Peruvian schoolchildren learn that the Inca ruler Atahualpa was assassinated for gold and silver to satisfy Spanish greed. The new rush on Peru’s natural resources, however, is very recent. A protectionist military government in the late 1960s and 1970s, followed by a 15-year armed conflict with left-wing guerrilla groups and rampant hyper-inflation, made Peru a virtual pariah for foreign investors.

Alberto Fujimori burst on to this scene with a surprise election win in 1990. Fujimori’s anti-terrorist strategy, spearheaded by his personal advisor Vladimiro Montesinos, targeted all left-leaning organizations, regardless of whether they were affiliated with armed guerrilla groups. Montesinos founded an élite death squad to wipe out suspected terrorists and authorized massacres, disappearances and torture. By the time the state of emergency was lifted in the mid-1990s, terrorism had been virtually eradicated – but so had any form of popular protest, including the once-mighty trade-union movement.

Fujimori quickly became the darling of the global financial establishment, privatizing state businesses for bargain-basement prices, loosening tax regulations and turning a blind eye to environmental laws. Once again foreigners flocked to Peru in search of a modern ‘El Dorado’.

As the political élite in Lima grew richer, the smell of something rotten in government grew.

Photo: Stephanie Boyd

At first, Fujimori was able to distract the majority of the population by dressing up in traditional costumes, searching for giant anacondas in the jungle and ‘personally directing’ Rambo-style anti-terrorist operations. Few worried when Fujimori ousted his own government, rewrote the constitution to his liking and stacked the judiciary and military with Montesinos’ close friends. But the end of terrorism meant the Government had to loosen restrictions on civil society, including students, who began demonstrating. When Fujimori won a third consecutive term amid allegations of fraud and foul play in 2000, citizens took to the streets en masse. Peru’s civil society had been reborn.

Scant months later a series of corruption scandals linked to Montesinos (he is said to have swindled the country out of a billion dollars) became public and in November 2000 Fujimori fled to Japan, his parents’ birthplace, and was removed from the presidency in disgrace. Democratic elections were held, won by Alejandro Toledo, a former shoe-shine boy turned Stanford economist.

Now President Toledo is being closely watched by the same forces that swept him to power – Peru’s newly awakened civil society and emergent free press. His early rule has been marked by angry protests from indigenous and peasant communities demanding control over their natural resources and lands. Instead of calming these tensions, Toledo has embraced his predecessor’s neoliberal policies and made resource extraction the centrepiece of his economic plan.

Peru’s wounds run deep. The conflict between government forces and guerrillas of the Maoist-aligned Shining Path and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement left 30,000 Peruvians dead and another 600,000 displaced. The victims, mainly peasant farmers, indigenous peoples and urban poor, were ignored and forgotten until the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission last year. This is collecting testimonies of human-rights abuses committed between 1980 and 2000 and has an estimated 180 mass graves to exhume. Hundreds of victims have come forward to testify and it seems that, at the very least, Peru’s long years of silence and fear have been broken.

Stephanie Boyd