Remembering putis: State, earth, and the indigenous ordinary in the Peruvian Andes

On December 13, 1984, 123 Quechua community members were executed by the Peruvian military and left in a mass grave in the community of Putis in the region of Ayacucho, Peru. They were among the approximately 70,000 lives (the majority of whom were Indigenous) estimated to have been lost during the Shining Path-Peruvian state conflict, escalating through the 1980s and 1990s. This chapter is a commentary on the relationship between Indigenous community members, specifically Quechua people, and the state, fraught since colonial and independence eras. As a Wanka and Quechua educational researcher, the author links Putis with contrasting ideas of humanity, selective citizenship, and the disposability of Indigenous bodies. Inspired by Aziz Choudry's work on learning from history and each other, the author proposes the Indigenous ordinary as an ontological-pedagogical frame for contesting colonial capital and recognizing human life as a process of embedded earth relations that rethink nationhood along Indigenous terms.