We purposely didn’t do a blog on Peru’s capital Lima because we mainly spent our time eating the most delicious food we’ve had in South America and Mike is going to do a separate food blog shortly. However we also did take some time out of stuffing our faces to visit the National Museum to see an incredibly moving and harrowing exhibition about Peru’s civil war. I wanted to write a short blog on this because most people, including myself, don’t really know much about it.
The exhibition was set up by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and is called Yuyanapaq (meaning ‘to remember’ in Quechua). It documents the most violent chapter of Peru’s history by exhibiting photos and materials from over 20 years of violence – pictures of the immediate aftermath of attacks, photos of missing people, photos of mass graves. The exhibition is one part of the TRC’s work. It was set up to investigate gross human rights violations committed in order to help Peru confront its past and prevent such abuses from occurring again. In theory TRCs serve to validate the experiences of victims, propose ways to repair the harm and prevent the main perpetrators from gaining/remaining in government/military/police positions. If you’re interested (and can read Spanish) the full report is here: http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ingles/ifinal/index.php
I’m obviously no expert on these issues but I wanted to attempt to get down on paper some of the things that resonated with us and some of the things that I’ve been unable to stop thinking about since we visited the exhibition.
One of the main things I continue to feel guilty about is how little I knew about a conflict that affected so many people and continues to have repercussions today. Conservative estimates put the number of people killed at 70,000 and the mass graves are still being discovered today. The number of people forced to leave their communities were in the hundreds of thousands. In 1989, 56 provinces had been declared Emergency Zones where civil rights were completely suspended and extra-judicial killings and full-scale massacres were commonplace.
As in every conflict there was the routine practice of rape by all fighters; forced sterilisations (conservative figures show that between 1996-2000 over 215,000 women, mostly from poor indigenous communities underwent forced sterilisation operations); sexual blackmail; sexual slavery; sexual mutilation; sexual humiliation; forced prostitution; forced pregnancy; and forced nudity, amongst many other forms of sexual violence. One of the things that struck me as we walked through the exhibition was how the people living in rural communities were victimised by every side of the conflict – the state (police, army etc) and revolutionary groups. They were in a completely lose/lose situation and women often suffered sexual abuse from army, police and revolutionary movements. Women who searched for their missing relatives were frequently sexually violated; women who had any kind of relationship with any of the fighters (e.g. mother of someone in the army, sister of a guerilla fighter, daughter, wife etc) were sexually violated; women who spoke out about human rights violations were sexually violated.
How did it get to this?
Sendero Luminoso
The main revolutionary group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) was born from a Communist movement in the years following the Sino-Soviet split in 1964. It strongly adopted a Mao-ist philosophy (focusing on the need for a protracted and violent people’s war to smash the bourgeois state and the need for a rural insurgency to overcome urban elitism). Sendero Luminoso was founded by Abimail Guzman, a philosophy teacher at a University in Ayacucho (a city in Peru). Its early leaders were intellectuals and academics who exerted a strong influence over student affairs. It meant that in the early days they were able to recruit a large number of students and young people to the movement.
I found it interesting that this was a movement led by intellectuals in pursuit of a more equal society – particularly for poorer, rural people. And whilst I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself as a Communist, if I was in Peru at the time I could see myself being interested in their ideas of social justice, increased equality and bringing accountability to a corrupt and prejudiced political, judicial and police system. But this is only half the story.
Sendero Luminoso also believed in a very violent form of revolution. Basically the more blood the better. And very quickly it wasn’t just the blood of those in positions of power that was being shed. Sendero Luminoso forcibly recruited people to fight for them. They demanded complete and utter support from communities. If anyone dared to resist – torture and death would ensue. In the end the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that more than half the victims of the conflict (and we’re talking poor indigenous people not the people they were supposed to be fighting i.e. the state) were killed by Sendero Luminoso militants.
