Source: Hugo Curotto (EFE).
Peru is experiencing its worst political violence in years. Since the ouster of then-President Pedro Castillo on December 7, at least 58 Peruvians have died, most at the hands of police, whom human rights groups have accused of using excessive force. Protesters are demanding fresh elections and the resignation of President Dina Boluarte, Castillo’s constitutional successor. Boluarte, for her part, has refused to stand down, though she has called on Congress to move forward the planned April 2024 elections to December 2023.
Protesters have dug in their heels, carrying out roadblocks and continuing peaceful marches that have often ended in clashes with security forces. Meanwhile, Boluarte’s stance toward the demonstrators has become increasingly combative. In lockstep with powerful right-wing lawmakers, the leftist Boluarte has blamed the mounting death toll on protesters, who she claims are influenced by criminal actors seeking political gain.
Boluarte’s hawkish posture—despite appalling reports of police brutality—is reminiscent of the Peruvian state’s mano dura tactics against perceived enemies during Peru’s internal armed conflict in the 1980s and ‘90s when security forces acted with impunity. As a result, the ongoing crisis is reopening the wounds of the civil war, which never fully healed even with the work of a truth and reconciliation commission. Peru’s failure to consolidate its post-conflict transitional justice agenda will likely exacerbate the challenge of holding authorities accountable for human rights abuses during the crisis.
Peru’s protests were sparked by the impeachment and arrest of Castillo, a consequence of his ill-fated attempt to dissolve the government and rule by decree. The former president, born to a peasant family in the northern highlands of Cajamarca, represented change to many rural and Indigenous Peruvians who have long felt ignored by wealthier, whiter politicians in Lima. As a political outsider, his inexperience appealed to many voters who were fed up with the graft and instability that has characterized Peru’s highest office. Castillo was Peru’s fifth president in as many years, though like many of his predecessors, his time in office was dogged by accusations of incompetence and corruption. Still, Castillo’s removal triggered historical grievances held by Peruvians in the rural regions that are home to the country’s sizeable Indigenous minority.
The violence from Peru’s twentieth-century conflict took a massive toll on some of the Andean regions that are now hubs of the ongoing protests. From these areas, the Maoist Shining Path insurgency waged a bloodthirsty campaign to overthrow the government through guerrilla warfare. The Peruvian state and its military responded with a brutal Dirty War-style counterinsurgency. While Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined that the Shining Path was the main perpetrator of crimes and human rights violations, it also established that the Armed Forces and the police were responsible for systematic and widespread practices of human rights violations, including torture, sexual violence, extrajudicial executions, and disappearances. Seventy-five percent of the victims spoke native languages such as Quechua—which few Peruvians know—revealing the disproportionate impact the violence had on Peru’s Indigenous peoples.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (or CVR, per its Spanish acronym) also warned in its final report on the conflict about the persistence of “veiled racism and scornful attitudes” in Peruvian society toward Indigenous groups. Moreover, the CVR concluded that the tragedy suffered by Peru’s most marginalized people “was neither felt nor taken on as its own by the rest of the country.”
The Boluarte government’s response to protests shows that these sentiments continue to affect Peruvian society today. Observers have criticized Boluarte and other Peruvian politicians for practicing terruqueo, a uniquely Peruvian term to describe the smearing of political opponents as terrorists. There is an extreme social stigma of armed insurgent groups in Peru, a legacy of the trauma caused by the Shining Path. But over the years, Peruvian politicians have exploited these wounds to dehumanize protesters—often leftist, poor, and Indigenous—while neglecting to rein in notoriously abusive security forces.
Amnesty International recently accused Peruvian authorities of the “unnecessary and disproportionate use of force against the civilian population” after riot police killed 17 people during a 24-hour period in the southern region of Puno. Human rights workers and local media described the events on January 9 as a “massacre.” Among the dead were bystanders, including a 17-year-old girl and a 31-year-old medical student killed while helping an injured protester.
The government has shown little remorse for the outburst of police repression. The state’s actions are necessary to “protect the lives and tranquility of 33 millions of Peruvians,” Boluarte explained in a recent press conference, adding, “Puno isn’t Peru.” The clip of Boluarte saying “Puno isn’t Peru” quickly went viral on social media, prompting the president to tweet an apology. But the comment underscored the persistence of the racist and disdainful views that the CVR warned of in its report on the conflict.
Lima’s right-wing mayor, Rafael López Aliaga, gave perhaps the clearest indication that Peru’s violent past has not been laid to rest. Last month, he called for The Place of Memory, Tolerance, and Social Inclusion—Peru’s museum dedicated to the conflict—to be wrested from the Ministry of Culture and administered by the National Police and the Armed Forces. In his remarks, López Aliaga complained of a narrative framing the Armed Forces and the National Police as “aggressors.” Instead, López Aliaga proposed that the military and police administer the museum to tell us the story “as it is, as it really has been.”
Peru’s military has often been at odds with the country’s transitional justice agenda. Since the conflict, a number of convictions have been handed down in human rights cases, most notably of the former strongman president, Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity. Dozens of military officials were also arrested and prosecuted for their involvement in the rampant corruption schemes associated with Fujimori’s authoritarian regime. Additionally, the Peruvian Army published a report in 2010 titled En Honor a la Verdad, which challenged the CVR’s assessment that state actors committed systematic human rights violations during the conflict. Instead, the report asserts that there might have been “excesses” that took place in the implementation of the military’s counterinsurgency strategy.
The timing of López Aliaga’s attack against the historical memory of the conflict is not a coincidence amid weakening accountability for Peruvian security forces. In 2020, Congress enacted the Police Protection Law, which eliminates “an explicit requirement that the use of force by police must be proportionate,” according to Human Rights Watch. Likewise, the law could make it more challenging to hold security forces responsible for abuses. Taken together, these efforts to shield Peru’s security establishment from responsibility for atrocities—past and present—demonstrate the inextricable link between contested memory of the conflict and modern-day impunity.
However, in a glimmer of hope for accountability, Peruvian Attorney General Patricia Benavides announced 11 inquiries to identify those responsible for the deaths in the protests. But the top prosecutor is also investigating Boluarte and several current and former members of her cabinet on charges of “genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries,” despite the absence of a deliberate attempt to destroy an ethnic group. As former Peruvian prosecutor Antonio Maldonado told The Washington Post, “[Benavides] is deliberately torpedoing her own investigation, posing as a hero when she is not.”
But regardless of whether the Boluarte administration is held accountable for the protest deaths, the current crisis highlights a deeper struggle in Peru to atone for the past.
Benjamin Wilhelm is the News Wire Editor at World Politics Review, where he has previously written. He has a master’s degree in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from New York University.
