Uruguay: Update on Graf Spee eagle

Despite being a bit of a detour from the main focus of this blog, my 2010 post on the eagle of the Graf Spee pocket battleship is one of the most-read posts I've written.

We're over four years on and not much progress has been made. Now the BBC asks "What should Uruguay do with its Nazi eagle?".

The country's supreme court has ruled that the Uruguayan state is the owner of the artifact, but that the salvage company should also receive half of the profits in the event of a sale. Businessman Alfredo Etchegaray, one of the men who led the operation to recover the eagle, told the BBC that the eagle could be worth up to US$ 15 million."Having the eagle in a box doesn't benefit anybody," he said.

There has been reporting that the eagle is not appropriately stored, but Uruguay denies this.

I'm tempted to agree with Etchegaray that the country could make good use of the cash and possibly display a replica of the eagle instead of the real thing. It's an amazing historical piece and while I certainly understand the concerns of the German government, I think it should be on display somewhere. I was just listening to a piece on the radio this morning about the difficulties of knowing what to do with the house where Hitler was born, in Austria. These are always thorny issues because the last thing you want is a shrine for neo-Nazis, but letting the sites/objects rot hardly seems to be the solution either.


What should Uruguay do with its Nazi eagle? (BBC)

Response to "Memory is not history"

The Economist's Bello column this week has a column entitled "Memory is not history", which argues that "there are dangers [in South America’s] intellectual fashion for “historical memory”." It goes on to accuse "the left" of "rewriting history" - in fact, of imposing "memory" over an accurate "history".

I would argue that the piece contains several important distortions, aside from trying to lump together a region from Colombia down to the Southern Cone.

The historical truth silenced by “memory” is that the cold war in Latin America was fought by two equally authoritarian sides.

But it was not. To take the example of Argentina, yes, there were Montoneros and there were incidences of left-wing violence before the 1976 coup. But to suggest that the small leftist group, which was largely destroyed before the military took power, was in any way equivalent to the forces of the State is very far off the mark.

The Economist points out that some human rights groups in Argentina tend to use the figure of 30,000 disappeared and it contrasts this with the nearly 9,000 victims recorded by the CONADEP commission. It is inaccurate and unfair to use the CONADEP list to undermine estimates of the disappeared, and I explained why in detail years ago. See also here for more on the numbers.

None of this mitigates the inexcusable barbarity of Pinochet or of the Argentine junta. 

The problem is that it does. You can't equate State terrorists with their victims, suggest that calculations of the disappeared are deliberately inflated, and then claim that you're not weakening the accounts of the dictatorships' crimes.

Memorials are a shorthand, yes. You can't include the whole complexities of a country's experiences on a plaque. Memory, in its wider sense, tends to include the testimonies of victims and relatives and it encompasses a whole range of commemorative acts, both formal and informal. Pulling out the memory/history dichotomy and reiterating the dos demonios theory ("each side was as bad as the other") is a means of obscuring human rights abuses and seeking to paper over the crimes of the past.

Chile: Andrés Cruzat's photomontages of Santiago coup

Photomontages of old and new images which remind us "how things were" have become a bit of a fad recently.

See, for example, this photo slideshow of Cologne, Germany, on Youtube. The clip was extremely popular, but some people, including in the Youtube comments, express concern that it is somehow an overly patriotic view of history - something which is, from the German point of view, highly problematic. There are all sorts of questions surrounding the appropriateness of mourning Germany's loss of architectural heritage and nostalgia for "what could have been".

See also these images of the Second World War in Google Street View. The "montage" in this case is not subtle - it's just a photo pasted on top of the Google image - but the idea of the continuity of place and memory is there.

Now we come to Chile.

Andrés Cruzat's images of modern-day Santiago combined with original photos of the September 11 coup do not to me seem "suspect" in the same way that some Germans felt the Cologne ones did. Rather, they take the contemporary environment, where it is often easy to forget the past, and say "Look what happened here!". One comparison which often comes up in these montages is that of ghosts - but despite the colour, it seems to me that the modern figures here as just as "ghost-like" as the 1973 ones. You can't really decide which side is more "real", it's just a layering of memory and history - the urban palimpsest in an image, as it were.

Lots more photos to see at the link below, or look at Twitter account  @fotomemoria.


"La Persistencia de la Memoria" el fotomontaje de Andrés Cruzat (cooperativa.cl)

Guardian special report on transitional justice

I thought it was worth linking to this special report from the Guardian newspaper on how various countries, including Chile and Colombia, have dealt with their traumatic pasts. The article is necessarily an overview so it doesn't reveal much to someone who is already well-read about a particular country - but I'd be surprised if anyone was well-read about all those countries, and the transcontinental comparison is really interesting.

[Colombian] President Juan Manuel Santos, re-elected in June to a second term, denies impunity is on the table, but says demanding full punishment would derail peace. "If you ask a victim today he would lean towards having more justice," said Santos. "If you ask a future victim, he will lean more towards peace."

