Jo-Marie Burt

After his failed self-coup on December 7, 2022, Peru's leftist president Pedro Castillo was arrested and jailed. The same day, his vice-president, Dina Boluarte, was sworn in as president by the right-wing controlled Congress. Her government was rapidly met with large-scale protests calling on her to resign and the convening of early general elections. Boluarte and her conservative allies have dealt with protests with extreme repression, resulting in a human rights crisis that is reviving fears of Peru's civil conflict between 1980 and 2000, in which 69,000 were killed. Boluarte and her key allies —the right-wing Congress and the armed forces— have seemingly weathered the storm and consolidated their rule. But the government’s brutal response to protests has fueled indignation and eroded the little legitimacy Boluarte had. In this context, the space for compromise and dialogue as a way out of the crisis has shrunk dramatically, increasing the risk of an intractable conflict and one whose principal victim may be democracy itself.

Despite persisting impunity, over the past several years Guatemala has made important strides in prosecuting war crimes committed during the internal armed conflict (1960–1996). This article provides an ethnographic account of the 2018 Molina Theissen trial, which resulted in the conviction of four senior military officials for crimes against humanity, aggravated sexual violence, and forced disappearance. An ethnographic study of this critical human rights trial can help us understand how a country with a relatively weak judicial system and well-organized spoilers has managed to hold the intellectual authors of wartime atrocities responsible for their acts. It also contributes to a richer understanding of the construction, meaning, and impact of human rights prosecutions for victims and the broader society, and what role they play in broader public debates over the historical memory of conflictual pasts.

As transitional justice has become both a global idea and a global practice, there is an increasing need to better understand not only the design and implementation of transitional justice mechanisms, but their impact and significance as well. Any such effort requires an examination of the specific mechanisms of transitional justice, as well as the broader political context that gives shape to these mechanisms and their implementation. This monograph seeks to respond to this need by analyzing the experience of transitional justice in three countries that have been relatively understudied: Peru, Guatemala and El Salvador. The study draws upon research and workshops conducted over the course of eighteen months in each of these three countries with transitional justice practitioners, government authorities, and victims associations, to better understand the transitional justice processes in each country and from a comparative perspective. The project workshops were organized in close collaboration with in-country partner organizations: the Institute for Legal Defense (IDL) in Peru; the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH) in Guatemala; and the Foundation for Applied Legal Studies (FESPAD) in El Salvador.

These three countries were selected for a number of reasons. First, the transitional justice literature on Latin America has focused primarily on the experience of repressive military rule in the Southern Cone of the region (Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay). While Peru, Guatemala and El Salvador all experienced authoritarian and military rule, they also experienced prolonged internal armed conflicts. The dynamics of post- conflict countries pose distinct challenges for transitional justice efforts.

Second, unlike the Southern Cone, where victims were in large part middle and working-class political activists, the vast majority of victims in Peru, Guatemala and El Salvador come from historically marginalized sectors of society: poor, rural farmers. In the case of Peru and Guatemala, the majority of victims are also indigenous: 75% in the case of Peru, 80% in the case of Guatemala. The history of racism and socio-economic exclusion in these countries has meant that victims have faced greater hurdles in having their demands for truth and justice heard, which inevitably impacts the outcome of transitional justice processes.

Finally, there have been significant changes over time in the transitional justice processes in each of these three countries that merit closer scrutiny. For example, in the cases of Peru and Guatemala, there have been important efforts to move away from situations of near-total impunity to greater accountability for crimes of the past. While truth commissions challenged official narratives of denial, many sectors of society, including some government officials, continue to deny that such abuses were committed. In the face of ongoing campaigns of denial, there have been significant efforts in each country to develop local memory sites and spaces of commemoration, to develop coalitions to strengthen the voices of victims, and to implement national programs to search for persons who were forcibly disappeared.

This report seeks to identify the factors that have allowed for successful transitional justice processes as well as those that have hindered or undermined these processes in each of the three countries; to highlight innovative practices; and to discern key lessons from the transitional justice processes of these three countries that might be useful for other countries transitioning from a period of conflict and authoritarian rule.

