In this issue’s Open Forum [“Caught in an Anti-Terrorist Web,” see Open Forum], Peruvian human rights activist Ernesto de la Jara tells us how willing his fellow Peruvians were to let their government ravage legal and constitutional norms in the name of fighting terrorism; he describes how easy it was for an ostensibly democratic government to create an Orwellian system within which innocent people were swept up in an anti-terrorist net. This is a warning with obvious relevance for us in the United States today.
Some readers, however, may be disturbed by de la Jara’s matter-of-fact use of the term “terrorist” to describe members of Peru’s Shining Path and MRTA movements. Most of us are all too aware of how the word has been used to discredit a wide range of groups working for social change. The Peruvian groups identifed themselves as armed revolutionaries; but many, many other Peruvians, including most of those who were working for change via unions, community groups, and other leftist political parties found themselves in daily danger from these same groups. Shining Path routinely assassinated activists who disagreed with the guerrillas’ program or methods; MRTA was more discriminating in its murder targets, but its bombings and other attacks killed many innocent civilians and contributed to an atmosphere of fear and insecurity for everyone. By any reasonable definition—not just the U.S. State Department’s—these groups were engaged in terrorism, that is, violence against noncombatants aimed at creating widespread fear for political ends. Perhaps now that we in the United States have experienced the daily insecurity and fear produced by the September 11 attacks and their sequel, the anthrax mailings, it’s easier to understand why most Peruvians, even on the left, feared and opposed Shining Path and MRTA and freely labelled them “terrorists.”
Let us be clear: In pointing this out, we don’t need to downplay government terror. The horror for many Peruvian progressives was precisely that they found themselves “between two fires,” in equal daily danger of being murdered by security forces or by insurgent forces. Nor, as de la Jara stresses, do we need to support the erosion of our rights and liberties in order to gain security. U.S. progressives who feel themselves threatened both by possible new terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and the increasingly authoritarian “War on Terrorism” can now perhaps more readily identify with the psychological, as well as political, dilemmas such dual threats create.
It is equally important not to forget—as the Bush administration wants us to—that terrorism is not rooted in some shadowy “evil,” but in misery, inequality and injustice. Peruvian progressives have not forgotten this lesson, despite the assaults they themselves suffered at the hands of would-be revolutionaries, and they continue to stress, that although Peruvian “terrorism” has for the moment been mostly suppressed, Peru’s serious social problems remain unsolved. They know that unless these are addressed, Shining Path, or some new and even more virulent movement, will win new adherents.
For 35 years now, NACLA and NACLA readers have taken part in the continent-wide—indeed, world-wide—debates over how best to achieve real and lasting social change. We have pondered the complex questions related to insurgency, revolution, armed struggle, national liberation movements: What social and political ends are worth pursuing? What means are justified in order to change things; what means can actually succeed and bring us closer to the ends we want to reach? We must continue the discussion, not allowing ourselves to be intimidated by authorities who wish us to believe that anyone who brings up such topics in the current environment is themself an incipient “terrorist.” At the same time, however, we must not allow official misuse of the term to keep us from criticizing those whose acts result in death, destruction and daily terror for the very people in whose name they claim to be acting.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JoAnn Kawell is the editor of the NACLA Report on the Americas.
