Peru: Disappeared in Canayre?

Yesterday, La Republica reported that a military operation in the region of Canayre, Ayacucho, caused villagers to flee from their homes. The area is often known as VRAE, which stands for Valle de los rios Apurimac y Ene, Valley of the Rivers Apurimac and Ene, and it's the stronghold of the remnants of the Shining Path. Local people from the small villages of Jesus de Belen and Nueva Esperanza complained that the armed forces arrived in helicopter, firing shots, burning houses, and treating everyone as if they were senderistas. Terrified, they fled. The military chief, General Raymundo Flores Cardenas, has advised them that not is not the time to return.

The same article also claims that a total of 11 villagers were reported missing at this time.

Operación militar en el VRAE obliga a pobladores a abandonar comunidades (La Republica)

Today, Peru21 takes an even starker tone:

Extrajudicial execution, murder and forced disappearance. This are the crimes which members of the military base at Canayre, in Ayacucho, are alleged to have committed against 11 citizens from the community of Río Pichis, in the district of Ayahuanco, in the court of operations which they are carrying out to eliminate the remnants of Shining Path in the zone of Vizcatán, in the VRAE.

Denuncian a las Fuerzas Armadas por nuevas desapariciones (Peru21)

The Minister of Defence Ántero Flores-Aráoz, (who I mentioned earlier here), has stated that none of the missing people are being held by the Armed Forces. Moreover, he accuses those denouncing the disappearances in no uncertain terms of being involved in the drugs trade and attempting to prevent the military from opposing terrorism.

Descartan que las Fuerzas Armadas esten detras de desapariciones denunciadas (Peru21)

All I can say is, will they never learn? The TRC report found the armed forces reponsible for nearly half of deaths and disappearances during the main period of conflict and still, they not only drive peasants from their villages, but also act all astonished and self-righteous when questioned about it. The monthly newsletter from the Peru Support Group that I received this morning asked, after a couple of positive examples, whether impunity was 'over' in Peru. Not quite, I suspect.

Film Review: War on Democracy

John Pilger's War on Democracy is reviewed by NACLA:

Perhaps the most poignant moment in John Pilger’s latest documentary, The War on Democracy, comes during an interview with Sister Dianna Ortiz, the U.S. nun tortured by Guatemalan security forces in 1989. “I’ve heard people say that what happened in Abu Ghraib is an isolated incident,” she says, with a mix of outrage and disbelief. “And I just shake my head and say: Are we on the same planet? Aren’t you aware of our history? Isn’t history taught in the classroom about the role of the U.S. government in human rights violations?”

Cold War Terror in the Americas: A History Lesson

Here's a trailer:

Brazil: Compensation for US torture victim

The Brazilian government has promised to pay compensation to a U.S. pastor who was arrested, beaten and tortured in 1974 under the former military dictatorship.

Brazil to compensate US pastor torture in 1974 (AP via Yahoo)

Memorials: Interview with Julián Bonder

Peruvian newspaper La Republica carries in interview with Argentine architect Julián Bonder, whose work includes a monument to the victims of the AMIA bombing.

- What is the meaning of a memorial?
- It's a space which invites people to think, to reflect on the past. The word memorial comes from the Latin "memento", something which warns us about past and future topics. The term monument is very interesting, which means remember and warn. Therefore, is it possible that thinking about monuments can warn us about past events, thinking about the future? The idea is not to generate objects where memory can be deposited, but spaces which activate memory.

Yes, indeed, this is one of the principles behind this blog. You can read more of the interview at the link below, although I would have preferred to read more about the concrete manifestations of the memorial culture in Latin America, as well as the theory.

Entrevista | Julián Bonder. Promotor (La Republica)

Argentina: Dictatorship documents discovered

The head teacher of the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires (one of the most prestigious secondary schools in Argentina) has discovered files compiled during the military dictatorship. It's a long article so I haven't translated the whole thing, but here are some good chunks of it:

In a dusty, cobweb-filled staircase, in a dark corner of the head teacher's officers of the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, dozens of folders with intelligence documents about students and staff were discovered, gathered by the authorities of the school during the dictatorship. There are blacklists, with details of pupils and their parents, graphs showing the organisation of the UCR* and even a list of wardens and human rights abusers under the amusing title of "National Committee on the Disappearance of Personas". The current headteacher, Virgina González Gass, who found them, plans to create an Archive of Memory with the documents.

The files were piled in several cabinets in the internal staircase of the headteacher's offices in the college - which is four centuries old. The stairs were used by the headteacher to go to what was his private quarters, which was some time ago converted into an IT office. González Gass took the post last May, replacing Horacio Sanguinetti, now director of the Colón [Theatre], appointed by Mauricio Macri. During his long headship at the Buenos Aires [college], Sanguinetti never showed much interest in the documents: they were left to gather dust, although he did allow two pupils to go through them and publish some in a book about the school during the dictatorship**.

[...]