Guatemala is breaking new ground with a series of high-impact war crimes prosecutions. The 2016 Sepur Zarco trial was one such landmark case: it was the first time that Guatemala prosecuted wartime sexual violence, and the first time that a domestic court prosecuted sexual slavery as a crime against humanity. This case also set important precedents in legal and evidentiary practice. Based on my direct observation of the Sepur Zarco case, this paper examines the legal practices that placed the women-survivors, not the defendants, at the forefront of the proceedings, and which proved that the state of Guatemala systematically used sexual violence as a weapon of war against women and as a strategy to control the civilian population. It also examines the evidentiary practices in this case, which allowed not only for a conviction more than 30 years after the crimes, but for a broader understanding of the historical context, including land conflict, that led to the atrocities in Sepur Zarco. By piercing the veil of impunity surrounding wartime atrocities and making visible the faces of the victims-indigenous men and women who have historically been relegated to the margins of Guatemalan society-the Sepur Zarco trial is challenging entrenched narratives of denial that have sustained the power of military officials whose influence continues to shape present-day politics in the Central American nation.

Jo-Marie Burt, From heaven to hell in ten days: the genocide trial in Guatemala, Journal Of Genocide Research Vol. 18 , Iss. 2-3 (2016).
Abstract:
Latin America leads the world in efforts to prosecute perpetrators of gross violations of human rights in domestic courts. Domestic justice offers a number of advantages to international and hybrid tribunals: proceedings take place in close proximity to the site of the atrocities, facilitating victim participation; they are directed by domestic prosecutors and judges, thus contributing to local buy-in; and they can strengthen rule of law and legitimize fragile transitional democracies. The case of Guatemala appears to contradict such arguments, however, given the overturning of the landmark conviction of former dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity and the ongoing impasse of the proceedings. Drawing on the author’s work as an international observer to the genocide trial, interviews with those directly involved in the case, and comparative research on human rights trials in Latin America, this article suggests an alternative reading. By situating the genocide trial in relation to the broader transitional justice process in Guatemala and in the region more broadly, it argues that current setbacks should be viewed as a backlash to initial transitional justice success that is neither unexpected nor fatal to the accountability process. Second, the article argues that the genocide case is illustrative of a victim-centred approach to human rights prosecutions that hold important lessons for transitional justice theory and practice, and examines the way in which victims of sexual violence were incorporated into prosecutorial strategies and helped to prove that a genocide had taken place in Guatemala. Finally, the article argues that despite the undoing of the genocide verdict, the very fact that the trial took place is historically and politically significant, both for survivors and for the construction of collective memory in Guatemala and Latin America as a whole.

El caso guatemalteco demuestra que, a pesar de un contexto difícil e incluso hostil, se ha avanzado con el proceso de justicia transicional. El compromiso de las víctimas, de las organizaciones de derechos humanos y de los operadores de justicia, ha sido el eje de este proceso. El hecho de que aún hoy confrontan nuevos intentos de imponer amnistía y cerrar estos procesos, habla de la im- portancia alcanzada hasta el momento, y de la necesidad de continuar acompa- ñando a la sociedad civil guatemalteca y a la institucionalidad democrática en el camino hacia la verdad, la justicia y la memoria.

On 7 April 2009, Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru from 1990 to 2000, was found guilty of grave human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years in prison – the maximum penalty allowed by Peruvian law. The prosecution and conviction of Fujimori mark a watershed in efforts to achieve accountability after atrocity in Peru and across the globe. This article explores the factors that made the Fujimori trial possible. It briefly examines the global shift in norms favoring accountability for human rights violations that facilitated the extradition and prosecution of Fujimori, the interactions between these global norm shifts and local efforts to achieve accountability for grave human rights violations, and the specific domestic factors in Peru favoring prosecution. The article analyzes the Fujimori trial in terms of both process and outcome, and highlights its implications for politics in Peru and beyond, as well as for the broader field of transitional justice.

This paper examines the efforts to hold perpetrators of grave human rights violations accountable in Peru. It finds that despite important advances in criminal prosecutions, including the historic 2009 verdict against former president Alberto Fujimori, the justice process has encountered serious obstacles, from technical capacity to human resources issues, to serious backlash by military and other conservative forces.