MRTA
As if that wasn’t enough, a guerilla organisation called Movimiento Revolucianario Tupac Amaru (MRTA) was created, inspired by the success of Sendero Luminoso. Whilst they were a Communist group too they took Cuban rather than Chinese revolutionary ideology. Like other movements elsewhere in Latin America (most notably FARC in Colombia) its activities involved kidnappings as a source of funding and armed propaganda through attacks on symbolic targets (e.g. they attacked the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima in December 1996 taking hostage of scores of diplomats. The siege lasted three months and ended in an armed assault where several of MRTA’s leaders were killed). The MRTA and Sendero Luminoso often clashed and the main victims were ordinary people living in Peru – caught in the crossfire of two guerilla movements purportedly trying to make their lives better.
The State
The State wasn’t any better. The government response was to send in paramilitaries who acted with complete impunity. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found countless perpetrations of human rights abuses. They took a heavy handed approach to justice. Not content to focus on finding Sendero Luminoso or MRTA activists they detained, tortured and/or killed anyone they suspected of being 1) communist 2) indigenous 3) left leaning in their political outlook. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that state sanctioned political-military commands – what should be the most trust-worthy and safe authority in an emergency zone – bore primary responsibility for many of the crimes committed.
Women’s role in Sendero Luminoso
An aspect that I found particularly interesting was the focus that many academics and historians place on women’s participation in Sendero Luminoso. In 1992 during a particularly hostile period, at least 8 out of the 19 members of the Central Committee of Sendero Luminoso were women, including 3 of 5 of politburo members (a much higher percentage of women than have been in the UK Cabinet!). Sendero Luminoso’s own literature and the work of scholars suggest that up to 40% of the guerillas were women. The murder of 19 year old activist Edith Lagos by the police inspired thousands of people to gather on the streets and Edith became a symbol for the revolution and the young idealism that fueled the movement.
I’ve read a number of articles where authors express surprise at women’s participation in the armed movement because women are naturally more ‘caring’. Obviously that’s complete nonsense and it’s interesting to see a long standing and, at times, successful movement with women’s participation at all levels. Yet despite the large number of high profile women within the movement, and the development of a ‘feminist’ manifesto there are many things that are deeply disturbing.
The challenge that many feminists face with communist literature is the priority given to overthrowing the class system rather than other forms of prejudice such as gender or race. In the literature of Sendero Luminoso you can find explicit references to the party asking women to put aside the struggle for greater gender equality and civil rights in a capitalist system in favour of joining the class struggle (as if they weren’t all different facets of the oppression that women feel at the same time). At one point leaders of the party wrote ‘the Latin woman lives more prudently, with less passion. She does not have that urge for truth.’ Doesn’t seem very feminist to me.
In one of the most horrifying moments of the civil war, a young Afro-Peruvian working class feminist activist – Maria Elena Moyano – was murdered after she criticized Sendero Luminoso. Shortly after arriving at a fundraiser with her two sons she was shot point blank and then blown up by a stick of dynamite on her lap in front of her children. Whilst I can understand the principles of the Sendero Luminoso movement, I will never be able to understand or condone the use of senseless violence to silence the voice of a working class woman standing up for her rights. These were the people that Sendero Luminoso should have been standing up for.
Today
I still have a lot of questions. Not least about what has happened since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission published their report. I do know that people in Peru continue to live with the consequences of the conflict. Only last month relatives were reunited with the bodies of their loved ones after 30 years of not knowing what had happened to them. Whilst the Government has acknowledged forced sterilisations, they continue to exist in Peru today with incentives given to health workers for every sterilisation carried out. It took until 2012 (10 years after the end of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report) for the Government to admit that reparations (justice/compensation/support) should be given to women survivors of all forms of sexual abuse (sexual slavery, forced prostitution etc) rather than just rape. I don’t know if women have received any compensation to date.
I still have a lot more learning to do but just walking in to that exhibition in Lima opened my eyes to something I should really have known more about.
awayfarers 