Special report: Truth, justice and reconciliation (Guardian)

Brazil: 50th anniversary of coup

Here is a round-up of some of the coverage of the 50th anniversary of the overthrow of Brazilian president Joao Goulart.

The BBC reports how current president Dilma Rousseff stressed the importance of remembering the coup, explaining "We owe this to those who died and disappeared, owe it to those who were tortured and persecuted, owe it to their families. We owe it to all Brazilians." It also provides a video on the "house of death" and how its sole survivor has been helping the truth commission to identify torturers. There are plans to turn the site into a memorial.

In addition, BBC Brasil's Pablo Uchoa recalls the story of his father, who was detained during the dictatorship. Inocencio was long reluctant to discuss his experiences but is now also helping the truth commission.

The day after the coup anniversary, Brazil's defence minister agreed to investigate military facilities where human rights abuses were believed to have been committed during the dictatorship, reports the New York Times.The news was revealed in a statement on the truth commission's website. It is a step forward against impunity, as also discussed by The Pan-American Post.

At the National Security Archive, Peter Kornbluh discusses attempts to achieve the declassification of U.S. documents on the covert operations that contributed to the Brazilian coup and argues that now is the time to use declassified U.S. historical records as a unique diplomatic tool.

Transitional Justice in Brazil provides a far fuller round-up than I have done...

Chile: 40 years on (3)

There are declassified documents on the US and Chile from the National Security Archive.

Chilean journalism research center CIPER criticizes the role of paper El Mercurio in supporting the Pinochet regime and failing to account for its actions afterwards. 

Steve Anderson provides a personal piece for the Santiago Times on how September 11, 1973, changed his life.  

The BBC has a slideshow of the commemorations and reports on the clashes between protesters and police. 

The lingering effect of Pinochet's policies and resulting inequality is discussed by IPS.

In an editorial for La Tercera, Robert Funk asks what happens after the commemorations are over. He argues that the 11th is for remembering, and the 12th is for opening your eyes and coming to terms with the past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung). It's a very good piece.

Don McCullin on the "shame of memory"

The "Lens" blog in the New York Times picks up on comments by renowned photojournalist Don McCullin recently.

“Photography was a beautiful thing to me... But once I started putting my hands in the blood and suffering of war I became really disillusioned. I would stand in front of men who were going to be executed in front of me, crying, looking at me and hoping I could stop their murder. There were dying children in Africa who were starving, and I would come to a feeding center. They would think here was a white man, he is going to bring some food aid. All I had was a Nikon camera around my neck... At the end of the day, after years and years of assuming you can steal the pain of people in your pictures and the suffering of soldiers, civilians and starving children and dying children that drop dead in front of you, you have to suffer the shame of memory and then you have to somehow live with it, sleep with it, understand it without trying to become insane... Nobody said that you have to get on this airplane and go to these wars and make these terrible images. I did it. I have to accept the responsibility.”

Strong words which raise pertinent questions about the point of photojournalism and the uses of photography. 

I think McCullin is right that claims about the power of photography (and indeed, memory) are often overblown. Recordar para no repetir, we hear. Nunca más. Never again. But atrocities do happen again. The Holocaust was unique, but it didn't prevent Rwanda, Guatemala, Cambodia, Argentina, Peru, and the rest. He is quite right that there is no sign of an end to war and bloodshed.

So why bother? Firstly, I think, there is a value in learning about and remembering historic events whether or not this can affect the future. It seems like a question of respect towards the victims as much as anything. Photography plays a role in illustrating this and giving it a "human face".

Secondly, let's not only see the negative. While countries continue to suffer trauma, there has been progress too. Argentina - a country which experienced six coups in the twentieth century - is about to mark 30 years of democracy. Brazil is examining its past in a truth commission. Peru has imprisoned both its main guerrilla leader and the president who combated terrorism with disregard for human rights.

The issue of shame is an interesting one. Yes, being a photographer is a job and they earn money from it - I have no idea how much, but I have a suspicion it's not that much when you consider the risks they run (which they choose to run). So are they merely exploiting their subjects? It's an issue with many sides, clearly, but my instinct is that we need to see, however imperfectly, what is happening in other parts of the world. Photographs can't work miracles, but they do form an important part of memory work, and memory might not prevent future disasters, but it is still important in its own right.

The “Shame of Memory” Haunts a War Photographer (NYT)

Peru: Armed internal conflict

[Spanish speakers might want to skip directly to the links given below; in this post, I'm not claiming to be original. I just feel that the issues raised are interesting and worthy of flagging up on an English-language forum]

In view of the upcoming tenth anniversary of the final report of the truth and reconciliation commission (CVR), a debate has been ignited (or rather, reignited) in Peru regarding the use of the term "armed internal conflict" (conflicto armado interno) to refer to Peru's period of political violence.

