On February 28, 1995, hundreds of people marched through the streets of Comas, a popular district in northern Lima, to pay their last respects to Yenuri Chiltuala, a young soldier who had died days earlier near the Peruvian-Ecuadorian border. Municipal authorities and leaders of civic associations led the procession as Peruvian flags intermingled with white flags to protest the border war. While nationalist slogans were part of the repertoire, this demonstration was not about patriotism. The people on the streets chanted slogans like “Make the Guilty Pay!” and carried banners proclaiming “Chihuala: The People Cry For Your Death!”‘ The left-wing language of popular protest was also present in slogans like, “By Your Example, Venceremos![2]
Yenuri Chibuala was 14 years of age at the moment of his death. On February 7, he disappeared from his neighborhood without a trace. His family frantically searched local police stations and hospitals but was unable to locate his whereabouts for nearly two weeks. On February 19, Calixto, Yenuri’s father, received a call from a relative working in Bagua, a town near the border. The relative, a nurse in a hospital for wounded servicemen, had recognized Yenuri when he was brought in for treatment. Calixto rushed to Bagua, where he watched his son die.
Initial press reports presented Yenuri as an enthusiastic kid who had voluntarily enrolled in the army and had died in combat, the victim of shrapnel. But in fact, Yermri was a victim of the leva. He had been forcibly abducted from his neighborhood by a military patrol, along with other young men who did not have identity papers, and taken to the barracks for crash training and immediate deployment to the border. But Yenuri never made it to the front line. The lack of adequate footwear resulted in a tetanus infection that was not properly treated. The infection spread to the rest of his body and eventually killed him.[3]
Those who protested Yenuri’s death on that hot summer afternoon knew that he had been the victim of an act of selective state-sponsored violence inflicted on young men who live in low-income districts like Comas. Young men are plucked from their neighborhood streets and forcibly conscripted into the military—a longstanding practice which became more common during the counterinsurgency war against the Shining Path in the 1980s and continues unabated today. The protesters expressed their repudiation of the leva by carrying white flags at the procession in Yenuri’s honor. When army officers arrived at the cemetery to pay their respects to Yenuri, the crowd harangued them and forced them to leave. The protesters, however, were unable to articulate a discourse as powerful as the one already making its rounds in the media, which depicted Yenuri as a boy-hero, making him an example for all Peruvian youth. Although several politicians demanded an investigation, Yenuri’s case was quickly dismissed and forgotten. Forced conscription remains part of the accepted texture of daily violence in Peru.
Yenuri’s tragic fate and that of other forgotten actors of the conflict between Peru and Ecuador in 1995 is closely linked to the existence of a social imaginary that shapes discourses about youth in ways that are functional to authoritarian projects of social control. The underlying elements of such discourses, which portray youth as naturally violent actors whose impulses must be controlled and channeled by the state, became evident during the border conflict. Youth, usually portrayed in the media as a dangerous social group linked to gangs, criminal organizations, subversive movements and soccer-fan violence, appeared in a new light as villages and testimonies of eager young soldiers saturated the media.[4] If this were just a momentary shift from criminal to heroic images of youth, it could be dismissed as a philistine strategy of wartime propaganda. But both images of youth were presented simultaneously. In the war stories on the front pages, young men were presented as heroic, patriotic and disciplined, while in the sports section and the crime chronicle they were portrayed as vandals and delinquents. At the root of these dual images lies a particular conceptualization of “popular youth.” The same discursive mechanisms that produce the image of youth as heroes produce that of the vandal and the criminal, objectifying the same actors in diametrically opposed ways.
Psychologists, sociologists and pundits of diverse kinds are frequently interviewed in the media to provide a veneer of scientific legitimacy to the idea that young people are violent by nature and that society needs to find adequate mechanisms to socialize them into more respectable modes of conduct. Because of the discipline it purportedly instills, obligatory military service is seen as precisely such a mechanism. In the public debates surrounding conscription and youth in the context of the 1995 border conflict with Ecuador, military service was presented as a civilizing mechanism capable of transforming poor, dark-skinned youths from vandals into heroes. In effect, the moral transformation of violent savages into civilized patriotic citizens is seen as the responsibility of a state institution. The irrational violence of street kids is redirected and legitimized when put in the service of the state.
