SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES,

LITERATURE, CULTURE AND

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Samantha Browne
11115033
Link in Occasional
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Mariano Paz
SP4622
25/04/2016

I, ___Samantha Browne_____, declare that the attached essay/project is entirely

my own work, in my own words, and that all sources used in researching it are
fully acknowledged and all quotations properly identified

Explore the representation of Andean indigenous identities

and the issue of post-memory in La teta asustada.
The following essay will consider both the issue of post-memory and the
representation of Andean indigenous identities in Claudia Llosas La Teta Asustada.
The film is set in between 1980 and 1992 in Peru during the years following a period
of political violence and turbulence, particularly in the Andean region due to the
uprising of the Maoist group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and the subsequent
reactions of the paramilitary and state armed forces. Segn Cisneros (2013);

El pas enfrent un conflicto armado interno entre 1980 y el 2000, el cual cobr
aproximadamente 70,000 vctimas
(Cisneros, 2013)

La Teta Asustada tells the story of Fausta, a young woman whose mother was
raped, and is believed to have inherited the traumatic experiences of her mother
according to a folk belief that the trauma experienced by women was transmitted
through lactation of the breast milk. Thus, this period of violence and abuse continues
to affect not only those who experienced it firsthand, but also subsequent generations.
This brings us to the notion of Post-Memory, put forward by Marieanne
Hirsch in 2001. She states that:
Postmemory is the response of the second generation to the trauma of the first. More
specifically, it describes the relationship of children of survivors of cultural or
collective trauma to the experiences of their parents, experiences that they
"remember" only as the narratives and images with which they grew up, but that are
so powerful, so monumental, as to constitute memories in their own right
(Hirsch, 2001: 12)

Although the traumatic experiences of her mother are transmitted through

narrative (At the beginning of the film, before her death, we can see that Faustas
mother is singing to her daughter about her feelings of fear and can assume this is the
type of lullaby Fausta has grown up with) it is also necessary to consider the fact
that the transmission of memory is not necessarily always intentional or verbal. In
fact, as Hirsch (2001) suggests, it is often based on silence rather than speech, on
the invisible rather than the visible. This draws great parallels with the evolutionary

concept of atavism/ atavistic regression which refers to the tendency to revert to a

certain ancestral type either in biological aspects such as DNA or more sociological
aspects such as the mirroring of older and more primitive tendencies or ideologies.
The idea was first put forward by Australian scholar and psychiatrist Ainslie Meares
in 1960:
The atavistic hypothesis requires a regression from normal adult mental
function at an intellectual, logical level, to an archaic level of mental function
in which the process of suggestion determines the acceptance of ideas. This
regression is considered to be the basic mechanism in the production of
hypnosis.
(Meares, 1960: 59)

The films makes reference to both of these concepts through its use of both
biological aspects such as breastfeeding and narrative aspects such as song to
effectively portray the different modalities in which memory can be transmitted,
consciously or subconsciously, verbally or otherwise.

Hirsch (2001) also considers the fact that an entire generation cannot be
considered as one entity and that each member of the generation might display
varying levels of curiosity and desire, as well as ambivalences about wanting to own
their parents' knowledge. (Hirsch, 2001:12). This adds a certain layer of subjectivity
to the concept, which of course does not only pertain to subsequent generations, but
also to the first, in terms of how they have remembered and narrated events. Lazarra
(2006) considers the difficulties survivors or witnesses of political violence have
experienced first hand in their attempts to communicate limit experiences like
torture and disappearance which seem to defy expression:

Memories are selective: rather than confront difficult, painful realities, people often
prefer to remember in ways that alleviate cognitive dissonance

(Lazarra, 2006)

This would suggest that although survivors or witnesses of political violence

may feel a certain sense of responsibility or obligation to tell their story, often
referred to as testimonial imperative, perhaps a certain distance is necessary in
order to recount events in an objective and unbiased manner. Hirsch (2001)

recognises the belated nature of memory as a reason why subsequent generations

could perhaps be of more importance and better usage in terms of producing more
objective narratives, than those of the primary generations.
The notion of post-memory derives from the recognition of the belated nature of
traumatic memory itself. If indeed one of the signs of trauma is its delayed
recognition, if trauma is recognizable only through its after-effects, then it is not
surprising that it is transmitted across generations. Perhaps it is only in subsequent
generations that trauma can be witnessed and worked through, by those who were
not there to live it but who received its effects, belatedly, through the narratives,
actions and symptoms of the previous generation.

(Hirsch, 2001: 12)

The problem with this, however, is the issue of ownership which surrounds the
concept of memory. Following the boom of literature surrounding memory both in
Spain regarding the civil war and the dictatorships of Latin Americas recent past,
members of subsequent generations feel the need to validate their objectives for
writing and can often be dismissed as opportunistic or irrelevant if they do not attain
direct familial ties with these experiences of political violence and terrorism.
Taylor (1992) discusses both the logistical as well as the ethical issues
surrounding the ownership of information and memory. She considers both practical
issues such as copyright and royalty payments as well as the moral implications which
surround the representation of the memories of others.
People feel that it is their story, that they own it. It is their intellectual property,
something that has come out of their minds. For that reason, they will always own
their story.