Some would prefer the term "terrorism" to emphasise the fact that the main culpable parties were the Shining Path and MRTA. Others suggest "civil war".

This piece on Facebook from El utero de marita expresses the debate really well, pointing out that "terrorism" excludes the large numbers of victims caused by the actions of the state (think Accomarca, Los Cabitos, La Cantuta) and those who do not fall easily into either of the two categories (e.g. Uchuraccay). "Civil war", meanwhile, suggests a conflict with two more or less equally-matched and well-defined "sides", which is also not accurate. He concludes "armed internal conflict includes terrorism, but terrorism excludes many victims that we should not forget". Exactly.

Language is always a contentious issue in these contexts. As far as Peru is concerned, I've always acknowledged the particularly bloody violence of the Shining Path, in particular, by referring to them unequivocally as a terrorist group. I don't refer to the Montoneros as such, for example, nor do I call the Argentine dictatorship the "dirty war" (except occasionally in inverted commas). Argentina did experience some terrorist acts before the 1976 coup, but it did not suffer indiscriminate mass murder of unarmed civilians and the response of the state under the military regime was completely disproportionate. This is why, in Argentina, the armed forces were the primary human rights abusers. In Peru, the Shining Path (and to a far lesser extent, the MRTA) were the primary violent actors, but the state contributed a very significant number of victims as well.

So yes, Shining Path were (are) terrorists, but Peru's armed internal conflict had several actors.

Does it matter? I would suggest it does, since the label we give the period is connected to which victims we decide are worth remembering.

See also:
Sobre el termino conflicto armado interno (Desde el Tercer Piso)

Peru: 30th anniversary of Uchuraccay

It is now three decades since one of the emblematic events of the Peruvian conflict, the killing of eight journalists and their guide in Uchuraccay. Here's my original post on Uchuraccay from 2009.

Uchuraccay is one of those events where, 30 years on, the truth seems as out of reach as ever despite two investigations and innumerable newspaper articles, events, protests, appeals to court, etc.

It is also a very visual contribution to social memory. Here are three images:

This is the classic picture of the murdered journalists (with the exception of Octavio Infante, who took it). It captures the men on their way up the village, posing, apparently relaxed, it could a snapshot of a group of friends on a day out. Its power derives from our knowledge of what happened next, that these men were almost at the end of their lives.

 

This image was taken by Willy Retto at Uchuraccay, very shortly before he was killed, and discovered in a film shortly after the publication of the report produced by the commission led by Mario Vario Llosa. How many instances are there of people capturing the very moments before their own death? The power of this image is located in its presentness, frozen just before the crime. What it does not do is deliver us an awareness of "the truth" or "the facts of the case". Retto's images have been used to argue both for and against the presence of the armed forces in the village. 

This photograph comes from the online edition of La Republica, in an article headlined "They live on in the hearts of those who loved them". It shows Oscar Retto, Willy's father, holding a photograph of his son. Retto senior has spent long years battling for justice for his child and the other victims. Like relatives in many other countries and contexts, his symbol is the enlarged image of his missing son. Unlike the families of the disappeared, of course, he knows where his son is buried, but he cannot be sure of the precise circumstances of his death. The image brings together a number of symbols - the Christian cross, the cemetery, the photograph, the memorial - yet Oscar Retto is also in a posture of defiance, not bowed in mourning. Also a photojournalist, Retto senior is aged over 80, but like the Grandmothers in Argentina, his pain keeps him fighting.

Here's further reading: in particular, Juan Gargurevich's posts on his blog Periodismo, Periodistas, Periódicos are highly recommended for Spanish-speakers.

Uchuraccay: la pesadilla de Vargas Llosa (I) (Periodismo, Periodistas, Periódicos)
Uchuraccay, la pesadilla de Vargas Llosa (II) (Periodismo, Periodistas, Periódicos)
Uchuraccay, la pesadilla de Vargas Llosa (III) (Periodismo, Periodistas, Periódicos)
Uchuraccay, la pesadilla de Vargas Llosa (FINAL) (Periodismo, Periodistas, Periódicos)
-¿Qué escribió Vargas Llosa sobre Uchuraccay? (Periodismo, Periodistas, Periódicos)
Uchuraccay (IDL-Reporteros)
30 años de la matanza de Uchuraccay (el Popular)
Mártires de Uchuraccay en el recuerdo de todos (La Primera)
Masacre de periodistas es una herida abierta en Perú (AFP)
Viven en el corazón de los seres que amaron (La Republica)

Argentina: BBQ at the ESMA, anyone?

An odd scandal blew up in the first week of the year in Argentina. Justice minister Julio Alak was accused of taking part in an end-of-year barbecue on the site of the former ESMA clandestine detention centre. This was interpreted by some as a sign of disrespect for the victims disappeared at the site.

