The Truth Ten Years On: The CVR in Peru

Abstract

In the hot morning sun on August 29, 2003, the central plaza of Huamanga (Ayacucho) began to fill with Peruvians from many parts of the country, awaiting a report that would tell them about what they had lived through. As midday approached, the heat was sweltering and there was hardly any room to move. Vendors sold ice cream and bottles of water to keep cool the fairly peaceful crowd. Then the commissioners filed onto a stage, symbolically shaped like the local art form of a retablo. The president of the truth commission, Dr. Salómon Lerner, began his speech evoking reciprocity, stating that the truth commissioners had listened to Peruvians for the last two years about the preceding twenty years of violence, and now it was time for them, the commissioners, to return to the audience what they had heard (Lerner Febres 2004, 163–4).

They gave us their voices.

We return them in a report that

tells the story of us all,

the history that we must not forget,

the history that we must not repeat,

and the other story, that of hope,

that which should begin today.

—Dr. Salomón Lerner Febres, concluding his presentation of the CVR’s Final Report in Ayacucho (Lerner Febres 2004, 177)