Conflict In Peru Research Articles

Does government response to natural disasters explain violence? The case of the Sendero Luminoso and conflict in Peru

AbstractObjectiveWe consider how the Peruvian government's responses to natural disaster events shaped political violence patterns from 1989 to 2020.MethodsWe gather data on government disaster response and compare the effect of positive disaster responses, such as reconstruction and regulation of domestic/international aid, and negative disaster responses, such as neglect or placing restrictions on movement near the affected areas, on violent conflict. To address the endogeneity between armed conflict and disaster responses, we estimate a structural equation model where we allow armed conflicts and disaster responses to be fully endogenous.ResultsUsing a structural equation model at the province‐year level, we show that negative disaster responses increase the risks for political violence, while positive disaster responses do not affect the risks for armed conflict. Armed conflict in turn makes negative policy responses to disasters more likely but has no effect on positive disaster responses.ConclusionsThe results suggest that poor government response to natural disasters can foster grievances and aid rebel recruitment, increasing the risks for armed conflicts.

Social exclusion, corruption, recall of authorities, inequality and fiscal centralization: inducers of social conflict in Peru (2016-2023).

The objective of the article was to investigate the possible inducing factors that contributed to determine the frequency of social conflicts at the subnational level in Peru between 2016 and 2021, including income inequality, social exclusion, fiscal centralism, corruption and revocation of authorities, for which four regression models were built. Disaggregated official data from the 24 departments and the provinces of Lima and Callao were analyzed. Economic inequality was associated with the Gini coefficient. To establish the association between social conflict and the inducers, it was estimated using Spearman's Rho correlation coefficient. Statistical calculation was also employed to appreciate the collinearity between the inducers. The results showed that the revocation of subnational authorities determines 42.5% of social conflict. On the other hand, corruption and fiscal centralism determine 28.5% of the perception of suffering social exclusion. Inequality and social conflict determined 21.8% of the relevance of the execution and quality of public spending by the national government in the regions. Sixty percent of social conflicts in Peru are of an environmental nature. The population that has declared the greatest discrimination corresponds to Puno (28%). 55.6% of those surveyed consider corruption to be one of the country's main problems. Corruption and social exclusion have a negative impact on the effectiveness of economic results and promote social conflicts. Inefficient use of fiscal resources translates into low quality of services and diminished credibility of the national and subnational governments. This situation highlights the need to design public policies that reduce conflicts and promote adequate governance.

Participación y relación con el Estado de los familiares de personas desaparecidas durante el conflicto armado en el Perú

Participación y relación con el Estado de los familiares de personas desaparecidas durante el conflicto armado en el Perú

The Rural State: Making Comunidades, Campesinos, and Conflict in Peru's Central Sierra by Javier Puente (review)

The Rural State: Making Comunidades, Campesinos, and Conflict in Peru's Central Sierra by Javier Puente (review)

Positive mental health and occupational burnout in the tourism sector in Peru

The COVID-19 crisis and the political conflicts in Peru affected tourism activity, generating psychosocial risks. The objective of the study was to establish the relationship between positive mental health and occupational burnout in employees of the tourism sector in Junín. The approach was quantitative, basic type, correlational level, non-experimental design, cross-sectional descriptive correlational. The sample consisted of 384 collaborators, and the Positive Mental Health Scale and the Occupational Burnout Scale were applied. The results showed an inverse (Kendall's Tau b = -.738) and significant (p-value < .00) correlation between both variables. It is concluded that the better mental health, the less occupational burnout.

State intervention in socio-environmental conflicts in Peru

State intervention in socio-environmental conflicts in Peru

Reflections on silence and ritualised hospitality

ABSTRACT This essay explores a hospitality rite as a contribution to transitional justice. It describes a tea ceremony (and a related video recording, focused on testimonies) in La Hoyada, a site used as a clandestine burial ground for people abducted, tortured, and killed during the internal armed conflict in Peru. A place of destruction acquires new significance as an unfamiliar ritual breaks the temporality of the site; mindful hospitality actions create silence, so the voices of people can be better heard. The video is available at https://vimeo.com/trimedia/lahoyada.

Becoming Community. Filmmakers Crafting Futures in an Andean Town

In the aftermaths of the internal armed conflict in Peru (1980-2000), a group of film enthusiasts from the Andean highland town of Ayacucho began using cameras to tell their stories of violence in the region. According to scholarly analyses, these films reflect a collective trauma resulting from prolonged experiences of political violence and abandonment from the state. However, little attention has been given to the filmmakers’ creative practice and its impact on their community. To address this gap, this article takes a multimodal approach to ethnographically explore the circumstances and conditions in which these films are made. It argues that cinema-making in the Andes is a social intervention that resists contemporary memory regimes by forming a community of storytellers who reimagine the past to create alternative futures.

