Unsettled Accounts: Militarization and Memory in Postwar Peru
Burt, Jo-Marie
On April 22, 1997, military commandos burst into the residence of the Japanese ambassador to Peru, where rebels of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) were holding 72 hostages....
...22-43...
...The national tax agency then began to harass her husband, who has also sought asylum...
...Moreover, the fact that Peru's internal conflict was resolved militarily but not in political terms means that neither the MRTA nor the Shining Path has been eliminated completely...
...Fujimori's relentless attacks against Peru's "traditional" parties must be understood in this context...
...The pro-government majority in Congress maneuvered first to have the case heard by a military court-a clear violation of the autonomy of the Judicial branch...
...94-108...
...But memory has a way of emerging in unexpected and often surprising ways...
...223-249...
...Attacks against the press have avated terrorism," allow- also increased notably over the past year...
...As a result, public debate about the role of the armed forces in the recent conflict has been drastically circumscribed...
...The ability of Peru's rulers to use this triumphalist discourse to consolidate their hold on power is a reflection of the disintegration of political life in Peru-a process intimately linked to the economic upheaval and political violence of the 1980s...
...What needs to be analyzed is the process of the militarization of Peruvian politics and society--a process that began when Shining Path took up arms in 1980, expanded as democratic administrations ceded authority to the armed forces to quell the insurgency, and culminated in the 1992 autogolpe that established a civil-military regime in which democratic instituYuyachkani, a Peruvian theater troupe, performs its theater of memory in the Plaza San Martin in December 1997...
...The total defeat of the insurgent movements was the underlying motive behind the Soldiers take a rest during a civic-action operation in Huaycin, a sh in December 1997...
...The surprise attack began at 3:15 in the afternoon while the MRTA leaders, including top commander N6stor Cerpa Cartolini, were playing a relaxing game of soccer inside the diplomatic compound...
...In effect, Fujimori and his cronies have taken advantage of the polarization of Peruvian society-the most lasting legacy of the Shining Path's "revolutionary" war against the Peruvian state-to consolidate the neoliberal authoritarianism set in place after the 1992 autogolpe...
...During the grueling four months of the hostage crisis, Fujimori repeatedly stated that he would not intervene militarily unless the rebels harmed the hostages...
...The ongoing fear and intimidation that became part of daily life during the war have had the effect of obscuring alternative readings of Peru's recent past...
...s The following day, Lima awoke to a parade of army tanks, while the army accused Congress of engaging in a "systematic campaign orchestrated with the sinister objective of undermining the prestige of the armed forces...
...Another case of the government's authoritarianism is the Law of Authentic Interpretation...
...Loyal officers were promoted to high-ranking positions, instituti while suspect officers were forced remain o into early retirement-a situation that has deeply politicized the armed forces...
...By late 1991, Montesinos had convinced Fujimori to adopt the military's 20-year coup plan as his own, making the dissolution of the Executive branch unnecessary.'12 The military, in turn, agreed to support Fujimori in exchange for a blank check to wage its counterinsurgency war, marking the beginning of the civil-military alliance that has radically militarized political and social life in Peru...
...6. As cited from major Lima newspapers, DESCO Database, March 31, 1993...
...government, he was able to engineer a governing majority that has passed neoliberal policies with relative ease and has protected the impunity of the armed forces at all costs...
...See recent issues of DESCO's monthly publication, Reporte Especial: Violencia yseguridad en el PerO de hoy...
...The authors of the report, moreover, cannot be cited as witnesses...
...More recently, efforts by opposition groups to hold a referendum on the Law of Authentic Interpretation-a right granted by the 1993 Constitution-have also been thwarted by the ruling majority in Congress...
...The MRTA had already been effectively reined in earlier that year with the recapture of its top leadership, including the group's main leader, Victor Polay...
...On the rondas campesinas, see Orin Starn, "Villagers at Arms: War and Counterrevolution in Peru's Andes," in Richard G. Fox and Orin Starn, Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), pp...
