Photo/ Foto: Marlène Ramírez Cancio

Memoria para los Ausentes

In Peru, a long period of subversive and military violence deeply scarred the country. Among the wounds of this dirty war, a wound remained open: that of the missing, thousands of people abducted, whose bodies never were found, leaving whole communities in uncertainty and fear. Today, Peruvians return to the horror as the secret graves are discovered in various regions in Peru.

"Memoria para los Ausentes" (July 2001) overlaps past and present, life and death, facing those responsible for these buried crimes.

Biography

For 18 years, Vichama has grown in Villa El Salvador, a district in the outskirts of LIma. The group offers a theater intimately linked to the social and policial process of the district, as a way of assetrting collective identity as an artistic proposal directed basically at the community development. For the group, theater is more than an occupation, it is a mission, a way of being part of the world, to defend the right to create, so that this this no longer a privelege and to democratize the culture; a way of transforming human relations and contributing to human development. Defending the right to invent our own feelings separately from our own experiences, feelings that intend to connect reason with the heart. A theater that contributes to reocvering what it is to be human which we are losing.

The most significant theater works they have produced are: "Diologo entre Zorros," about the history of Villa El Salvador, released in 1985. "Carnaval por la Vida" about women, their organization and their struggle, released in 1988. "Voces en el Silencio", about violence, released in 1992. "Lirio de Esperanza" about Maria Elena Moyano, popular leader and victim of violence, relsaed in 1996. "La Noche de los Olvidados," about authoritarianism and misery, relesead in 1998. "La Cantante Calva" y "Esperando a Godot" about the so-called theater of the absurd released in march of 2000.