Alak has responded by denying that there was a barbecue, stating that there was an event organised by his ministry at which sandwiches were provided. He has also blamed the media for blowing the story out of proportion.

Madres' leader Hebe de Bonafini says that "anything" is allowed in the ESMA and has herself previously cooked there. On the other hand, the association of former disappeared people (AEDD) has criticised Alak and is organising a protest.

Pagina/12 has published an excellent article by Cecilia Sosa asking the questions which arise in this context:

What is a "space of memory"? What are the activities which it is possible to imagine in a site which is characterized by the unbearable? And further, is it possible to celebrate in a place of death?

Sosa recalls the work of Jens Andermann, who has identified three positions with respect to a place of memory like the ESMA: the "testimonial", which situates it as an unalterable place of witness to State Terrorism, the "museal", which focuses on the pedagogical function of the space, and the "performatic", which maintains that only by opening the space up to artistic and politic activities can it be taken back from death and the perpetrators.

Since the opening up of the ESMA in 2007, Sosa points out, the site has attempted to balance all three functions - human rights groups have offices there, there are guided tours, and there are concerts and lectures, among other things.

She concludes,

The future of the ex-ESMA has still not been discovered. The co-existence of distinct rituals suggests a different path to that taken by Auschwitz: a politics of pain which reveals its capacity for experimentation, where absences help to forge new links and where the past may live alongside a future to be invented. In this time to come, perhaps a barbecue for two thousand people or other types of celebration will not be so scandalous and will turn out to be a new way for people to be together in their loss. The table is laid. It's time to feed our guests. 

My gut reaction when I saw Tweets about the ESMA barbecue was "Really??". But reading this article reminded me of some of my usual understanding of memorials. I'm a great believer in using spaces of memory, not shutting them off from the rest of society. This was the problem with the Parque de la memoria when I was in Buenos Aires in 2004: far from the centre of the city and close to the (then-closed) ESMA, it was completely empty at the time I visited. Dead. What's the point of a park no one sits in, walks in, brings their kids to? It was also the problem with the Ojo que llora monument in Lima which, following vandalism, was shut behind a gate (I don't know if it's freely accessible right now, but the last I heard it wasn't).

No, I'm not suggesting a picnic in Auschwitz. I don't even know enough about Alak and the particular event he was attending to comment on whether or not it was "respectful enough" for the site. But I am still sure that I like to see places of memory woven into the fabric of the landscape and not preserved in aspic.

Apareció la foto del "asado" de Alak en la ex ESMA (Clarin)
Alak: "El asado en la ex ESMA es una absoluta mentira" (La Nacion)
Bonafini: en la ESMA "se puede hacer de todo" (Terra)
Crece el repudio al asado en la ESMA y convocan a una marcha (Clarin)
La mesa está servida (Pagina/12)

Argentina: Beloved Elderly Women No More

The ins and outs of the Argentine human rights scene are not much discussed in English, where if the Madres (and Abuelas, Hij@s, and so on) are seen uncritically as heroes, if they are known at all. In Argentina, they can divide opinion. In this blog, I have expressed a great deal of respect for their work, and I make absolutely no apology for doing so. But humans being humans, it's all a bit more complicated than that, as I discussed some time ago and as explained in a recent article from the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

For decades, the Argentine human rights group, Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo), has been respected for its work bearing witness to the thousands of disappearances during the Dirty War (1976-1983). In recent years the Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a faction of the original group led by Hebe de Bonafini, has sparked significant controversy because of her divisive comments on topics ranging from September 11 to anti-Semitism. Most significantly, the recent embezzlement scandal involving the organization’s housing program as well as Bonafini’s possible involvement in illegal activities threatens to destroy the reputation of the group and harm its political allies.

Read the whole thing here:
Beloved Elderly Women No More (COHA)

Brazil: Truth commission only to investigate military crimes

News that the Brazilian truth commission will focus only on military crimes from the dictatorship-era, and not guerrilla crimes, has sparked a lively debate this week. I have little to add to Colin Snider's argument in Americas North and South. For more, see in particular:

Thoughts on Brazil’s Truth Commission and the Investigation of State Crimes Only (Americas North and South)
More Thoughts on False Equivalency and Brazil’s Truth Commission (Americas North and South)
Brazil Truth Commission (Two Weeks Notice)
Brazil probes crimes of the military junta (Central American Politics)

Philip Gourevitch on memory

Thanks to Lauren for sending me the link to this interview with Boston Review ran with Philip Gourevitch, author of the book on the Rwandan genocide, We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families. 

