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ELECTIONS-PERU: Voting for the Accused

Ángel Páez

LIMA, May 24 2006 (IPS) - In a seeming paradox, ex-military commander Ollanta Humala – accused of kidnapping, torture and mass killings – was the first-round presidential election favourite in areas that suffered major human-rights violations during Peru’s counterinsurgency struggle.

Accomarca, a poor town even by the standards of the impoverished Andean Ayacucho region, has been waiting for 20 years to see the military officers who killed more than 60 elderly people, women and children brought to justice.

The killers have been identified, and include Lieutenant Telmo Hurtado, the commander of the patrol responsible for the massacre. Hurtado has been protected by the army high command and is now in hiding.

The memory of the Accomarca massacre – one of the worst in the 1980-2000 “dirty war” against the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) Maoist guerrillas – is still fresh. Yet in the first election round held Apr. 9, a majority of the townspeople (71.8 percent) voted for Humala, despite investigations into his alleged abuses during the counter-insurgency struggle.

This is not an isolated case. Humala also easily swept the vote in Cayara (68.6 percent), where the army murdered 31 people in 1988.

According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated the political violence that plagued Peru between 1980 and 2000, during this time army officers killed and disappeared 7,260 people who were not involved in the conflict.

Of these, 3,968 (54.6 percent) were from the Ayacucho region, which bore the brunt of army excesses. In many of the region’s provinces, the commission uncovered evidence that military personnel systematically eliminated and “disappeared” civilians based on unfounded accusations of membership in the Shining Path or collaboration with insurgents.

But like Accomarca, despite their multiple unhealed wounds, large proportions of people in these provinces – which suffered some of the worst human rights violations – cast their votes for Humala. In La Mar, he won 73.3 percent of the vote; Huanta, 65.4 percent; Huamanga, 58.8 percent; and Vilcashuamán, where Accomarca lies, 64.6 percent.

Shortly after the elections, sociologist and researcher for the Institute of Peruvian Studies Víctor Caballero visited the Canarias district, in the Ayacucho province of Víctor Fajardo, where the military killed and forcibly disappeared 413 residents.

In the village of Umasi, army patrols killed 41 people in 1983. No one has been brought to justice. There, Humala won 68.9 percent of the vote.

“To understand why residents of areas in which the military violated human rights voted for an ex-commander accused of this kind of abuse, we need to take into account that they also feel like they defeated the Shining Path,” Caballero told IPS.

“In these towns, the military were not the only ones committing crimes – the members of Shining Path were doing so as well,” he noted. “They killed people who did not support them and anyone they suspected of collaborating with the army. Additionally, these communities organised themselves into ‘campesino patrols’ to combat the subversives. And they won.”

According to the Truth Commission, the Shining Path killed 5,164 Ayacucho residents (as compared to the 3,498 deaths attributed to the military). The campesino patrols killed 234 suspected Shining Path members.

Shining Path had chosen Ayacucho as its launching pad, to spread its deadly “people’s war” throughout Peru.

“The troops that went up against Shining Path members were almost entirely comprised of young men recruited from Ayacucho villages,” explained Caballero. “Ollanta Humala’s party has the support of thousands of reservists who fought against the Shining Path. They are the ones campaigning for Humala in the former war zones.”

In the Ayacucho region, Humala captured 62.2 percent of the vote. Alliance for the Future, former president Alberto Fujimori’s party, came in a distant second with 10.5 percent.

“The support for Fujimori can also be explained in terms of victory over the Shining Path,” said Caballero. “Fujimori had the army organise campesino patrols, and gave them weapons to fight the Maoist guerrillas. The people have not forgotten that.”

“Humala represents the military that triumphed over subversion, as well as the victorious military marginalised and excluded by politicians. They voted for Humala because he is a winner, like them,” he continued. “And they hope that when he becomes president, he will remember them.”

Humala also won by a wide margin in a number of other regions that suffered massacres at the hands of the military or Shining Path: Apurimac (57.3 percent of the vote), Huancavelica (59.4 percent), Huánuco (59.4 percent), Junín (41.0 percent) and Puno (51..5 percent).

If elections had been held in these regions alone, Humala would have easily become president of Peru, and the Jun. 4 second round – in which he will face off against former president Alan García – would not have been necessary.

“The electoral results are related to local perceptions of the armed forces. If you go to the zones hardest hit by the violence, you would see that, even though they recognise that the army violated human rights, they also acknowledge that they eliminated the Shining Path threat,” Sofía Macher, a former member of the Truth Commission, told IPS.

“Therefore, there is also a sense of gratitude in these regions, because the army put an end to the terrorist violence,” she noted.

Most Peruvian media backed centre-right candidate Lourdes Flores, and frequently denounced Humala for human rights violations allegedly committed during his command of a military base in the Amazon jungle village of Madre Mía in 1992.

But the barrage of accusations failed to sway Humala supporters in war zones.

“In the towns I visited, the campesinos were aware of the accusations against Humala. But they did not believe them, and saw them as part of a smear campaign launched by the rich and powerful,” said Caballero. “They do not trust the press, and see it in a negative light.”

The retired army lieutenant colonel took 52.3 percent of the vote in Tocache province, where Madre Mía is situated, and where local residents have accused Humala of having overseen military operations that included kidnapping, torture and mass killings.

Macher said mistakes made by human rights organisations have played a part.

“We have failed to raise awareness and create a culture of human rights, despite years of work. Hence these electoral results,” she explained.

“This is a major blow to us, because there is no sense of solidarity with the disappeared, the tortured, the raped, and the dead. The victims are still invisible.”

The issue of impunity is also a decisive factor.

“The judge who investigated numerous crimes committed by members of Counterinsurgency Base 313, in which Humala was deployed, had the case shelved due to lack of evidence, manipulated by the accused military officers, who had many resources,” said Macher.

According to Ana María Tamayo, a military expert with the Legal Defence Institute, during the counterinsurgency war, citizens were aware that uniformed soldiers were abusing rights. But as these soldiers were the only state representatives in the conflict zones, civilians turned to them for protection.

“These people remember the armed forces as being on their side. The military inspired terror, but the people accepted them because they were the only authorities,” Tamayo told IPS.

“Throughout his candidacy, Humala has played up the image that citizens have of the military. And they support him because he represents the possibility that the state will have a more permanent presence in their towns and villages,” she explained.

Residents of former conflict zones cast a protest vote, according to Alejandro Silva, executive secretary of the National Human Rights Coordinator, which has pushed for investigations of Humala.

“They voted for Humala because they’re pragmatic; because he has promised to resolve their day-to-day problems. And because he campaigns on promises of vindication,” Silva told IPS. “They will continue to vote for people like Humala until democracy puts food on their table. Because these populations are marginalised.”

Caballero said that in Ayacucho, two decades after the massacres perpetuated by members of the military and the Shining Path, communities continue to be neglected and abandoned, immersed in poverty and marginalised.

“It is inconceivable that these populations are still ignored after having been victims to such a cruel, perverse internal war,” he said.

“Campesinos are waiting for some kind of justice and reparations, some kind of compensation for having defeated terrorism, but they have received nothing. They’re just as down-trodden as ever. That’s why Humala’s speeches have hit the mark.”