State Under Siege: Development and Policy Making in Peru by Philip Mauceri

Author:Philip Mauceri [Mauceri, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429965722
Google: P__EDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-03-29T14:04:22+00:00

Bringing the Military Back In

The decrees dealing with national security antagonized many Peruvians across the political spectrum, who accused Fujimori of attempting to restrict basic democratic freedoms. By early February 1992, the Peruvian Congress had overturned most of these decrees. The decrees themselves, however, were only the most publicized aspect of the broader effort to increase state control over society by giving security forces greater authority and new resources. At least two other measures underscored the new emphasis on state coercion.

First, the Fujimori administration revamped and amplified the role of the intelligence services. Every branch of the armed forces, along with the police, had its own intelligence agency, and they often worked at crosspurposes. Fujimori and advisor Vladimiro Montesinos relied heavily upon a reorganized National Intelligence Service (SIN) as the primary intelligence organ. Although information on budget and personnel changes are unavailable, strong indications have surfaced of Fujimori’s propensity for using the SIN far more extensively to control political and civil society than any of his predecessors. A vast telephone espionage network aimed at opposition party members was created, along with efforts to influence media reporting of events, such as surreptiously providing television reporters with supposed documentation of the November 1992 anti-Fujimori conspiracy among retired army officers.15 Fujimori’s willingness to use the SIN to alter public perceptions and keep track of opponents, broke sharply with the largely military role assigned to intelligence during the 1980s.

A second aspect of the effort to expand state influence in society via security forces was an ongoing militarization of counterinsurgency strategy. This trend led to an expanded role for the military in policing activities and organizing social groups to engage in counterinsurgency activity. As we shall see in Chapter Eight, both approaches were used during the Belaúnde and García periods, but Fujimori made them the centerpiece of his effort to stop the expansion of Sendero Luminoso. In addition to ceding greater authority to the military, Fujimori’s counterinsurgency policy meant giving the armed forces a more visible role in maintaining public order. As was mentioned earlier, Fujimori used the military to occupy a number of universities, distribute food, conduct house-to-house searches for suspected Senderistas in shantytowns, and accompany SUNAT agents on their tax-collecting rounds. The greatest level of involvement, however, occurred when the military organized and armed "las rondas,” self-defense committees established in the countryside and in the shantytowns. While they have a long previous history in Peru, it is only under the Fujimori administration that they came to occupy a central role in counterinsurgency and were encouraged on a wide scale.16

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