In this context, violence is framed as an intrinsic element of youth—be it vandalic or heroic, irrational or rational, unruly or state-controlled, illegal or legal. Once violence is posited as a defiining characteristic of youth, “youth” the category becomes synonymous with “youth” the social problem. Within this framework, the term “youth” refers exclusively to popular youth—poor cholos (a derogatory term referring to people of indigenous descent) who are not integrated into the market and who are trapped in an inefficient school system. Class and race intersect, forming the basis of a notion of youth that has been essentialized as violent. This category is also specifically gendered. Youth is masculine. Since young males are understood as the source of criminal violence, state programs are targeted specifically at them. Conscription turns young boys into men, conferring upon them the right to exercise their masculinity.
The idea that youth is inherently violent is nowhere more evident than in the media treatment of soccer-fan violence. The same newspapers which clamored for peace and the end of the border conflict on the front page, called for a “war against fan violence” in the sports section.[5] The press routinely describes the clashes between fans of rival teams—known popularly as the barras bravas—and increasingly, press stories about such violence are accompanied by editorials demanding harsh punishment for “vandals” and more effective means of vigilance and repression in stadiums.
Sports journalists frequently use the same language to describe the barras bravas that was used by the war correspondents who covered the Peru—Ecuador border conflict. In a story about one incident of stadium violence, the conservative daily El Comercio described the young poeple involved as “a human pack of hounds wearing yellow uniforms” who “took by assault the Lolo Fernández Stadium, transforming at should have been a simple practice match into a pretext to unleash its madness.”[6] The caption of the photograph accompanying the story read, “the popular sectors and the forces of order face to face” suggesting the futility of police efforts to stop the riot. The ensuing violence was described in exquisite detail. The journalist describes a moment in which the women’s restroom was invaded by a group of fans: “a trinchudo fan was forcibly pushed out of the ladies’ restroom by a woman who was defending her small daughter. The shameless man jumped around, shouting incoherently, while bystanders laughed.” Trinchudo is a Peruvian term with highly derogatory overtones that is used to describe a person with thick hair, a phenotypical trait associated with people of indigenous descent. The story makes implicit mention of the menace these young fans represent to existing social hierarchies when describing how fans from the southern part of the stadium began pelting those sitting in “the usually privileged west seats with a storm of rocks.”
In this account, youth are portrayed as chaotic and unrestrained. They are described as animals incapable of controlling their aggressive and sexual impulses who can only express themselves through physical aggression. The situation is war- like, and violent means of repression and pervasive vigilance are the only way to deal with it. The newspapers clamor for better weapons for the police and special vigilance in the stadiums. The youth in the stadium bear little resemblance to the image of disciplined, heroic teenagers wearing army uniforms presented on the front pages.
The story of Yenuri Chihuala highlights the irony of this juxtaposition of soccer fanaticism and war heroism. As the truth about his forced recrutment into the army began to filter out, the newspapers tried to cover up the scandal with stories in which the boy’s short life was depicted as an example of patriotic sacrifice. But as the newspapers delved into his biography, an ironic twist appeared. Yenuri, it turned out, was an avid soccer fan who played for a local soccer club in Comas. He was also a fan of Alianza Lima, and he saved his money to go to the stadium to see them play as often as he could. “When he could not pay for a ticket,” the story reads, “he joined the segundilla, a nervous legion of fans that forces its way into the stadium during the last minutes of the match.”[7] The very same boy-hero—the patriotic conscript of the official discourse-was also a member of the reviled mass of young vandals who terrorize the stadiums. The same discourse that portrays popular youth as essentially irrational depicts a redeemed youth whose violence has been redirected in the service of the homeland, effectively justifying institutional violence. The “nature” of these media—constructed poor and dark-skinned males is divided by the Rubicon of redeeming military duty.