Telling Stories About the Stories We Tell (Boston Review)

Although it's not strictly about the Latin American context, Gourevitch has some interesting thoughts on collective memory:

There’s a kind of fetishization of memory in our culture. Some of it comes from the experience and the memorial culture of the Holocaust—the injunction to remember. And it also comes from the strange collision of Freud and human rights thinking—the belief that anything that is not exposed and addressed and dealt with is festering and going to come back to destroy you. This is obviously not true. Memory is not such a cure-all. On the contrary, many of the great political crimes of recent history were committed in large part in the name of memory. The difference between memory and grudge is not always clean. Memories can hold you back, they can be a terrible burden, even an illness. Yes, memory—hallowed memory—can be a kind of disease. That’s one of the reasons that in every culture we have memorial structures and memorial days, whether for personal grief or for collective historical traumas. Because you need to get on with life the rest of the time and not feel the past too badly. I’m not talking about letting memory go. The thing is to contain memory, and then, on those days, or in those places, you can turn on the tap and really touch and feel it. The idea is not oblivion or even denial of memory. It’s about not poisoning ourselves with memory.

So one of the things I’m interested in is how a measure of forgetting can also be helpful—societally or politically—in getting from a state of violent destruction to one of habitable coexistence. I’m not talking about reconciliation, whatever exactly that is. I mean a condition where you’ve reckoned with the demons adequately to hold them enough at bay that you can have security and act for the future instead of simply reacting to the past.

 I think he's probably right, the mourning and remembering can't become all-consuming and go on forever. The problem comes when countries try to leap ahead and brush their traumatic past under the carpet, accusing opponents of this policy of bitterness and revenge, when the work has not even been done. And, on a practical level, how this fits in with justice for victims and prosecution of rights abusers. I'm not sure that most countries, on a societal level, are in danger of remembering too much, although some sections of society may be, but certainly, there needs to be a degree of selection and compartmentalisation. We need to make up stories to live with our idea of the past, and the tensions involved in doing this is one of the things that interests me here. 

Peru: CVR's Salomón Lerner interviewed by Caretas

Caretas magazine has run an interview with the former president of Peru's truth commission, Salomón Lerner Febres. It's looooong, but it seemed to me worth translating, so here we go - I've put some care into this but as I say, it is very extensive, so please excuse any errors. It also assumes a lot of background knowledge which the magazine's Peruvian readers can be expected to have; if anything is particularly unclear, feel free to ask in the comments and I'll do my best to explain.

Here is the original:

Lerner Febres Contraataca (Caretas)

The former president of the truth commission (CVR) responds to the new offensive against the final report published nine years ago.

The death of Comrade "William" sparked a new offensive against the Final Report of the CVR, which has just celebrated its ninth anniversary. In the end, the critics were wrong, but the barrage was accompanied by successive headlines in the newspaper “El Comercio” and reached a high point on the Sunday front page, which claims that the former commissioners had acknowledged "errors" .

Salomón Lerner Febres, former president of the CVR and rector emeritus of the Catholic University (PUCP), defended the document as "a solid starting point for reflection. What a nerve some people have to say that we spoke as the ultimate authority and we said that it is the truth that cannot be moved!".

Surrounded by Ayacuchan retablos in his office, he talks in his usual leisurely tone, but with almost unprecedented frankness.

-[Former commissioner] Sofia Macher said on Canal N that it was a mistake for the Commission not to invite members of the armed forces to the public hearings. What do you think?
-Sofia Macher should think more before she speaks. We did not call on the actors of war to testify, but on those who were victims. And they included relatives of police and military who suffered. There was even a police officer who had ended up blind. So what she says is not true. Annex 5 of the Report is the ratio of fatalities of the Armed Forces. The fact that among the former commissioners there is also a lack of memory is alarming.

- Did they walk into a trap?
-Yes. Enrique Bernales should not have given statements to El Comercio that, given the circumstances, were going to be distorted. I was called by phone and refused to talk to them because they are reporting in such a biased way. That very day, without knowing whether it was true, they ran the headline that we had been wrong in the case of "William". That morning I was called by Peru.21, which is the same group, I gave them a 15 minute interview, and the next day the only thing that appears is in a photo caption that reads "curious statement from Lerner saying that the terrorism had been brainwashed”. And yesterday El Comercio was casting doubt because I don’t make a statement. It's really despicable what they have done. It smells bad.

- Why do you think the articles in El Comercio coincided with the fujimorista attempt to revise the CVR?
- It's not a newspaper. It’s the El Comercio group. It's a deliberate issue and the million-dollar question is why that is. You know what's funny? That in this country, where committees are formed each week and committee reports last as long as the mood of the people, we have marked the ninth year since the presentation of the report, 11 years since the Commission began work, and are still talking about it. That is something for the psychoanalysts. The main people keeping awareness on the report are those trying to discredit it because they do not have a clear conscience, they have skeletons in their closets. It's there, like a pebble in the shoe. I think it will eventually become clear that history will take a negative view of people who wanted to become part of the country’s history in a positive light.

