Peru: desaparecidos and social justice

Peru is the second Latin American country with the most desaparecidos- around 15,000-, right after Guatemala. Twenty years after the worst period of Peru’s civil war between security forces and Maoist guerrillas, most cases of disappearances remain unsolved. From 1980 to 2000 thousands of systematic murders and forced disappearances took place, leaving a total of around 69,000 deaths.

In 2001 Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in order to tackle this issue. Although some of the main culprits such as Alberto Fujimori (Peruvian president from 1990 to 2000) have been imprisoned, there’s still much to do: many Peruvian families are still waiting to know what happened to their loved ones, and they want the government to compensate them.
So far, the national register has listed a total of 60,000 beneficiaries of this compensation, which is far from the 3 million Peruvians believed to have been affected by the conflict. The government is now reluctant to hand out reparations because, they say, they have projects of improving the health and education facilities in the areas that were most affected by the violence of the war.

Opinion: I believe that Peruvian authorities don't realize of the urgency and importance of this issue. It is not only about compensating the people for the material and economic damage, it is also and most importantly about restoring the trust of the people in the government and in democratic insitutions. Say your father disappears (that is, he is killed by squads linked to the government) during a civil conflict, and, twenty years later, a different government is reluctant to judge the culprits or at least tell you what happened to him. How would you feel? Would you trust the new government any more than you trusted the previous one?
From my point of view it is about time to start making justice work in Peru once and for all.

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