This is particularly important in a poor country like Peru, where technologically sophisticated mechanisms of vigilance and riot control are a fantasy. In their place, low-tech massive deployment of armed force is used to repress the mayhem produced by these ritualized confrontations between chaos and order. In this context, conscription appears as an institutionalized way to exercise direct control over popular youth with the added virtue that it domesticates their bestial instincts, transforming them into constructive, disciplined energies.
A term that was repeatedly used by the media to describe the young soldiers fighting on the border was “self-sacrifice—the reuniciation of one’s own identity, safety and very being for a larger cause. According to El Comercio, “Young men voluntarily went to the barracks, sacrificing their summer to face possible death in the line of fire.”8 The middle-calss, urban journalists writing the story desctibes the young mens’ sacrifice in her own terms—disavowing the pleasure of the summer holiday. But it is the subtext which is most significant here. Soldierly duty implies sactifice, the negation of oneself and of the selfish pleasures and dangerous impilses to which the lack of dicipline can give rise.
Even male aggressiveness, depicted in stories of soccer-fan violence as the essence of the “pack” of youngsters, is redeemed in this self-sacrifice. Cenepa, the valley where most of the border clashes occurred, “is hellish. One must be a real man in order to enter this area, and even more manly to get out alive.”[9] The soldiers’ enthusiasm and courage were contrasted with the images of crying mothers and girlfriends. But more significantly, military duty is presented as the prerequisite for male citizens to enjoy the benefits of citizenship. One journalist directly linked military service with obtaining a voting card:
Obligatory military service is a sort of compensation to the state for the status of citizenship that it confers upon us. It is also an opportunity to demonstrate that patriotism exists among young people, despite the volatile behavior associated with youth. Having a voting card, moreover, is very useful. For young men, it opens the door to X-rated cinemas, allows them to check into a motel with a girlfriend, and who knows what else.[10]
In this context of self-sacifice, the ethnic condition of cholo that was referred to disparagingly in the stories about the vandalism of popular youth reappears, but now as a symbol of bravery and national pride. The gallant soldiers who return from the front are described as conscripts with “provincial traits,” a euphemism used to denote their indigenous background [11]. The notion that Indianness is equivalent to unmediated nature, violence and courage is reflected in the testimony of a wounded officer who tells of his battle experiences:
At dawn, we heard a signal. That was the moment to assault Tiwinza. As the troops were being deployed I took a moment to pray and remember my son Renzo, who lives in Lima. I was afraid, but we sang warrior hymns and the spirit of the cholo soldier filled our bodies once again.[12]
The officer uses a variation of a phrase that is very well known in Latin American countries with large indigenous populations: se me subio el indio (the Indian within me emerged), meaning that one is possessed by a fit of rage or an impulse of spontaneous bravery. Again, a dichotomy is used, though it clearly refers to one person. The first is rational, concerned with soul, family and safety, while the second is “cholo/indian”-violent, brave and mindless.
The recognition of differentiated ethnic and racial identifications and identities is extremely problematic in a country like Peru, where the concept of nation has been constructed on the assumption of a homogenizing mestizaje. The selective nature of military service, however, makes it necessary to rethink this understanding of the nation. A photograph of Peruvian soldiers at a position they retook from Ecuadorean troops which appeared in the daily La Repblica highlights the problematic nature of these assumptions:
Humaní, Yupanqui, Quispe, Tincopa, Choque-these are the family names of the people, of the soldiers who went to the front line. They were 16, 19, 20-year olds or even much younger, since many of them do not have even a birth certificate. They were simply drafted, trained and sent to fight. For Peru—their Peru, our Peru.[13]
“The family names of the people” used in connection to indigenous surnames is a way of fusing class and ethnic identifications without explicitly doing so. It is impossible to say outright that Humamí or Tincopa are Indian names, for this would challenge the inclusive notion of Peruvianness that is needed to glorify military duty. At the same time, the identification of these names as “popular”‘ and implicitly as Indian implies that other names were not present in combat. The surnames of upper-class, white Peruvians do not appear. It is not even necessary to say that young men from this social group are simply not draftable. In spite of the journalist’s effort to evoke the national community by referring to Peru as “theirs” and “ours,” the difference is painfully evident, for “they” have fought, and “we” have not.
