40th Anniversary of the General Strike of 1977

Last week I attended a commemorative meeting marking the 40th anniversary of the nationwide general strike of July 19, 1977.

At the rally at Plaza San Martin, the previous week, someone had handed me a flyer for the event, and it immediately piqued my interest because I distinctly remember the strike.

At the time, Peru was ruled by a military junta presided by Gen. Francisco Morales Bermúdez. Morales Bermúdez and his allies had, a couple of years earlier, deposed his predecessor, Gen. Juan Velasco Alvarado.  They then set about undoing the structural and social reforms initiated by Velasco. They introduced monetary adjustments which dealt severe blows to people's standard of living, at the same time that they froze wages and let prices rise. They countered protest of these measures with states of emergency, night-time curfews, jailings, exile, and worse.

I was in grade school at the time. I remember that things were tense in the days leading up to the general strike, and everyone wondered how big the walk-out would be, how successful.

I have vivid recollection that on the morning of the 19th Lima, then a city of almost five million people, seemed absolutely silent and still. Not one store was open, not one bus or taxi circulated. No one, it seemed, went to work that day. 

Photo from a display at the event.

Speakers at the event, held at the headquarters of Patria Roja --one of Peru's largest communist parties-- explained how 23 unions had decided to work together and established a unitary struggle committee at a secret meeting at the offices of the water utility workers' union.

They talked about how the struggle committee --which even included the government-sponsored state employees union!-- reached out by word-of-mouth to other unions and tried to bring them on board, first to the idea of a national one-day general strike, and then to the specific date.  All of this, of course, had to be done clandestinely.  The risks were highlighted by the fact that 18 unionists had already lost their lives to the repression in the first half of the year.

As it was, the government arrested many top union leaders and leftist party leaders in an effort to thwart the strike organizing and to cow the movement into submission. It did not work, of course.

The strike was nearly total and paralyzed the country. The people, and specially the working class, had flexed its muscle. In one day the military lost all claim to legitimacy and popular support.  Within a year it had begun the process of transitioning the country back toward representative democracy, with elections to a Constituent Assembly.

Those were heady days, which I well remember. We all, even us middle-class children, felt that the return to democracy was also our victory.

However, as Alfredo Velásquez --then head of the public school teachers union (SUTEP), and part of the joint struggle committee-- explained, the workers' movement paid a heavy price for having spearheaded the opposition to the military regime.  On the day of the strike a number of workers and peasants lost their live in Lima and in other cities, including 13 marchers who were gunned down in the Lima district of Comas.  In the days following the strike the military government passed a law authorizing the summary firing of workers, and in one swoop over 4000 unionized workers were dismissed, decapitating nearly every industrial union in the country. It was a blow, Velásquez said, from which the Peruvian labor movement has never recovered.

Unionists who participated in the strike pose for a group photo.

Rally against pardon for former dictator

"Peru against the pardon"

Coincidentally following my attending a Thursday-evening colloquium on the right to protest, on Friday evening I exercised that right as a Peruvian citizen by adding my voice to a protest in downtown Lima against President Kuczynski's even considering pardoning or commuting the prison sentence of former dictator Alberto Fujimori.

Fujimori, who was elected president in the 1990 elections, dissolved Congress in April 1992 and, in a "self-coup", abrogated the democratic order and assumed dictatorial powers assisted by his sinister intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos.

The coup was initially widely welcomed by a public weary of political gridlock, economic crisis, and a spiral of criminal and political violence that seemed to be inexorably leading to a national debacle.  Soon, however, the nature of Fujimori and Montesinos' "firm hand" became clear as the press was threatened, muzzled, or bought off, human rights abuses mounted -including the forced sterilization thousands of poor women- and government corruption became the norm. Fujimori unleashed a secret military death squad against opponents who could not be cowed or bribed, and Montesinos went as far as installing kilns on the grounds of the ministry of defense in order to secretly  dispose of the remains of prisoners brought in by the death squad.

The whole apparatus of violence and corruption was propped up by a taylor-made constitution and a coterie of pliant Congresspeople. In time videos were leaked revealing the scope of the bribery and corruption of politicians and public figures. The country was fed up, the proverbial rats deserted the sinking ship, and the regime came tumbling down in November of 2000.

