Peru attempts to address years of violence with tolerance museum
It was Peru's deadliest conflict. During the 1980s and 90s tens of thousands were killed and thousands more forcibly disappeared when the Maoist guerrillas of the Shining Path unleashed violence against the very people they claimed to defend. Atrocities were also committed by Peru's security forces who used torture and forced disappearances during a state-sponsored campaign of counter-terror.
Now, against all the odds, Peru has opened a museum of historical memory to commemorate the dead – and to address the country's enduring polarisation over human rights abuses committed by the armed forces.
Adelina García, 50, remembers the night in December 1983 when her 27-year-old husband, Zosimo, was dragged from their home by hooded soldiers. She never saw him again. More than 30 years later she is president of the National Association of Families of the Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared of Peru (Anfasep), based in Ayacucho, the Andean region that was the centre of the conflict. "We have waited so long for this," she said.
The Place of Memory, Tolerance and Social Inclusion museum in Lima is expected to officially open later this year, but this month held a "soft launch" with several days of music, theatre and photography exhibitions.
"We want to open a space that goes beyond a museum," said Denise Ledgard, its executive director. "In terms of memory we start from the point that there is not one truth.
"What we are trying to do is to make a bridge for people so they can converge somewhere; a place where you can reflect … debate and discuss."
Embedded in Lima's Pacific-facing cliffs, which ring its sweeping bay, the stark concrete museum commands a panoramic view of the city's coastal periphery. At the top of its three storeys, the Balcony of Anguish invites visitors to reflect by gazing out to sea.
It is a place to ponder a conflict that left Peru socially and economically in ruins. Shining Path unleashed its bloody war on the state in 1980 promising a "river of blood" to irrigate its revolution. The state responded in kind, mainly in Ayacucho. The group's founder and ideologue, Abimael Guzmán, and most of its senior commanders, are in jail but, to this day, just a few members of the military have been prosecuted.
In 2003, a truth and reconciliation commission estimated that 69,280 people had been killed between 1980 and 2000, 75% of whom were indigenous Quechua-speaking people – but even that figure remains a matter of dispute.
It also apportioned blame to the security forces for a large minority of the deaths, a version that has been challenged by Peru's military and the political right loyal to the former president Alberto Fujimori, who was jailed in 2009 for corruption and human rights crimes during his decade in office in the 1990s.
Previous memorials have not been universally welcomed. In 2007, El ojo que llora (the eye that cries), a monument to the victims of the violence, was vandalised with orange paint – the political colours of Fujimori's supporters – because the memorial apparently bore the names of Shining Path members.
Alejandro Aguinaga, Fujimori's doctor and a congressman in his party, said the Place of Memory museum was biased because it failed to present the point of view of the soldiers who "defended democracy" while former Shining Path members had been exonerated. "The murderers of yesterday, today present themselves as victims and Peru has had to compensate them," he said.
In an attempt to forestall controversy, the figure for the estimated death toll will not be shown in the museum, said Diego García-Sayán, a former justice and foreign minister who led the commission in charge of developing the Place of Memory.
He added that the museum should be a way to remember a "tragedy caused by Peruvians" and serve as a way to "vaccinate" against its being repeated.
The $11m (£6.5m) museum, which was funded principally by Germany but also the EU, Sweden and the UN development programme, has been subject to political pressure from the outset.
In 2009, Peru's then president, Alan Garcia, rejected a $2m donation from Germany, only to make a U-turn following harsh criticism from Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa – who at the time led the commission for the Museum of Memory, as it was going to be called.
Now that the building is finished and its permanent exhibition is expected to be installed before the official opening, Ledgard seems most concerned that what it displays may force some visitors to relive painful memories or deter others from visiting.
"The first big challenge is to get the people through the doors so they can process what they are going to see in the future," she said.
Source http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/20/peru-museum-place-of-memory-shining-path
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