Peru: Tempestad en los Andes

A documentary was presented at the Lima film festival this week called Tempestad en los Andes, directed by Mikael Winström. It focuses on Josefin Ekermann, the niece of the first wife of Abimael Guzmán, Augusta La Torre, as she travels to Peru from Sweden to find out "the truth" about her family's links to Sendero Luminoso (see trailer below, in Spanish - although the film is apparently in Quechua and English with Spanish subtitles). It also tells the story of Flor Gonzales, whose brother died in the prison of El Frontón.

I knew that Guzmán was married before Elena Iparraguirre but I knew almost nothing about his first wife and her role in the foundation of Shining Path, so this sounds really interesting.

La sobrina política de Abimael Guzmán es la estrella de este documental sueco sobre Sendero Luminoso (utero.pe)
Los estigmas de la guerra unen y separan a estas mujeres (La Republica)
TEMPESTAD EN LOS ANDES (festivaldelima.com)

Chile: Military childhoods of presidential candidates

There are bound to be plenty of comparisons of the similar-yet-different backgrounds of the two presidential candidates in Chile, Michelle Bachelet and Evelyn Matthei.

Bachelet, who of course we know from her previous term, is the daughter of Air Force Brigadier General Alberto Bachelet Martínez. He was loyal to Salvador Allende, was imprisoned following the coup and died in 1974 of heart problems caused by torture.

Labour minister and UDI candidate Matthei is the daughter of Air Force General Fernando Matthei Aubel, who was part of the military junta from 1977 to 1990.

The two have reportedly known each since childhood.

Chile Labour Minister Evelyn Matthei to run for president (BBC)
Weakened Chilean conservatives pick woman to take on Bachelet (Reuters)
Nueve hechos que han marcado la carrera política de Evelyn Matthei (La Tercera)

Edited to add that Otto got there first on this one. 

Peru: Proyecto 1980/2000

Proyecto 1980/2000 is a theatre project dealing with the period of Peru's internal conflict. Directed by Sebastián Rubio and Claudia Tangoa, the piece uses various media including photos, video and music to discuss the era.

It tells the stories of five people growing up during this time: Sebastián Kouri, the son of Alberto Kouri (a former congressman implicated in the "Vladivideos" scandal); Manolo Jaime, the son of Matilde Pinchi (also connected to Vladimiro Montesinos); Carolina Huamán Oyague, the cousin of a victim of the massacre of La Cantuta; Amanda Hume, the daughter of the journalist Gilberto Hume and Lettor Acosta, the son of a military man who participated in the "dirty war" which took place in the interior of the country.

According to Rubio, "Proyecto 1980/2000 tries to form a bridge between the spectator and a history in which the country is fragmented, polarized by the (internal) conflict and corruption".


La Republica writes that the piece brings together different points of view on the internal conflict and the Fujimori era, making it an exercise of memory for people who are too young to actually, personally, remember some of it. It sounds fascinating and it's certainly unusual to unite the divergent viewpoints in this way.



De 1980 al 2000: un catártico paseo por la historia del Perú (La Republica)
Voces de la memoria: Proyecto 1980/2000. El tiempo que heredé (El teatro sabe, La mula)

See also the Facebook page and this Youtube video for more:

Thanks to José Ragas for drawing my attention to this.

Peru considers putting the TRC on the curriculum - and it had better hurry up

I have just watched the Youtube video above and I am genuinely shocked and saddened.

For the non-Spanish speakers, it shows young Peruvians being asked about their country's recent history and revealing that they know...well... nothing. They were unable to identify a photo of Abimael Guzman - a man responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people in their country within the last 30 years ("Is he an artist?" "A film director?"). The words "Lucanamarca" and "Tarata" mean nothing to them.

The sample size was undoubtedly small and the survey not representative - there are young people who know about the conflict. But the fact that the examples shown in the clip above could even be found is scandalous. I live in Germany, and it's pretty much the equivalent of a young person here not being able to identify Hitler or recognise the word Auschwitz. That's simply not possible because the German school curriculum deals with the issue from every angle - not just in history lessons - with the explicit aim of teaching the next generation and making sure such a thing can never happen again.

Now the Peruvian education minister says she is "considering" including material from the truth and reconciliation commission (CVR) in the curriculum from 2013. I would say that this move is urgently needed and as many young people need to visit exhibitions like Yuyanapaq as well. Otherwise, when someone from a movement like Movadef asks them for a signature, they won't have any idea what they're signing up to.

Truth Commission Report Could Be Added To Curricula In 2013 – Minister (Peruvian Times)
Informe de la CVR será considerado en los textos escolares del 2013 (El Comercio)

Peru: Consequences for Children of Imprisoned Mothers

The recent Peruvian film La teta asustada focused on how violence inflicted on a Peruvian woman continued to have repercussions in the next generation, on her daughter. In the real world, Peru's Centro de Atencion Psicosocial has carried out a study on the children of women imprisoned during the civil conflict, concluding that these children have suffered a negative psychological impact.

The mothers reported that their offspring had displayed various negative effects in including emotional changes (sadness, crying and depression 44%), problems at school (34%), consumption of drugs and alcohol (10%) and suicide attempts (8%).