How did the documents get there? They are geological layers of papers left behind by the headteachers. Some of them date back to the headship of Raúl Aragón, who took over in 1973 during the government of Héctor Cámpora. At this time, an aggressive group of class representatives formed, who defended Aragón by taking over the college when the Peronist right threatened the university and its associated secondary schools. During this takeover, the militants kept a wake for a student, Eduardo Bekerman, who had been shot by the Triple A. Shortly afterwards, Aragón was removed and succeeded by two other headteachers who clashed with pupils, imposed mass expulsions and were finally forced to resign: Mario Garda and Antonio Muñoz.

The next head arrived in 1975 and continued during the dictatorship: his name was Eduardo Aníbal Rómulo Maniglia, but the staff called him affectionately[!], "the Beast". He deployed a group of wardens who carried out intelligence work inside the college and enforced a discipline similar to that in a prison: they insisted on martial order and silence at all times, and the blue and grey uniforms of the students. The Buenos Aires college has 106 victims of state terrorism, among pupils and ex-pupils.

Maniglia died in 1978 and was replaced by his deputy, Icas Edgardo Micillo, who continued the constant contact with perpetrators of human rights abuses who requested information, until he left the post in 1982 to take up the job of Education Secretary of the City of Buenos Aires. And he abandoned the documents from the college, which stayed there as evidence of the persecution of pupils and staff and of the contact with the perpetrators. "They didn't let Aragón in anymore. Maniglia died, and Micillo, I don't know why he didn't take them," sums up González Gass.

[...]

A typed memo describes the "particular aspects to bear in mind in relation to the detection of subversive agents". In it, the military advised that "the authorities of educational establishments are obliged to inform military authorities of the detection of agents or presumed subversive activities originating from those under their orders."

Maniglia and Micillo had no problems complying with this instruction. In another document, the names of perpetrators with whom they communicated regularly are recorded, followed by names of the wardens (most often recorded: Tito Gristelli and Eduardo Kember Urquiza). The document is entitled "National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (educational field) CNdeBA". And it includes "Colonel: Hoffman, Amiano, Genovese, Valladares. Lt. Colonel: Guillermo Brizuela. Officer: Navarro (S.I.F.A.). Doctor: Bianchi".

Juan Carlos Amiano was responsible for the clandestine detention centres of Florencio Varela and Berazategui, while Héctor Hoffman directed the naval base at Mar del Plata. But the most significant is the Coronel Agustín Valladares, who led the "Operation Clarity" designed to search for subversives in eduction. His link with the Heads of the Buenos Aires college was the Secretary of University Coordination, Carlos Bianchi.[...]

La patota del Nacional (Pagina/12)

*I assume this acronym stands for Union Civica Radical, a political party, but I'm not 100% sure.
**The book is La otra Juvenilia, by Santiago Garaño and Werner Pertot.

See also this really nice article about class of '73 from the LA Times in 2003:
Revolution was one of their 3Rs

Cultural Sunday

The Navy Mechanics' School [ESMA] is no longer a school for marines nor a clandestine centre for torture and death. Yet each corner of the neutral military edifice, even the fragrance of the flowering magnolias, is impregnated with its history.

Musician Liliana Felipe is an Argentine who moved to Mexico in 1976 (Mexico was a popular destination for exiles, people who fled the military dictatorship. It was far enough away to be relatively safe but had the obvious advantages of a shared language, etc). She has returned to Buenos Aires to perform a concert in the ESMA, the former clandestine detention centre now turned "place of memory".

Ganarle a la ESMA a fuerza de memoria (Pagina/12)

An academic symposium and exhibition are commemorating 80 years since the publication of Seven Essays on the Interpretation of Peruvian Reality, Jose Mariategui's classic text (which, i hang my head in shame and admit I have never done more than flick through, but I should try to remedy that). Mariategui was a key inspiration for Abimael Guzman and the Shining Path - whose name is derived from a quote of his about following the shining path to revolution - but I suspect he would have utterly horrified at the interpretation of his works that led to the slaugher of tens of thousands of indigenous Peruvians.

Anyway, the symposium is taking place on the 2 and 3 October at the Universidad Ricardo Palma in Lima, and the exihibition is being run by the Universidad de San Marcos and is in their cultural centre, the Casona de San Marcos, from 2 to 23 October, with free entrance.

Siete ensayos, 80 años después (La Republica)

Finally, there is an application underway to have the Qapaq Ñan, the network of Inca roads which cover the Andean region, declared a UNESCO world heritage site. It would be the only such site to encompass six different countries - Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.

Qapaq Ñan, patrimonio de la humanidad (La Republica)

Peru: Fujimori 'knew about abuses'

Newly declassified documents from the US suggest that Fujimori must have been aware of human violations committed early in his Presidency.

Fujimori is currently on trial for the murders of 25 civilians, committed in 1991 and 1992 by the "Colina Group," a death squad made up of Army Intelligence Service (SIE) agents.

"Fujimori cannot claim he had no idea about the activities of the armed forces until 1993. The declassified documents record that the former United States ambassador to Peru, Anthony Quainton, spoke to Fujimori on the subject in December 1991," Kornbluh said.

Declassified US Documents Undermine Fujimori's Claims (IPS)