Three years ago you pointed out in an article in CARETAS that Hugo Guerra, former editor of El Comercio, had acknowledged to the CVR the errors of the paper in its editorial line over issues like the anti-terrorism legislation with which Fujimori justified the self-coup .
-Right. But in a recent column, he has shown himself to be absolutely opposed to the CVR that he once praised. I think that besides the personal stories, there are corporate designs and in some media, certain issues cannot be addressed or are addressed in some way in which the journalist is just a simple worker who can be fired. I wonder why there were changes at Perú.21 affecting the orientation and direction.


- Why did Augusto Alvarez have an agenda which was favourable to human rights?
-And that was something that a newspaper like El Comercio could not be allowed. On the other hand, there are personal stories. I understood that Hugo Guerra was a political adviser to admiral Luis Giampietri, and being a very polite and friendly person, he cannot fail to express an attitude of not understanding that an institution reaches the highest levels of excellence when it recognizes its mistakes and purges its bad elements.

-Former commissioner Luis Arias Graziani also criticized the commission this week.
-He demonstrates very poor memory.

- But did he not sign the report with reservations?
-What the general did not endorse was that there had been systematic violations by the armed forces, and he also objected to reparations. Otherwise, we worked shoulder to shoulder. What he does not remember is the letter he sent to me on 27 August 2003, in which he recognizes that the CVR fulfilled "its mission seriously and with commendable dedication." Now there is no mention of the recognition which we gave to the armed forces because they defended us, of the homage which we paid to the heroes.

- Does the criticism really hide the responsibility of fujimorismo?
- I think so. And the APRA regime is like its little brother. I think [Alan] García does not like the Yuyanapaq exhibition in which he appears looking at the corpses in Los Molinos. We recall that he opposed the Place of Memory, which eventually succeeded thanks to Mario Vargas Llosa, and hopefully it will turn out well. But, when they attack the CVR, the fujimoristas do not realize that the argument of the report itself convicted Abimael Guzmán, because he did not kill anyone with his own hands.

- What do you think of the persistence of Sendero Luminoso via movements like Movadef?
-They don’t educate, they don’t inform, they don’t debate. They insult. That's the worst that can happen. They deny the past in such a blunt way that it opens up a niche for the followers of Sendero to position themselves as the victimized, the persecuted.

-The fact is that we have not been able to defeat them as a society.
-The fact is that we did not want to remember. Some people say "we don’t look back", we are growing, we are on the up. This is fujimorismo and all those who believe in a certain political orientation, ways of thinking about government and society: authoritarianism, a strong hand, pragmatism, the value of money, the ends justify the means, the economy has priority, and the big gap between rich and poor doesn’t matter.

-Now there’s a lot of talk about inclusion, the final report is actually a history of exclusion.
-When he was a candidate, president Humala endorsed the report of the CVR. I would remind him that his former vice president Omar Chehade signed a document pledging reparations for victims of terrorism.

-That budget has not been spent.
-Before leaving office, Alan García issued a decree which set very complicated conditions to register victims. These conditions were not changed by the then-minister of justice, who is now prime minister, who knew very well how the CVR worked and who (when interviewed last February in El Comercio) said it gave political status to Sendero Luminoso. [Juan] Jiménez has a poor memory. But each has their own fears and ambitions.

- What do you think of the recent judgment of the Colina Group?
-I think it's a very unreasonable judgment and inconsistent with what has been the position of the judiciary. (Javier) Villa Stein cannot, with some blood on his face, say that there are no crimes against humanity when they kill people because they are suspected terrorists. It is an admission of state terrorism. The prestige won by the Peruvian justice system with Fujimori's sentence has been diminished. More with the debacle of the Interamerican Court. The political contacts and friends of Villa Stein have influenced a biased judgment.

- And what about the government's change of strategy in the Chavín de Huantar case, abandoning the thesis of the “vultures”?
-They're comparing apples and oranges. I think there is ample evidence pointing to action which was different to the commands. A minister like Aurelio Loret de Mola said so, and there are also several testimonies.

-There has been speculation that the cardinal's anger with the authorities of the Catholic university has to do with the CVR.
-If there is a sector that is not in favour of the PUCP it is because they consider it "caviar". The CVR, for those who do not want to look in the mirror, is also "socialist" and progressive. There's a man out there, who does not do honour to the craft of journalism, who has come to say I'm “the king of the caviar”.

- Aldo Mariátegui of the newspaper “Correo”?
-Yes, of whom I do not say I have not had the pleasure, but that happily I do not know him. That man has been criticizing me since the time of the Commission. “Salomón Lerner is even thicker than fat Macher”. It does not surprise me that somehow my role as rector here has been linked to my work in the CVR in which I had to, with pain, point out those institutions and individuals who did not live up to what was expected of them. We said that the Catholic Church did well in parts of the southern Andean country but it was not the same in Ayacucho. There are sins of commission and omission. When you can do something and save lives and do not, you share part of the responsibility. I guess that can influence the stubbornness and malice which is going on behind the university. Sometimes hate can blind us or you want to control an institution to take not only assets but, above all, the prestige and history which is not theirs so that they can celebrate the centenary in five years. Let’s hope not.

