Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges, and the

many other thinkers and writers who

played in the mind of the now-departed

Fernando Coronil. In five short pages (fol-

lowed by 11 flowing pages of notes), he

sketches out the dream of Anthrohistory as

a project “of this world but not at home in

it,” as one that “must roam in exile”—at

least for now—pursuing the task of exam-

ining “what has been recorded and un-

cover what has been silenced, bringing to

light possible histories.” In a vertiginous

and stirring paragraph—number 7 of the

piece—he begins thus: “Imagine a discus-

sion about truth in a Jorge Luis Borges

story written by Italo Calvino and illus-

trated by M.C. Esher.” He then goes on to

produce a map so imaginative, so distorted

and unfamiliar, that it somehow brings us

back, disheveled, to some kind of truth. To

see how he does that, you will have to buy

the book. Do.

Cajones de la memoria: La historia re-ciente del Peru a traves de los retab-los andinos. Marıa Eugenia Ulfe, Lima:

Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Univer-

sidad Catolica del Peru, 2011. 310 pp.

Olga GonzalezMacalester College

Cajones de la Memoria is a detailed ethno-

graphic study of retablos, a well-known

form of Peruvian art. Written in close

conversation with the artists who created

them, the main focus is on the transforma-

tions these retablos—carved and painted

wooden boxes with figures made of a mix-

ture of plaster and potatoes—have under-

gone in relation to their creators’ attempts

to represent memories of Peru’s violence

from 1980 to 2000. This textured narrative

is based on 5 years of collaborative and of-

ten multisited ethnography in workshops,

galleries, and shops in cities and peasant

communities in Ayacucho, shantytowns,

and upscale neighborhoods in Lima, and

in Naples, Florida in the United States.

The ethnography is divided in two

parts and contains a total of eight chap-

ters. In the first part Ulfe pays attention to

the historical processes that contributed

to the transformation of the cajones of

San Marcos–portable altars used in cattle-

branding ceremonies in the Andes–into

retablos. She argues that this popular art

developed in opposition to high art. Ulfe

then examines the various relationships

artists established with intellectuals, col-

lectors, dealers and tourists, and concludes

that the artists “subvert the will of the

teacher” (59; all translations by the re-

viewer). They thus ultimately create their

own artistic genre, reclaim citizenship, and

gain recognition at the national level. By

presenting in chapter 2 a portrait of the

lives and experiences of the artists negoti-

ating their identities, their notions of place,

and their ideas on continuity and disconti-

nuity, Ulfe stresses the importance of their

agency in the artworks’ production and

commodification. In chapters 3 and 4, she

conveys how this agency takes shape and

inflects the social life of the retablos inside

and outside the workshop. Together they

offer a close examination of family work-

shops, divisions of labor, and dialogues

with clients and intellectuals.

Chapter 4 closes with a discussion of

what distinguishes an artistic retablo from

a commercial one, as defined by its mak-

ers. While aesthetic quality is of the utmost

importance, what seems to be essential to

the artists is the lived experience attached

to the “retablos de arte,” or “retablos espe-

ciales,” and “retablos de comentario so-

cial,” other categories the artists use to

Book Reviews 133

refer to their artistic work. In this way, Ulfe

begins to problematize the relationship be-

tween art and politics, and the artists’ un-

derstanding of their role as witnesses and

engaged observers, highlighting in turn the

ethnographic quality of their work, “the

retablista turns into an ethnographer of

social life” (168).

In the study’s second part, Ulfe ex-

amines a series of retablos especiales that

present social critique, images of globaliza-

tion, and memories of violence. In chap-

ters 5 and 6, she analyzes retablos that de-

pict Peru’s period of violence from 1980 to

2000. This begins through a demonstra-

tion of how the artists sometimes resort

to the so-called “protest” huayno (genre

of Peruvian Andean music) of the 1970s

and Andean myths such as the pishtaco

(slaughterer) and the condenados (con-

demned souls) so as to interpret recent

violent pasts. She argues that images tied

to lyrics of Andean songs or stories are

means to explicate the historical past as

well as to exercise a political voice in iden-

tification with the suffering and the hopes

of Andean people. In chapter 7, she ex-

pands her analysis of the retablos of the

period of violence in order to focus more

specifically on the artists’ need to por-

tray events realistically or through realis-

tic genres. This includes their use of reli-

gious image making as related to “witness-

ing” (testimonio), the expression of emo-

tions, and the reclaiming of the human-

ity of those who died. Memory’s relation-

ship to oblivion is essential to Ulfe’s un-

derstanding of the interplay of images in

the retablos that the artists produce out

of the stories, songs, media research, ru-

mor and gossip, conversation with rela-

tives and intellectuals, and the silences as-

sociated with Peru’s violence. In chapter 6,

for instance, she notes that the artists do

not represent all the massacres, not even

the major ones. She suggests instead that

the artists choose to represent massacres

that enable them to raise historical con-

sciousness rather than simply contribute

to an illusion of historical completeness.

