Peru's Trial

Peru today displays all the elements of a historic tragedy: a 10-year standoff between powerful and murderous guerrillas on one side and brutal military forces on the other; in the middle, a fear-filled yet courageous populace, including foreign religious workers who agonize over whether to leave their posts or remain; and lurking in the background, a U.S. military presence, fresh from its Middle East "triumph," willing, perhaps even eager, to carry out yet another foreign crusade.

The "Shining Path" (Sendero Luminoso), the self-styled Maoist guerrillas, seem poised to move from their controlled areas north and south of Lima in a final offensive against the capital city. When they will strike is anyone's guess, as these insurgents have heretofore exhibited no impatience whatsoever in their decade-long drive for power. Their latest target is any foreign personnel, including church workers, who are making efforts to alleviate Peru's endemic hunger and misery (see accompanying story).

The Peruvian military has shown itself to be no better than the guerrillas. In recent years the military has committed widespread crimes against the human rights of its own citizens under the guise of combating the Shining Path. One Peruvian military officer has estimated that 600,000 deaths would be the price of excising the cancer that is known in Peru simply as Sendero. Others have placed the cost of doing away with the guerrilla networks at two million dead, likening it to the Dirty War waged against Argentine urban guerrillas in the mid-'70s, which totally discredited the military establishment there.

Under the pretext of suppressing Peru's production of coca (the basic ingredient for making cocaine), the United States has sent 50 military advisers, including Green Berets, and allocated $34 million to that country in the past two years. It is an open secret, however, that the Bush administration is taking aim at the Shining Path and is willing to unleash the Peruvian military for the kind of scorched-earth policy mentioned above. The Shining Path's drive against foreign personnel could well serve as the catalyst for more direct U.S. military intervention in Peru.

THIS APOCALYPTIC SCENE is all the more tragic because it could have been avoided. Years before the Shining Path became a force in Peru, a leftist military government entered the picture there and instituted reforms favorable to the oppressed majorities in all sectors of Peruvian society.

Independently, and often through loyal criticism, significant elements of the Christian churches provided an ethical basis for these reforms through what came to be known as liberation theology. For a wonderful moment, Peru had uniquely within its grasp the possibility of something never before accomplished­ -- a humanizing restructuring of its social fabric on the ethical foundation of justice for all. Tragically, that revolution was thwarted.

It was said at the time that any justice-oriented turnabout would fail because the middle class of Lima could never give up their washing machines. And so it was. Liberation theology found itself subverted and written off within and outside the churches as "Marxist-Leninist propaganda." The cadre of reform-minded military officers was ridiculed and undermined by powerful national elites and their international cronies who stood to lose so much. Within a few years, a palace coup swept the innovators from power. A short five years later, in 1980, Sendero Luminoso made its first moves in the Andean hinterlands.

Today, some in Peru recognize this historic error. During a 1989 visit to Lima, this writer heard more than one middle-class person state categorically that had they listened to the church­ -- read liberationists -- ­20 years ago, they would not be facing the dreaded alternatives presently before them­ -- Shining Path on the left, a harsh military on the right, and an elected but ineffective government in the middle.

Peru's middle class possibly has more to fear from a Sendero takeover than those at other levels of Peruvian society. The guerrillas have promised that they will not make the mistake of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua­ -- they will eliminate the Peruvian middle class.

One astute Peruvian observer sees the basis of his country's tragedy in the age-old, unresolved struggle between the indigenous peoples of that land and those with varying degrees of Spanish blood, the mestizo classes. The same observer also cites Peru's perennial state of poverty, exacerbated in the 1980s (the decade of Sendero) by an external debt that now runs at $17 billion, as the breeding ground for guerrilla activities.

In the end, the real battle is for Peru's soul­ -- specifically, whether Peruvians have a nationalism healthy enough to save themselves from the present quagmire.

Joe Nangle, a Franciscan priest and outreach director at Sojourners when this article appeared, spent 11 years (1964-75) in Peru as pastor of a Catholic parish on the outskirts of Lima. During his years there, he established strong ties with the progressive segments of the Latin American church, which he had maintained since his return to the United States.