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Friday, September 25, 2015

Life under the Sendero Luminoso

This was translated with Google. Some parts are not as well translated as others;

This was translated with Google. Some parts are not as well translated as others;
In the following, Santiago Roncagliolo interview with Nancy Obregon, who lived in a region controlled by the guerrillas. Present in the book "The fourth sword - The history of Abimael Guzman and Shining Path", the passage makes it clear the violent context of Peru's civil war and the behavior of the State against insurrection.
Nancy grew up near here, in the popular neighborhoods of Lima, where his family raised pigs. In the late 80s, the family economy increasingly complicated, until parents decided to return to their place of origin. "Here we lived in extreme poverty, unable to get an education or to grow. My parents are farmers in the jungle, where the family, at least, could work together to cultivate to feed everyone. Then they returned to there. "
Nancy Young was in Lima because he had a job in the Peruvian Air Force. And a husband. But he is visiting his family frequently. So he met near the forest. In the late 80s, the jungle province of Tocache was a place where "people died in every corner. In Tocache, you could not look at the face of a narco. And all were armed narcos. All night there were parties, and every night was dead. Assaulted people, raped women and controlled the police, who protected their businesses. "
According to Nancy, traffickers paid $ 30,000 per flight cocaine coming out of Tocache. And ten flights per day out. Part of this money was for the police, and another part was for municipalities. "The first building of the Provincial Municipality of Tocache, for example, was built with drug money."
One day, on a visit to the region, Nancy was walking with her husband through the woods and found armed men who called them "comrades". No need to be an expert to recognize the columns of the Shining Path, which then began their incursions into that area. Nancy and her husband were shaken: she was a soldier and the policeman. "We had heard of Path, but had never seen. However, their courtesy and politeness surprised. Educated people, college, some white boys like you. They began to approach the most violent and villages hardest hit by the mafia. There, Sendero began to kill criminals, prostitutes expelled, cleaned and declared Tocache a frontal war on the Mafia. And people started to support them. There is talk of narco-terrorism, links between Shining Path and the traffickers. But Sendero has never supported the narcos. The army and police yes, those defending them. Until cared for their homes. "
Life in Tocache was a tightrope: you fell to one side or the other. Although they were members of the police, Nancy and her husband could not inform his superiors in Lima on what happened in the jungle. First, they could not denounce their colleagues behaved worse than the rebels. Second, they feared to be heard by infiltrators walkers. "It seems incredible, but if we said something in Lima, in the jungle immediately known. And in the jungle were our families. If we had what was going on, we would have problems with Path. "
In a country still shaken by the memory of the war it is very bold to say something. (....)
When she speaks, it is the state that looks like a terrorist group. Path, on the contrary, acts as a State.
One day in 1990, Sendero ordered an armed strike in Tocache, where Nancy lived. To contain it, the police entered a village in the area. They cut women's breasts and killed several children. The villagers had to flee for his life.
Revenge of Sendero was no kinder: the guerrillas sought the authors of the slaughter and wiped out one by one. (...)
"Then I learned to see the Shining Path as a lion kills only when hungry," says Nancy. "Walkers not tortured or raped, by contrast, respected even the prisoners who were executed. (...) Besides, much they emphasized education. They said that the rudeness was a glimpse of colonial rule of the Spaniards and that if we wanted to make a new state, had to begin with respect. "
Walkers schools created and imposed a strict moral in the territories they controlled. (....)

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