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Crisis in Peru

Justice on hold for Quechua women

By Inter Pares

June 12^th, 2023

We followed Doña Filomena into her cuy coop, stamping our feet on a rubber tray to disinfect our shoes. The sweltering heat hit us as soon as we entered. The Ayacucho sun in south-central Peru beats down on the corrugated steel roof, creating a greenhouse effect in the coop.

Filomena explains the cuy—guinea pigs, in Spanish—need the warmth. She has been raising cuy for the past five years and exalts their many benefits: they provide a good source of protein, require little space, and are easy to feed and manage since they do not need to graze like other animals.

The ease of raising cuy is crucial for Filomena due to her declining physical health. “Because of the procedure,” she shares, “it hurts to bend over, my knees ache, my head aches. There are no children left to help me.”

At the age of 35, Filomena delivered her fourth child via caesarian birth. Immediately afterwards, without her knowledge or consent, the doctor performed a tubal ligation—preventing her from any future pregnancies.

The inability to bear more children weighs heavily on Filomena, especially since the untimely passing of one of her sons. “We are ashamed of going to the doctor, of sharing that we are victims of forced sterilization, because there is a stigma to not having many children,” confides Filomena, “I feel badly because I am not surrounded by children.”

What happened to Filomena is not unique. She is among an estimated 300,000 people in Peru—mostly rural Indigenous and campesina women—that were subjected to a policy of forced sterilization under dictator Alberto Fujimori’s regime. The policy was in place from 1995 to 2000 and was one of the tools used to repress Indigenous and poor populations during a decades long internal armed conflict. Ayacucho, where Filomena lives, was the epicenter of the civil war.

Women victim-survivors of forced sterilization began to form associations in the 2010s to seek mutual support and to formally denounce the forced sterilization policy and its impact across Peru. In Ayacucho, Filomena belongs to one such association, the Asociación de mujeres afectadas unidas de Huamanca “Sumaq Wayta,” or beautiful flower in Quechua. The association brings together eighty women in the region that suffer from different trauma and ailments due to complications from forced sterilizations procedures. Through the association, the women gather for moral support and participate in workshops to better understand their legal rights. Remarkably, with the support of the association, the women hired a lawyer to assemble their case, and in 2019 filed a formal legal claim with the Ministry of Justice. Their testimonies will be added to a national registry with the promise of state reparations.

Inter Pares’ long-term Peruvian counterpart, SISAY, supports women’s associations like Filomena’s in the region. Beyond their advocacy work and legal support, SISAY provides financial support to victim-survivors of forced sterilization while they await years-long legal processes. In 2015, they developed a small-scale guinea pig breeding project to help victim-survivors, like Filomena, garner a financial income. Initially, Filomena received seven cuy via SISAY’s project. Now, five years later, she has over twenty.

Filomena slowly moves around the coop, separating the females from the males. She shows us which cuy she will keep for the household, and which she will sell at the marketplace. The modest earnings from the cuy sales go toward her healthcare costs.

“Many of us are afraid we have cancer, but with this support, we are eating well, and it helps to pay for doctor’s appointments,” she explains. Filomena’s small cuy farm allows her to support herself as she seeks justice and awaits state-sponsored healthcare services.

However, recent events in Peru might have Filomena waiting even longer for justice.

In December 2022, a mere month following Inter Pares’ visit to Ayacucho, a political crisis erupted in the country after the removal and imprisonment of President Pedro Castillo. Dina Boluarte ascended to the presidency—a power grab that sparked country-wide protests. The protests were met with excessive police and military violence, leading to hundreds of arrests and injuries, and over sixty deaths.

The political crisis in Peru continues to worsen. Deep-seated divisions are returning to the fore and protestors are increasingly criminalized. Repression of the press and racial discrimination are reaching alarming levels. Boluarte’s government has deployed racist fearmongering tactics, including terruqueo—a discourse born during the internal conflict—to discredit protesters and gain public favour by labelling them as terrorists. In the past and now, this tactic is used to disproportionately target Indigenous populations outside of the capital city, Lima.

A report released in May 2023 by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights confirms human rights violations took place during the protests. In Ayacucho, accounts surfaced of ten extrajudicial killings—protestors shot point blank outside the airport—by armed forces.

Protestors are calling for new elections and participatory processes towards a new constitution. Despite historically low approval ratings, Boluarte is maintaining power through force. She announced new elections, but only to be held in 2026.

The recent shift in power poses new challenges for SISAY and other groups advocating for women’s rights and justice in Peru. Boluarte’s government is rapidly making changes that threaten advances for women’s rights, including renaming the Ministerio de la Mujer (Ministry of Women’s Affairs) to Ministerio de la familia (Ministry of Family Affairs), and declaring their intention to claw back abortion rights. In order to finance the Fiscalia de terrorismo (Office of Terrorism), the Peruvian attorney general has redirected funds from the Fiscalia de derechos humanos (Office of Human Rights). This change is particularly impactful for SISAY, as the Office of Human Rights is responsible for managing cases of forced sterilizations, like Filomena’s. Significantly fewer resources and staff will be available to compile testimonies—a process that has already faced serious delays due to the pandemic.

For Filomena, the current political regime presents roadblocks to reparations and is aggravating the trauma she experienced as a Quechua woman in the 1990s. The rise of state-sponsored violence exacerbates the struggle of victim-survivors for social and economic justice.

In Ayacucho, and across Peru, the return of state repression, heightened violence, and racial discrimination recalls the difficult years of dictatorship and armed conflict. SISAY and other advocacy groups are concerned about impunity for the perpetrators of violence. They stay vigilant and continue the work, despite the political setbacks and uncertainty for what the future may hold.

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