Fujimori was arrested in Chile in 2005, extradited to Peru in 2007, and convicted of human rights abuses in 2009.  He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Nevertheless, his administration is widely credited with controlling inflation and stabilizing the economy, advances in infrastructure, and bringing an end to the Shining Path insurgency.  He thus retains a margin of popularity and many still regard him as "Peru's best president".  His children -Keiko and Kenji Fujimori- head a political party premised on his legacy, and which has continually pushed successive presidents for a pardon or commutation of his sentence.

It seems that this time, in the politically weak President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the fujimoristas -who control Congress- have finally hit on a national executive who would seriously consider granting their request presumably in return for political an legislative cooperation.

As on other occasions, when the idea was publicly floated human rights organizations, political parties, labor unions, student groups, victims' relatives, and other indignant citizens, took to the streets, taking over the Plaza San Martin to make our voices heard demanding that Fujimori be made to serve his entire prison term.

Marchers carry photos of some of the victims of the "Grupo Colina" death squad

"La Cantuta" National Education University students' banner bearing the images of the nine students and one professor
killed at Fujimori's order in the 1992 La Cantuta Massacre.

Relatives of Javier Rios, an 8-year old boy killed along with 14 adults in the Barrios Altos Massacre in 1991.

Human Rights Colloquium

Well, most of my early days here so far have been spent partly in recovering from the travel and getting some basic things squared away.  However, on Thursday evening last, I attended a colloquium on human rights and the right to protest at the nearby Hotel Meliá. 

The colloquium was hosted by the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (Association For Human Rights, APRODEH), which has been one of the leading defenders of human rights in Peru for many years, including right through the internal war years of the 1980s and 1990s. The colloquium featured a panel of speakers from human and civil rights organizations from Peru, Mexico, and Colombia.

The similarity of the challenges faced by critics of governments across the continent in trying to exercise their right to social protest was striking; as was the similarity with the challenges faced by critics in the USA.

Across the continent, members of civil society wishing to exercise their right to public protest -a right enshrined in international law and in the constitution and legislation of every nation- face an ever increasing set of obstacles.  On one end, there has been a trend toward requiring previous notice of the intent to protest, the requirement that time, place, and manner of protest be pre-approved by the government, and holding organizers responsible for the actions of any and every individual who attends.  On the other end, there is the tendency to view critics and protesters as an "internal enemy" of the state, and thus to use heavy-handed responses to protests.  Particularly after 2001 there has also been a trend toward applying anti-terrorism legislation to social protest situations, thus turning many activities that are part and parcel of street protests, and which had not previously been considered illegal in and of themselves or aren't illegal outside the context of a protest, into criminal offenses meriting prison terms.

 Needless to say, it was an interesting event, with much to reflect on.

At San Marcos University

The other day I attended one session of a multi-part, multi-day colloquium on Marxism in Latin America held at the San Marcos University.

The talks were interesting enough, but there was nothing particularly revelatory in them. Nonetheless, I was glad to have attended, but what really got my interest was the university campus itself.

The last time I had been there was, I think, 25 years ago, still during the war between the Peruvian state and the Shining Path guerrillas.

At that time, the university had been practically taken over by the Shining Path, who had infiltrated its student body and employees, and had cowed everyone into leaving them relatively undisturbed.  Guerrilla flags flew over the campus and the walls of the classrooms were covered in red-painted slogans in support of their "People's War."

The government, meanwhile, stuck in fiscal crisis after fiscal crisis, and disdainful of the university, let San Marco's coffers become nearly drained, such that repairs went undone, salaries were low and late, and even basics such as desks or chalkboards were not kept up, nor the campus repainted --not that anyone would have dared erase the guerrilla slogans. A truly sad state for the oldest university in America (it was chartered in 1551).

Today, by contrast, despite signs left over from the recent university elections, the campus was neat, clean, and orderly.  The atmosphere was truly relaxed, and young people milled about chatting and smiling.

It was neat, but also a little odd because of the contrast with all my previous experiences there. It was, though, nice to see.

Back in San Felipe

I've been in Lima just over a week, and am settling into the apartment and back into San Felipe.  