...7 Indeed, the military's growing frustration over the limitations placed upon its counterinsurgency operations by democratic institutions, coupled with the growing inability of civilian politicians to deal with the spiraling economic crisis and the expansion of the Shining Path, prompted a group of military officers to devise a coup plan in the late 1980s...
...From the outset, the total defeat of the MRTA was its preferred solution to the crisis...
...Author's interview, the Rev...
...But when Cerpa announced the suspension of medical visits to the hostages for one week in response to Fujimori's backtracking on the deal, the government finally found a publicly acceptable excuse to launch a military assault against the rebels...
...But when such institutions transgress the limits imposed by those in power, they are subordinated, subverted or otherwise domesticated...
...The raid, which was broadcast live on national and international television, was deemed an immediate success--71 of the 72 hostages were rescued, and all 14 rebels were killed.' Two army commandos were also killed during the assault...
...10...
...As long as the war is discussed in terms of victory and defeat, the real processes at hand-the militarization of society, the subordination of democratic institutions, the unrelenting assault on the political opposition and the repression of social movements-will remain obscured...
...While human rights groups have had some success on specific issues-such as securing the release of hundreds of people who were unjustly convicted of terrorism-social and political actors have remained weak and unable to articulate an alternative discourse explaining what happened in the course of Peru's internal war...
...Peru is not a discussed delegative or illiberal democracy, or Victory even an expression of some form of victory neopopulism, as some have argued.13 at, the Rather, it is a new kind of hybrid authoritarianism whose architects recof society ognized the impossibility of a tradibversion tional military-led coup given the international-primarily U.S.-temcratic perament in favor of democracy.14 Formal democratic institutions like ns will Congress, the Judiciary and the Conscured...
...Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos, "Informe sobre la legislaci6n de seguridad nacional" (Lima), June 23, 1998, from Website http://www.derechos.org/cnddhh...
...Enrique Obando, "Fujimori and the Military...
...As cited in APRODEH, De la tierra brot6 la verdad: Crimen e impunidad en el caso La Cantuta (Lima: Associaci6n Pro-Derechos Humanos, 1994...
...tions are completely subordinated to the will of the Executive and the armed forces...
...But the military's influence goes beyond the political realm, reaching into the interstices of Peruvian society...
...VOL XXXII, No 2 SEPT/OCT 1998 Jo-Marie Burt is editor of NACLA and a doctoral candidate in political science at Columbia University...
...Fujimori rebukes the country's politicians at every turn, reinforcing popular sentiment against the predominately white and Lima-based political class...
...On the concept of delegative democracy, see Guillermo O'Donnell, "Delegative Democracy," in Larry Diamand and Marc F. Plattner, eds., The Global Resurgence of Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp...
...It had come to believe its own trumped-up rhetoric that the guerrilla movements that had dominated Peruvian politics since the early 1980s-the MRTA and the more lethal Communist Party of Peru, better known as Shining Path-had been defeated and no longer posed any threat...
...In this official history, Shining Path and the MRTA are responsible for every one of the 30,000 deaths that occurred over the course of the 15-year conflict--despite the fact that human rights organizations have documented that the security antytown in eastern Lima, forces are responsible for approximately half of those 30,000 deaths, as well as some 6,000 disappearances...
...48 (1995), pp...
...With the firm support of the Peruvian bourgeoisie, Fujimori and his military allies proceeded to establish their political control...
...After his reelection in 1995, some observers argued that Peru had fully returned to the democratic fold...
...Hubert Lanssiers, June 29, 1998...
...This, in effect, has made it feasible for him to forge an alliance with Peru's economic elite to reshape the Peruvian state and economy along neoliberal lines...
...1 8 disorder...
...Because the terminology is so vague, stusign of the militarization dents participating in anti-government protests could lay, when the Executive easily be prosecuted under this law and sentenced to 1 with the growing prob- 25 to 35 years in prison...
...The corollary-that the army bears no responsibility for any crimes it might have committed in the war against terrorism-underlies the amnesty law passed in 1995, which not only guarantees impunity for members of the police and armed forces who committed human rights violations between 1980 and 1995, but also sets free all those previously convicted...
