Peru - "Dirty War" in Ayacucho
Barton, Carol
"Terrorists! Tonight we will enter your homes, we'll eat your guts, drink your blood, cut off your heads and gouge out your eyes!" -Chanted by Sinchis in the streets of Ayacucho There is...
...20009...
...In keeping with the thrust of the Vargas Llosa report, the government reinterprets the Indians' traditional system of justice, claiming they are not responsible for their actions because of their ignorance...
...When peasants hacked eight journalists to death in the community of Uchuraccay in late January, the world glimpsed the dimensions of the Army's counterinsurgency plans...
...Over a decade ago the group sent its cadres into the peasant communities of Ayacucho, one of Peru's most destitute departments...
...This, and the vengeful assassinations of members of the peasant communities whom they believed to be "traitors and informants," have cost the guerrillas considerable support...
...They enter after curfew, shooting automatic rifles in the air, pulling people out of bed and beating them...
...C.B...
...flict...
...The campaign has come to be known as Belaunde's "dirty war...
...The battle is for the allegiance of the Quechua-speaking Indians who are the target of coercion and threats from both sides...
...One reporter, Luis Morales of El Diario, a leftist daily, was jailed for four days after filing exclusive testimony from peasants in Uchuraccay...
...The news from Ayacucho, in fact, is that there is no news, and no answers to probing questions about the incident...
...Complementing the Army, the Sinchi patrols are sent into proSL towns to terrorize the peasants...
...Later, colleagues learned that Sinchis had regularly visited the zone, telling horror stories about SL...
...fully called for the closure of certain dailies...
...Nonetheless, the Army's recruitment of peasants may backfire...
...The brutal murders point to the military's use of peasant communities as active forces in its war against SL...
...The viciousness with which the Senderistas carried out these acts led some to compare them to Pol Pot SL claimed responsibility for over 3,000 actions by the end of 1982 But SL has won considerable sympathy and support from peasant communities...
...According to some accounts, following the massacre of Uchuraccay the peasants openly acknowledged their participation as if waiting for reward...
...Because the Uchuraccay victims were journalists trying to check out military reports, other reporters have been effectively discouraged from continuing their work...
...While villagers responsible for these massacres have not been arrested, others accused of terrorism are illegally held for weeks, often to be tortured in police jails...
...It has also become clear that the military has strategically sealed Ayacucho off from the press, and thereby the world...
...A continued free hand for the military to terrorize and incite violence will depend, in no small part, on the press' ability to break the news blackout and report accurate information...
...While its Who Is "Sendero Luminoso...
...The uncooperative are arrested or summarily shot...
...Opposition press in Lima, left and center, has pointed a finger at the military command of Ayacucho for direct, if unwitting responsibility in the murders...
...The arrival of the Army in December 1982 put SL on the defensive, yet the true strength of its support remains unclear...
...Despite fears of a blood bath, in villages where SL is weakest, the Army has focused on a more subtle psychological "anti-subversion" war, offering food, propaganda and protection...
...May/June 1983 ables the military to use the peasants as pawns in their counterinsurgency campaign...
...36 Today, there is no possibility of corroborating such reports...
...In one case the President personally praised villagers responsible for a massacre...
...They learned the native Quechua language and nurtured the messianic tradition of Incan rebellion against the conquistadors and landowners...
...In recent weeks they have raided neighboring villages, beating the inhabitants, stealing goods, destroying crops and rounding up SL suspects...
...Shaky Interpretation The decision to appoint worldrenowned novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, a writer sympathetic to the governing Popular Action Party, to lead the investigation team was largely seen as an effort to bolster the shaky government interpretation of events...
...On inspection journalists documented that innocent peasants had been murdered...
...If communities feel they can no longer trust the military, this could mark a serious setback for government policy in the region...
...In a recent article, Torres pointed out the unreliability of military communiqu6s, and mentioned one release declaring that Sinchis had killed five Senderistas in an armed encounter...
...Nonetheless, some rural observers warn that it is too early to predict the demise of SL...
...Raids on police posts and mines followed...
...The government accepts no May/June 1983 special responsibility for the murders, nor names any wrongdoing on Sinchis' part...
...In September 1982, over 10,000 people crowded the streets of Ayacucho to mourn Edith Lagos, a young SL leader killed by the police...
...Armed confrontations began in March 1982 when it freed over 200 prisoners in an attack on the Ayacucho jail...
...SL surfaced in 1980 to launch armed struggle in the Andes, just as a democratic regime was inaugurated in Lima following 12 years of military rule...
...They ransack homes taking valuables and leaving destruction...
...According to Rail GonzAlez of DESCO, a left-liberal research institute in Lima, in the early stages of its war SL enjoyed broad popular sympathy, but there is evidence that support is waning in the Ayacucho region, due to the Army's presence and to some key strategic mistakes on the guerrillas' part...
...Senderistas consider their leader, former university professor Abimael GuzmAn, the fourth in the line of great revolutionary thinkers, after Marx, Lenin and Mao...
...Later that month, the popular trials and executions began-policemen, local landowners and government officials, loan sharks, merchants and informants...
