At the edge of the Peruvian Truth Commission: Alternate paths to recounting the past

Radical History Review

Volumn , Issue 98, 2007, Pages 3-33

  Milton, Cynthia E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL   (Canada)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34250346424     PISSN: 01636545     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/01636545-2006-025     Document Type: Article

References (109)

1. Both historians and truth commissions establish narratives of political violence providing an explanation and interpretation of events. See Greg Grandin, "The Instruction of Great Catastrophe: Truth Commissions, National History, and State Formation in Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala," American Historical Review 110 (2005): 1, 46-67
2. and Charles S. Maier, "Doing History, Doing Justice: The Narrative of the Historian and of the Truth Commission" in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions, ed. Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 261-78.
3. These eight modes of unofficial truth telling are discussed for various countries (for example, South Africa, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, and the former Yugoslavia) in Ksenija Bilbija et al., eds., The Art of Truth-Telling about Authoritarian Rule (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005).
4. For recent considerations of alternative sources and an expansion of historians' archives, see Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003)
5. Steve J. Stern, Remembering Pinochet's Chile: On the Eve of London, 1998 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004)
6. Dominick LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998)
7. Fernando Coronil, "Seeing History," Hispanic American Historical Review 84 (2004): 1-4.
8. Oral history is a well-established means of accessing subaltern histories. For an exciting recent approach that combines oral accounts of violence in highlands Peru with ethnographic drawings done in consort with those interviewed, see Edilberto Jiménez, Chungui: Violencia y trazos de memoria (Chungui: Violence and Traces of Memory) (Lima: Comisdeh, 2005).
9. Florenica Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)
10. Mark Thurner, From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nation Making in Andean Peru (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997).
11. As Marisol de la Cadena notes, the CVR served to break the unquestioned hegemony of this supposedly commonsense response to Peru's history of modernity. Marisol de la Cadena, "Discriminatión étnica," Cuestión del estado 32 (2003): 8-9
12. Marisol de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919-1991 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000).
13. Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos.
14. Andean protest reaches back to the eighteenth century in the rebellions of Juan Santos Atahuallpa and José Gabriel Túpac Amaru. A renewed wave of highland struggles took place in the 1960s and 1970s. See Steve J. Stern, ed., Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).
15. On the emergence of guerrilla groups in Peru during the 1960s, see Leon G. Campbell, "The Historiography of the Peruvian Guerrilla Movement, 1960-65," Latin American Research Review 8 (1973): 45-70.
16. Ibid.
17. See also Iván Hinojosa, "On Poor Relations and the Nouveau Riche: Shining Path and the Radical Left," in Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995, ed. Steve J. Stern (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 60-83.
18. Through ethnography and archival accounts in Huanoquite in the department of Cuzco, Linda Seligmann has traced the Shining Path back to the 1969 reform. See Linda Seligmann, Between Reform and Revolution: Political Struggles in the Peruvian Andes, 1969- 1991 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995).
19. Florencia Mallon, "Chronicle of a Path Foretold? Velasco's Revolution, Vanguardia Revolucionaria, and 'Shining Omens' in the Indigenous Communities of Andahuaylas,' in Stern, Shining and Other Paths, 84-117.
20. Stern, Shining and Other Paths; Nelson Manrique, El tiempo del miedo: La violencia política en el Perú, 1980-1996 (Time of Fear: Political Violence in Peru, 1980-1996) (Lima: Fondo Editorial del Congreso del Perú, 2002).
21. Coletta Youngers situates the beginning of Peru's human rights movements in the repressive aftermath of a general strike in Lima on July 19, 1977. Inspired by liberation theology, progressive sectors of the Catholic Church such as the Episcopal Commission for Social Action (CEAS) strongly supported these early human rights initiatives, as did, in a more cautious way, some of the political parties of the Peruvian Left. Coletta Youngers, Violencia política y sociedad en el Perú: Historia de la Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (Political Violence and Society in Peru: History of the National Coordinator of Human Rights) (Lima: IEP, 2003), 29-57.
22. Ibid., 163-74.
23. Ibid., 147.
24. Paramilitary groups intimidated and killed human rights activists such as Angel Escobar (169-70). Jo-Marie Burt has argued that the government successfully weakened civil society by equating protest with terrorism. "'Quien habla es terrorista': The Political Use of Fear in Fujimori's Peru," Latin American Research Review 41 (2006): 3-62.
