Aletho News

Reseacher: Peruvian Government Has Political Debt with Forced Sterilization Victims

teleSUR | October 29, 2014

Eighteen years have passed and those who were forcefully sterilized in Peru have obtained no justice even though the issue was key for the electoral victory of current president Ollanta Humala.

On Wednesday, author and researcher Alejandra Ballon accused the current administration of president Ollanta Humala of using the case of forced sterilizations for political gain and failing to follow through with seeking justice for the victims.

Ballon is the author of the first book on the issue, released earlier this month with the support of the National Library of Peru. It is titled Memoirs of the Peruvian Case of Forced Sterilizations.

Crimes Against Humanity

Over 300,000 people, mostly indigenous women, were forcefully sterilized by the Fujimori regime during the 1990s. The program sought to reduce the number of children in poor rural indigenous families by deceiving and threatening them and even operating on them without them knowing. For those reasons the crimes are being described as genocide.

Sometimes, the signature of the victim’s relatives was used to go ahead with the process without consent. Sometimes the victims were operated on secretly after giving birth. The program was implemented nationally but the methods were not systematic. However, the government gave official quotas to each post for specific periods of time and medical personal were required to comply.

The results were brutal. There are several reports on the effects of such crimes including psychological and physical impairments of the victims and the effects on their relatives. “Women lost their physical strength and could no longer work as farmers, but also many were abandoned by their male partners, and forced to emigrate to the cities,” explained Ballon.

“It is not only the irreversibility of the operation and that women were made sterile against their will, but on top of that there are physical, mental, family, community, agricultural and cultural consequences,” asserts Ballon.

She described a case in Huancabamba where many women were dedicated to sewing using an ancestral, pre-Incan method called Cahihua, which uses the stomach. “It is one of the cultural legacies that we have in the country and we should take care of it,” argues Ballon. However, she explained that this sewing method uses a tool that places pressure on a person’s belly, and after being operated, the pain from the scar would not allow them to sew in that traditional manner. Ballon discovered this problem in 2012 but no systematic method has been implemented to be able to find all the other ways in which this criminal program has affected people’s lives.

The Case of Victoria Vigo

Victoria Vigo is one of the women who was forcefully sterilized. Right after a miscarriage in 1996, doctors secretly mutilated her reproductive organs to comply with the sterilization quota ordered by the regime.

She explains how she found out about her operation. “The doctor who was next to me and taking care of me told another doctor that what is happening is that my baby has passed away,” she explained, and the new doctor “turned around and told me ‘don’t worry you are young and you can have another baby.’” But the first doctor responded, ‘No, she has already been sterilized,’ and that is how I found out what they did to me,” says Victoria.

Victoria explains her feelings at the time. “When one loses a child, a longing to have another child stays… When you lose something you immediately want it. I wanted to have a child … but friends who are doctors talked with me and told me, no Victoria, it is irreversible,” she said.

Political Debt of President Humala

Ollanta Humala picked up the struggle for justice for these cases during his presidential bid. Many believe that such a move gave him the edge to win the election in the second round. He was running against Keiko Fujimori, daughter of Alberto Fujimori, the dictator in charge of the country when the sterilizations took place. During a presidential debate, Humala raised the issue and used it to attack Keiko. However, little has been done after his victory to investigate and obtain justice.

For those reasons, the victims are saying Humala only used them for political gain and he has no interest in their struggle or pain. Ballon has come out in their support. She argues that current president Ollanta Humala has a political debt with these women because he was partly able to win the election by promising in depth investigations into the matter.

Failures of Society

Ballon goes further than pointing out the failures of Humala. She calls these cases the “gravest violations committed against indigenous woman since the colonial times.”

“We are not understanding as a society what we can learn about ourselves through these women. They can tell us about how it was done so that we can learn who we are, what are we doing and to what point can we prevent a future possibility of repeating it.”

Ballon explains that the implementation of the program also shows chauvinism in society. Out of the 300,000 sterilized people, 22,000 were males. “There was gender discrimination in the program even though a man can procreate hundreds of kids and a woman has a limited number of children she can have,” points out Ballon. She concludes that “this is not a result of only the program but the social constructs of the country.”

In a similar way, racism must have been operating in society to permit such crimes. Ballon uses postcolonial theory to explain why indigenous populations, Quechua speaking, were the main target. She explains how hierarchies and racism imposed during colonial times have made committing and justifying such crimes against indigenous populations possible.

The National Library of Peru is investing in a collection of books, including Ballon’s, called La Palabra del Mudo (The Mute Person’s Word) that are using postcolonial theory to record and give voice to those who have not been included in the official histories. The ultimate goals are to strengthen democracy, recover memories, and construct new and inclusive narratives about Peru.

October 30, 2014 - Posted by aletho | Book Review, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Crimes against humanity, Genocide, Human rights, Latin America, Peru