For those unfamiliar with Lima's topography, the Residencial San Felipe (to residents usually just, San Felipe or "la Resi") is a large housing development inaugurated in 1966 (but finished in 1968) during the presidency of Fernando Belaude Terry, who was an architect by trade.  Belaunde was determined to build housing for Lima's growing middle class and assembled a team of several hundred architects and engineers to design it.

The result, built on land that had housed the San Felipe horse racetrack, is a unique community within the city, with 30-some building in five different styles.  Despite housing for 1,085 families, and containing three nursery schools and a commercial center, close to 70% of the Resi is open space, with many and ample tree-filled gardens.

Of course, those gardens require frequent maintenance, which occasionally means pruning of trees and shrubs.  The debris, of course, must be gathered in one spot so it can be hauled away, as in the photo below, from this week.

Seeing that pile, I was reminded of an incindent from my childhood in the Resi.

In the 1970s the gardens usually were surrounded by low hedges --no more than two or three feet. In 1977 many of those were drastically pruned or removed, and many shrubs cut back, in order to deal with an infestation of rodents that had made them their home.  The resulting green waste was deposited in a single pile many times larger than the one above, in one of the parking lots.

It so happened, if I recall correctly, that this came around our midwinter school break, but it also coincided with a period of unrest against the military dictatorship headed by Gen. Francisco Morales Bermudez.  The major labor confederations went on strike, and so the debris was not hauled away from some weeks.

A friend and I started playing in it, and soon had devised a shelter in it complete with a "secret" exit. In the course of a few days we were joined by more and more neighborhood kids, and for a couple of weeks we had great fun expanding our warrens with extra rooms, hidden entrances, and long, winding tunnels, all practically invisible to the casual passerby.

We were much saddened when the government finally managed to get the place cleaned up.

Tarata Street

Strolling through Miraflores last week, Liz and I stumbled across Tarata Street, which I had known about but had never visited.

Before 1992, Tarata was just a quiet Miraflores side street -much as it is today- but on the night of July 16, 1992 - 23 years ago today, in fact- a powerful Shining Path car bomb exploded there.

There were one or two reports at the time (which I cannot find now) that indicated that the carbomb was actually intended for the banks on the main avenue a block away, but the car collided with a pickup truck at the intersection where the monument now stands and was abandoned minutes before it exploded.  

Those reports were buried or swept aside by the horrendous toll: 183 homes, 400 businesses, and 63 automobiles were either damaged or destroyed, and 25 people were killed and another 155 wounded that night.

People connected with the Shining Path have a t various points corroborated those initial reports that the bomb was not targeted at the civilian population, that it was intended for the banks, that it was a mistake, that the charge was too large.  However, it is hard to see how that one short block would have made any difference given the size of the charge used.  The shockwave would have still travelled down the canyon formed by Tarata's buildings and blown in very window, showering residents with flying shards of glass and other debris.  Either way, it is of little comfort to those who were hurt or lost loved ones.

Labor Unions Rally and March

On July 3rd Peru's largest labor confederation, the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP)  called for rallies and marches to push for an increase in wages, salaries, and pensions, and to show support for the communities of the Tambo Valley in southern Peru who have been resisting the attempts by the government and Southern Copper Corporation and Newmont Mining expand the Tia Maria copper mine.

A large part of the rural communities of the Tambo Valley residents fear the mine expansion will be detrimental to their health and to the local economy, polluting water supplies and damaging pastures.  They charge that the environmental impact assessment was haphazard and that the government rushed through its approval process with minimal review.

After protests turned ugly following a number of documented abuses committed by on-duty police as well as off-duty police hired by the company to quell protests, the government sent in troops and imposed a state of emergency on several southern provinces, limiting freedom of assembly and placing some communities under night-time curfews.

On July 9th several thousand people gathered in Lima's Plaza Dos de Mayo, a traditional spot for such events, in front of the CGTP offices.

Youth Protest in Lima

 

On Monday I headed downtown to buy some books.  My trip  there coincided with a march convened by

 numerous youth groups  in one of Lima's central squares, the Plaza San Martin, in order to.march in a show of their rejection of the recently-enacted Youth Labor Law.