25. Excerpts of an interview with María Elena Moyano that include her call for a more unified response from the Left are found in Orin Starn, Carlos Iván Degregori, and Robin Kirk, eds., The Peru Reader: History, Culture, and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 371-76.
26. A film that depicts communities as caught in the crossfire is La vida es una sola (You Only Live Once) (1992) by Marianne Eyde. See also Amnesty International, Caught between Two Fires (New York: Amnesty International, 1989).
27. Kimberly Theidon, Entre prójimos: El conflicto armado interno y la política de la reconciliación en el Perú (Among Close Ones: The Internal Armed Conflict and the Politics of Reconciliation in Peru) (Lima: IEP, 2004).
28. Carlos Iván Degregori et al., Las rondas campesinas y la derrota de Sendero Luminoso (The Rondas Campesinas and the Defeat of Shining Path) (Lima: IEP, 1996).
29. Orin Starn, Nightwatch: Politics of Protest in the Andes (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).
30. CVR, Informe final, "Conclusiones generales," www.everdad.org.pe/ifinal/index.php (accessed December 11, 2005).
31. Youngers, Violencia política, 172, 437-38.
32. Some prominent members of Peru's human rights movement saw the limits of what this commission could do given the restraint of eighteen months to investigate the preceding twenty years. Then executive secretary of the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos, Sofía Macher, later nominated by Toledo as a commissioner to the CVR, worried that the CVR could only create "a big inventory" of facts. See "Piden apoyo politico para la commission de la Verdad" ("They Ask Support for the Truth Commission"), El Comercio, July 8, 2001.
33. I thank the RHR anonymous reader for reiterating the importance of this shift for the CVR. Though it is difficult to state the specific meaning of these changes, a concern expressed at the time was that Toledo's changes had compromised the CVR's objectives and possibilities for reaching truths. However, in regard to the addition of reconciliación to the title, this theme was already on the lips of some commissioners. Gastón Garatea, for instante, spoke of seeking reconciliation and healing wounds. See "Gastón Garatea: Buscaremos reconciliación de los peruanos" ("Gastón Garatea: We Will See Reconciliation of Peruvians"), El Peruano. July 7, 2001.
34. The original commissioners included academics (including the former rector of the Universidad de San Cristóbal de Huamanga), human rights organizers, a fujimorista congresswoman, and a Catholic priest who headed the Mesa de Concertación para la Lucha contra la Pobreza (Forum on the Fight against Poverty): Solomón Lerner, Carlos Tapia, Carlos Iván Degregori, Alberto Morote, Enrique Bernales, Beatriz Alva, and Gastón Garatea. See Resolución suprema n. 330-2001-PCM, June 6, 2001 www.justiciaviva.org.pe/comision/normas/norma2.doc (accessed December 11, 2005).
35. After Toledo's additions, the commission included two more church representatives (including a Protestant evangelical), a retired lieutenant general of the armed forces, another academic, and the former executive secretary of the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos: José Antúnez, Humberto Lay Sun, Luis Arias, Rolando Ames, and Sofia Macher; Monseñor Luis Bambarén, the Bishop of Chimbote, was named observer. On tensions around the nomination of commissioners and the president-elect Toledo's intended changes, see "Alva Hart pone a disposición su cargo en Comisión de la Verdad" ("Alva Hart Makes Herself Available for the Truth Commission"), El Comercio, July 10, 2001
36. "Toledo reestructuraría Comisión de la Verdad" ("Toledo Would Restructure the Truth Commission"), El Comercio, July 13, 2001
37. "Toledo evaluará cambios en la Comisión de la Verdad" ("Toledo Will Evaluate Changes in the Truth Commission"), El Comercio, July 14, 2001.
38. See www.everdad.org.pe/lacomisioin/enormas/convenio25.php (accessed December 11, 2005).
39. On truth commissions, see Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (New York: Routledge, 2001).
40. While Quechua has been one of Peru's official languages since 1993, there is no program of studies in translation, and there are therefore no trained professionals. As Carlos Iván Degregori has pointed out, long-standing socioeconomic, linguistic, and gender divides were recreated in the composition of the commission itself: among the CVR commissioners, only one spoke and understood Quechua, while another partially understood, thus maintaining a strong linguistic gap between the mainly middle-class, male except for two women) commissioners and the victims, 75 percent of whom spoke Quechua and other native languages. Carlos Iván Degregori, "Heridas abiertas, derechos esquivos: Reflexiones sobre la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación" ("Open Wounds, Aloof Rights: Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission"), in Memorias en conflicto: Aspectos de la violencia política contemporánea (Memories of Conflict: Aspects of Contemporary Political Violence), ed. Ravnald Belay et al., (Lima: Embajada de Francia en el Perú, IEP, IFEA, Red para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Perú, 2004), 82n22.
