The Peruvian Crucible: Reflections of a Hostage
Canseco, Javier Diez
On December 17, 1996, as I was making small talk with other guests on the patio of the residence of the Japanese Ambassador to Peru, I heard a muffled blast. At first I thought it was a car...
...This reinforced the government's image as willing negotiator-an image that obviously influenced the MRTA's analysis of the situation...
...The hostage crisis opened alternatives for a peaceful and negotiated resolution of the country's ongoing conflicts-alternatives which could have been a first step towards overcoming the deep wounds created by 17 years of internal strife...
...In fact, with 90% of its leadership in prison, and with its principal military fronts destroyed, the MRTA could not impose the release of its militants-or even of its leadership-on the government...
...This helped to create the impression that a peaceful and negotiated solution was impossible...
...crisis-starvation wages, 50% of the population in poverty, 25% in extreme poverty, 52% of children undernourished, 10% unemployment, 75% underemployment, and the lack of prospects for the future...
...Such inflexibility resulted in a deadend situation that created the context for a military solution...
...to negotiate the demilitarization of the conflict...
...The government's gamble-which in the end paid offwas that if it could carry out the assault without incurring too many casualties, it would come out on top...
...These circumstances made the search for negotiated alternatives appear increasingly impossible...
...They fired their weapons to intimidate my security personnel, detained everyone for an hour, interrogated us, then finally released us...
...The embassy takeover-an operation that took less than 60 seconds in which the MRTA took control of one of the most well-guarded buildings in the city-was a huge embarrassment for the SIN and the military leadership, which had long claimed responsibility for the defeat of Peru's insurgent groups...
...Civilian participation in these matters has been nonexistent...
...In November, 1996, for example, the media reported on the SIN's involvement in the bombing of a local television station and the arrest of a retired army general, Rodolfo Robles, who had denounced the existence of death squads sponsored by the SIN and the military...
...Two days later, my car was found-torched to the ground...
...Political solutions to such conflicts are not only possible when the insurgent forces have military strength comparable to that of the government, as was the case in El Salvador...
...It laid out a concrete plan that included the liberation of the hostages, the safe passage of the MRTA operatives out of Peru, and subsequently, the opening of a negotiation process that could create the conditions for a political solution to the violence...
...Ndstor Cerpa Cartolini, the leader of the MRTA forces in the embassy, fell prey to the government's tactics...
...It lacks a central committee, a political commission, and anything like an assembly of delegates...
...Recent events have shown that such institutions are sorely lacking in Peru...
...Once the hostages had been freed, both the congressional majority and the judiciary refused to carry out an investigation...
...The militarist perspective that dominated the MRTA's analysis of the situation also contributed to this outcome...
...Throughout the hostage crisis, public opinion polls showed that the majority of the population did not favor a military solution...
...An important group of hostages, among them Peru's Minister of Foreign Affairs, suggested a negotiated political alternative that was forwarded to President Fujimori, the MRTA and the ambassadors of the nations affected by the takeover...
...dor to Peru, burnt-out nbassador's In fact, only the Supreme Council of Military Justice and the military courts have investigated the events which violently ended the crisis...
...The attempt to silence opposition continued even as the hostage crisis was being played out...
...The operation was efficient as far as intelligence gathering and military preparation are concerned...
...The violent unraveling of the hostage crisis has since been showcased by the military as evidence that a military solution is the only possible alternative given the country's conflicts...
...The campaign against the International Red Cross, which progovernment media accused of having "terrorist" sympathies, is a case in point...
...Her kidnappers did not take her purse, and they abandoned her car without even taking the spare tire...
...The residence of Gustavo Saberbein-former Minister of Finance under the administration of Alan Garcia (1985-90) and strong critic of Fujimori-was attacked with machine gun fire as he and his family were entering the house...
...Nor are they only possible when they have the support of large sectors of the population, as was the case with the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) and the indigenous population in Guatemala...
...In addition, family members were permitted to view and identify only two of the 17 bodies of those killed during the assault: Supreme Court judge Dr...
...The Ar wife, Naoki Aoki, is on the right...
...Largely for this reason, more than 70% of the population favored a peaceful and negotiated solution...
...Tunnels were dug, special army troops were trained, and electronic surveillance equipment was installed...
...It is also likely to serve as an argument for armed groups to dismiss any possibilities for dialogue and political negotiation as means of resolving internal strife...
...and Rolly Rojas, an MRTA leader who was shot six times...
...None of the other bodies have been seen, and most of them have been anonymously buried in cemeteries throughout the capital with no civilian witnesses present...
...A military solution to the hostage crisis was a political necessity for the Peruvian government...
