Narratives about Political Violence and Reconciliation in Peru

• Author: Jerónimo Ríos
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19856890
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• Date: 01 September 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X19856890

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 228, Vol. 46 No. 5, September 2019, 44–58

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19856890

© 2019 Latin American Perspectives

44

Narratives about Political Violence and Reconciliation

in Peru

by

Jerónimo Ríos

Translated by

Margot Olavarria

The narratives of members of the armed forces, former members of the Shining Path,

and victims of Peru’s armed conflict between 1980 and 2000 include very different views

of the responsibility for the violence, the notion of terrorism, the concepts of truth, justice,

reparation, and nonrepetition, and the meaning of reconciliation itself. Analysis of in-

depth interviews reveals a society that, decades after the violence, in 2018, the Year of

National Dialogue and Reconciliation, is still fractured and far from any type of recovery

of its social fabric and symbolic resolution of its internal armed conflict.

Las narrativas de miembros de las Fuerzas Militares, exmiembros de Sendero Luminoso

y diferentes víctima del conflicto armado interno acontecido en Perú entre 1980 y 2000

incluyen perspectivas muy diferentes sobre la responsabilidad de la violencia, la noción de

terrorismo, los aspectos relativos a verdad, justicia, reparación y no repetición, o el sig-

nificado mismo de la reconciliación. El análisis de entrevistas en profundidad muestra una

sociedad que décadas después de la violencia, en el año 2018, denominado como “Año del

Diálogo y la Reconciliación Nacional”, se mantiene fracturada y alejada de cualquier atisbo

de recomposición de su tejido social y superación simbólica de su conflicto armado interno.

Keywords: Reconciliation, Narratives, Shining Path, Peru, Political violence

The year 2018 was named the Year of National Dialogue and Reconciliation

in Peru. Between 1980 and 1999 the Andean country had been one of the most

violent countries in the world as a result of an armed conflict between the state

and the armed groups Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary

Movement, which according to official figures (CVR, 2003) left 69,000 dead and

some thousands disappeared and displaced by the violence. Responsibility for

these victims is attributed to the Shining Path (54 percent), the armed forces

and police (37 percent), the peasant patrols and self-defense committees (7 per-

cent), and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (2 percent), not counting

the undocumented disappeared, estimated at more than 7,000.

In 2003 a report like that of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission based

on detailed fact-finding in communities, mostly Quechua-speakers in Ayacucho

Jerónimo Ríos is Research Fellow in Political Geography and Geopolitics at the Complutense

University of Madrid as a recipient of a 2018 grant cofinanced by the Comunidad de Madrid. This

research is part of the 2018-T2/SOC-10508 project. He is the coauthor (with Marté Sánchez) of

Breve historia de Sendero Luminoso (2018). Margot Olavarria is a translator living in New York City.

856890LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X19856890Latin American PerspectivesRíos / Narratives About Violence And Reconciliation

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