An empty place of memory
Peru has
set up a place of memory for the victims of terrorism with German help – but powerful
people are still struggling with the past.
There is a
memorial at the gate of the presidential palace on the Plaza Mayor in the heart
of the Peruvian capital, Lima. It is a marble obelisk about four meters high on
a black base. Then-president Alan García inaugurated it in May 2009. It is dedicated
to the “4,357 defenders of the fatherland and democracy” who became “victims of
terrorist crimes” – members of the armed forces and the police, politicians and
officials. Every day around lunchtime, the colourful changing of the guards
takes place in the space in front of the neo-baroque state building.
The obelisk
for the victims of terrorism is to a certain extent part of a ceremony which
the Republic of Peru uses each day to reiterate its history –from independence
won in 1821 from its Spanish colonial masters through to the stable and
flourishing democracy of the present. The memorial in front of the presidential
palace does, admittedly, not do justice to the painful era of terrorism from
1980 to 2000. In the years of the terror caused by the Maoist guerrillas of the
Shining Path and the MRTA, it was not just the 4,357 military and state
officials who lost their lives. Most of the about 70,000 victims of the bloody
conflict between the leftist terror groups and the Peruvian armed forces were
civilians, and the mother tongue of three quarters of these civilian victims
was the indigenous language Quechua.
Unlike the
4,357 victims of terror from the security forces and authorities, the much
larger number of murdered and disappeared people from the mostly indigenous civilian
population do not have a national monument, unless you count the various
documentation and memory centres that have been set up in the particularly
affected Andean region of the South by victims’ associations. Yet this gap in
the national healing process of the now-secure Peruvian democracy could have
been closed long ago.
The
impressive building of the “Lugar de la Memoria” (place of memory) has been
ready for use in the district of Miraflores for nine months now and is waiting
to be filled with content and life. Germany contributed EUR 4.5 million to the
construction of the memorial, with Sweden also helping. But the design of the
planned permanent exhibition is still politically highly controversial.
Concepts developed by independent experts which are supposed to explain the
crimes committed and experienced by both sides equally, have become bogged down
in the bureaucracy of the ministries.
There are a
lot of indications that president Ollanta Humala, in office since July 2011,
wants to have his say in how Peru will present its recent, bloody history in
the national place of memory. After all, Humala is a former army office and in
1992 he was stationed at the Madre Mía base near Pacayacu in the Andes, from
where soldiers are said to have committed human rights violations during
actions against the civilian population, which was supposedly linked to the
Shining Path. Former president Alan García, whose first term in office from
1985 to 1990 saw notorious massacres of the indigenous population by the armed
forces, is also said to be doing his best to torpedo the exhibition plans.
The visit
of German president Joachim Gauck comes during this sustained phase of
sometimes heated national debate. It is the first time a German president has
visited Peru since 1964. On Saturday, Gauck opened a temporary exhibition on
the history of the conflict from 1980 to 2000 in the presence of Nobel
prize-winner Mario Vargas Llosa, who has provided considerable support to the
Lugar de la Memoria project in his role as intellectual mentor. “Germany has
been a role model for overcoming the rule of violence by being open about it
instead of hiding it,” said Vargas Llosa with a view to the situation since the
reunification of Germany in 1990.
Certainly, the display boards put up for Gauck's visit and the museum opening were not able to fill the exhibition rooms - in terms of space or content. In the museum auditorium, Gauck made an almost imploring speech on the subject of "No future without the past" to the overwhelmingly young audience. As he did during his visit to Colombia in 2013, Gauck offered Peru Germany's help in working through the trauma of a period of history characterized by violence and injustice. The desire to repress the past and "look forward" is understandable, said Gauck, but what is buried will resurface, at the latest in the next generation. "A nation does not lose itself when it admits its guilt," said the German president.
The independent truth and reconciliation commission was founded in 2001. Its exemplary work, including listening to about 16,000 witnesses, is regarded as a milestone in Peru’s process of dealing with its past. The commission found that 54% of the victims were killed by the Shining Path, while the Peruvian military and paramilitary groups were responsible for 42%.
Victims become gracious when perpetrators admit their guilt, said Gauck during his speech at the opening of the museum. He also stressed this belief during his private conversations with president Ollanta Humala. Whether his advice was taken on board remains to be seen, not least in the Lugar de la Memoria. The consensus about dealing with the past in Peru was stable enough to build a place of memory, but so far, it has not been strong enough to fill it.
Ein leerer Ort der Erinnerung (FAZ.net)
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