Chile: Pinochet documentary round-up

This has been widely reported, but for the sake of completeness on the blog I'm going to add some links to the aftermath of my previous post on the screening of "Pinochet".

Chilean police clash with anti-Pinochet demonstrators (BBC)

Hundreds Protest Screening of Pro-Pinochet Film in Chile (NY Times)

The past haunts Chile: film praising Pinochet triggers violent clashes in Santiago (Mercopress)


Pro-Pinochet celebration leads to street protests in Santiago (Guardian)

Chile: Controversy over Pinochet documentary screening

Relatives of the disappeared in Chile have been calling for the public screening of a documentary about Augusto Pinochet to be banned. A number of groups signed a letter to president Sebastián Piñera and there has been criticism from quarters in parliament as well. The event, scheduled for Sunday, is planned by a group called Movimiento 11 de Septiembre and is being presented as a homage to the former dictatorship.

The families do not have the universal support of the human rights sector, however. For example, José Miguel Vivanco, director of the Human Rights Watch Americas, opposes a ban in the interests of free speech. This is also the official stance of the Chilean government, which points to freedom of expression as the reason why it does not have the power to stop the event.

This is a difficult issue. It's certainly in pretty poor taste when supporters of Pinochet and similar regimes can continue to gloat about their heroes in front of the victims and their relatives - but I guess that is the point of free speech, you can't just give it to the nice guys. I live in a country - Germany - where for obvious historical reasons it has been decided not to allow free speech in all circumstances concerning recent history. It is illegal here to deny the Holocaust or to display a swastika or make a Nazi salute (there are exceptions to the prohibition on the displaying of Nazi memorabilia for educational purposes - museums aren't breaking the law!). I understand why they've done it, but it's still pretty strange when you think about it, as repressing opposing viewpoints was such a central part of Nazi ideology as well. I'm not sure it's really the answer to memory debates. It would definitely encourage the "victim"/"wronged hero" stance which many of the right-wing supporters of previous miliary regimes seem to hold.

Most of the news reports explain very litte about the film itself. I found this via "paniko.cl":

From this, it certainly looks like the documentary is going to present Pinochet as saviour of a country in chaos, but I would caution that this is just a short clip.

Families of Chile's disappeared condemn homage to Pinochet (Santiago Times)
Chilean government will not stop screening of Pinochet documentary (Santiago Times)
Familiares de DD.DD piden al gobierno que intervenga para evitar homenaje a Augusto Pinochet (La Tercera)

Memory/history and tourism

Yesterday the Guardian's "Comment is free" section ran a piece by Chris Jenkins criticising "conflict tourism" in Belfast, including viewing the sectarian murals and the euphemistically-named peace walls in the city, sites of bombing and the infamous Maze prison. Jenkins condemns this "gaping" as "deeply immoral" and maintains,

If this were history perhaps it would be more acceptable – but it's not. These lines are still a very real part of everyday life for communities in Northern Ireland.

 I've never been to Northern Ireland, but I have visited such sites in many other places, including Peru and Argentina. The comments from readers to Jenkins' piece generally disagree with him and draw comparisons with visiting World War I battlefields or former concentration camps like Auschwitz. But these would probably be acceptable to Jenkins since they count as "history".

I think the distinction is false. The sites referred to in this blog are certainly not part of any sort of "history" preserved in aspic - they are still changing, museums are only now being set up, legal proceedings continue, the perpetrators are still alive and live alongside their victims, and so on. That's why I refer to them as "places of memory". But at what point does memory become history? Do we somehow expect that there will be a moment when the development can stop, the period is finished, and then we can look at it in the history books and visit the memorials? It won't happen, and forgetting would be the only consequence of attempting it. Far better to engage with the issue while those affected are still alive to give us their testimony!

Then there is the issue of "gaping", suggesting that looking itself entails a lack of respect. I don't see this at all. I would suggest that actively engaging with the memory of conflict is important, yes, even if this is done by young people or those who are not particularly well-informed, such as foreigners. With cameras. Photos are a key way in which people in the twenty-first century deal with their surroundings and share them with others and photographing is not, I would say, inherently exploitative (the photographing of people might be, but I'm not discussing that here). Why would it somehow be more moral to visit a country as a tourist but ignore its very recent past, which as Jenkins rightly points out still affects large numbers of people?

I, for one, am going to continue seeking out places of memory wherever I go - but then, regular readers probably already guessed that ;-)

Brazil: Protests against coup celebration

Protesters in Brazil have drawn attention to a military commemoration of the country's 1964 coup.

Former officers have gathered every year to mark the occasion, but now they're facing a growing tide of opposition and had to push through about 200 people screaming "murderer" and holding up photos of those killed during the regime.

