recorded in stone

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Recorded in Stone: The women of Perus Shining Path, revisited

University of London

Institute of Latin American Studies

Historizando un pasado problemtico y vivo en la memoria:

Argentina, Chile, Per

Taller 16-17 de octubre, 2003

@ For Website only and not to be cited without permission of the author. Slopara leer en la Web, no citar sin permiso del autor.

Using the story of Betty, a former Shining Path fighter in Peru, I open adiscussion of her memories of being an agent of violence in Peru as well as herunusual position as a story teller speaking as someone who committed atrocities

and admits it.

Most often, it seems to me, those who have participated in acts of great

violence are loathe to talk about it with any degree of openness, detail or self-awareness. This is particularly true of rank-and-file members: not the leadership,but the foot soldiers, who joined a cause out of conviction, perhaps, but oftenleavened with a desire for adventure or a sense of boredom with their lives.Therefore, the history of such periods is not, to a large degree, written but theviolent, but by the survivors, by the witnesses, or by the political figures who mayhave wielded violence, but did not take direct part in it.

Who among Arkans Tigers has penned a Balkan memoir? Have FodaySankohs henchmen written a chronicle of the violence that tore apart SierraLeone, and many Sierra Leonians? There have certainly been spirited accounts

of atrocities by military men belonging to regular forces Albert Speers Inside theThird Reich (1970) and Spandau: The Secret Diaries (1976) come to mind,followed by tales penned by American soldiers, most recently Anthony SwoffordsJarhead, an account of his experiences as an American marine during the GulfWar. In 2001, French General Paul Aussaresses published Services speciaux,Algerie 1955-1957, leading to his conviction in January 2003 for complicity in

justifying war crimes - a press offense with a maximum penalty of five yearsimprisonment and a $41,000 fine. So not only are most people unwilling to record


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their storied about what happened during periods of violence they can actuallybe convicted for formalizing memory, or as Aussaresses put in during his trial,the duty of bearing witness.

Certainly, the question of memory remain a controversial and difficult one in

Peru as in other countries that have experienced pronounced violence. Theviolence there was not distant or faceless. It was up close, known, identified.Attackers and victims were neighbors, school mates, teachers, health workers.People knew, and they knew that they knew. Some communities attending TruthCommission hearings have protested the telling of truth, arguing that they havealready made peace and do not want to dredge up the past. Others remainconvinced that the past remains largely unexamined and certainly, thatatrocities remain unpunished.

Thinking back on my interview with Betty, questions of justice or truthremained far in the future, unthinkable. What she seemed to want to do more

than anything else was confess. It was a personal decision, and almost areligious one. Here I was, this stranger, who wanted to hear her story. After it wastold, I would vanish. I think Betty need to talk, but without worrying that her wordswould result in an accusation against her or any kind of punishment. She neededto tell the story, to bear witness. And then she wanted to be left alone to continuewith the new life that she had made for herself.

Before turning the page, General Aussaresses in the introduction to hisbook, it is necessary that the page be read and, therefore, written.

Betty and her friend were the youngest ever to join their unit. At first, camping

out was like a game. Betty had visited farms before, but she was a town girl atheart, used to the nearness of the square and its belled church. Some days, theywould march twelve hours up and down the steep gorges. It was exhausting. Shefantasized about collapsing beside the streams that cut the trail, sucking in her fillof thin, cold air. But she didnt.

She studied harder than she ever had in school. They carried no texts,instead noting down passages from Marx and Lenin and Mao and especiallyPresident Gonzalo, the Shining Paths leader, memorized and recited by themore experienced comrades. Betty used her algebra notebook from high school,but wrote in red ink only. Soon, her script was as neat and ordered as a

typewritten page.

Criticism sessions were held almost every night. Once, she was criticized fornot speaking up. How could she become a true revolutionary if she never openedher mouth? She vowed publicly and in grateful tears to reform. Comradesclapped her on the back. To Betty, it felt like love.


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The goal, she was told, was to forge true revolutionaries. The Iron Legions! Shewas to hide nothing -- nothing! -- from the Party.

Betty learned how to hold a gun and clean it, how to storm a police stationand set an ambush. More important than skill was the Thought -- Gonzalo

Thought. She would even dream it, their glorious President Gonzalo before her,his shape huge and imposing against a brilliant red dawn. Soon, Betty shoutedlike the most experienced cadres, her fist clenched and her face filled with love.Love for the Party, love for the people, the comrades, love for battle. PresidentGonzalo said it could take fifty years. She was ready! It made no difference thatshe was a woman. They were revolutionaries -- warriors -- equal in the quest for

justice.

