Post-Conflict Economic Policy and Group Inequalities in Peru

Abstract

In the early eighties a violent armed conflict, precipitated by Shining Path, a Maoist insurgency group, arose and was dominant in Peru until the capture of the movement’s leader Abimael Guzmán in September 1992.¹ The Truth Commission reported that the conflict cost approximately 70,000–75 per cent of them indigenous peoples. Development policy in post-conflict Peru, however, is said to look forward without considering the past. In early March, the government, enjoying a buoyant macroeconomy (Latin America’s highest growth rate in 2008 at 9.8 per cent), rejected a US$2 million donation from Germany to install a memorial museum. The Truth Commission Final Report launched in 2003 has been criticized by dominant groups in the country for being ‘biased’. Political and business elites maintain that Peru should look forward rather than backward.² Post-conflict economic policy seems to be designed without properly considering the socioeconomic sources and consequences of the internal struggle. Indeed, policy paradigms have limited state action to the large-scale provision of infrastructure designed to give priority to the rural poor. The Truth Commission recommendations, moreover, are being fulfilled in slow motion; they include a set of reparation measures ranging from the issuing of national identity cards to the provision of material and symbolic compensation. Reparations policies are mainly promoted by human-rights groups, while politicians and technocrats show little initiative and responsiveness. In more general terms, policy decisions that impact on living conditions in post-conflict areas — from free trade agreements to coca policies — are taken without adequately addressing causes of inequalities or potential development threats.