In this post, Sandra Rodríguez Castañeda, a PhD student at the UCL Institute of the Americas discusses a project of archival recovery in northern Peru. 

Peasants, Bureaucrats, Archivists? The Living Archive of the Rondas Campesinas of Chota, Cajamarca 

Sandra W Rodríguez Castañeda 

“Te buscas tu muerte” (You are looking for your own death), reads a carved inscription on the fleshly leaf of a penca (Agave cordillerensis). Widely used as fencing material in the Peruvian Andes, this plant also serves as a surface for anonymous handwritten messages scratched with its pointed thorn – usually love notes, but sometimes threats –like this one. It is common to find such messages along communal paths where pencas double as fences and public boards. A photocopy of this leaf appears as bio-evidence (see image above) within an acta de constatación (minute of findings), produced after a “visual inspection” carefully carried out on Eufemio B.’s property. The minute confirms the destruction of a pajuro tree and incorporates photographs of additional death threats: one written on the accuser’s door, and a medium-size cross drawn in oil on the entryway floor. In 2003, Eufemio B accused Demóstenes T. of taking possession of a piece of land he claimed as his own. Despite its formal language and legal tone, this file was not produced for a court of law. It belongs instead to a folk-legal system devised and administered by peasants in the northern Peruvian Andes over nearly five decades: the justice system of the rondas campesinas.  

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In this blog, Tom Hindley, a final-year undergraduate at the UCL Institute of the Americas, writes on the recent Institute of the Americas’ public seminar about Operation Cóndor.

 Lessons Learned from Fifty Years of Operation Cóndor

Tom Hindley

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the latest instalment in the Institute of the Americas’ public seminar series. As a student at the Institute, I regularly attend these seminars, which offer an opportunity to connect with my academic interests (and grab some of the best empanadas available in London). However, this particular seminar really stood out as both a cutting remembrance of an important historical process, the coordinated policy of repression across several South American countries by military regimes in the 1970s that came to be known as Plan Cóndor or Operation Cóndor, and a reminder of a poignantly current political trend towards authoritarianism.

Fifty years after Operation Cóndor, to some, may sound like a conventional retelling of a conventional Latin American Cold War history that elicits the usual senses of shock and disbelief which accompany a raw account of violence and human rights abuse. However, through the broad perspectives of speakers Karinna Fernández Neira, Philippe Sands and Sebastián Smart, the idea of a concluded history – or of anything conventional at all – could not be further from the truth. (more…)

Welcome to the official blog of the UCL Institute of the Americas!

Here you’ll find contributions from our staff, students, alumni, and visiting scholars, exploring a wide range of topics that deepen understanding of the Western Hemisphere.

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