Peru: 5 April, 1992, 'Autogolpe'

On 5 April 1992 President Alberto Fujimori dissolved Congress, sent tanks onto the streets and installed himself as a dictator. It's known as the 'self-coup', since he replaced himself in power. Essentially, acting as an elected politician, with all that tiresome debating, voting, and waiting for permission from Congress, wasn't enough for him. Events will be commemorating this in Lima today.


On 7 April 2009, the verdict is expect in his trial for human rights abuses, which has been in progress since December 2007. It's supposed to be announced at 9am local time.

Fujimori has been trying to deflect attention onto Peru's other presidents as the trial ends. I go by the old "two wrongs don't make a right" rule, so I don't see it as relevant for his case (if you kill someone, does that mean I can go ahead and do it too?!), but I do think that the current president of Peru, Alan Garcia, has some reason to be worried.

"What's the difference? Why are Alan Garcia and Fernando Belaunde innocent and Fujimori is guilty? Why the double standard?" Fujimori asked the court.

Belaunde is not "innocent", he's dead. You can't try a dead person. Were he still alive, I think there would be a case to investigate his responsibility for some of the atrocities committed by the armed forces in the early years of the conflict. As for Garcia, investigations have so far concluded he does not have a case to answer for the major horrors of his first presidency (1985-1990). I'm unconvinced. My judgement according to the reading I've done would suggest that he ordered multiple extrajudicial executions during the prison uprisings, for one thing. I believe that order came from the very top and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have to answer to it at some point in the future. These things have a habit of catching up with people eventually.

But for now, the man in the dock is Fujimori. I'm expecting a guilty verdict, as I think most people are. I will be astonished if the outcome is good for Fujimori, but I don't want to pre-empt the court any more than that. Let's see what happens on Tuesday.

Fujimori swings at Peru's ex-presidents in defense (AP)

Peru: 3 April 1983, Lucanamarca

There are words in Peru that conjure up the memory of violence. Gaping wounds in the collective consciousness of the nation. Accomarca, Tarata, La Cantuta. Other things happened and happen in these places but people remember the iconic events that define them, the multiple killings, the trauma. Uchuraccay. Lucanamarca.

On 3 April 1983, Shining Path columns entered the village of Lucanamarca in Ayacucho and murdered 69 people with machetes. Children were among the victims. The attack was directed from the very top of Sendero: Guzman ordered it as a punishment because there had been resistance to guerrilla activities in the area. It was to serve as an example: you resist the Shining Path, you die. He said as much himself:

Frente al uso de mesnadas y la acción militar reaccionaria respondimos contundentemente con una acción: Lucanamarca, ni ellos ni nosotros la olvidamos, (...) ahí fueron aniquilados más de 80, eso es lo real; y lo decimos, ahí hubo exceso (...) en algunas ocasiones, como en ésa, fue la propia Dirección Central la que planificó la acción y dispuso las cosas, así ha sido... (...)ahí lo principal fue hacerles entender que éramos un hueso duro de roer, y que estábamos dispuestos a todo, a todo(...).

"In the face of the reactionary operations of the military we replied forcefully with our own operation: Lucanamarca, neither they nor we will forget it. (...) "More than 80 people were wiped out there, that is a fact, and we admit it there were excesses there...on some occasions, such as this, it was the Central Directorate which planned the operations and gave the orders...the main thing was to make them understand...that we were prepared for everything."
(Spanish taken from the CVR report, pp. 44-45, which is quoting from Guzman's interview in El Diario in 1988, English translation from the BBC)

Just look at the agony etched on the faces of these women whose relatives were an 'example' to any who dared to resist the Shining Path. Of course, not resisting the Shining Path could well have earned you the wrath of the armed forces, whose treatment would be no better. The indigenous highlanders truly were caught 'between two fires'.

Photography and Memory (2): Marcelo Brodsky

This is the second in what I hope to be a series of posts on photographers whose work is concerned with issues of memory in Latin America. One could argue all photography is 'about' remembering, in that photographs show us images from the past and are so often used as part of memory work. I'm interested principally in photographic images that are more explicitly concerned with political violence in twentieth-century Latin American and its aftermath. Some of the photographers featured will lean more to the 'arty' side, others to the field of 'photojournalism'. The first post in the series is here.


Marcelo Brodsky is an Argentine photographer whose work deals with the legacy of the dictatorship. Brodsky's brother Fernando numbers among the disappeared, and he often draws on this experience. His best known work is a large reproduction of his class photograph covered with inscriptions and comments on the classmates. Brodsky tracked down his fellow pupils and took a photograph of each of those that he could find holding a small version of the group image. Across his own photograph, he wrote "I'm a photographer and I miss Martín".

Martín's photo contains the message,"Martín was the first one to be taken away. He didn't get to know his son, Pablo who
is twenty years old now. He was my friend, the best". Martín was one of at least 98 students of the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires who were murdered by the state during the dictatorship (some of them for the crime of requesting subsidised bus fare).