Scholarship on the decade-long rule of Alberto Fujimori emphasizes the surprising popularity and support for Fujimori's rule. This essay, which analyzes the politics of fear in Fujimori's Peru, suggests that this presents a partial view of the nature of Fujimori's authority. Drawing on a Gramscian conceptualization of power, it explains how coercion achieved a consensual façade by manipulating fear and creating a semblance of order in a context of extreme individual and collective insecurity. It traces the roots of this insecurity in the economic crisis and political violence of the 1980s and 1990s, and explains how the Fujimori regime manipulated fear and insecurity to buttress its authoritarian rule. This essay also complements existing studies on Peruvian civil society, which point to economic factors, such as the economic crisis of the 1980s and neoliberal reforms, to explain civil society weakness. This paper explores the political factors that contributed to this process, particularly the deployment of state power to penetrate, control and intimidate civil society.

/// La literatura acerca de la década de gobierno de Alberto Fujimori enfatiza la sorpresiva popularidad y amplio apoyo a su orden. Este ensayo, que analiza la política del miedo durante su régimen, sugiere que esta observación presenta una visión parcial de la naturaleza de la autoridad de Fujimori. En base a conceptualizaciones Gramscianas de poder, explica como la coerción adquirió un aspecto consensual a partir de la manipulación del miedo y la creación de un orden ficticio en un contexto de extrema inseguridad individual y colectiva. El ensayo halla las raíces de esta inseguridad en la crisis económica y violencia política de los ochenta y noventa, y explica como el gobierno de Fujimori manipuló el miedo y la inseguridad para fomentar su orden autoritario. Asimismo, este ensayo complementa los estudios disponibles sobre la sociedad civil peruana, los cuales enfatizan factores económicos, como la crisis económica de los ochenta y las reformas neoliberales, en la explicación del debilitamiento de la sociedad civil. Aquí en cambio se exploran los factores políticos que contribuyeron a este proceso, particularmente el uso del poder estatal en la penetración, control e intimidación de la sociedad civil.

This article is a transcript of a workshop conducted at Berkeley Law in March 2017 bringing together transitional justice scholars and practitioners to discuss the role of power dynamics in the production of knowledge about transitional justice processes. My contribution (pp. 61-64) discusses the contributions of political science to the field of transitional justice, including the contributions of both large-N research as well as grounded, ethnographic research, with an emphasis on the importance of expanding of the latter, and the role of the scholar-activist in transitional justice research and advocacy.

Este artículo explora los mecanismos utilizados por el régimen de Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) para construir su hegemonía. Si bien ganó apoyo popular luego de controlar la crisis económica y por la derrota del terrorismo, también utilizo la política del terror para minar la sociedad civil, ya fragmentada, para controlar a la oposición, y para obstruir nuevas formas de resistencia a su régimen y sus prácticas políticas. Utilizó el miedo latente en la sociedad peruana luego de años de violencia para mantener el poder y construir un sistema de control total para perpetuarse en el poder y mantener un sistema de corrupción generalizada. Analiza las graves consecuencias que tuvo la manipulación del miedo para la democracia peruana, los derechos humanos, y la «guerra contra la subversión»

This paper analyzes the historic 2013 trial against former dictator General (r) Jose Efrain Rios Montt. Rios Montt was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, but a controversial decision by the Constitutional Court annulled part of the proceedings, thereby vacating the verdict. The author was a trial observer at the Rios Montt proceedings, and drawing on her ethnographic research and interviews with relevant parties to the trial, argues that despite the verdict's undoing, the case remains significant historically and politically for Guatemala, and has lasting lessons for theoreticians and practitioners of transitional justice.

En este artículo analizamos el proceso legal para el caso de la masacre de Accomarca, en la cual 69 personas, entre ellos 26 niños, perdieron la vida a manos del Ejército peruano en el contexto de la guerra contrasubversiva, en agosto de 1985. Miramos en particular la confesión del principal autor material, el ex capitán del Ejército Telmo Hurtado, en la cual reconoce no sólo su propia responsabilidad, sino la de sus superiores, y como eso choca con los testimonios de los demás militares (y sus co-imputados en el proceso) y de la institución militar mas ampliamente hablando, que hasta hoy sigue negando su responsabilidad en la comisión de graves violaciones a los derechos humanos durante el conflicto armado interno.

