Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: 20 Years Later
El Ojo que Llora, a memorial commemorating the victims killed during the internal conflict of Peru, opened in 2005. (Wikimedia Commons by Lapalabranecesaria)
Declassified Documents Chronicle 20 Years of Conflict and Violence
U.S. Intelligence Reports Describe Grave Abuses Amid Army “Search and Destroy” Operations
Prime Minister Vowed to Crush Human Rights Investigations
Washington, D.C., August 28, 2023 – On the 20th anniversary of the Peruvian truth commission’s final report, the National Security Archive posts a core collection of declassified U.S. documents chronicling 20 years of conflict across three presidential administrations along with records relating to the 2001 decision to establish a commission to investigate the violence. The collection includes previously unpublished cables and intelligence reports detailing the Peruvian government’s brutal “take no prisoners” counterinsurgency strategy and its efforts to shield from justice members of the security forces responsible for grave human rights abuses.
Among the newly published records is a State Department intelligence report from 1984 that presciently predicted that the Peruvian Army “may be tempted to try physically annihilating Sendero Luminoso by eliminating everyone suspected of being a member or sympathizer.” Another highly revealing intelligence report from May 1988 said that Peruvian Prime Minister Armando Villanueva had told top military officials “that he did not care if the military executed every Sendero Luminoso (SL) guerrilla it captured” as long as it was done “discreetly.” Villanueva told the officers that any attempt to investigate a recent peasant massacre in Ayacucho “would be immediately defeated.”
A newly available report from the Pentagon’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) described the harrowing sequence of events during “Operation Aries,” in which Peruvian helicopters strafed a number of villages in central Peru before ground troops were sent in to rape and murder the survivors. The March 1994 assault “resulted in numerous civilian casualties” and was similar to earlier Army “search and destroy” operations in areas seen as controlled by guerrillas. (Document 16)
Other records show how Peru’s human rights record complicated relations with Washington. A U.S. Embassy cable described how Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering upbraided the Peruvian foreign minister for having sent a known human rights abuser to testify at a hearing in the United States. The State Department was forced to invoke the diplomatic immunity of the former intelligence agent in the face of a Justice Department effort to prosecute him for torturing and permanently disabling a coworker suspected of leaking information to the media. (Document 19)
The Archive posts this collection as part of its continuing commitment to the long-term goals of the CVR and its mission to shed light on 20 years of abuses, to identify and aid the victims, and to determine those responsible for the violence. As one U.S. Embassy officer wrote in August 2003, on the eve of the original release of the CVR’s final report, the ultimate goals of the CVR were “to encourage Peruvians to confront their country’s recent violent past, come to terms with what occurred, and take the necessary measures to ensure that history does not repeat itself.” (Document 22)
Unfortunately, the current political crisis in Peru demonstrates that the problems and legacies of Peru’s violent past are still very present today. The failed 2022 “autogolpe” (self-coup) of President Pedro Castillo led to his subsequent arrest and ouster. The current government of President Dina Boularte faces a wave of massive popular protests calling for her resignation, new elections, and the writing of a new constitution to replace the one written in 1993 after disgraced former President Alberto Fujimori’s own successful 1992 self-coup. The Boularte government’s violent suppression of protesters has led to at least 50-60 deaths and has been denounced by both international human rights NGOs and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Confidence in the government is at historic lows, with public approval of the Congress in the single digits. Indeed, a July 2003 IEP (Institute for Peruvian Studies) poll showed that 78% believe that the Congress is guilty of abuse of power, 77% think Congress should be shut down, and 80% agree with the call for early elections. Boularte has similarly low numbers, with an 11% public approval rating, and only 15% of those polled think she should stay in office. The respect for democracy and human rights at the heart of the CVR’s mission remains elusive.
The Internal Armed Conflict (1980-2000): What the Documents Reveal
1980 marked both Peru’s return to democracy after 12 years of military rule and the start of a bloody internal conflict that would span 20 years and claim more than 69,000 lives, according to CVR estimates. Not surprisingly, one of the first public acts of the Shining Path insurgency was to burn the ballot boxes on the eve of the May 1980 elections, demonstrating their disdain for the new democracy and all who would participate in it. A small regional splinter of the Maoist branch of the Peruvian Communist Party in Ayacucho, the Shining Path and its call for popular war were greatly misunderstood and underestimated by national and international spectators (including the rest of the legal Peruvian Left).