There are two retablos with representa-

tions of massacres in Cajones de la memo-

ria: “Martires de Uchuraccay,” in honor

of the eight journalists who were killed by

a group of peasants who mistook them

for Shining Path terrorists in 1983; and

“Cayara,” a 1988 massacre in which two

dozen peasants in the highland village of

Cayara were tortured and killed by the mil-

itary. The contrast between the two cases

is interesting because, as Ulfe points out,

the Uchuraccay case received strong me-

dia coverage and became an emblematic

memory of Peru’s historical past. Mean-

while, Cayara received little exposure, wit-

nesses were killed, and the case ultimately

closed. Furthermore, in the case of Uchu-

raccay artists who have experienced Pe-

ruvian society’s profound racism ask for

empathy and redemption for the peas-

ants who committed the crime. Hence, the

retablos become vehicles through which

viewers are confronted with uncomfort-

able truths and silences: They present an

indictment of Peruvian society, as Ulfe

suggests.

Gender appears in retablos exam-

ined in a number of chapters. In part 1

Ulfe focuses on Edilberto Jimenez’ “Flor

de Retama”—based on the huayno writ-

ten about the clash over educational re-

forms between the police and protestors

in Huanta in 1969—in which women rep-

resent courage, and the construction of

new notions of citizenship by leaving the

domestic sphere to fight on the streets

for the rights of their children. While the

retablo speaks of the 1969 events, Edilberto

134 J o u r n a l o f L a t i n A m e r i c a n a n d C a r i b b e a n A n t h r o p o l o g y

tells Ulfe it can evoke the internal armed

conflict as well. According to Edilberto,

“Flor de Retama is the song, one of those

songs. In those times of violence every-

body sang, Sendero sang it, the army sang

it. Everybody!” (197). In chapter 6, she ex-

amines retablos made in the mid-1980s—

when violence was escalating and the mil-

itary had taken control of the region of

Ayacucho—unsettling images of women

in grief and mourning stand out. Ulfe

points out that in spite of the melancholy,

chaos, and apocalyptic visions represented

in these retablos, the artists make room

for hope. This is especially evident in Sil-

vestre Atacusi’s “Llanto y Dolor de la Mu-

jer Andina,” in which the last phrase of the

prayer to the crucified woman reads “rec-

onciliation without impunity.” According

to Ulfe this is “a call for truth, for jus-

tice, to not forget the thousands of vic-

tims of the years of violence,” (247). Ulfe

continues to explore indirectly in chap-

ter 7 the issue of gender. She illustrates

retablos’ transformations in response to

the global art market. In this case she dis-

cusses the retablo “Las Chicas Vargas” that

Alcides Quispe made for a client in the

United States. Based on Alberto Vargas’

book The Esquire Years, it includes calen-

dar girls in provocative poses. Quispe’s ver-

sion followed Andean standards of beauty

and sensuality and presented voluptuous

women tempted by demons and men. Ac-

cording to Ulfe, while Quispe and other

artists might depend on the demands of

the global market, their work also carries

their specific cultural views.

Cajones de la memoria is about “frag-

mented memories” and “national frag-

ments,” to use some of Ulfe’s own phrases.

It is also about an artistic genre that I be-

lieve owes its creative and political force,

and collective value, to a commitment

to transgression within the confines of

the established art convention that in-

spired the retablo. Ulfe provides a de-

tailed historical account of these multiple

transgressions. From that perspective, the

chapter “Cruzando fronteras: discursos

modernos en los retablos peruanos”

[Crossing Borders: Modern Discourses in

Peruvian Retablos] speaks of the artists’

unyielding engagement with transforma-

tion. However, the first part of the title

might lend itself to some confusion since

the artists have been crossing borders in

a multiplicity of ways independently of

globalization.

Ulfe presents a compelling read and

makes an important contribution to the

fields of memory studies, visual anthro-

pology, and anthropology of violence,

Latin American studies, and art history.

The text enriches the literature on modes

of truth telling in Peru and Latin Amer-

ica and contributes, as Milton has so

aptly put it, to the “expansion of the

archive” to incorporate other memories

and histories beyond official and written

records. Noteworthy, Ulfe’s study is the

most comprehensive on retablos ever writ-

ten. It includes forty plates of images. Only

nine are color plates but all of them can

be enjoyed in color at http://blog.pucp.

edu.pe//cajonesdelamemoria.

Reference Cited

Milton, Cynthia.. (2009) Images of Truth:

Art as a Medium for Recounting

Peru’s Internal War. A Contracorri-

ente. Journal on Social History and

Literature in Latin America 6(2): 63–

102.

Book Reviews 135