Study Notes on Peru's Violence (1980-1995)

Peru After 15 Years of Violence (1980-1995)

Introduction

In the mid-1992s, many Peruvians sought passports to flee the country due to lack of work, fear, and speculations of a Sendero Luminoso victory.
Sendero Luminoso announced a stage of “strategic equilibrium” with serious possibilities of gaining power in two to four years.
The unexpected arrest of Abimael Guzmán in September 1992 radically changed the country's political violence.
President Fujimori announced the end of Sendero Luminoso and Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA) by the end of 1995.
In October 1996, Sendero Luminoso remained active, sparking concerns about its potential resurgence.
The fifteen years of war resulted in nearly thirty thousand deaths, over three thousand disappearances, and at least half a million displaced individuals.
Future social and political analyses will frequently reference a periodization before and after Sendero Luminoso.
There is abundant literature available on political violence and Sendero Luminoso, leading to a specialization called senderología.
Violence and its direct relation to ethnic issues are gaining increasing importance in academic and political debate.

Central Questions for Understanding Peru's Recomposition

Is it possible for the cycle of political violence that began in 1980 to end?
What are the consequences of the increasing militarization of the countryside and Peruvian society?
What are the limits and possibilities of the current militarization in the countryside?
Are pacification and demilitarization possible in the short term?
What would be the possible reordering of agrarian property in the new context of the open land market?
In what ways is capitalism being restructured in Peru?
Where are the Native Communities of the Amazon heading?
What are the possibilities for solving economic problems in the country's zones of extreme poverty?
How and why does social frustration turn into political violence? In other words, how is the Andean rage formed?
How would the political vacuum in the countryside be filled if pacification and demilitarization are admitted as possibilities?
What reserves do indigenous cultures have to resist the shock produced by political violence?
What reserves do peasant communities have to resist, adapt to, and overcome the severe problems caused by political violence?
What are the specific rights of indigenous peoples? What differentiates them from the so-called Human Rights?
What are the consequences of the struggle that the Catholic Church and Protestant Churches wage in the Andean, Amazonian, and coastal fields and in the young towns of the cities?
What consequences do the production and trade of cocaine produce in the war zones?
What are the changes in the universe of daily life based on the inversion of roles between men and women within displaced families?
How is political culture changing in Peru?
What real possibilities exist for displaced persons to return to their towns of origin?
What should be done in the Amazon region in the face of oil and timber companies?
How do cultures change in the context of Peru's multiculturalism?

Research Approach

Many of these questions have not yet been raised in the country.
Elements to answer them can be found in reports, books, or articles on violence.
Fundamental research is needed to identify and display deep changes in society due to capitalist restructuring.
Various horizons can be opened to answer the essential question: what to do?
There are many risks in attempting to answer the raised questions in emergency zones.
Researchers' intuition can guide the search for information on potentially correct answers, considering contradictory elements.
It is essential to avoid the classic error of researchers only interested in proving their hypotheses and ignoring contradictory reasons and facts.
Addressing all existing possibilities of response and measuring their importance is the only way to avoid the research's arbitrary linearity.
In 1994, after significant changes in global politics (fall of the Berlin Wall and disintegration of the USSR), the spirit for research should be free and open.
Conceptual categories from various sources should be used, focusing on complementarity rather than opposition.
The concept of social class remains useful if defined by its dynamics.
In a situation of change imposed by violence, the stratification of society enters decomposition.
It is legitimate and theoretically useful to speak of classes in decomposition or disappearance and classes in affirmation or consolidation.
Social phenomena should be approached as processes resulting from multiple determinations, with special attention to conflicts of interest.
Economic, political, or religious phenomena do not exist in isolation; they are all present simultaneously, and this complexity must be understood through research.
This text presents a list of themes and questions for a research agenda on the consequences of 15 years of violence in Peruvian history.

