Feminist and Human Rights Struggles in Peru by Pascha Bueno-Hansen

Author:Pascha Bueno-Hansen [Bueno-Hansen, Pascha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Women's Studies, History, Latin America, South America, Violence in Society
ISBN: 9780252097539
Google: EhARCgAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 25404084
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2015-07-21T00:00:00+00:00

Incorporating the Emblematic Case of Manta and Vilca

The Manta and Vilca case came to the PTRC through an essay titled “Women and the Armed Forces in a Context of Political Violence: The Case of Manta and Vilca, Huancavelica” written by anthropologist Mercedes Crisóstomo in 2002.10 Crisostomo’s report came into contact with the PTRC and, given the international and national pressure to address sexual violence, provided an opportunity for the state to demonstrate its adherence to the latest developments in the human rights regime. The fact that the PTRC included cases of sexual violence builds upon an important shift in the work of commissions across the globe after 2000, following on the Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification and the War Tribunals of Rwanda and Ex-Yugoslavia.

The Juridical Unit prepared the Manta and Vilca legal case, and the Regional Histories Unit performed an in-depth investigation.11 Before the PTRC took up the legal case, Crisóstomo and a group of PTRC employees returned to Manta and Vilca to ask the victims for permission to investigate their cases and prepare them for prosecution. Most consented, and the PTRC went forward with those cases.12 The inclusion of this collective case offers the opportunity to write women in as subjects of the national historical narrative. At the public event Nunca Mas in 2006, Sofia Macher, PTRC commissioner, reflected on the PTRC’s decision-making process regarding the inclusion of the Manta and Vilca case. She asserts, “For us in the TRC there was a big discussion about whether it was legitimate or not to put all the attention on the one case of Manta and Vilca. Was it legitimate to present the case to the state prosecutor when the women were not adequately informed about the juridical process? At the end it was decided that if we had the information about the injustice and violation, it was our duty to report it.”

Macher’s version of the events somewhat contradicts Crisóstomo’s version, since Crisóstomo went back to the community with the PTRC staff and asked permission to represent the cases. This discrepancy might be explained by the lack of follow-up communication with the victims after Crisóstomo’s trip with the PTRC employees to request their initial consent. Legally, the victim’s permission is not necessary to forward sexual violence cases because the violence is considered a public action. As Peruvian feminist lawyer Diana Portal comments, while women do not have to present their cases personally, the process can take the victim’s agency away.13

What is made clear through these passages is that the PTRC’s treatment of the Manta and Vilca case contains a certain level of ambiguity with regard to positioning women as subjects with the capacity of making decisions regarding the use of their testimonies for legal ends in the service of national justice processes. The moments of self-doubt and questioning reflected in Macher’s comments are important opportunities to explore how exclusionary practices are reinforced for the “greater good” of transitional justice. These exclusionary practices have a long legacy and are not new to the people who live in the Andean highlands.

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