...Some human rights groups, moreover, have called for a truth commission to render a full and unbiased accounting of the atrocities committed during the conflict...
...The armed forces are presented as the only institution capable of protecting and strengthening the nation-state-a notion that is deeply embedded in the doctrine of national security, which pervades military thinking in Peru and throughout Latin America...
...Guzmin's arrest was followed by a series of arrests of other high-ranking Shining Path leaders and the virtual dismantling of its most important organizational structures...
...While the 1993 Constitution clearly states that a President may be 38NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 38 NACIa REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON MEMORY reelected one time to a consecutive term, the same progovernment majority in Congress passed a law in 1996 establishing that President Fujimori was eligible to run for a third term, based on the argument that because the new Constitution was not in force when he was first elected in 1990, his first term did not count...
...35REPORT ON MEMORY dom for 400 of his jailed comrades-seemed to indicate a breakthrough in negotiations...
...Most disturbing is Decree No...
...These examples illustrate the way democratic institutions have been trampled on by the Executive and the ruling majority in Congress...
...Cerpa's agreement to release the hostages in exchange for the release of 20 MRTA prisoners-a far cry from his original demand of freeIn postwar Peru, challenging the official version of history is considered tantamount to subversion...
...The military continues to hold de facto power in the regions that are still under states of emergency, which currently comprise approximately 16% of the national territory.17 Through its control over the rondas campesinas, the campesino self-defense units organized throughout the central high- Family members protest the lands to combat Shining Martin in downtown Lima...
...For example, when Angel Paez, an investigative journalist for the opposition daily La Reptblica, reported on military corruption in the purchase of weapons, he began receiving death threats, while the tabloids began slandering him and accusing him of being a terrorist sympathizer...
...For an excellent review of the evolution of Fujimori's relationship with the armed forces, see Enrique Obando, "Fujimori and the Military: A Marriage of Convenience," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...Fernando Rospigliosi, "Las Fuerzas Armadas y el 5 de abril...
...But they too remain isolated, largely due to Fujimori's relentless accusations that they defend "terrorists" and are in fact front groups for the Shining Path...
...Not addressing the conflict at the political level, in effect, facilitates the ongoing militarization of the country...
...4. Author's interview, Carlos Reyna, DESCO, June 29, 1998...
...Author's interview, Gino Costa, Defensoria del Pueblo, July 6, 1998...
...stitutional Tribunal are retained, for they maintain the illusion-necessary for international purposes-that Peru is a democratic regime...
...Despite the fact that opposition leaders had collected 1.4 million signatures in favor of the referendum on the reelection law, they fell three votes short of the required 48, effectively killing the referendum...
...They harbor few illusions, however, that such a commission will materialize as long as Fujimori and his military allies remain ensconced in power...
...The best e accused of such a crime known case is that of Baruch Ivcher, who was stripped g brought before a judge...
...In fact, the civil-military regime put in place after the as is of e n u O b Peru's autogolpe has continued to consoli- date its power in Peru...
...8. For an excellent discussion of the coup plan, see Fernando Rospigliosi, "Las Fuerzas Armadas y el 5 de abril...
...Unsettled Accounts: Militarization and Memory in Postwar Peru 1. One hostage, Carlos Guisti, a respected judge, reportedly died as the result of a heart attack during the military raid...
...The MRTA's successful penetration of a well-guarded diplomatic compound during a VIP party that President Fujimori was himself scheduled to attend fundamentally challenged that belief...
...When Fujimori defeated novelist-politician Mario Vargas Llosa in second-round elections in 1990, he quickly sought to establish an alliance with the armed forces to fend off a rumored coup...
...This hardening of the regime over recent months suggests that things in Peru are likely to get worse before they get better...
...With the heads of both groups behind bars, the Fujimori government triumphantly declared that the armed forces had defeated subversion...
...APRODEH, De la tierra brot6 la verdad...
...3. Author's interview, Susana Villarin, June 23, 1998...
...There were no efforts to devise strategies to integrate guerrilla fighters who remained at large into social and political life, nor were there any attempts to address the underlying causes of violence...
