Everything about Internal Conflict In Peru totally explained
Óscar RamírezComrade ArtemioVíctor PolayNéstor Cerpa Cartolini †
|strength1=
|strength2=
|casualties1=
|casualties2=
|casualties3=about 70,000 killed
}}
It has been estimated that nearly 70,000 people died in the
internal conflict in Peru that started in 1980 and, although still ongoing, had greatly wound down by 2000. The principal actors in the war were the
government of Peru, the
Shining Path, the
Rondas Campesinas, and the
Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.
A great many of the victims of the conflict were ordinary civilians. All of the armed actors in the war deliberately targeted and killed civilians, making the conflict more bloody than any other war in
Peruvian history.
National situation before the war
Peruvian history has long been plagued by
coup d'états and
military dictatorships. General
Juan Velasco Alvarado staged a coup in 1968 and led a
left-leaning military government until he was thrown out of power by
another coup in 1975.
Francisco Morales Bermúdez was installed as the new
President of Peru in 1975, and allowed
elections to be held in 1980.
Rise of Shining Path
During the dictatorships of
Velasco and
Morales,
Shining Path had organized as a
Maoist political group based at the
San Cristóbal of Huamanga University in
Ayacucho Region, Peru. The group was led by
Abimael Guzmán, a
communist professor of
philosophy at the San Cristóbal of Huamanga University. Guzmán had been inspired by the
Cultural Revolution, which he'd witnessed firsthand during a trip to
China. Shining Path members engaged in street fights with members of other political groups and painted
graffiti exhorting "armed struggle" against the Peruvian state.
Outbreak of hostilities
When Peru's military government allowed
elections for the first time in a dozen years in 1980, Shining Path was one of the few leftist political groups that declined to take part, instead opting to launch a guerrilla war in the highlands of the province of
Ayacucho. On
May 17,
1980, the eve of the presidential elections, it burned ballot boxes in the town of
Chuschi, Ayacucho. It was the first "act of war" by Shining Path. Nonetheless, the perpetrators were quickly caught, additional ballots were brought in to replace the burned ballots, the elections proceeded without further incident, and the act received very little attention in the Peruvian press.
Shining Path opted to fight their war in the style taught by
Mao Zedong. They would open up "guerrilla zones" in which their guerrillas could operate, drive government forces out of these zones to create "liberated zones", then use these zones to support new guerrilla zones until the entire country was essentially one big "liberated zone." Shining Path also adhered to Mao's teaching that guerrilla war should be fought primarily in the countryside and gradually choke off the cities.
On
December 3,
1982, the Shining Path officially formed the "People's Guerrilla Army", its armed wing.
Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement
In 1982, the
Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) launched its own guerrilla war against the Peruvian state. The group had been formed by remnants of the
Movement of the Revolutionary Left in Peru and identified with
Castroite guerrilla movements in Latin America. The MRTA used techniques that were more traditional to
Latin American leftist organizations than those used by Shining Path. For example, the MRTA wore uniforms, claimed to be fighting for true democracy, and complained of human rights abuses by the state, while Shining Path didn't wear uniforms, abhorred democracy, and rejected the idea of human rights.
During the internal conflict, the MRTA and Shining Path engaged in combat with each other. The MRTA played a small part in the overall internal conflict, being declared by the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission to have been responsible for 1.5% of deaths accumulated throughout the war. At its height the MRTA was believed to consist of only a few hundred members.
Government response
Gradually the Shining Path made more and more violent attacks on the
National Police of Peru, and the Lima-based government could no longer ignore the growing crisis in the
Andes. In 1981,
Fernando Belaúnde Terry declared a
State of Emergency and ordered that the
Peruvian Armed Forces fight the Shining Path. Constitutional rights were suspended for 60 days in
Huamanga Province,
Huanta Province,
Cangallo Province,
La Mar Province and
Víctor Fajardo Province. Later, the Armed Forces created the Ayacucho Emergency Zone, in which military power was superior to civilian power, and many constitutional rights were suspended. The military committed many
human rights violations in the area where it had political control, including the famous
Accomarca massacre. Scores of peasants were massacred by the armed forces. A special
US-trained counterterrorist police battalion known as the "Sinchis" were particularly notorious for their human rights violations.
Escalation of the war
The reaction of the Shining Path to the Peruvian government's use of the military in the war wasn't to back down, but instead to ramp up the level of violence in the countryside. Shining Path attacked police, military, and civilians that it considered to be "class enemies", often using particularly gruesome methods of killing their victims. These killings, along with Shining Path's disrespect for the culture of indigenous peasants it claimed to represent, turned many people in the sierra away from the Shining Path.
Faced with a hostile population, the Shining Path's guerrilla war began to falter. In some areas, peasants formed anti-Shining Path patrols, called
rondas. They were generally poorly equipped despite donations of guns from the armed forces. Nevertheless, Shining Path guerrillas were militarily attacked by the
rondas. The first such reported attack was in January 1983 near
Huata, when some
rondas killed 13
senderistas; in February in
Sacsamarca,
rondas stabbed and killed the Shining Path commanders of that area. In March 1983,
rondas brutally killed Olegario Curitomay, one of the commanders of the town of
Lucanamarca. They took him to the town square, stoned him, stabbed him, set him on fire, and finally shot him. As a response, in April, Shining Path entered the province of
Huancasancos and the towns of
Yanaccollpa,
Ataccara,
Llacchua,
Muylacruz and Lucanamarca, and
killed 69 people, many of whom were children, including one who was only six months old.