Conscription is thus a publicly recognized institution in which existing inequalities are affirmed and sanctioned. It is a socially accepted fact that military service is fulfilled only by those young men who lack the social means to escape it. The compulsory and universal character of the law, when contrasted to its biased and violent application, reflects how inequalities are legitimized and how disciplinary mechanisms reaffirm the subordination of particular social groups—in this case, poor young men.
The power of the discourse on the purportedly civilizing nature of military service is revealed in the testimonies of recruits. They use a “before-and-after” strategy to emphasize the positive impact that military service has had on their lives. “Before” they were recruited, they say they had no objectives in life, they lacked jobs, and had serious family problems. “After,” they talk about a sense of pride, patriotism, new skills and personal discipline. A common metaphor is the comparison of conscription with marriage—responsibility and commitment to a jealous, controlling institution from which orders are received. The recruits point proudly to their newly acquired ability to obey orders “without doubts or lamentations.”
Alex, for example, said that before serving in the army, he was a good-for-nothing who was continually in trouble with his mother, but that his experience as a soldier in Ayacucho transformed his life. “I took a course on counterinsurgency tactics,” he said. “It was tough, but I felt so responsible, I was proud to serve my country. I spent nine months in the emergency zone.”[14] This testimony is certainly disturbing, for the systematic abuse of human rights by the counterinsurgency units in the areas of conflict during Peru’s internal war is well known. It is likely that Alex was involved in the dirty war. Is military discipline such a powerful normalizing mechanism that this formerly restless young man takes pride in his newfound willingness to engage in dehumanizing actions? Was the transformation from brute to noble savage instrumental in the creation of a dirty warrior? Is it possible to trace the patterns of systematic racial and sexual abuse of emergency-zone populations by the army to the disciplinary mechanisms that legitimize violence when it is exercised in the service of the state?
Youth and conscription intersect in public discourse along the axes of gender, class and ethnicity. Masculinity, poverty and indigenous descent are ambiguous categories that might be the source of mistrust and disdain or glorification and respect, depending on whether the subject has passed the threshold of military service. In the discourses of the state and the media, criminalized youth are irrational beings who live in a brutal state of nature: they are aggressive, amoral males who express the violent tendencies of the lower classes and the Indian. By contrast, after experiencing the civilizing role of the state—that is, after “legitimate” violence is exerted in order to tame the savagery of youth, these new young men become disciplined soldiers. Their masculinity becomes chivalrous and erotic, their belonging to the lower classes is glorified as disinterested patriotism and their Indian descent becomes the essence of nationalism and bravery. These three dimensions constitute precise social categories that are publicly recognized in the ideology and practice of conscription, both to select the subjects that need to be civilized through forceful recruitment and to glorify its results.
Given the series of scandals surrounding the leva, including the unexplained deaths of young men like Yenuri who were forcefully drafted by armed units trying to fill their quotas of conscripts, a number of non-governmental organizations grouped under the umbrella of the National Coordinating Committee for Human Rights (CNDH) have launched a path-breaking campaign to reform the system of obligatory military service and to prohibit forced recruitment. Yet these groups, whose main focus is curbing the abuses and human rights violations associated with the current system of conscription, fail to adequately address the specific complexities of these practices.
In a recent report on the abuses involved in the leva, for example, the CNDH criticizes the discriminatory practices involved in the selection procedures, but it fails to fully grasp the complex intersections of class, race and gender underlying forced conscription. “Those conscripted are primarily young students or workers with a poor rural background,” reads the report. “This practice is nonexistent among the middle and upper strata, for whom military service is not obligatory.”[15] Discrimination is addressed as essentially a class problem, The racial and ethnic dimensions of the problem are only suggested by the phrase “rural background.”