Bettys language skills made her indispensable. As a child, she had learnedQuechua, the Inca language still spoken throughout the southern Andes. Incontrast, the older comrades had never learned more than they needed to

understand their servants or swear on the playground. Betty became theirinterpreter. At night, the comrades would call villagers to meetings. They wouldtell them about the Peoples War, about rising up. The Peoples Army had to killthe wealthy, kill the corrupt, kill the adulterers, kill the thieves. They would fall onthe cities, dens of corruption, and destroy with the cleansing fire of revolution.Betty made her sentences ring so that even the ones crouched beyond the veil oflight from the lantern could hear.

Betty ended up leaving her unit without permission, and became a traitor inthe eyes of her former colleagues.

In the Shining Path universe, treachery is unforgivable. Punishment beginswith criticism and self-criticism sessions. It ends only with the accusedvanquished, undone, destroyed.

I also interviewed women in the Shining Trench, the name its residents gaveto the prison cellblock where women accused and convicted of belonging to theShining Path were held when I visited in 1991. My reasons for going were simple.What where these women like, I wondered, in a group, at their strongest? It hadto do with official versions, not press fancies or Bettys tragedy. How would theychoose to present themselves?

In the prison, most journalists visited the men. But for me, the women werethe mysteries: Sybila Arredondo de Arguedas, the wife of the late Peruviannovelist Jos Mara Arguedas, the German Renata Herr. At the time, the highestranking cadre inside was Laura Zambrano, convicted of having ordered sixmurders and at least twenty-eight bombings while she led the military committeeresponsible for metropolitan Lima.


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Getting official permission to enter the prison was not difficult. Gettingpermission to enter the Shining Trench was another matter. The womenthemselves had to decide.

The delegate agreed that discussion was necessary to agree on the terms of

a tour. We were shown to a table. What brought us, who sent us? she wanted toknow. Who did we work for, what was their stand on the People's War?

Finally, I discuss my conversation with Ruth, a fellow journalist. Ruths parentswere European who had moved to Peru after her birth, then divorced. Ruth toldme a story about Lydia, a senderista commander Ruth had once met. Severalyears earlier, Ruth and two television reporters had gone in search of the ShiningPath. The leader of one column was willing to entertain the possibility of havingreporters along. The reporters were to be treated as prisoners of war until theCentral Committee decided whether or not they would be granted an interview,something the Shining Path had never done. Lydia, Ruth explained to me, was

exceptional. She was nineteen, a high school graduate, whose fondest wish hadonce been to get a job as a bilingual secretary for an American oil company withwells off the north coast, near Lydias home.

At twilight, Lydia would organize volleyball and soccer games between lacolumna and the masses, area farmers. From the hilltops where they camped,Ruth could see the police and Army helicopters, gun doors open, buzzing thevalleys below. Once, bathing at a stream with Lydia, Ruth said a US DrugEnforcement Administration helicopter swung by so close she could see thegunner, his face ant-like with its protective goggles. Lydias gun was behind themin the grass. She didn't even reach for it.

Don't worry, she told Ruth. Nos tienen miedo (They are afraid of us).

Ruth never doubted that if the Central Committee had ordered them killed,they would have been killed. Yet, as she talked on her patio, the memory of Lydiaundid her. Every morning before leaving the hut, Lydia would adjust Ruthsblanket, tucking her in. The column, its frozen logic, existed, Ruth had no doubt.Yet it did not preclude a tenderness Ruth had not known even as a child.

There was something so admirable, yet so frightening about what Lydia hadchosen to make of her life, Ruth told me. In some ways, these young people

are the best Peru has to offer. And this is what they have chosen. On one level, itrequires great respect. On another, I can only contemplate it with fear andrepulsion.

This is also one of the problems with recording memories of atrocities,especially if you are hearing these things from someone who has committedthem. How do you manage disgust. Where is your sympathy? How do you listen


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without disapproval or should you? Where does recording become complicity,and is it worth it?

The question of who gets to tell the story of violence and the consequences ofthat story told is one of the great questions for the future. At a time when the

world grows smaller for human rights abusers with dictators on the run, bloodygenerals faced with real courts, demagogues in shackles brought before theirvictims and paramilitaries facing the rest of their lives in jail the ramificationsare real. Where do we strike the balance between justice and peace? Is it evenright or moral to talk of it as a balance? And what happens to the truth-tellers,like Betty, who finally find their voice?

Sharing memories and fixing them in the permanent record is crucial, therecan be little doubt. Yet it is facile to stop there. Once the story is told, there mustbe action taken not only to make that story available, but also to insure that suchthings can never happen again. In that, there is still much to be done. This paper

has no real conclusion, since I hope, through the medium of this conference, totake part in a broader dialogue about what those actions need to be.

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