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Exceptional Others: Politicians, Rottweilers, and Alterity in the 2006 Peruvian Elections

This article examines the representations of important political figures in the 2006 election in Peru, with special attention to outgoing President Alejandro Toledo, unsuccessful candidate Ollanta Humala, and the curious case of a rottweiler named Lay Fung who shortly after the election killed an alleged burglar in a working-class neighborhood in Lima. While these may seem unrelated stories, the 2006 presidential election and the case of Lay Fung provide useful windows into the workings of otherness in contemporary urban Peru. We examine a particular kind of otherness that we call exceptional otherness, in which it is the exceptions that prove a rule about the working of racial and social exclusions. This article provides a general discussion of the racialized climate of Peruvian politics, a comparison of the ways in which President Toledo and presidential candidate Humala negotiated their otherness, and finally a discussion of how a rottweiler with a Chinese name came to occupy a key place in a national debate over security, justice, and citizenship.