NEOLIBERAL-FUJIMORISTA TOTALITY: STIGMATISATION AND COLONIALITY IN CONTEMPORARY PERU

Abstract

This article explores the relationship among violence, racism and stigmatisation in the context of the Peruvian internal armed conflict (1980-2000), and how this relationship impacts both on the memory processes in Peru initiated after the collapse of Alberto Fujimori’s government (2000), and on the dimensions of continuity of colonial practices expressed in the ethnic profiling of “the other” to turn him/her into a social and political enemy. From memory studies and politicalcultural history, this paper traces a link between memory battles and social mobilisation, proposing that this link is mediated by what in Peru is known as terruqueo, that is, the artificial, racist and convenient construction of a socio-political enemy to delegitimise forms of social protest that contradict what, in this article, I call Fujimorist totality: a combination of discursive totalitarian practices and politically authoritarian enclaves driven by a neoliberal and extractivist development model.