This report published by the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) reports on the day-to-day unfolding of the genocide trial against former dictator of Guatemala José Efraín Ríos Montt; analyzes the guilty verdict and 80-year sentence against Ríos Montt; and the powers behind the undoing of the verdict by the Constitutional Court. The report was co-written by Jo-Marie Burt and Manuel Ollé Sese, who served as trial observers for the FIDH, and FIDH officer Claire Colardelle.

Link to article: http://www.thenation.com/blog/192825/latin-americas-lesson-us-prosecute-torturers#

The revelations unveiled in the summary of the U.S. Senate report on torture obligate the United States to prosecute those who sanctioned its use. Latin America’s efforts to bring accountability for grave violations of human rights during past dictatorships can help show us how.

The political process model views politics as an ongoing arena of contestation, accommodation, and negotiation. The state and elite politics are analyzed in relationship to the societies they seek to govern and dominate, while the way in which societies shape, limit and resist state policies and practices are also examined. This paper analysis state-society relations in urban Peru in an effort to better understand the nature of contestation over the forms and scope of state organization and control, and the exercise and limits of citizenship. The study examines the evolution of urban politics in Peru since 1950, with an in-depth examination of state-society relations in the urban community of Villa El Salvador.

They have not managed
to create a new democratic social order, but
the residents of Villa El Salvador in Lima did transform
a squatter settlement in a vast and inhospitable piece of desert into a liveable community of nearly 300,000 inhabitants.

Este libro analiza el surgimiento y la expansión de la violencia política en el Perú durante las décadas de los ochenta y noventa del siglo pasado. Trata de comprender cómo la violencia política moldea y reordena las relaciones Estado-sociedad, el impacto de esta en la sociedad civil, y cómo las cambiantes dinámicas afectan la gobernabilidad democrática. En el curso de este análisis, Jo-Marie Burt examina dos de los fenómenos más complejos y enigmáticos surgidos en Latinoamérica en décadas recientes: el extremadamente violento movimiento subversivo Sendero Luminoso y el régimen de Alberto Fujimori, el outsider político convertido en dictador, quien permanecería más de diez años en el poder (1990-2000).
El 12 de septiembre de 1992, el Estado peruano derrotó a Sendero Luminoso al arrestar al principal líder e ideólogo del grupo, Abimael Guzmán; no obstante, en vez de aprovechar esta victoria para reestablecer la gobernabilidad democrática, el régimen de Fujimori buscó mantener a la sociedad civil atemorizada y desorganizada, de modo que esta no pudiera desafiar la reconfiguración autoritaria del poder y los privilegios del régimen.

El 7 de abril del 2009, la Sala Penal Especial de la Corte Suprema del Perú encontró al ex presidente Alberto Fujimori culpable de autoría mediata en cuatro casos de graves violaciones de los derechos humanos cometidas durante su gobierno (1990-2000) y lo condenó a 25 años de prisión. En enero del 2010 la Corte Suprema ratificó la sentencia.
El juicio y la condena a Fujimori marcan un hito de suma importancia en cuanto a la lucha contra la impunidad y la consolidación del Estado de Derecho y la convivencia democrática en el Perú y en toda América Latina.
Cuando se cumplió un año del fallo, consideramos de suma importancia revalorar el proceso judicial y la sentencia a Fujimori, así como el proceso de judicialización para casos de violaciones de los derechos cometidas en el marco del conflicto armado interno.

Con esta finalidad, George Mason University, el Instituto de Defensa Legal (IDL) y la Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (APRODEH) organizaron una conferencia internacional en Lima, los días 19 y 20 de mayo del 2010, en la que distinguidos expertos nacionales e internacionales se analizaron el juicio y el fallo en el caso del ex presidente del Peru Alberto Fujimori.

As transitional justice has become both a global idea and a global practice, there is an increasing need to better understand not only the design and implementation of transitional justice mechanisms, but their impact and significance as well. Any such effort requires an examination of the specific mechanisms of transitional justice, as well as the broader political context that gives shape to these mechanisms and their implementation.

This book seeks to identify the factors that have allowed for successful transitional justice processes as well as those that have hindered or undermined these processes in Peru, Guatemala and El Salvador; to highlight innovative practices; and to discern key lessons from the transitional justice processes of these three countries that might be useful for other countries transitioning from a period of conflict and authoritarian rule.