...While Fujimori was forced to reopen Congress in late 1992 due to international pressure, especially from the U.S...
...The MRTA takeover of the ambassador's residence on the evening of December 17, 1996 had caught the government of Alberto Fujimori completely off guard...
...15...
...Political developments since 1991 need to be examined through a process-oriented framework rather than one focused on a particular event...
...This is particularly the case with respect to Shining Path, which has reorganized its forces and rearticulated its political objectives under new leadership...
...Fujimori's role as an outsider-and as a descendant of Japanese immigrants-sets him apart from Peru's dominant political elite in the popular mindset...
...1 (July/August 1996), pp...
...here are numerous examples that demonstrate the true nature of power in Peru today...
...16 Two months later, after the charred bodies of the students had been found, the case was brought before a civilian court...
...the doctrine of national The anti-crime laws are just one example of the common crimes such as hardening of the Fujimori regime since the end of the ing, robbery, rape of a MRTA hostage crisis...
...9 The victory of Fujimori in 1990 was a blessing in disguise for the coup mongers within the Peruvian military...
...This military logic has increasingly come to dominate Peruvian politics...
...In this sense, the military "victory" over the MRTA was a political exigency for the Fujimori regime, allowing it to turn an embarassing situation into an opportunity to bolster its triumphalist discourse and to further consolidate the military's dominant role in political and social life...
...2 0 Other groups are trying to raise the issue of the disappeared...
...When the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the law was unconstitutional, the dissenting judges were unceremoniously removed...
...1 9 Like in the terrorism cases, the police report can be used as evidence, but there are no mechanisms to oversee how the information is obtained or to guarantee that it is not falsified...
...5. As cited from La Repiblica (Lima), DESCO Database, May 27, 1996...
...On illiberal democracy, see Fareed Zakaria, "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy," Foreign Affairs (November/December 1997), pp...
...The capture of Abimael Guzmin, Shining Path's chief ideologue and strategist, on September 12, 1992 seemed to bring the Fujimori government closer to its objective of total victory...
...For Latin America, see Brian Loveman and Thomas M. Davies, Jr., eds., The Politics of Antipolitics: The Military in Latin America (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1989...
...La percepci6n de la amenaza subversiva como una motivaci6n golpista," Documento de Trabajo No...
...Human rights groups have been at the forefront of the struggle to secure the release of the hundreds of Peruvians unjustly convicted of terrorism, and they have extensively documented the abuses committed both by Shining Path and by the armed forces during the war...
...2 1 Since 1995, all judicial investigations into such cases have been blocked by Fujimori's amnesty law...
...899, which defines "pernicious gang activity" as aggressive acts on the part of youth between the ages of 12 and 18 that threaten the life or physical integrity of other individuals, harm public property, or create disappearance of their relatives by the military in the Plaza San )f the countryside...
...See also Carlos Ivan Degregori, ed., Las rondas campesinas y la derrota de Sendero Luminoso (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1996...
...There is little doubt that the capture of Guzmin and the "strategic defeat" of the Shining Path has radically altered the course of Peruvian politics, but analysts who focus on the "defeat" of the Shining Path as the central event in their analysis of contemporary Peru play into the logic of the armed forces' discourse of "total victory...
...Fernando Rospigliosi, "Las Fuerzas Armadas y el 5 de abril...
...In another case, Delia Revoredo, one of the three magistrates removed from the Constitutional Tribunal for voting against the reelection law, was repeatedly harassed after publicly criticizing the government's authoritarianism, forcing her to flee the country...
...While the government has retained strict control over the commission which reviews the cases of prisoners unjustly convicted of terrorism, the same commission is beginning to review other issues related to the legacy of the war, such as draconian prison conditions and the status of repentant guerrillas...
...After a handful of officers were convicted by the military court of the Cantuta murders, the ruling majority in Congress then engineered an amnesty law to free them...
...The government had won the war, and as Fujimori said in response to an appeal by Guzmin in 1993 to hold peace talks, "winners of wars do not negotiate...
...No 2 SEPT/OCT 1998 level presence in specific regions of the country...
