Peruvian Migrant Workers in Japan: Reading "Chimbote ganbare" (2013) by Luis Arriola Ayala (Lima, 1972) as "Cruel Optimism".

"Chimbote ganbare," a short story by the Peruvian writer Luis Arriola Ayala, depicts Peruvian migrant workers unloading a full cargo of frozen tunas in a fish vessel in a coastal city in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan. They are in a dangerous competition, in the form of a game, with two other teams of foreign workers under the vigilance of Japanese workers-spectators who place bets on the respective team. The story reveals the cruelty of a Japanese fish industry exploiting foreigners, but what is crueler, however, is that the Peruvians are enthusiastically engaged in the game, constantly adjusting themselves to a harsh environment and accepting the condition of precarity as their ordinary in their pursuit of a good life. Rather than considering "Chimbote" as a mere criticism against the meritocracy and self-responsibility based on neoliberalism, this study reads it as a story of "cruel optimism," which is defined by Lauren Berlant as a relation of attachment to unattainable hopes shaped by systemic crises. Berlant's notion enables us to understand how and why the Peruvians, trying to stay attached to the fantasy of a good life, manage to live on and reorganize their lives as part of their ordinary practice, even when the cruelty of optimism makes them more vulnerable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]