Known derisively as the "Pulpin Law" after a brand of fruit juices meant for infants and toddlers, Law No. 30288 provides incentives for businesses to hire youth 18-24 years of age who haven't previously had formal employment or who have not had it in the previous 90 days.  How?  By making their employment exempt from payment of Compensation for Time of Service (money deposited periodically by the employer into a special account, that workers can then use as retirement savings or unemployment insurance), life insurance, hazard pay, family stipends, and twice-yearly bonuses, all of which are mandated by law for other regular employees.

To the apparent surprise of the Humala administration, the youth have roundly rejected the law as discriminatory and have argued that it is actually an attempt to mollify the entrepreneurial sector after two years of slowed economic growth by making it possible to incur those cost savings in up to 25% of their labor force and to receive an additional tax break for doing so.

The march was scheduled to start at 6 pm. The police presence was notable, but it was also evident that they were making an effort to have a lighter touch than the had displayed toward another such march on the 18th, after which the police were accused of inciting trouble after being video recorded charging the marchers with horses and dousing them --and holiday shoppers-- with tear gas.

These young ladies were clearly excited to be there and smilingly asked me
to take their picture

At this march the police were on deployed on foot, and sans side arms and without their usual allotment of tear gas launchers.  They also deployed a larger number of female officers, genteelly outfitted in white cotton gloves.

That "lighter" touch, however, did not prevent the Minister of the Interior, Army General Daniel Urresti, from showing up at a pre-march concentration at a park some distance away from the plaza, and blustering that anyone causing "disturbances" would be dealt with harshly, as well as suggesting that marchers would be banned from wearing backpacks or head coverings, and even that all participants would have to present their national ID and register with the police beforehand.  Those statements earned him a quick rebuke from the head of the president's Ministerial Council.

   

The march got going promply at 6 o'clock --under the watchful eye of a couple of drones-- with marchers streaming out of the plaza and down Nicolas de Pierola (a.k.a La Colmena) Ave., west down Garcilazo de la Vega (a.k.a Wilson) Ave., and then down Salaverry Ave., and past the Ministry of Labor.

"When the Law is Unjust Protest is a Duty"

An energetic group of young anarchists made up the tail end of the march as it left the plaza:

"If No One Works In Your Stead, No One Should Decide In Your Stead...
No Union or Party Bureacracy; Workers' Free Association!"   

  Later, on my way home from the bookstores, I found that the march had continued past the Ministry of Labor and was now heading down Arequipa Ave. toward the upper middle class and heavily commercial district of Miraflores, passing through the districts of Jesus Maria, Lince, and San Isidro on the way, and disrupting traffic for many blocks.

March proceeding along the two westbound lanes of Ave. Arequipa

I decided to leave my taxi and accompanied the march for a number of blocks at that point, but as I neared home, I decided to continue on my path there.   During my time with the march --which had by now swelled to at least 10,000 and covered a nearly a dozen blocks-- I witnessed many shows of support for the youth, from drivers honking in rythm wiith the chants, passersby clapping for them, and people coming to their windows and balconies to cheer them on.

Large police contingent accompanies the march

The marchers, I saw later on  the news, then gathered and rallied in Miraflores' Kennedy Park. The entire protest lasted some 6 hours, and --despite an attempt to divert the march by a group that managed to split off a contingent along a different avenue-- it went on without incident. 

There was a group that gathered in the Plaza San Marti and who were dispersed and repressed by the police after a brief street battle.  While this was going on the main demonstration was across town, but that hasn't stopped the conservative and pro-business media from trying to smear the protests as violent, or to make ominous pronouncements about "infiltrators".

Ayacucho Museum to the Memory of Those Killed and Disappeared During the War Years

The main reason I traveled to Ayacucho last week was to attend a two-evening colloquium on "Class, Gender and the Building of Peace in Peru (1961-2014)".  It's main purpose was to examine the role of women in social movements, guerrilla groups, and in building peace and reconciliation, beginning with the  guerrillas of the 1960s,  but centering on the internal war waged  between the Peruvian state and the guerrillas of the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement in the 1980s and 1990s.

Given the political climate in the country at the moment, all doors were closed to the holding such an event in Lima.  However, in Ayacucho, which had been at the center of the violence and which suffered the greatest number of victims -between those killed, disappeared, tortured, traumatized, and displaced- the doors were opened.  And they were opened by no less than the mothers and relatives of the disappeared organized in the Association of Relatives of the Kidnapped, Detained, and Disappeared of Peru (ANFASEP).

