“…In order to achieve justice, that’s why I’m
here, where one can tell the whole truth.” This statement was made by Cirila
Pulido, a survivor of the Accomarca Massacre, during the U.S. civil trial of
Telmo Hurtado (2008). During the 1980s,
the Peruvian government attempted to eradicate a Maoist insurgency called
Shining Path using violent tactics of eradication and abduction. Unfortunately
many of the victims of the government and Shining Path’s war for power were
large sections of indigenous civilians. In one specific instance, a small village
called Accomarca was the scene for one of the largest instances of Peruvian
state-sponsored violence. Over 69 men, women, children and the elderly were
rounded up, beaten and placed into houses where soldiers under Hurtado’s
command fired upon them and eventually destroyed the houses with grenades. When
Hurtado fled to the U.S. to avoid prosecution for his crime in Peru, the Center
for Justice and Accountability and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement completed
an investigation that located and detained Hurtado and a few others accused of
being involved in the same massacre. My research involves researching trail
proceedings, researching news archives, interviewing those involved and
learning about how the civil court system in the U.S. can be used as an avenue
of justice for victims worldwide.
I became interested in this project when I first
began studying civil violence in Central and South America in some of my George
Mason classes, specifically those taught by my mentor Jo-Marie Burt. I believe
this kind of research to be exceptionally important as victims of state
sponsored violence may not be able to seek justice in their own countries,
especially if the government responsible is still in power. Extra-territorial
courts can help create an avenue for those victimized, and a court proceeding
can give legitimacy and voice to the horrors that might otherwise be ignored or
denied. In the long term I would like to
work for a non-profit organization, like the CJA, that works to provide justice
for underrepresented and marginalized people, so this type of research has been
incredible informative. On a weekly
basis, I do a lot of reading and comparing documents, since I work mostly with
primary sources it takes many of them to paint a complete picture of what has
happened and why. I also compare information, as most the research about the
facts of the massacre comes from exhumed bodies, first-hand accounts and truth
commission reports. This week I learned
that after the Peruvian military attempted to cover up the massacre by killing
the survivors, they established an outpost in Accomarca, where they began to
take the best grains and meat from the remaining villagers. Hopefully, these
kinds of trials, and the increasing scope of international accountability can
provide enough of a deterrent to prevent anything similar to the Accomarca
Massacre from happening again.