Early U.S. assessments, such as a 1981 report from the CIA’s National Foreign Assessment Center, viewed the new insurgents through the lens of the less violent, Cuban-inspired guerrillas of the 1960s and mistakenly viewed the Shining Path as a lesser threat than the earlier guerrilla movement, saying that a “return to the intensive insurgency of 1965 seems unlikely.” (Document 1) Only a year later, the CIA continued to underestimate the insurgency despite its resilience against police forces, predicting that the arrival of the army would easily destroy the insurgents. (Document 2) By October 1984, near the end of the first democratic government under President Fernando Belaúnde, a previously unpublished State Department intelligence report revealed a far more pessimistic view on the prospects for peace, demonstrating how the arrival of the armed forces had only intensified the cycle of violence, and predicted a more brutal policy of annihilation in the future. (Document 3)
The 1985 elections brought a successful transition to a new civilian president, Alan García, which the DIA viewed as a “milestone in the development of Peruvian democracy.” (Document 6) However, García’s promises to clean up the war and ensure that government forces showed greater respect for human rights, as well as his promises to engage in dialogue with insurgents to end the conflict, were never fulfilled, especially after the disastrous 1986 prison riots in Lima. Documents 4 through 8 depict the worsening conditions of the conflict under García. Intelligence triumphs, such as the capture of Shining Path top leader and hardliner Osmán Morote (Document 5) had limited impact due to the closed-cell nature of the insurgency.
Meanwhile, the García administration’s decision to allow military impunity on egregious human rights cases like the 1988 Cayara massacre, in which the military executed 30 peasants, emboldened greater abuses not only by military forces but also by the arrival of anti-communist death squads like the APRA-linked Rodrigo Franco Command. (Documents 4, 6, 9 and 10)
This period also saw a growing nexus of corruption around drug trafficking in the Huallaga Valley, further complicating the conflict. A 1989 U.S. Embassy report, for example, includes graphic details on the killing of ten police officials at Uchiza by Shining Path guerrillas in league with Colombian narcotraffickers. The victims had “accepted bribes from the traffickers but did not provide protection as promised,” according to the cable. The Shining Path “agreed to take care of the problem,” one source told the Embassy, since “all trafficking organizations in Uchiza pay Sendero Luminoso insurgents for protection as well.” (Document 8)
García left office with a free-falling economy, runaway inflation, an untamed insurgency with an increased geographic range, and a proliferation of violence from state forces with little fear of repercussions for human rights abuses. Like his predecessor, García failed to resolve the country’s grave political and economic crisis, contributing to the erosion of public trust in traditional political parties and their candidates. As a result, an obscure political outsider, former university rector Alberto Fujimori, beat famed literary icon Mario Vargos Llosa in the 1990 presidential elections.
With no prior experience in government and facing a severe economic and insurgent crisis, Fujiimori came to rely on his shadowy national intelligence advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos, leading to a counterinsurgency policy that continued to foment human rights abuses, impunity and corruption. Indeed, the preference for loyalty to the regime over competence led to the targeted sidelining of successful officers like General Antonio Vidal, head of the national counter-terrorism directorate (DINCOTE), and Army General Eduardo Bellido. Vidal’s spectacular capture of Shining Path supreme leader Abimael Guzmán led to “high level jealousy,” according to a U.S. Embassy cable, coupled with “unhappiness at his insistence on high professional standards.” (Document 13) Armed Forces Chief Nicolás De Bari Hermoza Ríos was more interested in punishing Bellido for exposing the narcotrafficking corruption of other officers than in rewarding Bellido for his successful campaign against the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) in the Central Huallaga valley, according to another declassified cable. (Document 15)
Those inside the military who tried to expose the worst human rights cases, such as the La Cantuta and Barrios Altos massacres, faced the worst repercussions. Lieutenant General Rodolfo Robles, for example, was forced into exile in Argentina after pushing for an investigation into the La Cantuta case. When Robles asked his friend, Lieutenant General José Picón, to help open a case at the Supreme Court of Military Justice, Picón reported him to Hermoza and was promoted for exposing Robles’s “disloyalty.” Army Intelligence (SIE) agent Leonor La Rosa Bustamante, who attempted to expose Fujimori’s plans to intimidate the press, was detained, tortured and left permanently disabled by SIE officers. Fellow SIE agent Mariela Barreto was tortured, murdered, decapitated and dismembered by her own unit, the La Colina death squad, which was led by the father of her child, Major Santiago Martín Rivas. (Document 17) It took until June 2023 for both Montesinos and Martín Rivas to be convicted of Barreto’s murder.
