History of Northern and Andean Spanish America

Machu Picchu is an Inca royal estate constructed in the mid-15th century in Peru’s picturesque high jungle. As a seasonal retreat for celebrations, religious rituals, and administrative affairs when the Incas traveled beyond Cuzco, Machu Picchu was abandoned soon after Spanish conquistadors arrived in the Andes in 1531. The site was largely lost to the Western world until 1911, when a Yale University expedition led by Hiram Bingham lay claim to the scientific and historical “discovery” of the impressive complex of white-granite buildings and agricultural terraces. Contentious debates over cultural patrimony, conservation, indigenous rights, and neoliberal exploitation have enhanced Machu Picchu’s allure as one of the most famous archaeological remains in the Western Hemisphere.

From 2001 to 2003, Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación del Perú, or CVR) investigated and reported on human rights abuses committed in Peru by state forces and insurgents between 1980 and 2000. That twenty-year armed internal conflict began when militants of the Peruvian Communist Party-Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) launched an armed struggle against the Peruvian State. The smaller MRTA (Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement) waged a separate armed struggle from 1984 until 1997. Peru’s armed forces, police, and peasant civil defense patrols carried out a counterinsurgency that lasted until the collapse of Alberto Fujimori’s authoritarian regime in 2000.

The CVR’s official mandate was to analyze why the violence occurred, determine the scale of victimization, assess responsibility, propose reparations, and recommend preventative reforms. The CVR collected nearly seventeen thousand testimonies about the violence, including harrowing stories of massacres, disappearances, torture, and sexual abuse. The CVR also held twenty-seven public hearings, broadcast on Peruvian television and radio.

Commissioners determined that the death toll from the armed internal conflict was 69,280. This number was more than twice as high as previous estimates. The CVR established that 79 percent of the victims lived in rural areas, and 75 percent of the dead spoke Quechua or another Indigenous language as their first language. Commissioners also determined that the PCP-Shining Path was responsible for 54 percent of the reported deaths. The Final Report recommended institutional reforms including changes to Peru’s educational system, limits on military autonomy, changes to policing, and greater controls over intelligence agencies. It also made a series of recommendations regarding individual and collective reparations, as well as judicial actions. These conclusions and recommendations appear in the CVR’s Final Report, a nine-volume analysis of the violence, totaling about eight thousand pages.

Commissioners forwarded forty-five cases to the Peruvian Attorney General’s office (Ministerio Público) and two cases to the Peruvian Judiciary (Poder Judicial) for investigation and possible criminal trials. Most of these cases, however, stalled in the courts. The most significant exception to these frustrated legal efforts was the trial of former president Alberto Fujimori, who was found guilty of human rights abuses and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.

The CVR proved highly controversial inside Peru. Many Peruvians argued that reconciliation would be tantamount to forgiving and forgetting terrorists’ crimes. Another heated controversy involved the accusation that the CVR was unduly sympathetic to the Shining Path and unfairly critical of the Peruvian military. Although the CVR’s work galvanized civil society, the return to power of political and military figures sharply criticized in the Final Report has led many observers to question the Truth Commission’s impact. There has also been significant disappointment with the CVR because it generated expectations for compensation and sociopolitical transformation that have not been met.