HATUN WILLAKUY ABBREVIATED VERSION OF THE FINAL REPORT OF THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION PERU HATUN WILLAKUY ABBREVIATED VERSION OF THE FINAL REPORT OF THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION PERU Hatun Willakuy Abbreviated version of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Peru First English edition: First Spanish edition: February 2004 Press run: 20,000 copies © Transfer Commission of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Tomás Ramsey 925, Magdalena Lima, Peru www.cverdad.org.pe Under Laws 27806 and 27927, this text, entitled Hatun Willakuy, is a public document. The contents may be reproduced in part or in full as long as they are cited accurately and the source is properly credited: Transfer Commission, Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Hatun Willakuy. Lima, 2004. Transfer Commission members: Javier Ciurlizza Contreras, Arturo Perata Ytajashi and Félix Reátegui Carrillo. Publication coordinator: Félix Reátegui Carrillo Editing coordinator: Estrella Guerra Caminiti Cover and inside design: Egard Thays Infographics: Carla Gonzales This text is an abbreviated version of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The lector should refer to this report if more complete information is needed. This version was prepared by the Transfer Commission of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the request of the commissioners at their final session on August 31, 2003. Legal deposit: 1501372004-0921 ISBN: 9972-9816-4-9 Printing: Corporación Gráfica NAVARRETE S.A. Printed in Peru TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL 9 PREFACE 10 PART ONE: THE TRAGEDY AND THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR IT 15 CHAPTER 1 THE EVENTS: MAGNITUDE AND SCOPE OF THE CONFLICT 17 “FOREIGN TOWNS WITHIN PERU”20 THE LEGAL DIMENSION OF THE EVENTS 26 MAGNITUDE AND COMPLEXITY OF CRIMES AND HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS 36 PERIODS OF THE INTERNAL ARMED CONFLICT 56 THE ARMED CONFLICTS AND THE REGIONS 72 CHAPTER 2 SUBVERSIVE ORGANIZATIONS 93 THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF PERU – SHINING PATH 93 THE TUPAC AMARU REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT 183 CHAPTER 3 THE CIVILIAN GOVERNMENTS IN THE FIRST DECADE OF THE VIOLENCE 201 THE ADMINISTRATION OF PRESIDENT FERNANDO BELAUNDE TERRY AND THE POPULAR ACTION PA RT Y 201 THE APRA GOVERNMENT 216 CHAPTER 4 THE STATE SECURITY FORCES 235 THE POLICE FORCES 235 THE ARMED FORCES 251 CHAPTER 5 ALBERTO FUJIMORI’S ADMINISTRATIONS 299 PART TWO: THE LEGACY OF THE CONFLICT AND THE WAY TO PEACE 321 CHAPTER 6 THE FACTORS THAT MADE THE VIOLENCE POSSIBLE 323 CHAPTER 7 THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CONFLICT 343 PSYCHOSOCIAL CONSEQUENCES 343 SOCIO-POLITICAL CONSEQUENCE 361 SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES 372 CHAPTER 8 THE CVR’S PROPOSALS: TOWARD RECONCILIATION 397 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 419 BIBLIOGRAPHY 453 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 459 EDITORIAL This text is an abbreviated version of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was prepared by the Transfer Commission, which was appointed at the final meeting of the commissioners on August 31, 2003. Hatun Willakuy summarizes that principal ideas and findings of the Final Report. All of the events described and the assessments presented are documented in the complete report and its appendices. More detailed information can be found in the Final Report. The Quechua phrase Hatun Willakuy can be translated into English as “great story.” We have chosen this title as a tribute to the main victims of the violence described in these pages, whose testimony helped us recount the events. In effect, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report is a great story, an account of a tragedy whose worst aspects were largely ignored and, at the same time, a exemplary demonstration of the resistance of human dignity in Peru. Lima, December 2003 PREFACE There are a number of difficult and painfully low points in Peruvian history. None, however, can compare with the shame and dishonor of the fragment of history that we recount in these pages. The final two decades of the 20th century are – to put it bluntly— a stain of horror and dishonor for the Peruvian state and society. We were asked to investigate and make public the truth about the 20 years of political violence that began in Peru in 1980. Now that our work has concluded, we can report a fact that, while shocking, still does not fully convey what occurred. