The last century has witnessed significant articulations and rearticulations of indigenismo and andinismo in Peru, as intellectuals and activists contemplate how to best define the heterogeneous cultures that have developed in the Andean region since the arrival of the first Europeans almost five hundred years ago, and how to best understand the role of Indigenous cultures in the national imaginary and in various modernizing political and social projects that have marked Peruvian history. While these discussions have been led principally by sociologists and anthropologists (and sometimes sociologists against anthropologists, as seen in the infamous roundtable on Todas las sangres in 1965), with key contributions by literary and cultural studies critics, certainly, I propose that Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2021, has developed into one of the key theoretical voices on defining and locating lo andino—namely, Andean Indigenous-mestizo cultures, peoples, and epistemologies—in contemporary Peru through its methodical and meticulous development of a poetics, or perhaps more aptly a “theatrics,” of race.

The Yuyas, as they are affectionately known, began as a group of young actors with a mission to take politically engaged pedagogical theater to disenfranchised communities throughout Peru. The original seven actors, Augusto Casafranca, Amiel Cayo, Ana Correa, Débora Correa, Teresa Ralli, Miguel Rubio (artistic director), and Julian Vargas, formed what is now one of the longest continually operating and most important theater collectives in Latin America. True to its commitment to “think Peru theatrically” (Rubio 2003), a large part of Yuyachkani's corpus is dedicated to the human rights and social justice issues that affect the country, particularly Peru's marginalized rural Indigenous-mestizo communities and urban popular classes. Its role as a political and social commentator became particularly evident during Peru's internal armed conflict between Shining Path and Peruvian military forces (1980–2000), and many of the group's over thirty plays (and counting) are dedicated to human rights and memory work about this period. Yuyachkani earned the Peruvian National Human Rights Award in 2000 and was invited by the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2003) as one of the principal artistic collaborators in its transitional justice efforts. Yuyachkani is a major force in Latin American theater, and the actors have participated in countless festivals, led numerous workshops at universities and cultural cent-ers, and performed extensively throughout both North and South America over the collective's five decades.