(Taylor, 1992: 44)

Consequently, this can be a great cause of difficulty in terms of representing past

generations whose stories will die with them unless they are told, and also minority or
indigenous peoples, who do not attain the tools to enable them to represent themselves
and their place in Latin American society sufficiently.
This brings us to our discussion of the representation of Andean indigenous
identities in La Teta Asustada. The two main aspects that we will consider with
respect to the portrayal of the lives and struggles of indigenous peoples in this film are
the geographical location and the use of the Quecha language. Firstly, however, we
will consider the reasons behind this sudden surge in interest towards indigenous

communities and languages from an academic viewpoint. According to Cisneros

(2013);
El inters acadmico hacia estas lenguas, aunque ha sido constante, vive un
incremento. Recientes cambios en los sectores de educacin, medios de
comunicacin y sistema poltico permiten que [las lenguas indgenas]viven una
significativa corriente de revitalizacin, no tanto en el aumento del porcentaje de
hablantes como en el sentido de una mayor aceptacin y demanda de su uso pblico,
en contraste a lo que habra sido una poltica que vari entre el abierto rechazo y la
tolerancia a lo largo de la segunda mitad del siglo XX
(Cisneros, 2013)

However, it is not simply the prevalence and frequency of usage of these minority
languages such as Quecha, but rather how they are represented in contrast to Spanish,
and how the speakers of these languages can often be presented as inferior within
Latin American societies. In La Teta Asustada, Fausta generally speaks Spanish with
figures of authority or people of a higher socio-economic status:
La Guayi y Fausta hablan espaol, lengua con la que se relacionan principalmente
con sus empleadores y en su desplazamiento social; sin embargo, en determinados
segmentos se expresan en sus lenguas maternas, guaran y quechua. El uso de
idiomas catalogados como indgenas o precolombinos implica con su sola presencia
procesos histricos que han moldeado una realidad postcolonial como la
latinoamericana
(Cisneros, 2013)

It is interesting to observe, however, that Faustas employer (a renowned pianist and

composer) plagiarises Faustas melody about the mermaid who must collect quinoa
grains before being released into the sea. Not only does Llosa draw a parallel between
the story of the mermaid and that of Fausta (her employer gives her a pearl for every
song she sings, which in turn permits Fausta to pay for her mothers funeral and
become liberated from the burden of concealing her corpse), but the fact that she does
not use Faustas lyrics, only her melody, speaks volumes in itself. Not only does the
employer abuse her power over Fausta by her lack of accreditation, but her complete
dismissal of Faustas words and voice as unimportant and unworthy, is perhaps even
more insulting and derogative than the plagiarism itself.

In terms of the geographical location of the film, it is made clear to us in the

opening scene of the film that both Fausta and her mother have migrated from a
village in the Andean Region to a Pueblo Joven on the outskirts of Lima where they

live among others who escaped the terrorism and violence of the Andes, and have
taken refuge in the deserts. As mentioned in the beginning of this essay, the Andean
region is an area that hosts the largest number of Quechua speakers and holds the
highest number of victims of terrorism. It is clear that this geographical location
already puts the indigenous people in a socially and economically disadvantageous
position. According to Cisnero (2013);
Las directoras escogen personajes que representan sectores vulnerables, afectados y
movilizados a travs de fronteras internas y externas para huir y superar dichas
condiciones. Este hecho traza no solo lmites geogrficos al interior de cada pelcula,
sino principalmente la representacin de un mapa de relaciones hegemnicas entre
diferentes realidades socioeconmicas al interior de Latinoamrica.
(Cisnero, 2013)

The Pueblo Joven, in which Fausta and her family live, however, is not the
film's only setting. For example, the home of Faustas employer and the hospital in
Lima city centre, to which Fausta and her uncle travel in order to consult a doctor due
to her frequent nosebleeds and fainting. Both of these settings provide a strong
contrast to the decrepit rural village which Fausta comes from. It is most likely that
the employment of these contrasting settings were not to provide a balanced view of
life in modern Lima nor to boast its urban development, but rather to show the
segregation of these minorities.
In conclusion, Claudia Llosas La Teta Asustada considers both the issue of
post-memory and the representation of Andean indigenous identities in great depth.
The protagonist Fausta is exemplary of Hirschs notion of post-memory in that the
fear her mother felt and experienced first-hand has been transmitted both through the
physical transmission of breast milk as well as narratives such as song which have
dominated the protagonists life and overshadowed her own memories and
experiences. In terms of representing indigenous identities, both the use of minority
languages (and its contrast with the use of Spanish) as well as contrasting geographic
locations are extremely effective in their representation of the indigenous people and
the portrayal of the segregation to which these communities are subject to in
contemporary Latin American society.

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