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comisión de la Ver- dad y Reconciliación, CVR) has concluded that the number of deaths in those two decades probably exceeds 69,000 Peruvian men and women who were killed or forcibly disappeared at the hands of subversive organizations or state agents. We were given the task of recording and gathering, one after another, year upon year, the names of Peruvians who are no longer with us. This number is too great to enable our nation to continue talking about errors or excesses committed by the people who directly participated in these crimes. It is also too overwhelming for authorities or citizens to plead ignorance as their defense. This report exposes a double scandal: assassinations, disappearances and mass torture on the one hand, and on the other the apathy, ineptitude and indifference of those who could have stopped this human catastrophe but did not. We have said that the numerical data are overwhelming, but inadequate. That is true. No number can express the asymmetries, responsibilities and methods of horror experienced by the Peruvian people. Nor can it illustrate the suffering that was indelibly inflicted on the victims. In the Final Report, we conclude the task that we were assigned, as well as an obligation that we voluntarily assumed: to publicly expose the tragedy as the work of human beings who inflicted suffering on other human beings. Three out of every four victims were peasant men or women who spoke Quechua as their native language. The victims, as Peruvians well know, form part of a population that historically has been ignored by the state and urban 11 society, which has enjoyed the benefits of our political community. The CVR has not uncovered evidence, as some sources have claimed, that this was an ethnic conflict. There are, however, grounds for stating that the death and destruction REFACE P over those 20 years would not have been possible were it not for the profound disdain for the country’s most dispossessed people demonstrated by both the members of the Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path (Partido Comunista del Perú - Sendero Luminoso, PCP-SL) and state agents. This disdain is woven into the fabric of Peruvians’ daily lives. The 17,000 testimonies freely given to the CVR have allowed us to reconstruct, even if only in rough form, the history of the victims. It is overwhelming to hear in these testimonies that racial insults and verbal abuse of the poor were like a refrain that preceded beatings, rapes, kidnappings of sons and daughters, or seeing a loved one shot point blank by a soldier or police officer. It is equally infuriating to hear the leaders of subversive organizations explain how it was strategically opportune to annihilate this or that peasant community as part of their war against the state. While a great deal has been written about the persistent cultural, social and economic discrimination in Peru, state authorities and common citizens have done little to combat this stigma in our society. This report shows the country and the world that it is impossible to live with disdain, that this is a disease that represents very tangible harm. From this day forward, the names of thousands of people who died and disappeared are recounted in these pages so that we can remember them. No one can hide behind the defects of our society or the events of our history to evade their responsibility. It is true – and this is one of the principal lessons of this report – that there exists a generalized crime, that of omission, which involves all of us who allowed things to happen during the years of violence without asking questions. We are the first to accept this. At the same time, however, there are concrete responsibilities that must be faced, and Peru, like any society that has lived through this kind of experience, must accept this and cannot allow impunity to reign. Impunity is incompatible with the dignity of a democratic nation. The CVR has found numerous people responsible for crimes and human rights violations, and it will let the country know this through the pertinent channels, respecting the requirements and restrictions in Peruvian law for accusing someone of a crime. The CVR calls on and encourages Peruvian society to demand that the criminal justice system act immediately, without vengeance but energetically and unwaveringly. Nevertheless, the Final Report goes far beyond assigning guilt for parti- cular actions. We have found that the crimes committed against the Peruvian population were not, unfortunately, perpetrated by perverse subjects who acted outside the norms of their institutions. Our fieldwork, complemented by the testimonies we received and a meticulous review of documents, forces us to 12 categorically denounce the perpetration of massive crimes that were coordinated or planned by organizations or institutions that intervened directly in the conflict. We demonstrate in these pages how the destruction of villages and annihilation of people were part of the Shining Path’s strategy. The enslavement of defenseless ILLACUY W populations, systematic abuse, and use of assassination to instill fear were also ATUN ATUN part of the methodology of horror used by the group’s members to attain an H objective – power – that was more important to them than human life. The primacy of strategic reasoning and the willingness to trample people’s most elemental rights were like a death sentence for thousands of Peruvian citizens. We found this willingness rooted in the PCP-SL’s doctrine, which is indistinguishable from the organization’s nature during these 20 years.