How Can a Person be Located After Catastrophe?

Persona, by José Carlos Agüero. Atmosféricas and Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2025, 200 pp.

Abstract

This review examines Persona by José Carlos Agüero, a fragmentary book that combines essay, poetry, photographs, maps and personal archival documents to question the memory of his parents, Shining Path militants killed by Peruvian security forces. The review highlights how the work unsettles the narratives of official history, Shining Path memory and academia, and how it shifts the sociological question of identity toward the question of what remains of a person after violence. It discusses the search for bodies, the spatiality of memory in Lima and the critique of the demand for the unity of the subject.