Artigo Revisado por pares

‘They were their boyfriends’: the construction of the image of the perpetrator in cases of sexual assault in the community of Manta during the Peruvian internal armed conflict

2023; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 32; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09612025.2023.2197794

ISSN

1747-583X

Autores

Camila Fernanda Sastre Díaz, Ben McCafferty,

Tópico(s)

Gender, Security, and Conflict

Resumo

ABSTRACTSeveral women from the community of Manta were raped by soldiers assigned to the military bases there during the Peruvian internal armed conflict (1980-2000). Sexual assault became a repeated and systematic practice throughout the entire time the military base was operational (1984-1998). In 2016, nine women started legal proceedings to demand justice and reparations for the crimes committed against them. The aim of this article is to focus on the construction of the image of the perpetrators of sexual assaults in the military during the armed conflict, paying particular attention to Manta. To achieve this, the opinions of six of the nine rape survivors have been analyzed from conversations taking place over the two years of the field research. Also, this article will analyze how an image of the soldiers as ‘innocent' and ‘decent’ men has been constructed by the defendants. For this, the author analyzes their ethnographic field notes realized during the trial. The analysis of the conduct of both the soldiers and their lawyers during the hearings allows to observe the construction of a story of innocence that attaches to the triumphalist memoria salvadora that exists in Peru.KEYWORDS: TrialperpetratorssoldiersPeruvian armed conflictsurvivors of sexual violencesexual violencecrimes against humanity AcknowledgmentsThis text is the result of a doctoral research Project titled “Producciones culturales postviolencia: el caso de Manta y Vilca (Huancavelica) y los casos de violencia sexual durante el conflicto armado interno del Perú”. The research was financed by an ANID Scholarship/Advanced Human Capital Training Program/Becas Chile Doctorate/2017-72170421 and the Research support program for Postgraduate students PAIP from the Vicerrectoría de Investigación, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Jo-Marie Burt, Violencia y autoritarismo en el Perú (Lima: IEP-Asociación SER-Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense, 2011). The subversive group, Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), declared war on the Peruvian State in May 1980. Its objective was to impose a communist state through armed struggle. However, this declaration of war led to an escalation in violence from both members of Shining Path and the State, which would see 69,280 people fall victim to human rights violations, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, CVR). The so-called internal armed conflict ended in November 2000, following the escape from Peru and removal of the then President of the Republic, Alberto Fujimori, who had installed an authoritarian government through a coup on 5 April 1992.2 See: . The trial was cancelled on 6 September 2018 due to the involvement of one of its judges in a network of corruption known as the Cuellos Blancos del Puerto or CNM recordings (CNM because of the initials of the Consejo Nacional de la Magistratura).3 For research focusing on disputes over memory in the legal setting, see: Jo-Marie Burt, ‘Justicia, verdad y memoria: el proceso penal para el caso de la masacre de Accomarca’, in Políticas en justicia transicional, ed. Ludwig Huber and Ponciano del Pino (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2015), 135–68; Jo-Marie Burt, ‘Gender Justice in Post-Conflict Guatemala: the Sepur Zarco Sexual Violence and Sexual Slavery Trial’, Critical Studies 4 (2019): 63–96; Iris Jave ‘Tensions between criminal trials and the sense of justice in post-conflict Peru’, in The impact of human rights prosecutions, ed. Ulrike Capdepón and Rosario Figari Layús (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020), 143–64.4 This research was carried out between March 2019 and May 2021. Initially, observing the hearings meant physically attending them, however, this stopped in December 2019 while I moved house and completed my field research. However, the hearings were suspended and recommenced virtually in July 2020 due to the pandemic. Albeit only from November 2020, this allowed me to continue attending the hearings, given that they were streamed on the channels that the Peruvian judiciary has access to: its YouTube channel and FaceLive. Nonetheless, this new stage of research would be different in nature. For example, the virtual platforms only allow the audience to see the faces of the perpetrators and it is not possible to observe them for the duration of a hearing, since the cameras switch to show whoever is speaking at that