Margarita Saona's and Víctor Vich's volumes are key reference points for any scholar of Peruvian cultural memory, and will also be useful for those interested in collective memory more generally and even those considering the wider issue of the political role of culture. Both insist upon the importance of artistic initiatives in Peru today for addressing the political violence sparked by the Shining Path's insurrection (1980–2000), and lay a map of the terrain of the best known (mainly visual) Peruvian cultural memory enterprises, either produced in Lima or that have reached a Lima audience. They add to the small but growing number of book-length studies on cultural memory in Peru, which includes Batallas por la memoria: antagonismos de la promesa peruana edited by Marita Hamman, Santiago López-Maguiña, Gonzalo Portocarrero and Víctor Vich, Olga González's Unveiling the Secrets of War in the Peruvian Andes, Cynthia Milton's edited volume Art from a Fractured Past. Memory and Truth-Telling in Post-Shining Path Peru and No hay mañana sin ayer: batallas por la memoria y consolidación democrática en el Perú by Carlos Iván Degregori, Tamia Portugal, Gabriel Salazar and Renzo Aroni.

Saona's focus is upon what we mean when we say we ‘remember’ collectively (that is, as individuals feel we ‘remember’ pasts that we did not ourselves experience) and on how this effect is achieved through concrete forms of representation. The notion of empathy is important to her argument: collective memory works via the empathy that we can come to feel for the experiences of others, thanks to the specific mechanisms of certain cultural productions. She builds upon an extensive bibliography of studies in cultural memory from diverse contexts, theorisations of different symbolic forms (photography, memorials, architecture, plastic arts, digital media), and a dialogue with neuro-scientific understandings of memory.

The book is divided into four chapters. The first is in fact a chapter-length introduction, which contextualises the study by examining how the idea of collective memory as an ethical necessity was established by the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación) (2001–03). The chapter in turn gives an account of the global tendency towards the establishment of such commissions, and as such is useful in thinking about the connections between Peruvian cultural memory and the international discourses of transitional justice. The second chapter looks into how images make way for cultural memory, specifically by comparing the Commission's Yuyanapaq photography exhibition, and pictorial representations produced on the basis of local artisanal traditions in Ayacucho (drawings by retablo artist Edilberto Jiménez, and a series of paintings by the Sarhua community). This chapter reveals that in Peruvian cultural memory there is a generalised focus on the victim, that there is a noteworthy lack of heroic narratives, and that there is an opposition between those cultural productions which prefer to evoke the violence rather than confront the viewer with direct representations of it (produced by the ‘lettered’ sectors of Peruvian society who were not themselves affected by the violence), and those which attempt rather to represent the crudeness of violence in a way which is unsettling, and therefore transmit traumatic experience to the viewer (produced by groups who were directly affected by the violence). The third chapter looks at cultural memory initiatives which work via evoking the dead or disappeared, mainly discussing the photographs taken by Domingo Giribaldi of the exhumed clothing of victims of the Putis massacre, and the El ojo que llora memorial in Lima, and shows how both of these produce cultural memory via the metonymical representation of the body of victims. The final chapter examines how places can become devices for collective remembering, either as artificial creations of architecture, design and ritual, or by way of establishing the sites where atrocities occurred as places of memory; this is followed by a reflection on ‘non-sited’ cultural memory initiatives, an itinerant museum and an online artistic project. The book offers no concluding section; as a result, its position regarding the objects studied remains somewhat understated.

Vich's volume, a series of essays, studies some of the same objects as Saona's but has a broader scope. Its stance is, in comparison, markedly more political: the author is interested in how cultural representations can produce critical awareness of political issues in their audiences. The focus is mainly upon cultural memory in art, but there are also essays on objects that defy traditional definitions of ‘art’, as well as some on cultural initiatives that were produced before or during the conflict. The book's main, and convincing, point is that in a context where the political sphere is much discredited and massive inequalities are naturalised, it is the cultural sphere where one can find truly politicising initiatives that attempt to address the deep causes of violence. In this view, the initiatives studied promote critical thinking by representing violence, both specific and structural, which is usually hidden and silenced. Vich therefore argues at several points, evidently with a Peruvian reader in mind, for the promotion and dissemination of this type of art and culture. The theoretical framework of the book (which is at times more explicit than others) is mostly based on Badiou, Rancière and Žižek.

The book is divided into an introduction and 12 chapters. These can either be read as a sequence, with the chapters proceeding in a loosely chronological order (although a unifying narrative is for the most part missing), or as independent units. The first is on the fate of a famous huayno (a genre of Andean music), ‘Flor de retama’ (1970), before, during and after political violence. The second and third are on artworks made during the conflict (Jiménez's retablos and Ricardo Wiesse's land art, Diez cantutas en Cieneguilla). Chapters 4 and 5 are on photography: a series on the ruins of the Fronton gaol by Gladys Alvarado, and images from Yuyanapaq. The sixth chapter looks into the role of political cartoons during and after political violence, and chapter 7 compares three post-violence films produced in Lima. The eighth examines the role of performance and other symbolic interventions in Lima street protests in toppling the Fujimori regime. Chapter 9 compares how recent plastic arts in Lima have created critical awareness of the conflict with the Shining Path, the corruption of state institutions and globalisation. The tenth and eleventh chapters study post-conflict mostly limeño artwork, in the gallery and as interventions in public spaces respectively. The last chapter formulates some conclusions, centred on the notion of collective mourning.

Reading these books together is useful insofar as their objectives are similar, and some of the shortcomings of each are addressed in the other. In its dialogue with an extensive bibliography on cultural memory and in pointing out how what we understand as collective remembering is an effect of specific cultural productions, Saona's text will be useful both for those interested in cultural memory in Peru and for those studying other contexts. However, it is to some degree lacking a theoretical discussion and a specific appreciation of how these works play into the local political and social situation. The engagement with existing bibliography on cultural memory is missing in Vich's volume, which is also directed at a smaller (Peruvian) readership. The strengths of Poéticas del duelo is that it looks into the way each piece positions itself politically, and provides contextual information where necessary, as if for a younger reader unfamiliar with the historical details referenced by the cultural representations. It also offers theoretical discussions which, in addition to enriching the analyses, connect the text more directly with current thinking as to the political role of art. Vich's book also covers more material and includes more images, but it has less focus and can at times be careless, for instance, in the citation of sources. Saona's volume is more careful methodologically and more perceptive as to some of the major contrasts within Peruvian cultural memory, which Vich tends to brush over.

But what these books have in common is more striking than their differences. Both are optimistic, viewing the mediations of cultural memory as contributions towards a better (more empathetic, solidary, less discriminatory in Saona, more critical and politicised, in Vich) national community. Readers will not find, in either, a critical evaluation of cultural memory as a discourse particular to the current global and Peruvian context. Likewise, they both stop short of fully systematising tendencies within this production, or of engaging with the debate as to the pros and cons of its different forms. In addition, readers interested in cultural memory practices that were not produced nor circulated in Lima will have to turn to other studies (such as some of the essays in Milton's volume and in No hay mañana sin ayer, cited above). Overall, these books are important contributions, but many questions remain to be answered (and, moreover, asked) about cultural memory in Peru today.