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The exhumations of the war dead in Peru aim to restore their dignity while alleviating the suffering of their relatives and, more broadly, to work towards national reconciliation through the reconstruction of the social fabric. Contrary to these ideals, the article deals with the case of forced exhumations which do not target the disappeared, but the individuals whom the families had already been able to bury during the war and who are subjected by this practice, to a test of truth. Local reactions to this bureaucratic management of exhumations have given rise to rumours of the commodification of the exhumed bones, which carries with them the breach of a moral contract between the supposedly repairing and repaired parties. To show this, the article examines: the economy of suspicion; the differential valence of human remains from their institutional handling; the terms of the bureaucratic encounter between peasants and state agents; and the scope of these rumours in terms of critical discourses towards public policies of aid to victims. These four dimensions inform in detail the experiences from which the inhabitants form an image of the state and what the life of a peasant is worth in their eyes.