Peru's History of Internal Armed Conflict

Abstract

Joseph Feldman reviews the fraught development of Peru’s Place of Memory, Tolerance, and Social Inclusion in Lima, originally imagined as a site to commemorate the victims of massive human rights abuses and Peru’s recent history of internal armed conflict. During the violence in the 1980s and 1990s, some 70,000 people were killed. Sendero Luminoso began an armed struggle against the state in 1980 and used brutal tactics, targeting civilians as well. Nevertheless, it had substantial campesino support, at least in the first years. The armed forces unleashed extensive counterinsurgent violence that included massacres, disappearances, torture, and killings. In 1992, right-wing president Alberto Fujimori launched an “auto-coup.” In the name of fighting terrorism, he authorized fierce new counterinsurgency campaigns. Army operations against supposed Sendero militants also targeted civilian populations suspected of supporting them, resulting in massacres in the highlands and urban areas, such as La Cantuta and Barrios Altos. Political opponents were labeled “terrorists” to discredit them.