This was a relatively small study and I don't know enough of the details to know whether these issues are more severe than those suffered by the children of women incarcerated at other periods or for other reasons. Nevertheless, it's a further reminder of the continuing legacy of a violent era in a society. Especially under Fujimori, many thousands of Peruvians were imprisoned, often with very little evidence against them and without having undergone a fair trial, so although the study cohort was fairly small, there must be a lot more people out there whose family life was disrupted in this way.

Hijos e hijas de madres detenidas durante etapa de violencia politica presentan consecuencias negativas en su salad mental (CNDDHH)

News Round-Up

Argentina
Suspect: Charges in Argentine Bomb Case Are 'Lies' (NY Times)

Colombia
Afraid to Fight? (Plan Colombia and Beyond)
Parapoliticas on the ballot (Lat/Am Daily)

Peru
Peru mental health specialists provide treatment for children of political violence (Peruvian Times)
Defense Minister: Peru and Colombia intelligence agencies share information on ties between rebel groups (Peruvian Times)

Chile: Election Sunday Round-Up

Numerous bloggers with more Chile-specific knowledge than me will doubtless be following today's elections.

My attention was caught by an article in the New York Times about the reluctance of young Chileans to vote.

Just 9.2 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds are registered to vote on Sunday, the lowest number for a presidential election since democracy was restored in 1990

That really is an amazing low figure. The article identifies a series of interconnected reasons for young people's rejection of the electoral system.

I hope that 9 percent becomes zero percent,” said Gonzalo Castillo, an 18-year-old history major at the University of Chile, who said he refused to register. “All the candidates represent the interests of the oligarchy, of big business interests.”

Chile’s young people say they are frustrated by a system that requires anyone who registers to cast votes for the rest of their lives, and slaps a fine on those who do not. They say the system, set up under General Pinochet, limits their freedom of expression and discourages them from registering.

But the younger generation is also deeply apathetic about traditional politics in general, and fiercely independent of the issues that concern their parents, most of whom lived through the dictatorship.

“Chile’s youth today see political discourse as the language of their parents, not as their language,” said Juan Eduardo Faúndez, the director of the National Youth Institute. “These are the children of democracy, and they have other options and other demands of Chilean society, and of the political class.”

As the article points out, young Chileans will engage with political issues which they feel affected by - but using methods such as public protest, not by voting. This is an interesting legacy of the dictatorship; simplistically, one might expect the population to have an enthusiasm for the democratic process fostered by the length of time it was denied to them, but this is not exactly how it works. Susana Kaiser's book Postmemories of Terror, for which the author interviewed many young Argentines who were too young to remember the dictatorship personally, revealed a similar reticence to engage with the political system. Aside from activists who had strong personal connections to victims of the regime, such as members of HIJOS, many young Argentines were uninterested in party politics, vague about the exact causes of political repression, and still felt inhibited by the belief of their parents that political involvement could be dangerous. For both countries, the lack of engagement of younger generations could pose a serious challenge in coming years.

Chile's 'Children of Democracy' Sitting Out Presidential Election (NY Times)

In other news, exhumations of mass graves may shed light on the death of a British-Chilean priest in 1973.

Woodward died at the Valparaiso naval hospital on September 22. The official cause of his death was “cardio-respiratory arrest.” But this official version has always been contested, with his family insisting that the priest died as a result of torture.

[...]

Witness reports claim that Woodward was beaten and repeatedly dunked in a swimming pool until he suffocated. He was taken to the Esmeralda, which was then be used to hold political opponents of the military regime, where attempts were made to revive him. His body was then buried anonymously in a mass grave with other victims.

Search for remains of British priest killed when[sic] 1973 coup (Mercopress)

The international media has picked up on the story of the six arrests in connection with the death of former Chilean president, Eduardo Frei Montalva, whose son is a candidate in today's elections. Frei senior was originally said to have died of natural causes, but it now seems that he was poisoned.

Pinochet's other victim (Guardian)
6 Arrested for Murder of Former Chilean President (Impunity Watch)
Chile judge charges six over ex-president's 1982 death (BBC)

News: Bolivia and Chile

At least twenty-five people are dead as the result of political violence. It is unclear if the nation will be able to steer clear of open civil war. The Bolivian and U.S. governments have taken turns kicking one another's ambassadors out of the country. The Presidents of virtually every nation in South America are convening in an emergency summit in Chile on Monday morning, with one of them calling this moment the biggest threat to a democracy on the continent since the bloody coup that installed Augusto Pinochet in power there in 1973.

For updates on the situation in Bolivia, check out Abiding in Bolivia, Machetera, Inca Kola news, and the Democracy Center (where the citation above comes from).

Aside from that, the New York Times has an article on Chile's sexual revolution. It's a slightly odd article that seems to be attempt to be morally disapproving and also faintly titillating. OK, that in itself is quite a common feature of the press, but considering that teens making out is not in itself really newsworthy... Anyway, there are a few interesting points made:

“We are not the children of the dictatorship; we are the children of democracy,” said Michele Bravo, 17, at a recent afternoon party. “There is much more of a rebellious spirit among young people today. There is much more freedom to explore everything.”

The parents and grandparents of today’s teenagers fought hard to give them such freedoms and to escape the book-burning times of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. But in a country that legalized divorce only in 2004 and still has a strict ban on abortion, the feverish sexual exploration of the younger generation is posing new challenges for parents and educators.

In tangle of young lips, a sex rebellion in Chile (seriously, what is that headline?! NY Times)