Brazil protests counter military coup celebration (AP)

Although I am pleased by the protests, watching this video from the BBC in particular, I was saddened by the gulf between the two sides of opinion:

Protests in Brazil on anniversary of 1964 military coup (BBC)

O Globo has an excellent selection of photos of both the anniversary event and the responding protest and police repression of it, which may be seen here.

See also:
Comemoração de militares termina em pancadaria no Centro do Rio (O Globo)
Ausschreitungen nach Diktatur-Gedenkveranstaltung (Blickpunkt Latinamerika)
In the News… (Transitional Justice in Brazil)

Chile: Call for law banning honouring of Pinochet

Chilean daily La Tercera yesterday ran an article on the efforts to introduce a law regulating the public commemoration of Augusto Pinochet. Here's my translation:

Opposition calls for law prohibiting pro-Pinochet monuments to be pushed through

On Thursday, opposition members of parliament criticised the lack of progress on the draft law which would ban the exhibition of images and public monuments which honour the memory of the late general Augusto Pinochet.

The legislators believe that the human rights committee of the lower house needs to resume discussion of the initiative presented a few months ago, following a series of court rulings that established the existence of a conspiracy by government agencies.

The MP for the Democracy Party (PPD), Tucapel Jimenez, son of the iconic trade union leader of the same name murdered during the military regime, explained that the decisions of the courts confirmed the crimes committed by repressive bodies such as DINA or CNI, which were acting on Pinochet's direct orders.

The National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) was the first repressive apparatus of the state and was replaced years ago by the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) with the aim of reducing the harsh criticism which the former body had attracted because of its serious violations of human rights.

In fact, its mentor and director, retired general Manuel Contreras, is serving successive sentences totaling around 300 years for the deaths of dozens of opponents who were detained and in the majority of cases disappeared by that agency.

Jimenez said that "no one would imagine that, for example, in Italy there were public monuments or statues in honor of a drug lord or a criminal."

He said that approving the law, which prohibits the display of any image that honors the memory of Pinochet, "will be a very strong signal to show that Chile does not accept or honour the criminals who participated in a conspiracy."

The bill specifies that "images, statues, plaques or shields honouring or remembering the former commander in chief of the Chilean army, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, are prohibited in public spaces, institutions and educational establishments".

The text also specifies that this applies to "all members of the military junta that ruled our country from September 11, 1973 until March 11, 1990".

The document clarifies that the law will not apply to instances of strictly private memory, however, this rule shall apply also to the army, navy and air rorce of Chile.

If the initiative is approved in parliament, the complete removal of all pictures, plaques or shields in which Augusto Pinochet appears must take place within 90 days from the publication of the law.

Here's the original:
Oposición pide apurar trámite de ley que prohíbe monumentos en honor a Pinochet (La Tercera)

I live in Germany - a country where it is illegal to display a swastika except in certain educational contexts (ie in a museum exhibition) or own Mein Kampf or make the Heil Hitler salute - so this concept is very familiar to me. Of course, to some extent it may be regarded as a suppression of free speech (Holocaust denial is illegal here too) but given Germany's history, I don't think it is too much to ask that its public institutions and armed forces do not display any pro-Nazi imagery, and the same applies to Chile. I was also reminded of Argentina's move to change the names of certain streets which commemorated dictatorship figures.

Dominican Republic: Memory Museum (2)

Back in June, I mentioned that the Dominican Republic had opened a museum of memory. The New York Times now goes into more detail about the museum and the idea behind it, and it's worth a read. "This museum all but shouts for the era’s pain to be heard", writes the paper.

“We are rescuing the memory,” said Luisa de Peña Díaz, the director of the museum and one of its founders, whose father was killed in 1967 as he plotted an insurrection against the president at the time, Joaquín Balaguer.

Meanwhile, however, this version of history is facing a new challenge from a virtual competitor to the museum: the Museo Generalisimo Trujillo.

The counter-museum is the brainchild of L. Ramfis Domínguez-Trujillo, grandson of the dictator, who acknowledges his forebear was a “military dictator who did not tolerate freedom of speech” but believes that the death toll ascribed to him is inflated and includes killings by collaborators he was unaware of.
[...] “Did he commit a number of excesses? Absolutely. He was human. Was he a monster? Absolutely not,” Mr. Domínguez-Trujillo said in a telephone interview from Miami, where he lives.

It's an odd website, I have to say, with chirpy Dominican music and a layout more suited to a video game than a serious academic endeavour - not particularly user-friendly and takes a while to load even on my super-fast internet. A video clip explains that the memory of Trujillo and his rule has become "distorted" and the museum - currently only online, but with ambitions to become an actual place - wants to set the record straight. Well.

The "official" museum sounds like a well thought-out exhibition which will be useful, particularly for the younger generations who might not otherwise learn a great deal about their country's recent history.

A museum of repression aims to shock the conscience (New York Times)