Lawful Intimacies: Marriage, Race, and the Poetics of Violence in Twentieth Century Peru.

The idea of race in twentieth century Peru is best understood as the struggle for political inclusion within the practice of the law, or within its legal culture. That is, the idea of race in Peru is particularly embedded within the creation of penal codes that were shaped by debates over liberalism and positivism, but also ideas of proper womanhood and marriage. This emerges most cogently in the legal and popular understandings of difference (race) that are negotiated by litigants in court cases concerning rape. In fact, this special relationship between race, gender, and the law is the most salient force in shaping racial categories in Peru, as well as sustaining the social inequalities that still haunt this region. This paper is an examination of archival and ethnographic data collected in Cusco, Peru and will highlight the ways in which women use racial languages and the "poetics" of violence as strategies in court. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]