ANFASEP was started in 1983, when Angélica Mendoza de Ascarza -"Mamá Angélica"- after fruitlessly searching for her son Arquímedes, who had been taken one night by the army, joined with other women searching for their own relatives who had also been detained.  Mamá Angélica organized them to help each other draw attention to their cause and try to bring pressure on the authorities to release their relatives -or their corpses- and to bring those responsible to justice.  Now, thirty years later, they're still waiting for justice, and the fate and location of many of the victims, including Mamá Angélica's Arquímedes, are yet to be revealed.

Anyway, after thirty years of facing down authorities, threats, and every obstacle thrown in their path, the mothers of ANFASEP are not afraid of much, and they generously co-sponsored the event and got the Jesuit Order to provide the meeting space.

Not only did Adelina Garcia, ANFASEP's current president, open the event on Wednesday evening, but as part of it, they invited those attending to visit the ANFASEP's Museum of Memory, which was the first museum in Peru dedicated to exploring the war and to the memory of the victims.

ANFASEP's building on Prolongacion La Libertad, Ayacucho.

The museum houses photos, documents, and artwork related to the war's victims and their relatives' search for justice and reparations, and clothing and other items that belonged to the disappeared.

ANFASEP's first banner and the cross with the inscription "Do Not Kill", which they bore in their early mobilizations.

Mrs. Lidia Flores -standing before a photo of her late husband, Felipe Huamán, and the shirt he was wearing when he was taken by the police in July of 1984- talks about about the night he was taken, the day, a month later, when she discovered and  then secretly recovered and reburied his corpse, and her continuing struggle to gain convictions of the policemen who murdered him.

To say that the museum is moving, and harrowing and inspiring at the same time, understates the impact  on one caused by the exhibits and the courage of the women -mainly- who established and run it and ANFASEP.

Artwork depicting the kitchen which ANFASEP ran to feed 200 war orphans in the 1990s.

The Changing of the Guard at the Presidential Palace

On Thursday, Liz and I headed downtown for a bit before lunch just to look around and get out a bit.  As luck would have it, we arrived just as the Changing of the Guard ceremony at the Presidential Palace was getting started.

The guard regiment at the palace are the Dragoons of the "Marshall Domingo Nieto" Cavalry Regiment.   Every midday, Monday through Saturday, some 40 Dragoons, accompanied by the regimental band, take part in the ceremony which was established by President Manuel Prado in 1940.

This was only my second time witnessing the ceremony up close, and the first time I was a little kid, so it was pretty cool.  (I might go back with a video recorder!)

 

 

 

Protest downtown

Tonight I joined thousands of others downtown in a protest against the recent actions of the Peruvian Congress.   On the 18th, the nation watched via a live TV feed as the four parties with the largest share of representatives in Congress, which included the party of former president and dictator, Alberto Fujimori (who is serving prison time for graft, corruption, and human rights abuses), and that of the current president, Ollanta Humala- consumated a political deal between them to get their members elected to head the Central Reserve Bank, the Constitutional Court, and the Public Defender's Office.

The four parties -Gana Perú, Fuerza Popular, Perú Posible, and Alianza Por el Gran Cambio- pushed through a vote for the candidates in a block, instead of on a one-by-one basis, as required by the Congressional regulations in place since 1975.   As a result, the candidates were selected based, not on personal and professional qualifications, but on quotas set in backroom partisan wheeling and dealing.  In fact when one Congresswoman tried to abstain, she was browbeaten into voting in favor, on the grounds that she "had to agree" as her party had a "political agreement" to which she was supposedly bound.   To make things worse -with the exception of those elected to the Central Reserve Bank- the elected were perhaps among the worst candidates, lacking in relevant experience, having conflicts of interest, and having been connected to or defended human rights abuses and corrupt practices.

The people's rejection was immediate and loud.   Almost every newspaper, magazine, newsprogram, NGO, labor union, political movement, student group, and others spoke out against the repartija - the divvying up- in Congress.  That very night there were spontaneous protests in Lima.

There was another demo called for tonight as a show of rejection and a means of pressuring those elected into stepping aside, and Congress into approving an extraordinary session for Wednesday to anul the election and hold another, clean one.