ABSTRACT
News travels fast on the road. We heard about the accident when staying in the small Peruvian village of Chakachimpa. 1 Chakachimpa sits high in the Andes, within sight of the construction of the new Inter-oceanic highway, currently being built to connect Brazil to Asian grain markets across the Pacific Ocean. Some 30 or so people from Chakachimpa were working for the construction company, CONIRSA, bringing news each night which soon circulated between neighbours and kin. This was the first fatality of the construction project. The people we were living with were not sure exactly what had happened. At one remove the event circulated as ‘gossip’, ‘word of mouth’ in a world of not quite knowing – people knew that somebody had been killed violently, by heavy machinery, but the narrative ended there, in speculation as to what exactly had happened.
