Persistent pasts in Peruvian Amazon: temporal clashes and justice among the Ashaninka of the Ene river (1980-2017)

Abstract

The main purpose of this text is to understand how the Amerindian insistence on the persistence of the past is part of a political strategy of non-repetition. For this, based on ethnographical research and bibliographic review, I propose to address the historical experience of the Ashaninka that inhabit the basin of the river Ene, in the central Peruvian Amazon rainforest. I believe that the disagreements over the time framing of the “internal armed conflict” between Ashaninka discourses and the Peruvian state can help us to legitimize and take seriously non-Western perceptions of time and justice. By discussing the limits and potentials derived from indigenous cosmology as a legitimate way of being and relating with time and politics, I claim that it is possible and necessary to produce ontological and epistemological value for differentiated experiences of time, in order to address history as an ethical tool in order to think about epistemic justice.