...The decree laws are based almost entirely on the regime's 1992 anti-terrorist legislation, which has been widely criticized for undermining the right to a fair trial and which led to the conviction of hundreds of innocent people on charges of terrorism...
...73 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1996), p. 3. 9. Fernando Rospigliosi, "Las Fuerzas Armadas y el 5 de abril...
...12...
...Terrorism had infiltrated everything," said Fujimori, who described the coup as an act of "realism" that sought to reestablish democracy in Peru...
...Because Fujimori was a president without a party or a program, 37REPORT ON MEMORY he found himself increasingly rely- As long ing on military institutions to govern...
...Unlike other Latin American countries that have experienced internal conflict, Peru's internal war was ended not by peace negotiations but by a putative unilateral victory of the armed forces over rebel groups...
...One of the remarkable changes in Peru's current political landscape is the relative weakness of the guerrilla groups that just a few years ago seemed poised to take control of the Peruvian state...
...31-36...
...1 0 Vladimiro Montesinos, the recent war President's top advisor and the de in terms facto head of the National Intelligence Service (SIN), helped Fuji- and def mori secure the personal loyalty of the military high command after militarizatio Congress passed a law giving the and the s President control over promotions and retirements within the armed of dem forces...
...On 36 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICA5 36 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON MEMORY the contrary, the military has tightened its stranglehold on power, and in recent years, has become even more systematic in its efforts to shut down any and all possible sources of opposition...
...nother key element of the government's interpretation of the war is that its "victory over subversion" was the direct result of Fujimori' s April 1992 autogolpe and the hard-line policies that were adopted in its aftermath...
...As a result, alternative readings of Peru's recent past have been obscured, and struggles over memory have remained dormant...
...Drawing on security, these laws define robbery, homicide, kidnap minor, and extortion as "aggr ing authorities to hold anyone for up to 15 days before bein These offenses, moreover, can be tried in military courts, where sentences are disproportionately severe and where individuals are tried as adults starting at the age of 16...
...The head of the army accused legislators investigating the Cantuta murders of "collusion with the homicidal terrorists...
...This "triumph over subversion" has been central to the construction of an official historical narrative of Peru's recent internal conflict in which Shining Path and, to a lesser extent, the MRTA are portrayed as the only forces responsible for the violence, and the armed forces are depicted as the defenders of legality and national honor...
...By pitting himself against the old political elite, Fujimori has been able to cover up his alliance with the economic elite...
...Victims' groups, for example, remain relatively isolated, stigmatized because their members are poor campesinos and because of their relatives' presumed affiliation with Shining Path...
...Path, the military also has a significant presence in much Perhaps the most notable of society came this past M passed 11 decree laws to dea lem of crime...
...Employing language strikingly similar to that of the armed forces, he portrays all the country's political elites-from right to left-as responsible for Peru's political, economic and social crises...
...See also the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos, Situaci6n de los derechos humanos en el Pern en 1997 (Lima, 1997...
...Such a framework also allows for an examination of the role that both the armed forces and armed guerrilla movements have played in this process of militarization, how the conflict has contributed to the polarization of Peruvian society, and how the Fujimori regime has taken advantage of these circumstances to consolidate and perpetuate its hold on power...
...4 The continued presence of such groups, in fact, serves to justify the military's presence in power and corroborates its interpretation of the past...
...13...
...6 Underlying this argument is the belief that civilian politicians are corrupt and weak and that democratic institutions are incapable of dealing with crisis situations...
...82-116...
...But this has not been the case...
...The plan, developed in a series of documents known as the "Plan Verde," outlined a strategy for carrying out a military coup in which the armed forces would govern for 15 to 20 years and radically restructure state-society relations along neoliberal lines...
...A law passed by the official majority three years ago to prevent a possible referendum on the widely unpopular amnesty law mandated that 48 members of Congress had to vote in favor of holding a referendum for it to proceed-effectively undermining the constitutional right of citizens to call for referenda on unpopular laws...