The Peruvian government’s reluctance to discipline the officials responsible also generated diplomatic problems with Washington. The Fujimori administration’s decision to send one of the military intelligence agents implicated in torturing La Rosa (Major Tomás Ricardo Anderson Kohatsu) to the U.S. in March 2000 “created a first class problem” for the State Department, according to Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, which was forced to invoke Anderson Kohatsu’s eligibility for diplomatic immunity in the face of efforts by the U.S. Justice Department to detain him after an appearance before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in Washington. In a subsequent meeting with the Peruvian foreign minister, Pickering urged the government to “take another look at the Anderson Kohatsu legal case,” adding that “steps to make sure that justice is served would send a powerful message to the outside world about [Peruvian government] respect for human rights.” (Document 19)
While the worst human rights cases occurred at the start of the Fujimori regime, important examples of military abuses continued in regions with significant insurgent activity. A 1994 U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) assessment described “Operation Aries” in Central Peru, citing witness accounts that Army helicopters strafed villages “after which ground troops then entered them, killed and raped inhabitants, and burned structures to the ground.” The alleged operation was reminiscent of the 1980s and early 90s, when “widespread summary executions occurred, and security forces had a common practice of entering villages in search and destroy operations similar to those having been alleged this April,” according to the SOUTHCOM report on “Human Rights Violations in Peru.” Perhaps the biggest problem,” SOUTHCOM said, was “the lack of accountability for past military human rights abuses.” (Document 16)
Other records show that President Fujimori was directly responsible for some of the worst abuses. A Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report, for example, describing the killings and executions of members of the MRTA at the conclusion of the 1997 hostage crisis indicated that the “order to take no MRTA alive” was given by President Alberto Fujimori” himself. (Document 18)
While the Shining Path continued to be responsible for much bloodshed during the 1990s, the 1992 capture of commander Abimael Guzmán had a divisive impact on the organization. Nearly two years before his capture, a U.S. Embassy cable said that the Shining Path’s popularity in its birthplace, the University of Huamanga in Ayacucho, had already waned greatly. (Document 10) While it still had a clear presence at the university, it no longer controlled either the students or faculty as it had earlier in the 1980s. As the Shining Path “fled forward” into other regions like Lima, their tactics to infiltrate poor communities both outraged and terrified many inhabitants. There is no better example than the assassination of the outspoken leftist Vice Mayor of Villa El Salvador, María Elena Moyano (Document 12), who Shining Path operatives shot and then dynamited in front of a horrified crowd at a community fundraiser.
The Making of a Truth Commission
In 2000, Alberto Fujimori won a constitutionally questionable and internationally scrutinized third term. In the wake of Fujimori’s apparent electoral success, the Peruvian cable television station Chanel N played an earth-shattering secret tape of Montesinos, his intelligence chief, bribing recently elected opposition congressman Alberto Kouri to switch allegiance to Fujimori’s party. This was the first of many “Vladivideos” that documented the rampant corruption inside Fujimori’s regime. This scandal set off a political chain reaction that led to the fall of Fujimori after ten years of increasingly authoritarian rule. Montesinos fled the country but eventually returned, was jailed and then prosecuted. Fujimori initially attempted to deflect all blame to Montesinos, before himself fleeing to Japan and faxing his resignation to Congress.