Link a la tercera edición del libro (Planeta, 2023): https://www.planetadelibros.com/libro-violencia-y-autoritarismo-en-el-peru/344076 .

Absract: Sendero Luminoso fue una de las insurgencias más brutales jamás visto  en las Américas. Violencia política y el autoritarismo en el Perú: Bajo la sombra de Sendero y la dictadura de Fujimori explora los efectos agobiantes que tuvo sobre la sociedad civil peruana la violencia desplegado por Sendero Luminoso y por la guerra contrainsurgente llevada acabo por el Estado. En base a un trabajo de investigación etnográfico en las barriadas de Lima, la autora aporta conocimientos nuevos sobre el intento de Sendero Luminoso a expandir su revolución a la ciudad capital, así como sobre las respuestas de la población urbana frente a la insurgencia. El libro examina como la amenaza insurgente dio pie a un régimen despótico dirigido por Alberto Fujimori y su principal asesor, Vladimiro Montesinos, hasta que, después de una década, colapsó bajo revelaciones de corrupción y la movilización de la sociedad civil que cada vez más cuestionaba el autoritarismo de Fujimori. El libro ayuda entender cómo sociedades terminan sacrificando la libertad y democracia en el nombre de la lucha contra el terrorismo, pero también cómo los élites gobernantes manipulan los miedos de la sociedad para perpetuar su poder y sus privilegios.

Esta segunda edición del libro contiene un capítulo nuevo sobre el juicio al ex presidente Alberto Fujimori, quien, después de varios años como prófugo, fue extraditado en 2007 y enjuiciado por graves violaciones a los derechos humanos así como otros casos de corrupción y abuso de poder. Fue condenado en abril de 2009 y sentenciado a 25 años de prisión.

The Shining Path was one of the most brutal insurgencies ever seen in the Western Hemisphere. Political Violence and the Authoritarian State in Peru explores the devastating effects of insurgent violence and the state's brutal counterinsurgency methods on Peruvian civil society. Drawing on ethnographic research in Lima's vast shantytowns, the author provides original insights into Shining Path's efforts to spread its revolution to the capital city and the evolving responses of the urban poor to the insurgency. The book examines how the growing insurgent threat gave rise to a despotic regime led by Alberto Fujimori and his secret advisor, Vladimiro Montesinos, until it collapsed under the weight of its own corruption and the rebirth of civil society. Burt's analysis provides compelling insights into the way societies sacrifice freedom and democracy in the name of fighting terrorism, but also the way ruling elites manipulate societal fears to perpetuate their power and privilege.

Palgrave, 2007.
http://www.amazon.com/Political-Violence-Authoritarian-State-Peru/dp/0230621171/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425694814&sr=8-1&keywords=jo-marie+burt+political+violence

Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman was captured on Sep. 12, 1992, along with second-in-command Elena Iparraguirre and two other high-ranking members of Peru's outlawed, Maoist organization. A year after his capture, Guzaman began calling for peace talks with the government, a development which the Shining Path viewed with suspicion. The group continues to mount military attacks, although at a lower level than that prior to Guzman's capture. Although the government has been successful in improving the country's economy, improvements in the countryside have been minimal, contributing to Peru's chronic insurgency problem. Full Text: While the Peruvian Armed Forces now has the strategic and tactical initiative, Shining Path-under Comrade Feliciano-has the capacity to dig in at the local level and carry out armed actions of varying intensities.

The failure of Peruvian society to fully confront the horrors of the internal armed conflict (1980-2000) is on full display as politicians and media pundits appeal to the "terrorist" label to discredit any opposition figure they deem dangerous to the permanence of the neoliberal model put in place under the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). Today Peruvians refer to this as "terroqueo," from the Peruvian slang term for terrorist, "terruco."

The trial and conviction of former president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, for grave violations of human rights is milestone in the struggle against impunity in Peru. It marked the first time that a democratically elected head of state in Latin America has been found guilty of crimes against humanity. It is also the first time that a former president has been extradited to his home country to face human rights charges. Most of the credit for this goes to Peru’s vibrant human rights community, which fought tirelessly to confront impunity, end the Fujimori dictatorship, and establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.