Gender, Testimony, Public Space and Collaborative Virtual Platforms: The Case of The Quipu Project

• In Event: Reproduction, Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Discourses in Latin America

Abstract

The debate around the new reproductive health and family planning program introduced in Peru by President Alberto Fujimori’s government in 1994 circled around the female body and choice of a missing subject or actor. The three main narratives deployed in the public space during the discussion (the Government, the Church and the Feminist Groups) failed to address the specific experience of Peruvian Quechua-speaking indigenous women. (Crenshaw, 1992)
The Quipu Project (Lima-London, 2014) is a transmedia documentary that using a specially-developed telephone line service, an interactive documentary, a radio campaign and a feature documentary, provides “the framework for those affected by this policy to tell their story in their own words and bring it to an international audience.” In that sense this platform generates a second public space that claims to be more democratic because of the direct participation of those who were more affected.
The following paper has three aims. To map the terms of collaboration of this project (the actors, discourses and interactions). To compare the public space created by this project to the public space deployed between 1994 and 1997 in Peru´s media. Finally this paper aims to discuss the ways in which testimony and gender is shape by new media in this project and in general.

Author

• Veronica Uribe del Aguila, Stony Brook University (SUNY)