As new interim President Valentín Paniagua took office in 2001, the country’s mood shifted towards welcoming the exposure of hidden truths and investigations into the past. Congressional commissions and judicial proceedings investigated the activities of Montesinos, while the human rights community and civil society lobbied the new president to establish a truth commission. In June 2001, Paniagua set the groundwork for establishing the truth commission, and in September 2001, newly elected President Alejandro Toledo confirmed and renamed it the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The formal tasks of the commission were to determine the causes of internal violence in Peru between May 1980 and November 2000; contribute to the clarification of the crimes and human rights violations perpetrated during this timeframe; identify those responsible for these violent acts; evaluate proposals for reparations to the victims and their families; recommend reforms as preventive measures; and establish follow-up mechanisms for its recommendations.
U.S. Ambassador John Hamilton showed enthusiastic support for the CVR in a November 2001 meeting with newly appointed CVR President Salomón Lerner, who thanked the U.S. for its financial support and handed Hamilton a letter, addressed to President George W. Bush, requesting the declassification of U.S. archival documents on Peruvian human rights abuses. Hamilton explained the lengthy nature of the U.S. declassification process and encouraged Lerner to reach out to the National Security Archive for access to any records resulting from its pre-existing FOIA requests. (Document 21)
Unbeknownst to Ambassador Hamilton, the Archive had already been in contact with the Peruvian human rights community before the fall of Fujimori, collecting a list of key violations and submitting FOIA requests in support of one of the few independent agencies under Fujimori: the Human Rights Ombudsman. One of the Peruvian human rights experts consulted for these early requests, Sofía Macher, was eventually named as a CVR commissioner. U.S.-based experts like Coletta Youngers of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), Jo-Marie Burt of George Mason University, and the Open Society Institute’s Ted Piccone also assisted, including with a lobbying campaign to help accelerate the CVR’s own FOIA request. Working with Peruvian human rights workers, this group of advocates pushed for an interagency declassification process, like those initiated previously under the Clinton Administration to clarify abuses in Chile and Guatemala. While an interagency review never materialized, the State Department expedited the review and release of 326 documents to the CVR in January 2003, more than six months before its mandate was up.
Declassified documents were just one of many sources the CVR used to compile its August 2003 final report. The commission also relied heavily on the pre-existing archives and testimonies of the Human Rights Ombudsman’s office and from organizations like the Association for Human Rights in Peru (APRODEH). It also worked tirelessly to collect new testimonies and held public hearings (audiencias), but it first needed to win the trust and participation of Peruvian citizens and leaders. In one example, a boldly drawn, graphic-novel-style pamphlet produced by the commission described in simple terms the purpose of the CVR and encouraged all Peruvians to participate. (Document 20) After a successful outreach campaign across the country, the commission collected 16,885 testimonies by the end of its mandate.
The CVR’s final report was a monumental achievement in the search for truth and justice in Peru and, as one U.S. Embassy cable noted, drew harsh criticism from many of those implicated in the abuses even before it was released. (Document 22) As the Embassy predicted, the legacy of the CVR remains hotly contested still today by major actors from the time of the conflict, but one cannot fail to see the progress that has been made. This includes the historic prosecution of President Alberto Fujimori in 2009; the recent 2023 sentencing of the already-jailed Montesinos for the murder of Barreto; the formation of a Comprehensive Reparations Program in 2005; and the 2009 establishment of the Lugar de Memoria (Place of Memory), which serves as an archive, museum and community space.
Despite pressure and resistance, these signs of progress against impunity are evidence of the Peruvian truth commission’s lasting legacy.
* * *
Tamara Feinstein is an assistant professor at Murray State University and the former director of the Peru Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. A graduate of Wayne State University (B.A. in Political Science and Peace and Conflict Studies), the George Washington University (M.A. in International Affairs), and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (PhD in History), Dr. Feinstein worked at the Archive during the mandate of the Peruvian truth commission and coordinated with the human rights community and CVR staff to help assist the commission’s work. This included the strategic filing of human-rights-related FOIAs before the fall of Fujimori at the request of the Human Rights Ombudsman, meeting with truth commissioners at the beginning of their mandate to help craft a formal FOIA letter from the CVR to President Bush, organizing and sharing the Archive’s collection of declassified documents with the CVR, and lobbying with other Peruvian and International NGOs to push for a declassification of documents in response to the CVR’s request. Dr. Feinstein’s book, The Fate of Peruvian Democracy, will be released in September 2023 by Notre Dame Press. The book addresses how Peru’s internal conflict impacted political parties and argues that the violence significantly contributed to the rupture and disintegration of the non-insurgent legal Left by deepening pre-existing divisions and eradicating an entire generation of leaders (like María Elena Moyano). Chapter 7 deals directly with the contested reception of the CVR by different sectors of Peruvian society.
