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Conflicted Memory: Military Cultural Interventions and the Human Rights Era in Peru

2019; Duke University Press; Volume: 99; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-7370588

1527-1900

Jaymie Patricia Heilman,

Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America

The lone military commissioner on Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission qualified his signature on the commission's final report with a dissenting letter that stressed that Peru's soldiers had fulfilled their constitutional duties between 1980 and 2000. By this lieutenant general's telling, members of the armed forces had heroically risked their lives to protect citizens from Shining Path and Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA) terrorists, and the military should not be blamed for the wrongs committed by a few errant soldiers. Historian Cynthia Milton examines these kinds of assertions in her book, exploring how Peru's armed forces have attempted to shape memories of Peru's 1980–2000 armed internal conflict.Milton's welcome study considers how the military has used cultural efforts to narrate Peru's recent past in a way that emphasizes soldiers' heroism, honor, and sacrifices. Theirs is a casting that explicitly rejects the truth commission's conclusions that the armed forces perpetrated systematic human rights abuses between 1980 and 2000 and that state forces were responsible for approximately one-third of the deaths during the years of violence. The stakes for the armed forces in these memory struggles were—and remain—high. The military's reputation was seriously damaged following Alberto Fujimori's resignation amid a major corruption scandal that involved military leaders, among many others. Worse still, 46 of the 47 cases submitted by the truth commission to Peru's prosecutor general for investigation involved abuses perpetrated by state forces.Milton devotes three of the book's chapters to considerations of writings by military figures. These include memoirs and testimonials that vary significantly in production quality and availability. She offers a close reading of En honor a la verdad, a 350-page tome that provides the Peruvian army's official account of its struggle against Shining Path and the MRTA. This book has helped soldiers defend both their institution and, when on trial, themselves. Milton also considers a novel that presents a heroic portrayal of the military's fight against Shining Path. Although the novel's author entered active military duty well after the violence had ebbed, the book is nonetheless tremendously popular among new recruits and thus important to consider.Milton reads these works with attention to gender, carefully considering how ideas about honor and masculinity shaped the writers' discussions of military heroics. Her discussion of Lurgio Gavilán's memoir is particularly effective. Gavilán fought for Shining Path as a child soldier, until he was captured by the army. Gavilán then served a term of obligatory military service and subsequently enlisted, spending a total of ten years in the army. Gavilán's description of the military is damning, as he details grave abuses including rape, extrajudicial murders, disappearances, and the degradation of the dead. His critiques are all the more powerful because he belonged to the army, effectively undermining the military's assertions that its critics would judge them differently if they had faced the same terrifying challenges.Milton then presents a fascinating discussion of three museums. The Dirección contra el Terrorismo (DIRCOTE), the national police's terrorism unit, has produced a display showcasing over 1,200 paintings, books, carvings, and papers produced by captured Shining Path militants as well as a life-size wax figurine of Shining Path founder Abimael Guzmán in striped prison garb. Accessing the museum proved extraordinarily difficult, likely because of DIRCOTE's insistence that it be toured only in the company of a guide who would reinforce the intended message of DIRCOTE's heroism. It was equally difficult to access the museum that celebrates the 1997 rescue of hostages held by the MRTA in the Japanese embassy. This museum, a replica of the embassy where commandos trained for the operation, carefully excludes any suggestion that the commandos illegally killed hostage takers who had surrendered. Milton also explores the national Lugar de la Memoria, carefully tracing how military representatives participated in the formulation of the museum's script and the terminology used in the displays. Milton also ably shows that cultural interventions are not just about writing but about editing, too. She examines military efforts to censor a broad variety of artistic productions about the armed internal conflict, efforts that have regularly proven successful.The book's endnotes include rich details that might have been better situated in the text itself, and Milton could have given a more prominent place to the interviews that she conducted with military figures. Her argument that Ollanta Humala's 2011 presidential victory suggests military redemption perhaps understates the extent to which the vote for Humala was a protest vote against Alberto Fujimori's daughter Keiko as well as a vote of support for a candidate of provincial origins. These, however, are minor critiques of an otherwise strong work. The book's conclusion is especially compelling. Milton emphasizes that however energetically Peru's military has worked to highlight soldiers' heroic sacrifices, those memory interventions do not erase the realities of an armed conflict in which both the military and armed insurgents perpetrated grave human rights abuses against Peruvian citizens.