ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on anthropological expertise and its role within the Intercultural Justice Project (IJP), designed and carried out by the Peruvian Judiciary to serve justice using an intercultural approach in a conspicuously multicultural society. While this type of evidence has been used sporadically, to trade essentialized ethnic identity for liberty, proper anthropological expertise should be central to indigenous peoples and peasant communities’ access to justice and to prevent the violations of the human rights of vulnerable persons in indigenous jurisdictions. It should also facilitate coordination between the state’s courts and indigenous and peasant justice systems. To fulfil these tasks, anthropological expertise has to overcome the deficiencies and biases we have identified, as when expert testimonies are written as pleas in favour of indigenous and peasant defendants or are used to justify impunity in rape cases in the name of cultural tolerance. Overcoming these pitfalls is necessary to transform anthropological expert witness depositions into useful devices to clarify the implications of cultural difference for serving justice.
