I am taking advantage of being AP’s featured fellow to repost the english version of the web page my friends at EPAF have created for tomorrow’s mass action in Lima.  For those of us that are not in Lima, we can show we care about the plight of the families of the disappeared in Perú (and all over the world for that matter) by sending in a picture holding an umbrella. Here is more information:

Open Up Your Umbrella!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Open Up Your Umbrella! - For the Families of the Disappeared in Peru

In Peru, thousands of families lost their loved ones as a result of forced disappearances during the 20-year internal armed conflict from 1980 to 2000. Today, both the state and society have a moral obligation to help the families search for the disappeared so that they can recover their remains and bury them with dignity.

On August 28th, Peruvians will gather together at 6:30 pm GMT and open umbrellas in the Plaza San Martín in Lima to draw attention to the unresolved issue of the disappeared. We invite you to take part, wherever you might be, by taking a picture of yourself with your umbrella and uploading it to the Open Up Your Umbrella! group on Flickr. (If you don’t have a Flickr account, you can always send your photo to openupyourumbrella@gmail.com, and we’ll upload it for you!)

Better yet, get a group of friends together with umbrellas and take a photo. Make it creative, artistic or just plain fun. The important thing is that you participate and pass the word on to others so that we can raise consciousness about this important issue and make the recovery of the disappeared in Peru a priority once and for all.

There are over 15,000 disappeared persons in Peru, and we hope to have a photo to represent each and everyone of them.

On August 28th at 6:30 pm GMT, open an umbrella, take a picture, and help the cause!

Meeting with ANFASEP

After a day of touring, Renzo and I made a stop at an NGO colloquially referred to as ANFASEP, translated as the National Association of Relatives of the Kidnapped, Arrested, and Disappeared in Peru.  ANFASEP houses a memory museum that I had wanted to see for a while now, so I was really thrilled to go there and not only see the museum, but also meet with the President and founder of the organization.   ANFASEP was founded in 1983 by a group of mother’s searching for their disappeared children-you may remember a picture of them I posted in the entry where I described my visit to the Yuyanapaq photo exhibit.  It is based in Ayacucho, the region most affected by the internal armed conflict in Perú.

Upon arriving at ANFASEP, we were given a tour of the museum, which consisted of both artistic representations of the conflict, as well as photos, and a display of clothing and other personal effects belonging to the victims of violence.  We were shown a graphic representation of the way in which suspected terrorists were tortured.

Exhibit in ANFASEP Museum

The next few pieces of art show representations of the war as it occurred both between the terrorists and the military, and the way in which civilians were caught up in the war between the two. Each box represents a different scene from the violence, the bottom level shows a time of peace.

Art in ANFASEP Museum

But the scenes in the upper part of the work show the horrific atrocities committed by Shining Path, including the rape.

Art in ANFASEP Museum

The following piece shows the atrocities committed by military, and seems to specifically reference the oven used to burn bodies of those prisoners detained at Los Cabitos military base.

Art in ANFASEP Museum

After the visit to the museum, we went downstairs to meet with the founding member, Angélica Mendoza (warmly referred to by EPAF staff as “Mama Angélica”) and the current President of the organization. While we waited for them to finish a meeting, I stared at a picture on the wall that was clearly from the earlier days of the group’s fight to find out what happened to their loved ones. I say this because today, their demand “Alive they were taken, Alive we want them back,” is no longer feasible.

An old sign

Senora Mendoza’s son was disappeared at the age of 19 and was taken to Las Cabitos.  In our meeting with them, we discovered that the women (and men) of ANFASEP are now hoping to convert a piece of the land where the mass grave is located into a sanctuary, or shrine, to the memory of the disappeared.  Although the picture didn’t come out that well, you may be able to get a sense of what they are advocating for.

Memory Sanctuary at Los Cabitos

Memory Sanctuary at Los Cabitos

Be it the Argentine Mother’s and Grandmother’s of the Plaza de Mayo, or the Israeli grandmothers who monitor checkpoints to make sure that Palestinians are not mistreated by Israeli soldiers, I am proud to see women worldwide are empowered and driven to action by their maternal instincts.  Yet not only mothers, but parents all over this globe should have a special connection to the cause of the search for the disappeared.  Last week, family members from Ayacucho joined EPAF in a special ceremony to receive the remains of their loved ones that had been discovered in the mass grave at Putis last year.  Cu4rto Poder, a news program, filmed a special report on the ceremony and also interviewed the director of EPAF, José Pablo Baraybar.  I want to quote what he said in his interview (and also post the interview in Spanish) because I think it really sums up the special appeal to parents.  He says:

“One question.  If someone had a son or daughter who goes out dancing one Friday night and by Sunday morning, has not returned, how would the parents feel at that moment? Now how do the parents of those children who disappeared over 25 years ago, and have still not returned, feel? Or are they different? Or is that we live in a country where the lives of some are worth more than the lives of others?”

As any frequent traveler knows, taking a taxi to reach your desired destination can be simultaneously terrifying and rewarding. Terrifying because of the danger one faces when getting into a vehicle with a stranger in a city with little to non-existent traffic laws, and rewarding because it is often a way to learn about what the average person is thinking about in a place where most of your interactions are generally not with the average citizen.

I’ve been fairly lucky so far with my taxis here in Lima. There was one gentleman-a large, mustachioed man hunched over the steering wheel-who proceeded to tell Zack and I of his days in the national police, before he became a taxi driver.  This was all well and good until he began to explain the exact torture methods he used to use to get purchasers of black-market objects to tell him where they bought them.  Needless to say, I left the car quite disturbed and stunned.

But last Friday night I had an unexpectedly fascinating taxi ride home.  After dropping off my friends, the driver and I began to talk-mostly about women’s volleyball in Perú.   I asked him where he was from, to which he replied “Amazonas.” “Where in Amazonas?”  He answered, “Bagua.”  As many of you know from my other blogs, Bagua is the site of a recent violent confrontation between residents from the Amazon region (mainly indigenous) and the national security forces.  The government, after suspending the laws that were being contested, has now sent its prime minister to negotiate with the representatives of the protest groups and of the indigenous groups.  So of course, my first question was in reference to whether he thought they might reach and agreement.  My driver responded, “Maybe, its possible.  But it doesn’t matter because things will never change.”  We then proceeded to talk about the situation and I told him a bit about EPAF and how they had at one point considered going to Bagua to analyze and investigate the remains of the dead.

An underlying sense of despondency permeated his statements, including those about the events in Bagua. “We may never know how many protestors were killed.”  However, the one glimmer of hope, in his perspective, is the same phenomenon that is causing huge inconveniences for the rest of the country.  “Everyone has to rise up at the same time, it’s the only way they will listen.”

This past weekend, the Office of the Ombudsmen released a report that disputed the notion that there are still missing persons in Bagua. While there are still reasons to doubt the veracity of numbers-some do not match up with the testimonies given by bystanders or other protestors-it seems unlikely that a government-appointed investigatory commission will discover anything new in the region.  Yet, I think that when living in the bubble that is Lima, it is important to be aware of the aforementioned sense of despondency that permeates a number of marginalized regions, groups, and mentalities around the country.  This is particularly key for understanding the origin of the national strikes that are taking place in Peru at this very moment.