41. Other Peruvians were also well aware of the problem posed by the choice of commissioners. As Víctor Vich has noted, "by speaking for the 'other,' in reality we are silencing the 'other' who could have spoken for himself. On this point, the CVR starts with a central problem in that we do not find in its composition a direct representative of the victims." R. Víctor Vich, "La literatura, la Comisión de Verdad, y el Museo de la Memoria," Quehacer 132 (2001): 70.
42. The CVR held eight public hearings with victims or family members, seven public assemblies, and five theme-based bearings (on subjects of antiterrorist legislation, displaced persons, universities, women, and teaching). See www.everdad.org.pe/lacomision/balance/index.php (accessed December 11, 2005).
43. Amnesty International, Peru: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission; A First Step towards a Country without Injustice (New York: Amnesty International, 2004), 3.
44. Article 3 of Decreto supremo n. 065-2001-PCM www.everdad.org.pe/ lacomision/nlabor/decsupol.php (accessed December 11, 2005).
45. The objectives of the CVR can be found at www.everdad.org.pe/lacomision/ nlabor/objetivos.php (accessed December 11, 2005).
46. Carlos Iván Degregori, "La Palabra y la escucha: Reflexiones sobre la Comisión de Verdad y Reconciliación," Sociolismo y participación 92 (2002): 95.
47. At the time of writing this article, these judicial trials are underway, though the scale is limited. Of the 42 cases of gross human rights violations presented to the judiciary, prosecutors have filed only 22 criminal charges; 389 members of the armed forces are under judicial investigation, but so far none have been charged with human rights violations. César Romero, "Ningún militar está condenado," ("Not a Single Military Man is Charged"), La República, November 27, 2006.
48. I thank the anonymous RHR reader for drawing my attention to TAFOS.
49. The photograph archive of the CVR can be visited at www.everdad.org.pe/ apublicas/p-fotografico/index.php (accessed December 1, 2005). The CVR published the photography exhibit as a book and created a photography database available on their Web site: Yuyanapaq: Para recordar: Relato visual del conflicto armado interno en el Perú, 1980-2000 (Yuyanapaq: To Remember: Visual Account of the Internal Armed Conflict in Peru, 1980-2000) (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la PUCP, 2003).
50. On the role of Yuyachkani in contesting violence during the war years and in the reconstruction during the posteonflict period, see Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire, 190-211
51. Francine A'ness, "Resisting Amnesia: Yuyachkani, Performance, and the Postwar Reconstruction of Peru," Theatre Journal 56 (2004): 395-414.
52. On the earlier years of Yuyachkani, see Miguel Rubio Zapata, Notas sobre teatro (Notes on Theatre), ed. Luis A. Ramos-García (Lima: Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani; Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2001).
53. Truths are held as a kind of memory and thus form part of the struggle over individual, collective, official, and counter memories. As Stern argues, historians have to be careful not to fall into the dichotomy of memory-versus-forgetting narrative structures. See his Remembering Pinochet's Chile, xxvii-xxviii.
54. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990)
55. on ruptures, delayed memories, and historical openings, see Stern, Remembering Pinochet's Chile
56. and LaCapra, History and Memory after Auschwitz, 8-9.
57. Two of Ortega Matute's films that depict violence in the highlands were in theaters during the truth commission: Sangre inocente (Innocent Blood) (2000) and Incesto en los Andes: La maldición de los jarjachas (Incest in the Andes: The Curse of the Jarjachas) (2003).
58. On retablos, see María Eugenia Ulfe, "Representations of Memory in Peruvian Retablos" (PhD diss., George Washington University, 2005) on tablas, see Moíses Lemlij and Luis Millones, The Tablas of Sarhua: Art, Violence, and History in Peru (Lima: SIDEA, 2004)
59. on pumpin, see Jonathan Ritter, "Historia de una música testimonial," Cuestión del estado 32 (2003): 80-82.
