The Lima Art Museum repatriated 31 pieces of popular art from the United States. It was 2017. The anti-terrorist police, seeing the pictures, asked the prosecution for an investigation into apology for terrorism. The paintings portrayed those displaced by the violence of the 1980s and 1990s, and the attacks by Sendero Luminoso and the armed forces on the Sarhua peasant community in Ayacucho, the region where Abimael Guzmán’s uprising began. Months later, a newspaper headlined on the front page: They curb pro-hiking art exhibition“. After an anthropological examination, the museum removed them from customs. Shortly afterwards, the Ministry of Culture declared this traditional art a cultural heritage to compensate those affected.
It is just one example of the pernicious shadow cast by Guzmán, who died last Saturday at the age of 86, on Peruvian public life. Retired politicians and military often encourage fear of terrorism and the defunct Maoist organization, despite it being escaped in 1992 and its dome sentenced to life in prison in a military prison. The strategy of fear is used because it works as a mechanism of political control, “says historian Cecília Méndez, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Even after death it is still present. Some launch the theory that the greatest terrorist of the history of Peru is still alive and has been liberated by the Government of Pere Castell.
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Some remnants of Sendero Luminoso remained active, although in 1999 they abandoned Guzmán’s goal of “overthrowing the state.” Its new ringleaders chose to dedicate themselves to the extortion and the narco. “It was a terrorist sect based on the cult of Guzmán’s personality and a dogmatic Leninist and Maoist reading of political power. For more than 20 years no armed group has claimed Guzmán or committed terrorist acts on his behalf. Despite this, politicians, opinion leaders and a majority of the press are heard daily talking about the hikers as if there were armed columns attacking right and left, “says Méndez, author of the chapter The paths of terrorism in Peru, Recently published in The Cambridge History of Terrorism.
The historian explains that in these two decades it seeks to silence – stigmatizing as ‘terrorists’ – political opponents, social leaders and those who question the status quo, “censoring even artistic production,” she adds. This was the case with the cadres detained at customs.
Historian José Ragas points out that, as part of the phantom of terrorism, one strategy (“enough, but consistent”) has been to spread adulterated images of left-wing public or political figures to disqualify them. They present / display them to the band of Guzmán or with the sickle and the hammer – the icon of luminous Footpath. “In January 2018, Natalia Majluf, then director of the Museum of Art in Lima, was unjustly accused of apologizing for terrorism, and circulated an image of her next to a portrait of Abimael Guzmán, when the picture of the original photo corresponded to Simó Bolívar “, remembers the professor of the Catholic University of Chile.
Ragas points out that the same is happening with left-wing politicians such as former presidential candidate Verónika Mendoza, and recently with Prime Minister Guido Bellido: his detractors post so-called photos in which they join the terrorist ringleader. Méndez warns that the ghost of terrorism has gained new intensity as President Castell takes over the government: “With the aggravating fact that liberal and even progressive opinion leaders join the conservatives.”
For the university professor, the recurrent use of the alleged “terrorist threat” happens because there has been no process of reconciliation in the country, despite the efforts of the Truth Commission, a body that tried to clarify the crimes and divulging a common story. “Guzmán has died without apology and Fujimori is serving his sentence without showing remorse for his crimes,” he describes. “This long period of violence has left very real traumas on people. Instead of leading to overcoming them, trauma is used politically, manipulating fear, government after government.”
Military in political life
The Truth Commission reported that the violence left more than 69,000 dead, and Sendero Luminoso was responsible for more than half of them. In turn, law enforcement caused thousands of fatalities and more than 20,000 missing. On the other hand, the Fujimori regime used the fight against Sendero Luminoso as a pretext for an Army detachment to assassinate opponents, including union and university leaders. Dozens of military personnel have faced human rights violations between 1980 and 2000, and military and police officers who fought terrorism have reached Parliament in right-wing and far-right parties.
“The right has led to a post-conflict story that focuses on the Sendero Luminoso attacks with an emphasis on how they were defeated, leaving aside problematic elements such as the massacres perpetrated by the military: it does not rescue lessons for the future,” he said. the anthropologist Carlos Ernesto Ráez. According to the researcher, conservative groups tacitly associate the economic model of the free market – imposed after the 1992 Fujimori coup – with the victory over Sendero Luminoso. “That’s why anyone who questions the economic model is qualified as pro-hiker or terrorist,” he notes.
In this climate, a prosecutor must decide what to do with Guzmán’s remains. The opposition hopes that they will be burned to avoid a possible place of veneration for the sectarian and violent ideology it created. The terrorist’s widow has claimed his body. That is to be decided. Whatever happens, its shadow will continue to fly over Peruvian news.
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