...The journalists' guide has also disappeared, making it impossible to determine whether he died along with his charges, and, if so, how...
...The government has begun a whitewash of the event and there is evidence of a coverup...
...Further evidence of the alleged cover-up are the disappearances of key suspects and rolls of film...
...Some reports suggest that the guerrillas are also making inroads into Lima's destitute shantytowns...
...The dynamiting of key power stations left Lima in darkness in August 1982...
...It is not always clear who is targeted...
...Since the Army took control of seven Andean provinces (counties), the peasant population has become polarized...
...According to resentful regular soldiers, the Sinchi patrols receive a special combat bonus to do their dirty work...
...She is a former staff-person of Peru Solidarity, now the Ecumenical Com- mittee on the Andes...
...The Communist Party of Peru Sendero Luminoso, the self-proclaimed "vanguard of the world revolution,' is a strange mix of Gang of Four Maoism and deeply rooted Incan nationalism...
...After several days they closed up and refused to talk...
...Adopting a condescending "they know not what they do" attitude, the document places guilt with all Peruvians for not having incorporated Indians into modern society...
...SL closed down weekly markets in some communities in an attempt to impose subsistence farming and a return to pre-capitalist forms of trade...
...SL's rigid dogmatism has led it to attack Peru's Left as "parliamentary cretins" who would mislead the people...
...This becomes a useful source of immunity...
...According to Jorge Torres of Gente magazine, the press is constantly harassed, film is confiscated and a number of journalists have been jailed...
...The journalists entered the region to investigate reports that peasants of Huaychau had killed seven Senderistas the week before...
...In response, the Army has unsuccessNACLA Reportupdate update update update May Day: Campesinos rally to protest government policies...
...Battle Lines Are Drawn After two years of guerrilla actions in Ayacucho and throughout Peru, which had grown in scale and audacity, Peruvian President Fernando Belaunde imposed martial law in seven provinces around Ayacucho last December...
...Confused versions of bloody massacres are reported in military communiques, yet the press is not able to enter the zone of conCarol Barton visited Peru in March...
...For its part, Left Unity has tried hard to keep its distance from SL, hoping to avoid the government's repressive measures...
...Splintered from the Moscowaligned Peruvian Communist Party in the 1960s, SL has its roots in the University of Ayacucho...
...Ultimately, what happens in Ayacucho depends to a great extent on SL's real strength and how long it can put up a fight...
...One peasant revealed that Sinchis "told us to kill any stranger that appeared," and backed up the order by threatening that the uncooperative would be labeled terrorists...
...Observers also note that SL proved unable to provide arms and protection to communities who actively backed it...
...She lived in Peru from 1976 to 1980...
...SL has done its share of terror37 ru .E J =Iupdate update update update : Peru-caught between a repressive state and the ominous Sendero Luminoso...
...Instead they were besieged by the critical interrogations of the press, visitors and the official investigative committee...
...izing as well...
...If interested, send your resume to the Commission, at 1826 18th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C...
...In the remote hills of Peru's Andean department (state) of Ayacucho, the Army and specially trained counterinsurgency police known as Sinchis are battling an enigmatic Maoist guerrilla group, Sendero Luminoso (SL...
...In many communities, all males between 15 and 45 years of age have disappeared...
...They have declared a classic strategy of "prolonged popular war encircling the cities from the countryside," in a nation that is no longer predominantly peasant...
...NACLA Report 38update update update update following has visibly lessened in the areas under military control, it is apparently expanding grassroots work in other parts of Peru where traditional left parties, promoting electoral politics, have been unable to offer concrete alternatives...
...Apparently, the Sinchi recruits are guaranteed immunity and are even offered rewards for their terror sprees...
...The Left, united in the "Left Unity" electoral coalition, participated in the 1980 general elections and holds parliamentary and municipal posts...
...Such legal immunity enWashington Internships The Commission on U.S.-Central American Relations, in Washington, D.C., is accepting applications for summer interns...
...The justice system is nonfunctional in Ayacucho, where the military makes all decisions...
...Some leave to avoid becoming new victims of one or both of the warring factions, but others have taken up arms with SL...
...While there are reports of armed confrontations between peasants and SL, some Indians have used the opportunity to engage in bloody battles with traditional rivals...
...Employed by various publications-pro-government and nonthey were denied the military escort into the area by helicopter that had been extended to other journalists...
...A village in Ayacucho province...
...SL began its war by dynamiting public buildings and electrical towers...
...Thousands of young men have been arrested, hundreds of civilians have been killed...
...Chanted by Sinchis in the streets of Ayacucho There is another civil war in Latin America--one that has barely come to the attention of the media...
...The Army entered the central region of Ayacucho department, an area controlled by SL...
...The 200-page report, which has been called impassioned and eloquent, builds on the testimonies of linguists, anthropologists and social scientists...
...Army Enlists Peasants Entire peasant communities in upper Huanta, the province of Ayacucho where the Uchuraccay incident took place, have been enlisted by Sinchis to hunt Senderistas...
...By late 1982, SL had gained control of some areas of central Ayacucho, but its version of government in "liberated zones" was apparently not to the peasants' liking and has cost them support...
Vol. 17 • May 1983 • No. 3