THE DOCUMENTS
Document 1
Freedom of Information Act request
A less redacted version of a previously published CIA analysis of the Shining Path and the growing violence in the Andean Highlands demonstrates the failure of U.S. intelligence to accurately predict the growing threat of the Shining Path. The report downplays the rise in “terrorist activities” characterizing it as less concerning than the insurgency of the 1960s. The CIA notes that “the present incidents not only differ in scope and intensity, but President Belaúnde is unlikely to overreact and set off a chain of events similar to those that led to his ouster in 1968.”
Document 2
Freedom of Information Act request
Offered a year after the first document’s underestimation of the Shining Path, this CIA analysis offers greater detail and accuracy on background, operations and threat level. The document correctly predicts that a military intervention could ensue if police forces remain inefficient and another high profile incident like the Ayacucho jailbreak were to occur, and posits that the military would insist on having command of all antiterrorist operations if that happened. Embassy sources note that Belaúnde appears “concerned that an Army antiterrorist campaign might endanger Peru’s favorable human rights image” and might also increase public support for the Shining Path. While noting that the survival of Peruvian democracy was important for its “demonstration effect” in the region, the CIA correctly predicts that a military coup would be unlikely against Belaúnde. However, the CIA again underestimates the Shining Path when it predicts that “it would most certainly be shattered by a confrontation with the Army.”
Document 3
Freedom of Information Act request
This bleak assessment of the Shining Path conflict details the origins, activities and goals of the Shining Path and the ineffectual government response to the crisis. It notes the intensification and spread of insurgent violence and recruitment strategies, as well as the periodic massacre of peasants “unsympathetic to the cause,” especially in the emergency zones. The report highlights that the initial underestimation of the Shining Path by Belaúnde and the reliance on an incompetent police force that was “untrained, underequipped and unloved by the general populace” did not improve with the introduction of the better trained and armed “Sinchi” police force. The December 1982 introduction of the military also did not improve the situation as their “campaign was poorly planned and executed” and included escalating instances of human rights abuses. The report highlights the “increasingly dismal situation,” with the Shining Path refusing to renounce “its ruthless armed struggle” coupled with the military’s refusal toward dialogue. It concludes that “the armed forces do not appear capable of winning militarily and may be tempted to try physically annihilating Sendero Luminoso by eliminating everyone suspected of being a member or sympathizer.”
Document 4
Freedom of Information Act request
This intelligence report speculates that the newly installed APRA Prime Minister Armando Villanueva may be adopting a new policy to discourage a military coup and to “meet demands for stronger counterinsurgency efforts.” After meeting with high-level military officers including Minister of Defense López Albuhar, Villanueva drafted a communique backing the Army version that a massacre had not taken place at Cayara, Ayacucho. Villanueva “reportedly remarked that he did not care if the army executed every Sendero Luminoso (SL) guerrilla it captured as long as such executions were accomplished discreetly,” while also promising the military that any opposition investigations into Cayara “would be immediately defeated.” The document concludes that Villanueva’s success at deflecting opposition investigations “is likely to have considerable impact on future government-military relations.”
Document 5
Freedom of Information Act request
In the wake of the capture of high ranking Shining Path leader Osmán Morote, this intelligence analysis predicts that the arrest “will have little long term effect on terrorism in Peru,” but that it will provide “a needed and immediate lift to Peruvian counterterrorist forces.” The author believes the arrest will not lead to an increase of terrorist attacks against U.S. targets, since the Shining Path has not indicated any association between the arrest and U.S. involvement. Morote had been in Lima to coordinate terrorist attacks to commemorate the June 1986 prison massacres. The cable describes Morote as an “extreme hardliner, reportedly behind much SL violence directed against rural Indian peasants.”
