Poetics of testimony against the forgotten in the Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani

The Yuyachkani Cultural Group confronts battles for memory threatened by neocolonial forces. This article analyzes the group's pedagogical principles, which invite its actors and actresses, and workshop participants, to create from their memories and perspectives on their lives and historical contexts. By poetically elaborating their testimonies, dissident memories are reactivated through the use of stage language combined with quotidian relates, producing evidence of an «other» narrative that strengthens the struggle against oblivion. Following the listening policy of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Yuyachkani puts forward the testimony as a prove of what really happened in times of horror. The group thus invents actor-testigo operations, capable of confronting insufficient stories, in other words, hegemonic ways of inhabiting the world that only include a part of the population.