moment. Although this observation is limited, it still allowed me to observe the narrative being constructed.5 Jo-Marie Burt, ‘Justicia, verdad y memoria’.6 Ibid.7 Leigh A. Payne, Testimonios perturbadores. Ni verdad ni reconciliación en las confesiones de violencia de Estado (Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, 2009); Claudia Feld and Valentina Salvi, Las voces de la represión (Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila, 2019); Claudia Feld and Valentina Salvi, ‘La construcción social de la figura del perpetrador: procesos sociales, luchas políticas, producciones culturales’, Kamchatka. Revista de análisis cultural 15 (2020): 5–15.8 The paramilitary groups, as highlighted by the CVR, were not agents of the State, but acted under state orders. Therefore, the CVR assumes that they formed part of the state apparatus. The Comando Rodrigo Franco and the Grupo Colina are some of the best-known groups.9 A subversive left-wing group that burst onto the scene in the middle of the 1980s.10 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Final Report. Volume I (Lima: Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación, 2003).11 Dennis Chávez de Paz, Juventud y terrorismo. Características sociales de los condenados por terrorismo y otros delitos (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1989); Robin Kirk, Grabado en piedra. Las mujeres de Sendero Luminoso (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1993); Victoria Guerrero, ‘Arte, Mujer y Propaganda Política: Narrativas y Reconfiguración de Género en el PCP-SL’ (Masters thesis, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2015); Victoria Guerrero, ‘¿Romper las cadenas?: representaciones de género en la gráfica del Partido Comunista del Perú-Sendero Luminoso’, in Género y conflicto armado interno en el Perú. Testimonio y memoria, ed. Mercedes Cris­óstomo Meza (Lima: Fondo Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2018), 153–83; Dynnik Asencios, La ciudad acorralada. Jóvenes y Sendero Luminoso en Lima de los 80 y 90 (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2016).12 Ricardo Caro, ‘Ser mujer, joven y senderista’ (reviewed in ), 2005.13 This article will refer to the concept in the original Spanish.14 Jo-Marie Burt, ‘Justicia, verdad y memoria’; Cynthia Milton, Conflicted memory. Military cultural interventions and the human rights era in Perú (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press). The massacre of Barrios Altos (1991) and the killing of nine students and a professor of the Universidad Enrique Guzmán y Valle (1992) are symbolic of the human rights violations committed during the Fujimori dictatorship. In both instances, Fujimori is serving a prison sentence alongside his right-hand man, Vladimiro Montesinos. Nonetheless, other cases against Fujimori remain open, such as that for forced sterilisations (Salud con lupa, ‘Esterilizaciones forzadas: las pruebas reunidas por la Fiscalía en 16 años de investigación’, 15 Burt, ‘Justicia, verdad y memoria’, 138; Milton, Conflict memory, 18; Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, En honor a la verdad (Lima: Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, 2010).16 Ibid., 18.17 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Final Report. Volume VIII, (Lima: Comisión de la Verdad, 2003), 79–88.18 Milton, Conflict memory, 23–4.19 All of the people who appear in this text do so under a pseudonym to protect their identities.20 Personal conversation, Huancayo, October 2019.21 Personal conversation, Manta, October 2019.22 Field notes, Manta, October 2019.23 Ibid.24 Personal conversation, Manta, October 2019.25 Field notes, Manta, May 2019.26 From the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, various international organisations visited Peru and confirmed that a number of human rights violations had been committed, with sexual violence being one of them. The report drafted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights references the reports on the case of Raquel Mejía versus The Peruvian State (Report n°5/96, case 10.970, 1996).27 For other female authors who have reflected on rape in armed conflicts in other countries, see: Victoria Sanford, Guatemala: violencia sexual y genocidio (Guatemala: F&G editores, 2020); Laura Sjoberg and Sandra Via, Gender, war and militarism: feminist perspective (United States of America: Praeger, 2010); Amandine Fulchiron, ‘La violencia sexual como genocidio. Memoria de las mujeres mayas sobrivientes de violación sexual durante el conflicto armado en Guatemala’, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, 228 (2016): 391–422: Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, beaches and bases: making feminist sense of international politics (London: University California Press, 2014).28 Giuliana Tamayo, ‘Documentando la violencia sexual durante conflictos armados: definiciones, metodología