Document 6
Freedom of Information Act request
The U.S. Embassy political counselor recounts a harrowing trip to Ayacucho, where economic, political, and human rights conditions have greatly deteriorated since the last visit in March, based on the many interviews conducted with military, police, government, church, union and university officials. The most severe changes were the emergence of the Rodrigo Franco Command (CRF) death squad, and the general economic downturn. Previous survival strategies by peasants of “not taking sides” no longer seemed viable with the escalating violence. The embassy official notes that, on the eve of another Shining Path “armed strike,” citizens are receiving violent threats from the Shining Path if they do not comply, while also receiving death threats from the CRF if they do participate. The cable also notes that, “the Cayara massacre and its aftermath - especially the government’s decision to back the Politico-Military Command – had left the depressing message that when push comes to shove the military is beyond the law.”
Document 7
Freedom of Information Act request
This annually released intelligence report provides detailed country reports on all regions of the world. The excerpted section on Peru provides a broad overview on the government structure, internal and external threats, economy, and communist influence. It also provides a detailed analysis of each branch of the armed forces. This report from 1988, notes that, “Peruvian democracy faces a serious threat from insurgent and drug traffickers, while the current economic crisis inhibits the execution of costly, yet vitally needed, nation-building projects to help eliminate the root causes of insurgency.”
Document 8
Freedom of Information Act request
This intelligence cable demonstrates the complex web of involvement between coca-growing peasants, the Shining Path, corrupt police and Colombian narcotraffickers. On both February 27, 1989 and March 27, 1989, the Shining path and Colombian traffickers attacked police, “at least in part, due to corruption and double-dealing by the police.” The incident was spurred by the counter-narcotics capture of Colombian trafficker “Buke,” who was later released after bribing an official for $70,000. Prior to Buke’s capture, Uchiza traffickers had been regularly paying local police for protection, but the police were still providing information to anti-narcotics police in Santa Lucia and Tingo Maria, which led to the attack and summary execution of police captain Mocoso for the double-cross. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agents participated in the evacuation of the dead and wounded, personally observed the scene of the attack, and were able to debrief many of the surviving police officials, according to the cable.
Document 9
Freedom of Information Act request
This U.S. Embassy assesses the request for asylum by former special prosecutor Carlos Escobar Pineda, who had previously investigated the 1988 Cayara massacre, based on his fear of persecution due to his human rights work in Peru. The Embassy says that Escobar is “essentially correct” in saying “that they Army was responsible for the Cayara massacre, and probably responsible for the subsequent deaths of witnesses in the case.” The Embassy viewed the risk of Army persecution to be highest: “If he attempts and succeeds in reopening the Cayara issue, or if he chooses to travel to Ayacucho or another department under military control, the risk of persecution significantly increases.” But the Embassy distinguished between the killings of “non-entities” like the Cayara villagers and high-profile public figures like Escobar, adding that the killing of such a person would be “a significant qualitative leap for the Army.”
The Embassy concludes that, even if Escobar’s “life is not in danger, it is likely that he will be the object of death threats and harassment upon his return to Peru if he remains active in human rights work.”
In addition, the author of this cable calls for consideration of the larger political implications the precedent of granting this asylum case might set for those suspected of terrorism, noting terrorist suspects (whether actually terrorists or not) face even graver threats including threat of arbitrary detention and torture from the police and military, extrajudicial execution by the military, and murder by the CRF. [Note: Escobar was granted asylum.]
Document 10
Freedom of Information Act request
The second in a series of cables on U.S. Ambassador Anthony Quainton’s trip to Ayacucho focuses on the current status of the original birthplace of the Shining Path: the National University of San Cristobal de Huamanga. The cable asserts that while the Shining Path still has a clear presence among the faculty and student body, the level of Shining Path influence there is markedly reduced from its apogee earlier in the 1980s. However, non-Shining Path faculty and students are still targeted by the military, as demonstrated by the assassinations of Fernando Colonio, who ran the university’s human rights office, and Biology Professor Ciro Aramburu. The author notes that while there were ample witnesses to the events attributable to the military and police forces, no one is willing to make a formal allegation, especially after every witness to the Cayara massacre was killed or disappeared.
