“We used to have a terrorism problem in Peru.” Wait what?! It was casually mentioned by our in-country consultant. Later it came up again, this time with dates: from the 80s to the early 2000s. Excuse me?! Uhhh, that’s mad recent for me to have never heard about this! These are my thoughts as I struggle to make sense of what I’m hearing. Surely they must be talking about some small scale organization that delivered more threats than attacks over those two decades. However, I couldn’t have been more wrong. We had to make a stop at the US Embassy for a security briefing and another preparatory workshop. One of the security officials tells us more about the locations affected by the terrorism, but without much more detail, he moves on to discuss drug trade issues as the only current concern. It wasn’t until we met Dr. Laura Balbuena of Fulbright that we had the weight of the ugly truth dropped on us. “A Darkened Path” Dr. Balbuena used her presentation entitled “FROM BUREAUCRAT TO PROPHET: THE EVOLUTION OF THE SHINING PATH’S DISCOURSE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF ABIMAEL GUZMAN’S IMAGE” to explain how the terrorist organization “The Shining Path” or “Sendero Luminoso” was born and how it became a relentless infection in bloodstream of the public-school system. Some of the pictures below are from Balbuena’s presentation. Abimael Guzman was a professor of philosophy at the National University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga and became the father of a Maoism endorsing, guerilla tactic using, communist extremist sect along with his wife. The teacher assembled a group of young “intellectuals” in Ayochucho, using public universities as recruitment centers through students and faculty. They then began to gain followers in the highland rural villages due to the lack of governmental representation outside of Lima. These villagers craved order in their communities, and The Shining Path offered that along with leadership opportunities for the natives in the shadows of a Spanish speaking Eurocentric elite class. Many fell for this false sense of empowerment. Other villages resisted infiltration and saw the grim consequences of refusal. One of our colleagues’ host teachers told the account of his sister being snatched from school along with other children from the community in retaliation of the village people poisoning the terrorists. These children were never seen again. The group funded their exploits through the cocaine drug trade and strengthened their reign through anonymity. The group is responsible for at least 70, 000 deaths, but the exact number of victims is unclear due to the lack of supervision in the remote rural areas of the Andes. “The Fatal Flaw of Education in Peru”
The more Eurocentric this nation became, the more disenfranchised the natives and Afro-Peruvians became. The education system was and still is controlled by the central government out of Lima. Back then, all instruction and materials were delivered in Spanish which alienated the Quechua and Aymara native language speakers. Despite these being terrible challenges, the greatest weakness that gave place to extremism was the crippling pedagogy. Students were taught according to the basic cognition of memorization. Thinking for themselves was not supported and critical thinking in schools didn’t exist. This made it easy for students and teachers who had been educated in the same manner to be indoctrinated with the ideology of The Shining Path. Dr. Balbuena explained that when people would debate with members of the terrorist group, they would merely repeat quotes from their text, never a thought of their own or any supported argument to defend their claims. Due to how vulnerable public universities and secondary schools were, it was assumed that if you attended schools such as these that you were somehow affiliated with The Shining Path. Some canceled or delayed their plans of higher educated or fled to less affected areas to study. The lack of access to education or adequate education was another point of vulnerability that helped the terrorists victimize the native people of the highland regions. According to Dr. Balbuena’s research, here are the breakdowns of the victim demographics: “73% Quechua speakers, 51% from Ayacucho, 34% illiterate, 48% between the ages of 10-30 years old, and 80% lived in rural areas. “Still Healing” Although Guzman was captured and imprisoned in 1992 and the identified, top leadership was taken out by an elite task force, attacks accredited to the Shining Path have been carried out as recently as 2017. Traces of this infection remain, and corruption within the government is still being uncovered. The schools have become vigilant about cultivating the independent minds of their students as I will reflect on soon in my posts about my time spent at an accelerated learning school in Huancavelica. The students that I encountered were not easy targets for extreme ideology. However, the access to quality instruction is not equal across the nation and the threat has not been entirely neutralized. You can read more about the history here and more about the latest relevant resurfacing here. Peru has made obvious changes to heal, but the pain of the past can be heard in the hushed tones and strained faces of survivors and researchers of Peru’s fight against terrorism. If a cure is ever used to vanquish every trace of this disorder, I could bet that the ingredients would include: respect and inclusion for all racial/ethnic backgrounds, equal education opportunities with an emphasis on higher order thinking, and the love of humanity that desires for all to succeed in addition to having life and liberty.
2 Comments
Lisa M. Coffield
7/16/2018 11:54:15 pm
wow... just wow...I had no idea. How awful and devastating! I hope the new initiatives to teach all students and the inclusion of all people across the nation will help prevent more terrorist acts. Your comments at the end are spot on and the whole world could benefit from a dose of that cure as well. That we as Americans know so very little about such recent tragic events says a lot about us.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorBrittany Goldsby- The teacher & traveler behind these ramblings. Experienced in ELA teaching at the secondary level. All featured blog posts here and under the "Travel" tab are the original thoughts of Brittany, the author and manager of this resource guide and blog. All rights are reserved. t Archives |