y exigencias de justicia’, Revista de la Comisión de Derechos Humanos, número especial (2003): 2–7; Narda Henríquez, Cuestiones de género (Lima: CONCYTEC, 2006).29 Nora Cárdenas et al., Noticias, recados y remesas de Manta (Lima: DEMUS, 2005).30 Julissa Mantilla, ‘Los crímenes olvidados: la violencia sexual contra las mujeres’, Revista COMISEDH, número especial (2003): 29–31.31 Jelke Boesten, ‘Analizando los regímenes de violación en la intersección entre la guerra y la paz en el Perú’, Debates en Sociología 35 (2010): 69–93.32 Mercedes Crisóstomo, Mujeres y fuerzas armadas en un contexto de violencia política: los casos de Manta y Vilca en Huancavelica (Lima: IEP, 2015); Mercedes Crisóstomo, ‘Las mujeres y la violencia sexual en el conflicto armado interno’, in Warmikuna yuyariniku: lecciones para no repetir la historia. Violencia contra la mujer durante el conflicto armado interno (Lima: APRODEH, 2005), 9–29; Julissa Mantilla, ‘Violencia contra las mujeres: la experiencia de la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación’, Fronteras interiores: identidad, diferencia y protagonismo de las mujeres (Lima: IEP, 2007), 225–44.33 Paula Escribens, Proyecto de vida de mujeres víctimas de violencia sexual en conflicto armado interno (Lima: DEMUS, 2011).34 Rita Segato, Peritaje antropológico de género. Causa del caso Sepur Zarco, municipio de El Estor, departamento de Izabal, documento de peritaje de testigo experto para el Caso Sepur Zarco, Guatemala; Amandine Fuclhiron, ‘La violencia sexual como genocidio’; Narda Henríquez, Cuestiones de género.35 Veena Das, ‘El acto de presenciar. Violencia, conocimiento envenenado y subjetividad’ and ‘La antropología del dolor’ in Veena Das: sujetos del dolor, agentes de dignidad, ed. Francisco A. Ortega (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Instituto Pensar, 2008), 217–51, 409–36. This article subscribes to the anthropologist Veena Das’s understanding of subjectivity. Das analyses how Indian women damaged by the violence of the Partition of 1947 between Pakistan and India, internalised the violence that they suffered. Das reflects on how the women ‘inhabited the world again’, after they lived the destruction of their prior world, of their family relations, their worldviews, meanings, and their subjectivities, all of them imbedded in that world. For Das, a violent event is not necessarily processed by the person as a traumatic remembrance. It can also be incorporated as what she terms ‘poisonous’ knowledge. This means that the violence that destroyed the previous world of a person remains in that person’s life as an emotional burden, in order for them to carry on living and ‘inhabiting the world’ again. This new form of ‘inhabiting the world’ is reflected in the new subjectivity of the person, in her decisions and the way she understands the violent events.36 Henríquez, Cuestiones de género, 96.37 Two NGOs supported the women during the trial: the Institute of Legal Defence (Instituto de Defensa Legal, IDL) and the Research Centre for the Defence of the Rights of Women (Estudios para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer, DEMUS).38 Field notes, Huancayo, October 2018.39 Patricia Wiesse et al., Cuando violar a una mujer era pan de cada día. El caso Manta y Vilca (Lima: Instituto de Defensa Legal, 2019).40 Wiesse et al., Cuando violar a una mujer era pan de cada día, 40, 41. As Wiesse describes, the actions of the lead judge could be classed as insensitive and lacking discretion: ‘Following the account of one of the plaintiffs—who described being under age at the time of the offence—that she was alone on her farm with the animals when the soldiers arrived, that one of the men entered the farmyard, threatened her and said that if she did not let him he would shout the rest in to rape her too, the judge responded by asking her: “And why did you do nothing at that point?”’.41 See footnote two.42 Historical context was not deemed to be significant by the judges during the previous trial. The trial was ongoing at the time this article was first drafted.43 Escribens, Proyectos de vida de mujeres, 77.44 Field notes, meeting called by DEMUS with female survivors of sexual assault, 22 May 2019.45 Field notes, conversations with female survivors of sexual assault, Lima, December 2019.46 Cárdenas and others, Noticias, recados y remesas de Manta.47 Field notes, Manta, October 2019.48 Field notes, Huancayo, October 2019.49 Henríquez, Cuestiones de género, 96.50 Field notes, conversations with female survivors of sexual assault, Huancayo, August 2019.51 Ibid.52 Ibid.53 Field notes, conversations with female survivors of sexual assault, Huancayo, August 2019; Field notes, meeting called by DEMUS with female survivors of sexual assault, 22 May 2019.54 Field notes, conversations with female survivors of sexual assault, Lima, December 2019. The word “agüita” is used here to underscore