60. On Uchuraccay and alternative narratives, see Ponciano del Pino "Uchuraccay: Memoria y representación de la víolencia política en los Andes," in Jamás tan cerca arremetió lo lejos: Memoria y violencia política en el Perú (Never So Close it Attacked from a Distance: Memory and Political Violence in Peru), ed. Carlos Iván Degregori (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2003), 49-93.
61. The names Ayacucho and Huamanga are both used to refer to the capital city of the department of Ayacucho.
62. It should be noted that the distinction between state and nonstate sources is at times difficult to differentiate because of the very weakness of the Peruvian state and the strong presence of nongovernmental organizations. An interesting forum for or producer of alternative sources, though methodologically problematic if one seeks "pure" sources from "below," comes in the form of the NGOs who solicit cathartic truth telling such as art contests for the youth to recount their experiences and establish memory sites and commemorative dates. These NGOs, through their different diagnostic techniques, may point truth telling in certain directions and toward certain forms of expression.
63. Leigh A. Payne, "Humor That Makes Trouble," in Bilbija et al., The Art of Truth-Telling, 70.
64. Political parties and the media played an active role in distorting and silencing truths by speaking out against the findings of the CVR two months before the Final Report was made public. This continued after the publication of the Informe final. Degregori, "Heridas abiertas," 84.
65. Informe Final, "Conclusiones generales," www.everdad.org.pe/ifinal/index.php (accessed December 11, 2005).
66. Informe Final, "Conclusiones generales," www.everdad.org.pe/ifinal/index.php (accessed December 11, 2005).
67. According to an Amnesty International report, Fujimori, Vladimiro Montesinos, and the death squad Grupo Colina did not agree to meet with the CVR. See Amnesty International, Peru, 4. The media, political parties, and conservative sectors of the church (especially Opus Dei) posed the greatest opposition to the CVR, giving more resistance than Sendero. Guzmán agreed to talk to the CVR, mainly to insult it. Carlos Iván Degregori, presentation to the Instituto Hemisférico, Lima, July 20, 2005.
68. Informe final, "Los actores del conflicto" ("Actors of the Conflict"), www.everdad.org.pe/ifinal/ index.php (accessed December 11, 2005).
69. Informe final, "Conclusiones generales," www.everdad.org.pe/ifinal/conclusiones.php (accessed December 11, 2005).
70. On silence and memories, see Elizabeth Jelín and Susana G. Kaufman, "Layers of Memories: Twenty Years after in Argentina," in The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration, ed. T.G. Ashplant, Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper (New York: Routeledge, 2000), 89-110
71. Elizabeth Jelín, Los trabajos de la memoria (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2002).
72. Alex Wilde, "Irruptions of Memory: Expressive Politics in Chile's Transition to Democracy," Journal of Latin American Studies 31 (1999): 473-500.
73. Stern speaks of silence and indifference as a "closed memory box" in Remembering Pinochet's Chile, 90-93, 111-14.
74. Degregori, "Heridas abiertas," 81.
75. While the CVR found the Catholic and evangelical churches to have contributed to the defense of human rights in general and to have "strengthen[ed] the social fabric," they also criticized the archbishopric of Ayacucho for failing to acknowledge the existence of human rights abuses and for impeding the work of organizations assisting Ayacuchanos. Informe final, "Conclusiones generales," section C, 141-44.
76. On the struggle between progressive elements in the Catholic Church who played a pivotal role in the Peruvian human rights movement and provided important support for the CVR, and the conservative hierarchy that acted in opposition to these efforts, see Youngers, Violencia política, esp. 178-89.
77. The reference to Argentina is indicative of a larger tendency to conflate aspects of Peru's period of violence with that of Argentina. Those individuals and NGOs working on Peruvian memory projects borrow heavily from the boom of literature on memory and violence in Argentina for framing of Peru's own "dirty war." This tendency, somewhat repeated in the examples used in the essay, tends to place the focus of scholarly analysis on the roles of the military and the state. It should be repeated, however, that the CVR found Sendero Luminoso to be the instigator and main perpetrator of human rights violations. Cartoons and artistic representations may focus more heavily on the military role in committing violence because this is an easier narrative to construct, it poses a clearer argument for reparations, and it avoids the greater difficulty for affected communities to reconcile themselves with memories of fellow campesinos as Shining Path members. More directly, Sergio Langer, an Argentine cartoonist, created this cartoon. I thank Raúl Hernández Asensio for this observation about the "Argentinization" of Peruvian memories of violence.
