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La Teta Asustada
La Teta Asustada
La Teta Asustada
Date of Submission:
Samantha Browne
11115033
Link in Occasional
N/A
Mariano Paz
SP4622
25/04/2016
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)
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)
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)
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.
Bibliography
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