Brodsky's images often take everyday objects and rework them to show their significance to memory. You can see more of them on his excellent website (Spanish and English) and on zonezero. You can also buy the books Nexo and Bueno Memoria (available in various languages).

Peru: Museum of Memory: The Return?

Now it seems that the Museo de la Memoria is back on.

For readers of English, the AP informs us that Peru president accepts war museum, German donation.

Plus, Peru's Garcia does about-face on German donation to build memorial museum for victims of political violence (Peruvian Times)

Utero de marita has a round-up of the Peruvian blog reaction for readers of Spanish.

The next step is the formation of a High Level Commission - which has already been legally created - to coordinate the creation of the museum. The commission will be headed by author Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru's foremost literary figure.

I've been open about my support for a museum, and for an appropriate home for the stunning Yuyanapaq exhibition, so obviously I consider this good news. Despite his undoubted intelligence, Vargas Llosa would not be my first choice as the head of the commission, because:
1) I consider him too politically biased - he ran for President against Fujimori in 1990, in the middle of the conflict.
2) He has lived principally in London since the 1990s and also has Spanish citizenship, so his connection to Peru is not as strong as it could be.
3) He has headed a governmental commission before, into the murder of the journalists in Uchuraccay in 1983, and in the eyes of many observers didn't do a particularly job of it. He visited the highland village only briefly and, in the resulting report, appears to project many of his own prejudices about indigenous people, rather than analysing the facts of the case.

In view of these points, can Peruvians really feel that one of their own is leading the way to a representative museum, and can they trust him to do a good job? Nevertheless, I'm pleased to see the name of Salomon Lerner, the former head of the TRC, also among the names of the commission. I won't turn against the museum plan just because I'm not a fan of MVLL, but will judge him on the results.

Peru: Fujimori Begins 'Self Defense'

Fujimori is speaking in his own defense at the end of his trial.

He said it was difficult in modern Peru to understand the actions he took in that period but that one day schoolchildren would read about him in their history books as the leader who brought peace to Peru.

Oh, was that the sound of hollow laughter?

Fujimori defends himself at trial (BBC)

La Republica has managed to photograph Fujimori's notes and is using them to speculate on the future content of his speeches; but it's nothing new, the old story that he is Peru's saviour and the allegations against him are a bunch of fabrications. The headline may be intriguing for English speakers: literally translated, it means "I know you, cod" - a Spanish-language saying which means something like "I can see through you" and also refers to an occasion when Fujimori sent his then-wife to excuse him from an important government address, claiming he had contracted food poisoning from some cod. (Hmm, did we hear that one during the trial, I ask myself?)


Aconsejaron a Fujimori declararse inocente y no responder acusación (La Republica)

Argentina: Media Round-Up on Alfonsin

International press:

Argentines mourn President Alfonsin, dead at 82 (AP)

Argentina's post-dictatorship leader Alfonsin dies (AFP)

Post-junta Argentine leader dies (BBC)

Obituary: Raul Alfonsin (BBC)

Raul Alfonsin, 82, Former Argentine Leader, Dies (NY Times)

Argentina's Former President, Raul Alfonsin, Dies (Guardian)

Naturally, it's the top story in the Argentine media and they are covering it from all sorts of angles.

Critica also has a variety of photographic galleries on the topic, and according to a piece I've just read in Clarin, the queue to see the ex President lying in state in Congress is now over 20 blocks long.

Argentina: Raul Alfonsin Dies

This is not breaking news anymore; Otto, Boz, Mr. Trend, and Richard got there before me. Nevertheless, the death of former Argentine President Raul Alfonsin can hardly pass unnoticed on this blog.

Surely you either have to be quite mad or very brave to take on the leadership of a South American country with 6 military coups in a century behind it, a restive military who have just lost a war and are reluctant to lose power, an economy in tatters and the awful question of the fate of perhaps 30,000 desaparecidos hanging over it. Alfonsin belonged in the latter category, and the hopes of Argentine supporters of democracy rested on his shoulders.

The CONADEP investigation and the trial of the junta were the high points of his presidency. CONADEP - the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons - disappointed some in Argentina with lack of legal clout to compel the military to testify and its failure to produce a list of perpetrators' names. Nevertheless, it was exemplary in the region and remains a crucial tool to understand the events of the dictatorship. The importance of the trial of the junta leaders can hardly be overstated: to bring before the courts the all-powerful generals who had initiated a reign of terror in Argentina was to send a very powerful signal indeed. The fact that the sentences were later annulled is part of the later downturn that Argentina's democratisation process took.

Alfonsin did not manage to satisfy all those who were initially rooting for him, as is hardly possible when the demands were so great. Some of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo regard him as a traitor. I see him, rather, as a tightrope walker. He knew that Argentina was a wounded nation, crying out for truth and justice. The families of the disappeared were extremely vocal in their calling for change. But on the other side, he had the volatile armed forces threatening another uprising at any time. It was hardly an idle threat; the army had seized power enough times before. Given the circumstances, surely he can rest peacefully knowing he did his best.