In addition, conscription is described as an “arbitrary” practice—an unexplained exercise of violence by the state that affects individuals randomly. But only superficially can this phenomenon be considered arbitrary. In fact, it is a practice directed against a sector of the population that is identified and targeted on the basis of its gender, race and class. The human rights report focuses on a critique of egregious individual cases in which conscripts have been killed, tortured or have been the victims of extortion, but it does not analyze the social dynamic through which conscription is legitimized and reproduced.
Peruvian ombudsman Jorge Santistevan de Noriega presents the leva in similar terms, categorizing it as a crime against individual freedom and a violation of the principle of equalily before the law. That is, certain individuals are being discriminated against and are forced to provide a service that other individuals are not obligated to provide. The reason is again ambiguous or imagined in class terms: “This is a situation in which the principle of equality is being violated based on socio-economic grounds. A disproportionate majority of the young people who fulfill military service come from lower-class groups.”[16]
The results of such an analysis are incomplete and conservative reforms. Last year, Congress member Ernesto Gamarra, of the Independent Moralizing Front (FIM), introduced a bill in Parliament which—if approved—would legalize forced recruitment only when a judicial order authorizes the army to detain draft dodgers. It would also give citizens the opportunity to conscientiously object to serving in the military and, subject to review and approval by military authorities, engage in an alternative civil service. The ombudsman has recommended a number of additional measures. Most notable is a reform of obligatory military service in order to make it attractive to young people as a professional option.
These proposals do not dismantle the mechanisms that legitimize forced conscription and reproduce in soldiers the same patterns of violence to which they have been subjected. Soldiers who are abused because of their ethnic or class background and who are taught to associate violence with masculinity learn how to abuse others, on the same grounds—to exert sexist violence over women, racist violence against indigenous populations and classist violence over the poor. Brutal human rights violations during the counterinsurgency war against the Shinning Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) and the extremely violent recruitment hazing that occurs in the country’s military academies are simply gradations along the same spectrum of violence.
Power—the ability to subjugate another person’s will—is intimately linked to the power to define, to label and to name. A rigid definition of “youth” as popular, delinquent and dangerous allows the agents of power to reproduce a disciplinary political culture which legitimizes the open victimization of the majority of the population via the exemplary victimization of poor youth. How entrenched these definitions and discourses are remains an open question. The answer will depend on the vitality of the discourses and strategies deployed by elites and the media, and on the ability of social groups to contest and demystify those discourses and practices.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Eduardo Gónzalez-Cueva is a Ph.D. student in sociology department at New School University.
NOTES:
1. La Repúbiica (Lima), March 1, 1995~
2. Photographs published in EI Mundo (Lima), March 1, 1995,
3. Under public pressure, the army gave a confusing explanation of the incident, but acknowledged that Yenuri Chihuala did not die in combat and that while in the barracks suffered “cuts in his feet” that resulted in the tetanus infection. Official Coirmunique 001/OIE/95, Army Information Office.
4. See Aldo Panfichi, ed., Fútbol. identidad, violendayTacionafidad (Lima Pontificia Universidad Católjca, 1995).
5. La República (Lima), February 13, 1995,
6. 11 Comercio (Lima), February 12, 1995. The following description of the clash is based on this newspaper article.
7. La República (Lima), March 1, 1995,
8. EI Comencia (Lima), February 26, 1995. The conflict between Peru and Ecuador occurred between January and March, Peru’s summer months.
9, La Repúbiica (Lima), November 18, 1995
10 .El Mundo (Lima), February 7, 1995.
11.El Munda (Lima), February 13, 1995,
12. EI Mundo (Lima), February 21, 1995
13. La Repúbfica (Lima), November 18, 1995,
14. EI Mundo (Lima), February 7, 1995,
15.National Coordinating Committee on Human Rights, “¿Deber Civico o Licencia para el Abuso?” Flecha en elAzul, Vols. 4-5 (Lima), p 17,
16.Defpnsoria del Pueblo, “Levas y Servicio Militar Obligatoric, Pronunciamiento,” Flecha en elAzul, Vols. 4-5 (Lima), p. 22,
