monday, august 28, 2006
Hatun Willakuy
I once met a man who had been shot through the eye trying to save his son.In 1992, Peruvian soldiers came to take the teenaged Epifenio Cruz from his home in a rural area of the department of Ayacucho. When his father, Eulogio, struggled to stop them he was shot.
Miraculously, the bullet passed through his head and he survived. His son was never seen again. About the only thing Eulogio has left to remember his only child by is a blown up copy of his identification card.
It is a story is frighteningly common for thousands who live in the mountains of Southern Peru. Starting in 1980, a war raged between a hard line group of communist terrorists and the military for two decades. Almost 70,000 people perished in the conflict and the vast majority of these deaths were innocent residents who got caught in the middle of the struggle.
Almost all of the victims were poor farmers who lived in some of the most remote regions of Peru. Many did not even speak Spanish but rather conversed in Quechua - a language derived from the tongue of the Incas. Many of the survivors say they only want to know where the remains of their family members are. But to date, only a handful of the more than 4,600 clandestine gravesites in the highlands have been investigated.
On the 28th of August, 2003 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission - a group charged with investigating war between the Shining Path terrorists and the Peruvian government - released a 4,000-page final report. Based on more than 17,000 interviews of survivors of the 20-year conflict, the report chronicles a staggering saga of violence, terror, fear and bloodshed.
Shortly afterward, a condensed volume of the report was published, Hatun Willakuy. The name means "The Great Story" in Quechua. Although a fraction of the size of the final report, the book is a brutal read. It is only available in Spanish and now out-of-print and, given the unease the topic brings in Peru, it is doubtful it will be published again.
While the sheer numbers and data are staggering it is the straightforward horrific accounts of the survivors that are the most haunting. Like this recollection of a woman from the village of Pacca:
"The Shining Path took my husband out and they asked me where the money was, they asked my son too. They took my husband off and left me with my five children. In 1989 we were left like that, widows, and we went from hole to hole trying to hide, frightened at the least sound, we couldn't even go back to our homes. They grabbed one man and cut his throat saying that it was about time we took up the armed struggle... 'I'm not doing anything,' I told him and he hit me on the head with a stick. They slashed my baby. We were all hooded, and they started hitting us... They took them to the square. Some said, 'I don't know anything.' Then they called them dogs, killed them and later piled the bodies up one on top of the other."
Although the report indicated the terrorists and the military were almost equally responsible for the deaths there was little confusion of where the 12-man commission felt the actual blame for the devastation lay.
"We have reconstructed history and we have reached the conclusion that it would not have been so grave if it were not for the indifference, passivity, and simple ineptness of those who held the highest political office at the time," said Salomon Lerner, the commission president.
One of those leaders found to be at fault was then-president Alan Garcia. As the conflict with the leftist insurgents grew more violent and more uncontrollable in the mid-1980, his government resorted to brutal tactics to restore order.
The most notorious example occurred in June 1986. Members of the Shining Path who had been captured and incarcerated in prisons near Lima staged coordinated uprisings. Garcia’s government declared the prisons a war zone and sent in armed troops. More than 200 were killed in the three-day conflict.
The official Parliamentary Commission that investigated the events concluded that at one prison, Lurigancho, of the 124 rebellious prisoners who were slain, no fewer than ninety were victims of extrajudicial executions.
(It should be noted that in this instance the United States did little to protest these events as embassy documents from the period show. It was a pattern followed throughout the two-decade conflict.)
When Garcia was re-elected this year it fueled concerns that the efforts to undermine the commission’s efforts would gain momentum. When first released, the commissions report was blasted as being politically biased by critics, particularly those in the military and with the three parties that governed Peru during the 20-year period.
"I don't regret anything, said retired army Gen. Clemente Noel to the Associated Press at the time the report was released. “If I had to use the same anti-subversive strategy again today, I would apply it without hesitation." Noel commanded forces in the Ayacucho region in 1983, when some of the worst army massacres occurred.
Unsurprisingly, the leaders of the insurgent groups remain defiant.
A list of recommendations included in the final report for the government to act upon has been almost completely ignored except for a formal apology by the country's former president, Alejandro Toledo.
Yet, in recent weeks, Garcia’s government has pledged to work on the economic and social priorities recommended by the commission. This month officials announced a $4.6 million plan to bolster programs in some of the regions most affected by the conflict in following with several of the commission’s recommendations.
At the same time, the administration has remained silent on the human rights issues highlighted by the report. The new defense minister recent admitted more than 2,000 members of the armed forces have been investigated for human rights violations during the conflict and Garcia made a statement supporting the military “martyrs and heroes” and their sacrifice.
Addressing the social causes and injustice that occurred during the conflict isn’t simply an act of political convenience, Lerner insists. Unless Peru fully addresses its painful past and takes steps to address it, there is a chance it could be a part of the country's future.
"There is the possibility these problems will return," Lerner said. "Because we have offered these people little justice, little education, little work. For the most part, they have been left by the wayside. And when the successors to the Shining Path come they will again win the population saying, ‘We are going to make the justice for you that the state will not.’ And, when they have control of these populations, the injustices will begin again."
The commission’s final report is still available online at their website but it is only in Spanish and can be difficult to access at times. Amnesty International has an excellent report on the commissions finding in English that provides a good snapshot of what it encompasses.
more: Books | Human rights | Peru
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