Column No one to speak for dead Peru rebels
By THOMAS C. FOX
More than a month has passed since
those rebel voices in Peru were silenced. Most were uneducated teenagers or
young adults.
Last December the Túpac Amaru commando unit overwhelmed
guards at the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru. The siege of the
compound eventually led to the April 22 military raid and the deaths of one
hostage, two soldiers and all 14 members of the commando unit.
Various reports indicated some were executed as they pleaded for
their lives. They had already released most of their captives and by several
press accounts resisted executing some others when they had the chance just
seconds before their own deaths.
We never got to know them personally.
One of the youngest rebels, a teenage woman, it was reported, grew
homesick during the 126-day ordeal. "She cried at night, asking for her
mother," said police Col. Marco Miyashiro, a former intelligence chief and one
of the freed captives. "They sent her to the first floor and banned her from
contact with the hostages."
After the siege ended, Bolivian Ambassador Jorge Gumucio described
the commando unit as "four adults and 10 children."
Said Cardinal Augusto Vargas Alzamora, titular head of Peru's
Roman Catholic church, who visited the compound: "Most of them were
adolescents."
Congressman Luis Chang, one of five legislators held by the
rebels, said that when he talked with the youngest rebels, it was obvious they
were as anxious as the hostages to get out of the residence.
"I remember talking to one boy who wanted to go back to the
jungle. He said he missed the food more than anything."
One of the two women rebels loved to watch soap operas on the
television, freed hostages said. Another rebel just wanted enough land for a
small farm.
Most of the younger guerrillas barely had grade-school educations
and had little in common with their captives.
After President Alberto Fujimori visited Cuba in February seeking
a possible place of asylum for the hostage-takers, one freed captive recalled
one of the rebels asking if Cuba was reachable by bus. He was told that Cuba is
an island.
Most of us don't often have the means of meeting and knowing the
non-elites of Latin America where poverty is the rule and not the exception.
Many times if we do listen to their voices and don't understand or like what we
hear, we categorize them. They become rebels or guerrillas or members of a
movement.
Whether consciously or not, the process allows us to distance
ourselves from their humanity and their legitimate aspirations. Like having
food enough to feed their families. Or the chance to go to school or to work or
to say what they think without fear of being taken away and executed by local
army units.
I am not saying the group was justified in taking hostages. I am
asking what desperately poor people can do to draw our attention to their
plights.
It was widely reported that just hours before the army moved in,
diplomats were signaling that, at long last, progress was being made in the
negotiations. A deal was being cut. Apparently some decision-makers simply
didn't want a compromise.
A Canadian human rights commission sized up the April military
raid saying it brought relief -- but did not address the roots of violence in
Peru: poverty and "growing militarism and authoritarian rule, along with a
justice system that denies the most basic and internationally recognized
standards of due process."
Do we care? CNN has returned to Atlanta.
One would think that with normality returned to Lima, Peru is
finally back on the road to justice and democracy. Truth is, these are alien
goals to the elites who rule Peru. Nor, might we conclude, are these the goals
of U.S. foreign policy -- despite lip service to the contrary.
Not with the Fort Benning, Ga., School of the Americas on our
land. It has trained some of the worst Latin American human rights
violators.
Peru is a nation of festering disease where infant mortality rates
are high and most families, when they work, barely eke out subsistence level
incomes.
I remain troubled. I am troubled because the freeing of the
captives appears to have done nothing whatsoever to touch on the causes that
led to the hostage-taking in the first place. I am troubled because so few seem
to care that the hostage-takers had legitimate grievances.
In one news release during the siege, the Túpac Amaru
seemed quite reflective in assessing a moral dilemma they felt they faced. "The
approach of taking over an embassy might not be right," a group member said,
"since it does not correspond to our tradition, but then again, that tradition
has been violated a million times over.
"There is no other way to be heard in a country where people who
operate basic needs programs in the communities, such as soup kitchens and
milk-for-the-poor programs, are arrested, where members of the liberal
opposition are detained, where there is not the slightest sign of democracy. It
was the only way available to us in order to stop an irrational economic
policy, to stop the irrational violation of human rights that takes place
outside the jails and worse yet inside them."
Propaganda? Not if it rings true to virtually every assessment
made by human rights monitors who follow life in Peru.
All 14 rebels killed. The evidence indicates that President
Fujimori ordered his troops to execute all the captors, including those who
refused to execute their hostages and tried to surrender. A trial would have
meant even more attention given to the rebels' causes. So much for due
process.
Most of the rebels died playing soccer. They died having killed no
one. Following their deaths, their families were not allowed to see their
corpses -- lest evidence be gathered on how they died.
The mother of Rolly Rojas, one of the guerrillas leaders, said
police did not allow the family to open his casket or hold a wake.
"They said, 'What's so important about a wake?' " said Maria
Fernandez, another mother. "I told them I had not seen my son in seven years,
but they just would not listen."
When will the cries of these mothers be heard?
Tom Fox is editor and publisher of NCR.
National Catholic Reporter, May 30,
1997
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