In document 9.1, an excerpt from an essay published by Mario Vargas Llosa, describes the investigation of the murder of 8 journalists in the Highlands. He agreed with inflicted rhetorical violence on the peasants, and perhaps justified other forms of violence indirectly. He describes the peasants as primitives using stone sling-shots and using pictures that were taken right before the massacre, he provided proof of a dialogue between the journalists and peasants, the latter who attacked them anyway convinced they were enemies, even though the journalists were unarmed. The fear within the people was clearly present and as an event of miscommunication/misunderstanding, Llosa portrays it as a planned attack and killing. This document clearly shows that guerilla movements were not “peasant movements,” but young adolescents and adults born in the cities, among intellectuals and middle-class militants. The democracy of Latin American countries will never be strong as long as it is the privilege of one sector of society and an incomprehensible abstraction for all others.

In the second document, an interview with President Gonzalo who almost celebrates violence and a war of annihilation (violence as cleansing, as ritual where the nation is reborn in the bloodbath). He believed that only by destroying, demolishing the old order, could a new social order be brought into being. Gonzalo together with Llosa share a superficial view of peasant and indigenous cultures, deeming them as inferior and almost deserving of dying. They had a strong vision where rural cultures desperately had to be re-made as they were useless and dangerous in their present form.
How does this view towards peasant communities and indigenous cultures differ from Fujimori’s words and actions during his presidency?

In the third document, Fujimori’s rationale for dismantling the Peruvian state, he claims he was paving the way for the establishment of a democratic state (his end goal) as it would effectively guarantee the equal participation for all citizens, not just the elite. For so many years, corruption and politcal infiltration have permeated throughout the government to such an extent that justice is treated as a commodity. Fujimori discusses how regionalism is no longer a solution, but a problem, since it has created regional “microcentralisms” and a new source of national frustration that has stemmed into terrorism. His urgency for national reconstruction is not clarified by annihilation, until years later he is accused for killing citizens while trying to cleanse populations. The justice Fujimori was fighting for as shown in document 9.3 is now being played on him.