Hillel David Soifer and Alberto Vergara (eds.), Politics after Violence: Legacies of the Shining Path Conflict in Peru (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2019), pp. viii + 383, $45.00 hb.

Hillel David Soifer and Alberto Vergara (eds.), Politics after Violence: Legacies of the Shining Path Conflict in Peru (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2019), pp. viii + 383, $45.00 hb. - Volume 54 Issue 4

Daniel Alarcón’s Lost City Radio and the work of translation

The subject of Alarcón’s English language novels is identified without difficulty in publicity materials as deeply Peruvian and yet the marketing also presents him as a ‘World’ writer. I explore how naming where Alarcón’s writing is ‘from’ and where it is going relates to the place of Latin American culture globally. Working with the idea that literature should have a ‘place’, I examine the politics of (self)translation in Alarcón with reference to the period of armed internal conflict in Peru (1980-2000) to argue that an understanding of (self)translation as a process can contribute to our idea of what World Literature is and what national literatures are from a specifically Latin American perspective. In an interplay between foreign and domestic that differs from the more familiar strategies of codeswitching in Latinx writing, Alarcón both enables and resists the translation of other parts of the world onto Peru/Latin America.

The Drug Trade and State Violence in Internal Conflicts: Evidence from Peru

ABSTRACTMost literature on drugs and conflict focuses on how the drug trade affects insurgent behavior, paying little attention to its effect on state behavior in conflict settings. This article begins to address this gap by analyzing the impact of drugs on state violence during the internal conflict in Peru (1980–2000), which, in the 1980s, was the world’s major producer of coca for the international drug trade. Drawing on literature on criminal violence and on drug policy, this study theorizes militarization as the main channel by which drug production affects how state forces treat the civilian population during internal conflicts, though it also explores a second channel associated with corruption. The analysis finds that, all else equal, drug-producing localities saw increased state violence in ways consistent with the militarization channel.

Inocencia: Shining Path and the Recruitment of Minors, Ayacucho in the 1980s

Abstract This article uses a unique source to examine the role of young people in the Peruvian Maoist group the Shining Path. The Archivo Regional de Ayacucho contains the records of trials from 1980 to 1985 against minors accused of belonging to and supporting the Shining Path. About one-third of the detainees were women, and the majority were children of Indigenous migrants to the city of Ayacucho. These trials provide a ground-level view of how the guerrillas recruited and employed them, how these young people attacked “enemies of the people,” ransacked stores, set off dynamite, and dodged the police. They help explain why these young men and women joined a violent movement that was being met with similar brutality. The trials also illustrate how the police, the military, and the courts reacted to this guerrilla movement. The analysis of the trials contributes to debates about young people and insurgency, providing insights into the motivations for militancy and changing subjectivities. They also provide snapshots of Ayacucho in the early years of the struggle: the attacks that first bewildered and then petrified; the initial naivete about the Shining Path; and the panic of families when their children were detained as well as the families’ desperate efforts to defend them. The final section of the article tracks the fate of some of those detained. These trials tell the harrowing story of youth and the internal armed conflict in Peru in the 1980s.

Extractivism of the poor: Natural resource commodification and its discontents

In a recent series of articles, ecological distribution conflicts scholars present descriptive statistical analyses backing Joan Martinez-Alier (2002)’s thesis on the environmentalism of the poor. In their collaborative Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas), their Peru sample reports a success rate of 24% in stopping projects. We contend that successful resistance represents only 2-5% of the total universe of Peru mining conflicts. Our claim is built on the study of 517 conflicts in Peru between 2005 and 2019, as registered by the Ombudsperson's Office. The evidence suggests, moreover, that contentious collective action commonly subordinates environmental justice causes to conventional economic concerns and resolutions, resulting in mining conflicts unfolding into compensation schemes and better deal settlements. Our straightforward interpretation is that while negative impacts are complex phenomena not homogeneously experienced among and within local communities, across space and over time, natural resource commodification brings with it the promise of local development opportunities. We draw a complementary extractivism of the poor hypothesis: there are diverse forms of (bitter) accommodation with or (structured) involvement in natural resource commodification of the poor and the indigenous.