Document 11
Freedom of Information Act request
This cable chronicles the visit of U.S. Embassy political officers to Huancayo, where the Shining Path has a strong presence but is not strong enough to produce “liberated zones.” While police and elected officials have retreated, the Shining Path are still operating mostly underground and “have not effectively organized” those areas. Despite the Shining Path being unpopular, the government also lacks “a coherent or effective strategy for winning this war.” The local morgue director confirms that the number of victims of the terrorists and security forces is high.
Document 12
Freedom of Information Act request
While commenting on the Shining Path’s recent armed strike, this cable notes: “Sendero made it clear it was out for blood. And blood Sendero got.” Sendero bombings took nine lives, but the group’s most spectacular terrorist act was the assassination of the “natural grass-roots leader par excellence” and Villa El Salvador vice-mayor Maria Elena Moyano on February 15th. The violent death caused public denunciations but also “raw fear” and “loud silence” from members of the shantytowns of Lima.
Document 13
Freedom of Information Act request
In a conversation with a U.S. Embassy official, the former DINCOTE commander described the relationship between President Fujimori and Vladimiro Montesinos, their counter-terrorism strategy and their policy toward human rights. Vidal sketched Montesinos's background history and general character, noting his singular ambition for power throughout his career. The cable notes that Vidal is a highly popular figure due to his “spectacular capture of Sendero Luminoso leadership,” including Abimael Guzmán. The author speculates that he was sidelined from his position at DINCOTE due to “high level jealousy” and “unhappiness at his insistence on high professional standards.”
Document 14
Freedom of Information Act request
This cable highlights the waning fortunes of MRTA guerrillas, who previously controlled the northern zone of San Martín Department in the Huallaga Valley but have been recently “pounded hard” by the more effective strategy of military commander General Eduardo Bellido. The larger fear of local residents, however, is that “Sendero Luminoso, a much more formidable and bloodier guerrilla group, would move north to fill the vacuum.” Sources in the region note that “98 percent of all detainees in military detention centers are tortured, the majority severely – by beating, dunkings, hanging by their arms, electrical shock.” However, the popular General Bellido will at least transfer the most abusive of interrogators once discovered, although he usually does so by promoting them up and out of their position. The cable also comments on the difficult challenges and abuses faced by women in the region, where violence “is the norm, not the exception.”
Document 15
Freedom of Information Act request
This cable discusses the political strategy Army Commander General Hermoza is using to consolidate his power through personnel changes and promotions. This includes the sidelining of General Bellido (mentioned favorably in the last embassy document) by sending him to Israel because he exposed the narcotrafficking ties of a number of other military officers. On the other hand, General Luis Pérez Documet, tied to the La Cantuta massacre and other human rights abuses, has been rewarded with a military posting in Spain. When exiled Lieutenant General Rodolfo Robles tried to expose the La Cantuta disappearances and approached Lieutenant General José Picón, his friend from the Supreme Court of Military Justice, Picón refused to open a case and instead reported Robles to Hermoza. As a reward for his loyalty, Hermoza has decided to promote Picon and has placed him as the regional commander of Cusco.
Document 16
Freedom of Information Act request
This cable details “Operation Aries,” a counterinsurgency operation in Central Peru, the purpose of which was to destroy longstanding Shining Path columns but which “resulted in numerous civilian casualties.” After strafing a number of villages near Tingo Maria, ground troops entered the villages and “killed and raped inhabitants and burned structures to the ground,” according to witnesses cited in the SOUTHCOM report. The exact number of casualties is unclear, since no outside observers have been allowed to enter the area, and the government has denied any responsibility for the atrocities. The cable notes that while some advances in respect for human rights have been made in Peru in the past few years, “all the news is not good.” Abuses and disappearances continue to occur in the Huallaga and Pucallapa fronts, fueled in part by “the lack of accountability for past military human rights abuses.”
Document 17
Freedom of Information Act request
This cable provides details on the murder, dismemberment and decapitation of Army Intelligence Service (SIE) agent Mariela Barreto. While the government denies involvement, many speculate that Barreto was targeted by her own La Colina Death squad members in retaliation for the material she leaked about the 1992 La Cantuta massacre. Fellow SIE agent Leonor La Rosa was also detained and tortured by her own unit, and another former SIE agent has publicly claimed that Armed Forces Chief Hermoza knew of the torture of SIE agents for suspected disloyalty and insists that SIN chief Vladimiro Montesinos was responsible for the creation of the La Colina Death squad.