...Even so, shortly after the storming of the embassy, the government's popularity began to drop dramatically...
...For example, once the operation was underway, a heavily armed member of the MRTA entered a room full of hostages, including two ministers of state and several ambassadors, but instead of opening fire on them, he dropped his weapon...
...The proposal was rejected from the outset by Fujimori, and was not clearly or consistently embraced by the MRTA, which insisted, time and time again, on the liberation of all of its prisoners as part of the solution...
...It is also well known that several members of the MRTA were killed in cold blood after having surrended to government troops...
...A civilian-military government like Fujimori's could not concede to such demands without losing all credibility...
...Discontent over these persistent problems was beginning to be expressed even before the hostage crisis...
...After the explosion, a ho group of 14 members of the Co Tiipac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) occupied the house and took over 500 people hostage-ministers of state, members of Congress, government authorities, ambassadors and consuls, and other international guests attending the event hosted by Ambassador Aoki...
...This can be done through the freeing of prisoners, the incorporation of former insurgents into political life, and through negotiation with the military leaders that imposed authoritarian regimes as a solution to internal conflict...
...The Colina group is responsible for the murder of nine students and a professor in 1992, at the Enrique Guzman y Valle University, widely known as "La Cantuta," as well as the 1991 massacre of a group of Lima street vendors attending a barbecue in Barrios Altos, among whom the army says there was a member of Shining Path...
...During the hostage crisis, for example, Congress was kept completely on the margins, and at no point did the Fujimori Administration take any steps to keep legislators informed of the situation...
...Once such an alternative was implemented, however, it was approved by 67% of the population...
...This is ironic since Fujimori's official political party, Cambio 90-Nueva Mayorfa, is virtually nonexistent...
...It is also the result of government harassment of opposition groups...
...The only way to avoid such a debacle was to transform those responsible for the crisis into the heroes of its final outcome-making a military solution the only alternative...
...Believing the government had been forced into negotiating, Cerpa continued to demand the liberation of all MRTA prisoners...
...it will come from Peruvians themselves...
...In April, La Rosa declared on television that she had been tortured in the basement of the General Military Command, where the Army Intelligence Service has its base of operations...
...The lack of institutionalized checks and balances, or of avenues for civic participation in the structures of political decision making is glaring...
...For most Peruvians, the hostage crisis opened the possibility of a negotiated solution to the country's violent political conflict...
...The high command currently occupies key positions as both advisors and ideologues to the President-forming something akin to the central committee of a political party...
...Giusti, who was shot in the leg and bled to death due to lack of medical attention...
...Armed hostilities within nations are expressions of deep political, social and cultural divides...
...military solution to the hostage crisis had clearly been in the works from the start...
...It was also quite successful in terms of rescuing the hostages and not leaving enemy survivors...
...for the MRTA and the Peruvian state to commit to uphold democratic principles in resolving the conflict...
...While the government used the media to wage a huge publicity campaign against the MRTA, daily news reports showcased a benevolent government that allowed guitars, books and meals into the Ambassador's residence...
...Nine heavily armed men, whose faces were uncovered and who were wearing bullet-proof vests with the National Police insignia, got out of the cars...
...These dramatic shifts in public opinion must be understood in the context of the culture of fear that has taken hold in Peru over the past 17 years...
...Instead of protecting the country, the SIN was busy threatening independent journalists, blowing up the transmission towers of television stations which were critical of the government, and harassing opposition labor leaders and parliamentarians-all of this with the intent of deepening Peru's current crisis in order to make possible the illegal and unconstitutional reelection of Alberto Fujimori in the year 2000...
...The solution will not come from the outside...
...The takeover also revealed that the SIN in particular was less concerned with combating insurgency than with harassing opposition groups...
...A political solution would have exposed the failure of the SIN and the military leadership to prevent the takeover in the first place...
...nator Javier Diez Canseco, one of the init stages of the MRTA, at the Socialist Schola, nference in New York in April, 1992...
...Fujimori's waning popularity is also the result of growing conflicts within the armed forces that began to surface prior to the hostage crisis and the government's harassment of opposition groups...
...He was taken hostage and subsequently released...
...Early on, Fujimori set in motion the preparations for an armed assault...
...Translated from the Spanish by NACLA...
...This alliance enjoys the support of international finance capital--the principal benefactor of the neoliberal economic policies currently being implemented in the country...
...The proposal called President Fujimori, left, talks with the Japanese Ambassac Morihisa Aoke, in wheelchair inside the Ambassador' residence the day following the military assault...
...to embrace dialogue and negotiation as the means to resolve the crisis affecting the country...