Structural Violence

Peru began to form as a country from a violent clash between two civilizations that, after nearly 500 years, has not yet ended.
The Andean cultures Quechua and Aymara, as well as hundreds of ethnic groups in the Andes, Coast, and Amazon, were dispossessed of their resources and subjected to Western domination.
They adapted to domination while resisting to preserve core elements of their cultural matrices.
Dozens of these groups could not withstand the aggression and have disappeared.
At the edge of the 21st century, only 58 remain, six of which are seriously threatened with extinction due to their small number.
Structural violence resulting from the conquest still exists because the colonial society legitimized it, justified death, and made victors and vanquished accept supposed superiority and inferiority.
The Spanish crown questioned the justice of the war against the Indians, leading to differing opinions from figures like Fraile Ginés de Sepúlveda and Fraile Bartolomé de Las Casas.
Ginés de Sepúlveda argued for the licitness of Spanish conquest, viewing indigenous people as not fully human until Christianized.
Bartolomé de Las Casas argued that the Indians of America were also children of God and, therefore, brothers and sisters of Europeans.
Colonial state officials and conquistadors followed Sepúlveda's thinking, while Las Casas' ideas remained in the minority.
The argument about the non-human or sub-human character of the Indians underlies the structural violence in Peru.

Three derived ideas remain strong:

There are superior and inferior races, and mestizos are despicable.
Western culture is superior due to writing, contrasting with the ignorance attributed to Indians who do not read or write.
There is one true God of the Christians, and idols of pagans must be destroyed.

Culture of Violence

These values form pillars of a culture of violence, part of Peru's collective unconscious.
Abuse and violence against the poor and humble are considered normal.
The discourse of modernity (equality before the law, freedom, justice, democracy, secular thought, etc.) is largely an unfulfilled promise.
Structural violence is evident in language.
Ginés de Sepúlveda referred to the inhabitants of America as Indians and described them as infidels, pagans, idolaters, barbarians, tyrants, brutes, imperfect, fools, sodomites, and almost animals.
Indigenous people categorically reject these violent categories.
In the last third of this century, each indigenous people reivindicates its own historical name, escaping the prison of colonial domination.
Independence from colonial power must also be asserted in the sphere of language.

Politically Desired Violence

There is also politically desired violence in Peru.
On May 15, 1963, Javier Heraud, a 21-year-old poet from Lima, was killed, marking the first guerrilla death in a phase of politically motivated violence.
The Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) and Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) took up arms in the 1960s but were quickly defeated.
Armed and police officers decide to kill those they consider enemies of the homeland.
Political parties also resort to violence in their struggle for power.
Sendero Luminoso and MRTA are part of a diverse Latin American movement.
In 1968, General Juan Velasco Alvarado overthrew Fernando Belaúnde and initiated political change.
Velasco legitimized the promise of the Peruvian revolution, which had been a clandestine proposal.
Organizations of peasants, teachers, residents of young towns, state workers, domestic workers, women, secondary students, and homosexuals began to strengthen and emerge.
The official promise of humanistic and libertarian socialism and an anti-imperialist revolution created hopes that exceeded the military's capacity to profoundly change the country.
In 1975, General Morales Bermúdez overthrew Velasco, hoping to undo the changes and restore Peru to its 1968 state.
Parliamentary left and armed groups tried to fulfill the promise of revolution that Velasco legitimized.