In concluding comments, the Embassy notes that, “Even if a handful of intelligence types are convicted of either incident, the system will have sought out and punished only those who committed the crime, not those guilty of permitting the evolution of a culture within the intelligence services or security forces which allows human rights violations to occur.” For many “politically aware Peruvians” the revelations about the torture and murder of Peruvian intelligence agents had “translated into a feeling that,” as one politician told the Embassy, “this is not the government I thought I was supporting.” [Note: in June 2023, Vladimiro Montesinos received a 23-year sentence for the kidnapping, murder and dismemberment of Barreto.]
Document 18
Freedom of Information Act request
Based on unknown sources, this cable recounts the extrajudicial execution of two MRTA members after they had already surrendered at the end of the hostage crisis at the Japanese ambassador’s residence, reporting that “the order to take no MRTA alive was given by President Alberto Fujimori.” The message describes how one of the military commandos in the rescue operation recognized MRTA member Roli Rojas (“El Arabe”) among the hostages being led out of the residence, detained him, took him into the house, and shot him in the head. He then placed his body next to the fallen MRTA leader Nestor Cerpa, who had been killed during the crossfire. The cable also notes that a female MRTA member was executed after surrendering to security forces.
Document 19
Freedom of Information Act request
This cable shows Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering’s anger at the Peruvian government for creating “a first class problem” for the U.S. government in having sent known human rights abuser Tomás Ricardo Anderson Kohatsu to the U.S. to testify before the Organization of the American States. He admonishes Peruvian Foreign Minister Fernando de Trazegnies “never to send GOP representatives like Anderson Kohatsu to the United States under such circumstances.” As Chief of Security of the SIE’s Counterintelligence section, Anderson Kohatsu had been implicated in the torture of SIE agent Leonor La Rosa, who had been targeted, tortured, and permanently disabled because SIE officials suspected she had leaked negative information to journalists on the Fujimori government’s plans to intimidate the press. On March 9, 2000, the FBI had detained Anderson Kohatsu at the Houston airport, as the U.S. Justice Department wanted to prosecute him under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991. The State Department ultimately allowed Anderson Kohatsu to return to Peru due to diplomatic immunity but Pickering tells de Trazegnies that the case does not seem “closed either morally or legally, and that further GOP steps to ensure justice is served would send a powerful message.” The Foreign Minister denies any knowledge of the case. (For more information on this incident see this March 11, 2000 article in The Washington Post.)
Document 20
Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
This graphic novel style publication released by the CVR highlights the main objectives, leadership and activities of the Truth Commission. The publication encourages the general public to participate in sharing their testimonies without fear of reprisal.
Document 21
Freedom of Information Act request
U.S. Ambassador John Hamilton meets with the new CVR president, Salomón Lerner, and nine other members of the truth commission, offering strong U.S. support for the mandate and work of the Truth Commission. Hamilton describes the type of current and future financial support the U.S. is planning to give to the commission and encourages the commissioners “to use the FOIA as a tool to access documents from the U.S. government.” Noting the lengthy nature of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process, Hamilton tells the group that the National Security Archive already has 300 active FOIA requests on Peru. Lerner says that the commissioners are already in touch with the Archive and hands the ambassador a letter addressed to President Bush “requesting assistance in releasing U.S. documents for use in the commission’s work.”
Document 22
Freedom of Information Act request
Despite recent public attacks against the Truth Commission and its commissioners, the CVR has received the support of both the current Toledo administration and the general public, with high approval ratings in opinion polling, according to this U.S. Embassy cable. The “barrage of criticism” comes from “figures and groups concerned over how their actions and interests will be portrayed” in the final report, which is expected to “report negatively” on the presidencies of Fernando Belaúnde, Alan García and Alberto Fujimori and detail abuses by the Armed Forces and National Police. The report is “guaranteed to be front-page news,” the Embassy says, and its “conclusions regarding responsibility for violence are certain to be hotly debated” long after the report is published.
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