Using ethnographic and historical methods, this field account empirically describes the main characteristics of the political discourse expressed by veterans of the Peruvian « counterterrorist war » in the post-conflict period. This discourse reveals the intertwining of the memory of state violence after being victims of forced recruitment and, at the same time, the politicization of the war experience following participation in a fratricidal war. In this way, it reveals the voices of low-ranking veterans: sergeants, corporals and soldiers, mostly of indigenous origin and language, who fought and participated decisively in the defeat of the Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, which, between the 1980s and 1990s, threatened to overthrow the democratic system, destroy the Peruvian state and impose a new form of government. The field narrative was conducted in the context of the public demonstrations that the veterans themselves organized between 2018 and 2019 with the aim of demanding that the parliament recognize and enforce their rights as war veterans. Through the technique of participant observation and interviews, this ethnographic description focuses on capturing the meaning and significance underlying their stories, the symbolic languages present in each of their performances.

« Conquérir ou mourir » Ethnographie sur la mobilisation politique des vétérans de la « guerre contreterroriste » au Pérou