...The 126 days of the so-called hostage crisis have opened a window on the current social and politJavier Diez Canseco is a member of the Peruvian National Congress and was a guest at the residence of the Japanese Ambassador when the house was seized by the MRTA...
...The government stated that common criminals were responsible...
...Also exposed is a culture of terror and violence that has made a profound mark on the hearts and minds of most Peruvians, especially the millions of children and youth who have grown up amidst a decade and a half of intense political violence that has cost the country almost 25,000 lives and more than $20 billion in damages...
...hortly after being released by the MRTA from the Ambassador's residence, two exhostages became the targets of state repression...
...The military assault against the MRTA that ended the hostage crisis-with a death toll of 17, including one hostage, two members of the armed forces and all 14 MRTA operatives-is not only a human tragedy, but a political tragedy as well...
...A few days later, the press reported that another SIN agent-who happened to be the former lover of Santiago Martin Rivas, chief of the Colina paramilitary group, with whom she had a sonhad been kidnapped, tortured, killed and dismembered...
...Once the military solution to the hostage situation had been implemented, the possibilities for a political solution to the larger internal conflicts affecting the country declined dramatically...
...Yet it received little serious attention...
...At the same time, the military leadership has been playing an alarmingly central role in the Fujimori Administration...
...They also result from the absence of legitimate democratic institutions to resolve political and social conflicts...
...With the military assault ial that brought the crisis'to an end, rs' those wounds have only been exacerbated...
...The broader conflict can only be resolved politically, as other cases from Latin America clearly demonstrate...
...Just ten days after the crisis ended, only 35% of the population supported the Fujimori Administration, while 65% voiced their rejection...
...Only through such alternatives can we put an end to this authoritarian regime...
...The autopsies of the 17 people killed during the assault have been witnessed only by members of these institutions, and only they have written the official accounts of what took place inside the Ambassador's residence...
...It is the Peruvian people who must create the possibilities for their future...
...Yet international assistance will be crucial in the search for realistic alternatives to end the crisis gripping Peru...
...A few days after the hostage crisis had ended, the press reported that Leonor La Rosa, a SIN agent, had been brutally tortured...
...Two weeks later, my own car was intercepted by three others...
...It is crucial to keep in mind that Peru is presently governed by an alliance between Alberto Fujimori's forces, the National Intelligence Service (SIN) headed by Vladimiro Montesinos (a former army captain and lawyer for drug traffickers), and the military leadership headed by Commander in Chief of the Army, General Nicol.is de Bari Hermoza Rios...
...Even in countries where insurgencies have been militarily defeated, like Argentina and Uruguay, a political solution can be found...
...6NMZIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIIAREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 6ESSAY/ PERU The so-called hostage crisis has opened a window on the current social and political situation in Peru, exposing the accelerated militarization of the state and society...
...Yet several hostages have testified that the assault on the embassy could have unfolded quite differently...
...At first I thought it was a car bomb on the street, but I quickly realized that it was a bomb that had blown a huge hole in the wall separating the Ambassador's residence from the house next Se door...
...But it seems curious that these thieves burn stolen cars as well as identity documents and credit cards that might be useful to them...
...A negotiated political solution would have been a disaster for this governing triumvirate...
...The government adopted a shifting strategy to the crisis, which allowed it to participate in negotiations and then back out whenever partial agreements became possible...
...Her body, decapitated and without hands or feet, had been found on the outskirts of Lima and was identified by her father...
...and to discuss the possibilities of reducing jail sentences and freeing prisoners under the aegis of international organizations...
...Her torturers were trying to get her to confess that she was responsible for leaking SIN plans to harass the independent and opposition press...
...The fear which power can produce wanes when people begin to feel the effects of the economic B NALILA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACILA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 8ESSAY/ PERU Fujimori's waning popularity is partly the result of the growing conflicts within the armed forces that began to surface prior to the hostage crisis...
...ical situation in Peru, exposing an acute internal conflict that has accelerated the militarization of the state and society...
...According to the government, those responsible were common criminals as well...
...Two weeks later, the Editorin-Chief of La Repablica, the main opposition newspaper, was kidnapped, interrogated and released an hour later...
...Time and again, the government undermined the negotiation process in order to set the stage for its military solution...
...Cerpa wrongly assumed that the embassy takeover had completely transformed the political, military and social balance of power in the country...
...This false perception prevented him from seeing that the time frame of the negotiations Vol XXXI, No 2 SEr'rIOa 1997 7 Vol XXXI, No 2 SEPTIOCT 1997 7ESSAY/ I PERU needed to be radically different, and the goals more modest-less military and more political in nature...
...At the same time, however, the government repeatedly instigated conflicts which disrupted the negotiations...
Vol. 31 • September 1997 • No. 2