Additional massacres by Shining Path occurred, such as one in
Marcas on
29 August 1985.
The Shining Path, like the government, filled its ranks by
conscription. The Shining Path also kidnapped children and forced them to fight as child soldiers in their war.
The administration of Alberto Fujimori
Under the administration of
Alberto Fujimori the pace at which the armed forces committed widespread atrocities such as massacres was slowed. Additionally, the state began the widespread use of intelligence agencies in its fight against Shining Path. However, atrocities were committed by the
National Intelligence Service, notably the
La Cantuta massacre, the
Barrios Altos massacre, and the
Santa massacre, all of which were committed by
Grupo Colina.
On
April 5,
1992, Alberto Fujimori ordered the military to occupy the
Congress of Peru, declaring the Congress dissolved and the Constitution abolished, initiating the
Peruvian Constitutional Crisis of 1992. The pretext for these actions was that the Congress was slow to pass anti-terrorism legislation. Fujimori set up military courts to try suspected members of the Shining Path and MRTA, and ordered that an "iron fist" approach be used. Fujimori also announced that Peru would no longer accept the jurisdiction of the
Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
As Shining Path began to lose ground in the Andes to the Peruvian state and the rondas, it decided to speed up its overall strategic plan. Shining Path declared that, in Maoist jargon, it had reached "strategic equilibrium" and was ready to begin its final assault on the cities of Peru. In 1992, Shining Path set off a powerful bomb in the
Miraflores District of
Lima in what became known as the
Tarata bombing. This was part of a larger bombing campaign in Lima.
On
September 12,
1992, Peruvian police captured Guzmán and several Shining Path leaders in an apartment above a dance studio in the
Surquillo district of Lima. The police had been monitoring the apartment, as a number of suspected Shining Path militants had visited it. An inspection of the garbage of the apartment produced empty tubes of a skin cream used to treat
psoriasis, a condition that Guzmán was known to have. Shortly after the raid that captured Guzmán, most of the remaining Shining Path leadership fell as well. At the same time, Shining Path suffered embarrassing military defeats to
campesino self-defense organizations — supposedly its social base — and the organization fractured into splinter groups. Guzmán's role as the leader of Shining Path was taken over by
Óscar Ramírez, who himself was captured by Peruvian authorities in 1999. After Ramírez's capture, the group splintered, guerrilla activity diminished sharply, and previous conditions returned to the areas where the Shining Path had been active.
The ranks of the MRTA were decimated by both an amnesty program for its members and the jailing of several of its key leaders. In late 1996, the MRTA seized the residence of the ambassador of
Japan to Peru, starting a 126 day-long
hostage crisis in Lima during which the MRTA demanded the release of their prisoners. Ultimately, none of the MRTA's demands were met, and the crisis ended when the Peruvian armed forces
raided the building and freed the hostages. All of the MRTA members involved in the crisis were reportedly killed during the raid; however, it's alleged that several of the aforesaid members had survived the initial raid and were
extrajudicially executed hours after the raid began.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Alberto Fujimori resigned the Presidency in 2000, but Congress declared him "morally unfit", installing
Valentín Paniagua into office. He rescinded Fujimori's announcement that Peru would leave the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and established a
Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the war. The Commission found in its 2003
Final Report that 69,280 people died or
disappeared between 1980 and 2000 as a result of the armed conflict. A statistical analysis of the available data led the the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to estimate that the Shining Path was responsible for the death or disappearance of 31,331 people, 46% of the total deaths and disappearances. According to its final report, 75% of the people who were either killed or
disappeared spoke
Quechua as their native language, despite the fact that the 1993 census found that only 20% of Peruvians speak Quechua or another indigenous language as their native language.
Nevertheless, the final report of the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission was surrounded by controversy. It was criticized by almost all political parties (including former Presidents Fujimori, García and Paniagua), the military and the Catholic Church, which claimed that many of the Commission members where former members of extreme leftists movements and that the final report wrongfully portrayed
Shining Path and the MRTA as "political parties" rather than as terrorist organizations.
The war today
Since the capture of Guzman, Shining Path has greatly declined in strength. It no longer conducts any operations in Lima, and has only been able to mount sporadic small-scale attacks. Nevertheless, Shining Path continues to occasionally kill Peruvian security forces. For example, on
June 9,
2003 a Shining Path group attacked a camp in Ayacucho, and took 68 employees of the Argentinean company
Techint and three police guards as hostages. They had been working in the
Camisea gas pipeline project that would take natural gas from
Puno to Lima. According to sources from Peru's Interior Ministry, the hostage-takers asked for a sizable ransom to free the hostages. Two days later, after a rapid military response, the hostage-takers abandoned the hostages. According to rumor, the company paid the ransom.
The group now appears to be led by a man known as
Comrade Artemio. Rather than attempt to destroy the Peruvian state and replace it with a communist state, Artemio has pledged to carry out attacks until the Peruvian government releases Shining Path prisoners and negotiates an end to the war. These demands have been made in various video statements made by Artemio. The vast majority of Peruvians continue to hold the Shining Path in low regard. On
October 13 2006, Guzmán was sentenced to life in prison for terrorism.
On the 27th anniversary of the Shining Path's first attack against the Peruvian state a homemade bomb in a backpack was set off in a market in the southern Peruvian city of
Juliaca killing 6 and wounding 48. Because of the timing of the attack the Shining Path is suspected by the Peruvian authorities of holding responsibility for the attack.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Internal Conflict In Peru'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://internal_conflict_in_peru.totallyexplained.com">Internal conflict in Peru Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
