THE MILK OF SORROW
SUPPLEMENTAL LINKS
La teta asustada (The Milk of Sorrow), directed by Claudia Llosa (Peru, 2009), screened on November 25, 2019. The film explored the traumatic effects of the violence suffered by women as a result of the insurgency of the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) in Peru in the 1990s, and the military and paramilitary responses to the insurgency. The panelists were Professor Kimberly Theidon, a medical anthropologist and the current Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies at The Fletcher School of Tufts University, and author of a book that inspired the film; and Professor Ulla D. Berg, an Associate Professor at the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies and the Department of Anthropology, and the Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Rutgers University.
For further information on The Milk of Sorrow, click on the following links:
Interview with Director Claudia Llosa
NYTimes Film Review by Jeannete Catsolis
For further information on Claudia Llosa, click on the following links:
Article about the Magic Realism of Claudia Llosa’s La teta asustada
For further information on the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) and the Government response, click on the following links:
Book: The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru
Gustavo Gorriti, The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru. Trans. Robin Kirk. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press (1999)
Book: The Shining Path: Love, Madness and Revolution in the Andes
Orin Starn and Miguel La Serna, The Shining Path: Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes. New York: W.W. Norton, 2019.
The response to the insurgency by the government of Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru from 1990 to 2000, evidently resulted in numerous atrocities being committed by the National Intelligence Service and the Army Intelligence Service, and by death squads formed with the encouragement of the government. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission appointed by Fujimori’s successor Alejandro Toledo conducted investigations from 2001 to 2003 and found that atrocities were committed by both the insurgency and the government.
Ulla Berg
Kimberly Theidon
Professor Ulla D. Berg is an Associate Professor at the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies and the Department of Anthropology, and the Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Rutgers University. As a sociocultural and visual anthropologist specializing in Latin America and in Latin communities in the U.S., Professor Berg’s research focuses on historical and contemporary processes and experiences of migration and mobility within Latin America between this region and the United States. Her book, Mobile Selves: Race, Migration, and Belonging in Peru and the U.S., examines how transnational communicative practices and forms of exchange produce new forms of kinship and sociality across multiple borders among racialized global labor migrants. She currently co-chairs the 2015 Society for Visual Anthropology’s Film and Media Festival.
For further information on Professor Ulla Berg, click on the following links:
Article: “Mobilities” on the migrations of indigenous groups in the highlands of Peru
Professor Kimberly Theidon is a medical anthropologist and the current Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies at The Fletcher School of Tufts University. Her work focuses on Latin America with a specific emphasis on the Andean region, and her research interests include political violence, transitional justice, humanitarian and post-conflict interventions, gender studies, and drug policy. Her book Entre Prójimos: El conflicto armado interno y la política de la reconciliación en el Perú inspired the 2009 film La teta asustada (THE MILK OF SORROW) by Claudia Llosa.
For further information on Professor Kimberly Theidon, click on the following links:
Book the Film was based on: Entre Prójimos: Violencia y Reconciliación en el Perú
Kimberly Theidon, Entre Prójimos: Violencia y Reconciliación en el Perú, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (2004)
Article: The Milk of Sorrow: A Theory on the Violence of Memory
Kimberly Theidon, “The Milk of Sorrow: A Theory on the Violence of Memory.” Canadian Women's Studies Journal, Special Issue on Women in Latin America, Vol 27, No.1, 2009.