78. The number of people interviewed is not stated. Of those interviewed, 48.3 percent "agreed" with the work of the CVR, 34.8 percent "disagreed," and 16.9 percent did not respond. It is interesting to note that in the Cono Norte of Lima, only 8.2 percent agreed, while 50.9 percent disagreed. This region of Lima grew dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s as the result of rural highland migration to Lima. "La opinion de la gente," Ideele 157 (2003): 44-47.
79. Amnesty International, Peru, 26-27.
80. For an explanation of how the CVR came to this number of victims, see Susana Villarán and Hildegard Willer, "La cifra estimada: 69.280 muertos," Ideele 157 (2003): 58-59
81. Degregori, "Heridas abiertas," 84.
82. Amnesty International, Peru, 27.
83. The CVR showed that these wounds were not closed and that they were much more serious and painful that anyone outside of the affected communities realized. Unlike in Southern Cone countries, where the violence targeted mainly urban groups, in Peru the most affected was "el pobre-rural-indígena-joven" ("the poor-rural-female indigenous-young person"). Degregori, "Heridas abiertas," 81
84. Degregori, presentation at the instituto Hemisférico, Lima, july 20, 2005.
85. E. P. Thompson, "Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture," Journal of Social History, 7 (1974): 382-405.
86. Quoted in Amnesty International, Peru, 10.
87. Laurie Beth Clark, "Performing Truth," in Bilbija et al., The Art of Truth-Telling, 84.
88. Similar examples of street performance include the Madres de Plaza de Mayo Thursday processions, the banging of pots and pans (cacerolazos), and public rallies held by the sons and daughters of the disappeared at the homes of perpetrators (escraches) in Argentina.
89. Clark, "Performing Truth," 84.
90. Paul Stopforth, quoted in Sue Williamson, Resistance Art in South Africa (Cape Town: David Philip, 1989), 114.
91. Also quoted in Jo Ellen Fair, "Artworlds," in Bilbija et al., The Art of Truth-Telling, 224.
92. Colectivo Yuyarisun was formed in 2002, composed of several associations, including IPAZ and SER. Colectivo Yuyarisun, Rescate por la memoria (Recovery of Memory) (Ayacucho, Peru: Colectivo Yuyarisun, Ministerio Británico para el Desarrollo International, Organización Holandesa para la Cooperación International al Desarrollo, 2004), 5. SER held another contest the following year. Rescate por la memoria (Ayacucho, Peru: SER, 2005).
93. Some entries may have been excluded from the final contest because they did not meet the format of short stories or comics. Colectivo Yuyarisun, Rescate por la memoria, 8.
94. Ricardo Caro and Javier Torres, interview by the author, November 3, 2005, Lima, Peru.
95. Degregori, "Heridas abiertas," 81.
96. The lyrics for "Huamanguino" in English and Quechua are in Starn, Degregori and Kirk, The Peru Reader, 368-70
97. and Ulfe "Representations of Memory," 214-15.
98. These two translations differ: the first makes the main protagonist a woman and the latter, a man. I have used Ulfe's translation. For a more detailed description of this retablo and "Hombre" discussed below, see Ulfe's thoughtful dissertation "Representations of Memory," esp. 212-15
99. and Toledo Brückman, Retablos de Ayacucho: Testimonio de violencia (Retablos from Ayacucho: Testimony of Violence) (Lima: Editorial San Marcos, 2003), 61-65.
100. Brückmann, Retablos de Ayacucho, 64.
101. Amnesty International, Peru, 17-20; and Informe final, "Violencia y desigualdad de género" ("Violente and Gender Inequality"), www.cverdad,org,pe/ifinal/index.php (accessed December 11, 2005).
102. Colectivo Yuyarisun, Rescate por la memoria, 7.
103. Ibid., 138.
104. For Spanish and English translations of the lyrics, see Ulfe "Representations of Memory," 210.
105. For Spanish and Quechua, see Brückmann, Retablos de Ayacucho, 61n16.
106. Both Ulfe and Brückmann describe this retablo based on interviews with Jiménez. Ulfe, "Representations of Memory," 211-12
107. Bückmann, Retablos de Ayacucho, 61-63.
108. On retablos as protest art see Billie Jean Isabell "Violence in Peru: Performances and Dialogues," American Anthropologist 100 (1988): 282-92.
109. Several of these truth categories were discussed in the context of South Africa at the workshop "Alternative Truth-Telling," Robben Island Museum, South Africa, May, 22-26, 2000.