Demographic Problem: Displaced and Recovered

The violence of the last 15 years has resulted in approximately 30,000 deaths, over 3,000 disappearances, and hundreds of thousands of war-displaced individuals.
The APRODEH press archive recorded 785 denunciations of assault, robbery, attempted homicide, smuggling, corruption, homicide, kidnapping, extortion, sexual violation, and drug trafficking allegedly committed by the National Police of Peru between 1986 and 1992.
Massacres committed by the Armed Forces and Sendero Luminoso are known.
Former President Alan García ordered the massacre of 300 prisoners in Lima jails.
While the intensity has decreased since 1993, the horror persists.
Since 1983, a forced emigration of men, women, the elderly, and children has reemerged in Peru, fleeing conflict and seeking refuge in other cities.
Documentaries capture the brutal horror, massacres, and tortures of victims from both sides.
Testimonies from displaced individuals recount their reasons for leaving and their suffering.
The 1993 National Census reported Peru's population at $22,128,446$ . Ayacucho's population decreased by $3.3%$ compared to 1981 due to forced migration caused by political violence.
The country's rapid urbanization continues, with the urban population increasing from $35%$ in 1940 to $70%$ in 1993.
Internal migration is significantly altering Peru's landscape.
The jungle population has grown to $12.1%$ of the national total, while the highlands have decreased from $39.7%$ to $35.7$ . $48.9%$ of the country's total population is under 19 years old.
The displaced of war consist of hundreds of thousands of people.
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have prepared reports with valuable information on displacement from emergency zones to cities and the central jungle.
Testimonies of the displaced are rich and abundant.
In 1994, Isabel Coral published a book on displaced individuals.
Residents of peasant communities in war zones faced four alternatives: join the armed movements, join the armed forces, flee from both, or confront Sendero Luminoso independently.
Displaced individuals fled the indiscriminate repression of the armed forces and the violence of Sendero Luminoso.

Reasons for Leaving:

Being directly or indirectly threatened by the conflicting forces.
Losing one or more direct family members.
Lacking minimal security to continue working in the fields and living in the community.
Fearing the same fate as known victims in each community.
Fleeing poverty in hopes of finding something better.
Political violence accelerates a structurally inevitable displacement due to the poverty of Apurímac, Ayacucho, and Huancavelica.
The initial stage involves hiding in the community, sleeping in fields, caves, or hills, leaving only the elderly and children at home.
The next step is abandoning the community for another within the same region, staying with relatives.
When this possibility is exhausted, moving to the city becomes inevitable.
A common pattern involves migrating directly to Lima or the jungle without intermediate stops.
In cities, displaced individuals are initially received by relatives, but the large numbers make adequate help impossible.
Receiving relatives are often migrants displaced by poverty, living in extreme poverty.
Most lack stable jobs and face insufficient salaries.
The absence of personal documents proving citizenship is a severe problem.
Churches and some NGOs provide food, documentation assistance, and collective services, but this is only a palliative.
Displaced individuals organize associations based on their origins to help each other and receive support from solidarity institutions.
The Hatariy Ayllu Association in Huancayo was the first of its kind.
A National Federation of Displaced Families of Peru may emerge.
During the political violence (1983-1992), the governments of Belaúnde, García, and Fujimori did not assist displaced individuals, considering them terrorists or agents of Sendero Luminoso.
A 1992 official commission on displaced individuals was interrupted after President Fujimori's political coup on April 5, 1992.
In 1993, the Proyecto de Apoyo al Repoblamiento (PAR) was established to help displaced individuals return to their original villages.
Since 1988, the return has been discussed as a necessity, and in 1993, the armed forces regarded return as a possible resource in their counterinsurgency strategy.
The reasons that force displacement also explain why many do not want to return.
Lima, as the capital and largest city, exerts a strong pull but also generates bitterness and rage due to its centralism and flaws.
Migrants have a conflicting relationship with Lima, but prefer living poorly there to living poorly elsewhere.
Acquiring a plot of land in a human settlement and ensuring education for their children are powerful reasons not to return.

Major Waves of Displacement in Peru

Examining Peru's history through the problem of displaced individuals reveals a long tradition, making Peru a “factory of displaced individuals.”

Five significant periods:

Moment 1: Displaced by the Incas. Before the European invasion, the Incas compulsively relocated tens of thousands of families to weaken them and prevent resistance. The yana were forced into uprooting and nostalgia.
Moment 2: Displaced by Spanish Conquistadors. Following the Inca's pattern, the Spanish monarchy, through Viceroy Toledo, ordered the mass displacement of thousands of families into reductions. The term