by the communities themselves for important motives of societal cohesion. Tamia Portugal’s astute interpretation of accounts and actions by the leader of a Putis community points not just to ‘grey zones’ and ‘loose memories’ (p. ), but to the political intentionality behind them as a means to reconstruct his beleaguered community. The theme of closely reading testimonies at the margins makes these chapters cohesive. Furthermore, many of the authors draw upon a similar pool of scholars to bolster their theoretical reading of these testimonies (such as Judith Butler). These theoretical discussions, for themost part, do not seem necessary, principally since the authors themselves provide such deep insights into the testimonies, and additionally since the editors Denegri and Hibbett provide a theoretically very rich and stimulating introduction. While not wanting to abandon the concept of ‘buen recordar’ – that is the idea of the need to recount, of the fidelity and transparency of such recounting – they offer an alternative ethic of ‘recordar sucio’ of the grey zones and messiness of memory as equally if not more important for societal reckoning. For a non-Peruvianist it might be difficult to fully benefit from this book’s potential contribution. Most of the chapters assume the reader knows the general outlines of the conflict in Peru, except for Jelke Boesten’s chapter on the cultural and legal dynamics of marrying victims to their rapists. For instance, even a Peruvian might need a map to know where these communities are located (the geography of conflict is also a story). This wide array of experience of victims, perpetrators, stakeholders and bystanders (not by any means exclusive categories, as several authors illustrate) of the past elucidated here makes the book extremely useful for those wanting to broach the topic of testimonies after conflict, for it shows the diversity and complexity of how the conflict was lived and remembered.