Claudia Llosa and The milk of sorrow**: films, conflict(s) and popular cultures in Peru

Abstract

This paper is an analysis of the film The milk of sorrow by Claudia Llosa and of the film’s context. This film won several international awards and nominations, generating significant controversy by critics and being the main subject of various academic approaches. The film deals with the traumas suffered by Fausta, a young woman of indigenous origin, in the midst of armed conflict in Peru. It starts with the death of Fausta’s mother, while is telling the story of how this woman, being pregnant, was brutally assaulted and raped by the same armed group that killed Fausta´s father. Because of the forced displacement, mother and daughter take refuge with relatives in a suburb of Lima, city in which the girl seeks employment and suffers injustices. This analysis takes into account Llosa’s directorial debut, Madeinusa, and gives some elements of Peru sociocultural and political context. The paper approaches the cultural aspects linked to the Peruvian armed conflict between 1980 and 2000, and other longer-term conflicts, especially those related to the center-periphery and Eurocentric imposition of dominant elites. Some symbolic aspects of the indigenous cultures of Peruvian Andes and popular cultures of Lima’s slums are being analyzed. Some hybridizations and forms of resistance and emancipation are noticed; this is in dialogue with some problems that are, in some way, transversal in Latin America.