the attempts by the accused to perform their supposed helplessness.55 DEMUS, ‘Organizaciones feministas y de DDHH alertan discriminación y desconocimiento de estándares internacionales en Sala Penal Nacional’, 15 May 2018, 56 Field notes, conversations with female survivors of sexual assault, Huancayo, October 2018.57 Field notes, conversations with female survivors of sexual assault, Huancayo, October 2019.58 Ibid.59 Field notes, conversations with female survivors of sexual assault, Huancayo, August 2019.60 Field notes, conversations with female survivors of sexual assault, Lima, December 2019.61 Field notes, court hearing 22 April 2021.62 Field notes, conversations with female survivors of sexual assault, Huancayo, October 2018.63 Ibid.64 Cited in: Camila Sastre, ‘Experiencia y subjetividad de mujeres sobrevivientes de violencia sexual durante el conflicto armado interno peruano’, Antípoda. Revista de Antropología y Arqueología 44 (2021): 71–93, 83.65 Ibid.66 Personal conversation, Huancayo, October 2018.67 Field notes, conversations with female survivors of sexual assault, Huancayo, August 2019.68 Jelke Boesten, ‘De violador a marido: la domesticación de los crímenes de guerra en el Perú’, in Dando cuenta: estudios sobre el testimonio de la violencia política en el Perú (1980–2000), ed. Francesca Denegri and Alexandra Hibbett (Lima: Fondo Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, AÑO), 93–119.69 Kimberly Theidon, ‘Ocultos a plena luz: los niños nacidos producto de la violencia sexual en tiempos de guerra’, Análisis político 85 (2015): 158–72.70 Rita Segato, Las estructuras elementales de la violencia, (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2003).71 John McKenzie, Perform or else: From Discipline to Performance (London: Routledge, 2001).72 Field notes, meeting called by DEMUS with female survivors of sexual assault, 22 May 2019; Field notes, Huancayo, October 2018.73 The text in the image reads: ‘1. The Hearing. The five members of the army appeared with their lawyers. 2. Covered. The ex-chief of the Arturo Simarra Base hides his face to avoid being photographed.’74 Field notes, court hearing 27 March 2019.75 DEMUS newsletter n°6 on the Manta and Vilca court case, July 2020.76 Field notes, court hearing 31 July 2019.77 Field notes, court hearing 27 March 2019; Field notes, court hearing 31 July 2019.78 Field notes, court hearing 13 January 2021.79 Field notes, court hearing 27 May 2021. It should be noted that these final hearings were held virtually, with participation being easier than in previous hearings. In regard to the arrest warrants of the former soldiers on trial, one was arrested for failing to appear at the court hearings. See: 80 Eduardo Toche, Guerra y democracia: Los militares peruanos y la construcción nacional (Lima: CLACSO, 2008).81 Ibid., 77.82 Comisión Permanente de Historia del Ejército del Perú, En honor a la verdad, 343.83 Field notes, court hearing 25 October 2019; DEMUS newsletter n°5 on the Manta and Vilca court case, January-February 2020. It is important to highlight that this statement contradicts plenary agreement 1-2011/CJ-116 of the Supreme Court which establishes that allusions to a victim’s sexual history cannot be permitted as an argument.84 Field notes, court hearing 31 July 2019.85 Joanna Bourke, Los violadores. Historia del estupro de 1860 a nuestros días (Barcelona: Ed. Crítica, 2009).86 Field notes, court hearing 22 April 2021; field notes, court hearing 27 May 2021.87 Burt, ‘Justicia, verdad y memoria’.88 Field notes, conversations with female survivors of sexual assault, October 2018; Elsa Bustamante, video-call, 17 December 2020.89 Jelke Boesten, ‘De violador a marido’.90 Cárdenas et. al., Noticias, recados y remesas de Manta.91 Segato, Las estructuras elementales de la violencia; Rita Segato, La escritura de las mujeres en ciudad Juárez (Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón, 2013).92 Javier Pizarro, ‘La construcción de la identidad en los testimonios de los expolicías y exmilitares recogidos por la Comisión de la Verdad y la Reconciliación’, in Dando cuenta: estudios sobre el testimonio de la violencia política en el Perú (1980–2000), ed. Francesca Denegri and Alexandra Hibbett (Lima: Fondo Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2017), 309–31.Additional informationNotes on contributorsCamila SastreCamila Sastre is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). She is an ANID-Becas Chile Scholarship Grantee and member of the Interdisciplinary Research Group Memory and Democracy of PUCP. She has published on cultural representation of memory of the armed conflict in Peru (1980–2000) and women’s experiences during political violence. Her doctoral research deals with sexual violence during the armed conflict in Peru, focusing on the cases of the Andean communities of Manta and Vilca.

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