...In 1993, the new Congress wrote a Constitution giving the army broad powers, enshrining free-market doctrines, and permitting Fujimori to run for a second term...
...In the aftermath of the assault, it became evident that the government had been negotiating in bad faith, buying time in order train special army commandos and obtain the necessary intelligence to assure a swift victory...
...8 The plan called for the dissolution of Peru's civilian government, military control over the state, and total elimination of armed opposition groups...
...Given that questioning the behavior of the armed forces in the counterinsurgency war is tantamount to terrorism, it is not surprising that struggles over memory have been virtually absent in postwar Peru...
...Last October, for example, one victims' group, the National Association of Relatives of the Abducted-Detained-Disappeared from the Emergency Zones of Peru (ANFASEP), petitioned the Ombudsman's Office to initiate an investigation into the 2,000 disappearances it has documented in the Ayacucho region...
...7. For Peru, see Phililp Mauceri, State Under Siege: Development and Policy Making in Peru (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996...
...This official discourse has gone largely unchallenged, partly because of the broad social support for the Fujimori regime in the aftermath of the capture of Guzmin, but also because the government's militarized logic equates any challenges to its version of history with subversion...
...Particularly after Guzmdn's arrest, Fujimori and his allies repeatedly asserted the efficacy of the civil-military government put in place after the coup, contrasting it to the incompetence of civilian elites, who were portrayed as fundamentally incapable of dealing with the economic and political crises that had engulfed the country by the late 1980s...
...Since then, a pattern has emerged in which journalists who investigate the dealings of Peru's rulers are the targets of repression...
...While the group does not present a political threat to the state as was arguably the case in early 1992, it does maintain a significant localVoL XXXII...
...On neopopulism, see Kenneth Roberts, "Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism in Latin America: The Peruvian Case," World Politics, No...
...30, No...
...When opposition leaders in Congress sought to open an investigation in April 1993 after evidence emerged implicating members of the armed forces, the military high command refused to cooperate, and the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, General Nicolds de Bari Hermoza, accused the investigating legislators of acting "in collusion with the homicidal terrorists...
...both of his Peruvian citizenship and control of his tele39 4 4 VOL XXXII, No 2 SEPT/OCT 1998REPORT ON MEMORY vision station after running stories on the government's espionage on 197 opposition leaders, Montesinos' inexplicably high income-tax return, and the torture of former army intelligence agents who had presumably leaked information about the Cantuta murders to the press...
...Indeed, conflict over interpretations of the violence remains surprisingly subdued in comparison to other countries in Latin America that have recently emerged from military dictatorship or internal wars...
...The logic of the military," says Susana Villarin of the Lima-based Institute for Legal Defense, "is that the armed forces defeated the enemy and that society should be grateful...
...2. Author's interview, Susana Villar6n, Instituto de Defensa Legal, June 23, 1998...
...5 "It would have been irresponsible to not consummate the autogolpe, " he claimed, since it "permitted us to successfully wage the battle against terrorism, combat corruption within the Judiciary and deepen neoliberal reforms...
...Author's interview, Susana Villaran, June 23, 1998...
...autogolpe, or "self-coup," decreed by President Fujimori in April 1992, in which, in alliance with the armed forces, he shut down Congress and the courts and suspended the Constitution...
...2 Any act of violence or human rights crime committed by the military is portrayed as an act of self-defense against the "terrorist scourge...
...When a judge investigating another massacre in which the Colina Group was also implicated sought to continue her investigation, Congress passed a second law obligating the courts to obey the amnesty law, again violating the autonomy of the Judicial branch...
...In these courts, someone convicted of furnishing information in the planning of a crime in which a person is killed would receive the same 25year sentence as the person who actually committed the murder...
...3 As political violence declined in the aftermath of the capture of the top leaders of the MRTA and Shining Path, one might have expected the opening of democratic spaces in Peru...
...Perhaps the most illustrative is the case of La Cantuta, which involved the disappearance and murder of nine university students and a professor in July 1992 by a death squad known as the Colina Group made up of members of the SIN and army intelligence (SIE...
Vol. 32 • September 1998 • No. 2