Responsabilidad social empresarial minera y los conflictos socioambientales en el Perú

En lugares donde se desarrollan proyectos mineros se presenta un alto índice de conflictividad social, poniendo en riesgo la gobernabilidad y el orden público, lo que ha obligado al Estado y a las empresas mineras a implementar políticas que mejoren las relaciones Estado-empresa-comunidad. El objetivo de este artículo de revisión fue analizar la responsabilidad social empresarial del sector minero y su relación con los conflictos socioambientales en el Perú durante los últimos cinco años a través de la revisión de artículos científicos publicados en revistas indexadas o de documentos especializados. El resultado evidencia que las empresas implementaron acciones de responsabilidad social empresarial y/o corporativa con dinámicas diferentes, así como que hay diversos factores que desencadenan escenarios de conflictividad.

Percepciones intergrupales y atribuciones causales de conflictos socioambientales por gerentes mineros

The unprecedented mining boom of the 1990s in Latin America may or may have not contributed to socioeconomic development in the region, but it has certainly been accompanied by increased socio-environmental conflicts. Economists and sociologists have developed taxonomies for such conflicts and have attempted to explain them based on theories of resource mobilization, rational options, social cohesion, and identity construction applied to settings of generally extreme poverty. This study developed and tested psychological hypotheses based on personal values, attribution theory, reputational concern of the firm, intergroup threat theory, and UV radiation theory entailing mining managers’ reactions to socio-environmental conflicts in Peru and effects of latitude and altitude. Forty-three Corporate Social Responsibility managers of the 49 mining corporations registered in the Society of Mining, Petroleum, and Energy of Peru filled-in a 20-minute questionnaire in the presence of one of the investigators at company offices (December 2017). 100 % of respondents were male, most of them middle-aged. A 3-factor structure of political, economic, and ecological concerns sustained the attributions of cause whereas mine’s surrounding populations were perceived as moral, incompetent, and positive; in balance, these perceptions represent favorable conditions for conflict resolution. However, contrary to expectations, firm’s experience of socio-environmental conflicts was not associated with these outcomes. Rather, geography emerged as a moderator of the relationship between the level of socio-environmental conflict experienced and managers’ perceptions of the surrounding populations. These results suggest that mining managers more affected by socio-environmental conflict strengthened racial stereotypes in response to the external challenge.

Subnational governance strategies at the extractive frontier: collaboration and conflict in Peru

ABSTRACT The past decade has witnessed profound transformations in subnational territories engendered by a dramatic increase in natural resource extraction. Research to date has concentrated largely on why the transfer of extractive revenues often reinforces a ‘local resource curse’; however, little work has been done on subnational governments’ attempts to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs of mining expansion. Drawing on the literature on subnational governance in the context of resource extraction and neoliberal reforms, this study analyses the strategies – confrontational or collaborative – subnational political leaders pursue and the reasons why they pursue them. The findings are based on in-depth field research in two Peruvian subnational regions that are highly dependent on mineral extraction. More specifically, we examine the collaborative strategy pursued in one region and compare it with a confrontational strategy in another. Our analysis indicates that an interplay between institutional capacity and supporting coalitions affects whether subnational leaders undertake a collaborative or a confrontational approach. Based on our findings, we consider the likely effects of these strategies for regional development. By shifting the focus to the agency of subnational leaders, we make an essential contribution to debates about subnational governance in the realm of resource extraction.

Righting the Aftermath: On the Ethics of Recognition in the Postwar Novels of Alonso Cueto and Julien Kilanga Musinde

Abstract This article discusses the texts La Hora Azul by Alonso Cueto and Jardin Secret by Julien Kilanga Musinde within the context of postwar narratives emerging from histories of armed conflicts in Peru and Congo. The article focuses primarily on both authors' interweaving of formalistic aspects and complex narrative motifs in order to articulate an ethics of recognition that is indispensable in the reimagination of an inclusive nation in postwar contexts. Through an intertextual analysis of salient aspects such as the face-to-face encounter of self-other a la Levinas and the conceit of family–nation, the article argues that the preoccupation of the authors is less with the epic violence from which these narratives historically emerge than with the normalized forms of violence that have pitted sociopolitical relations in postcolonial nations. Thus, inclusive processes of reconciliation in the sense propounded by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Peru can only be possible through a self-reflexive examination of the sociopolitical habitus of the nation and the sedimented cultures/politics of exclusion that are responsible for the cracks within the imagination of the nation that make the resurgence of violent conflicts a persistent and immanent reality.

Violencia y Extractivismo en el Perú contemporáneo

Desde los años 90, los conflictos socioambientales en el Perú se han multiplicado de manera exponencial. Esto está en estrecha relación con el aumento en la extracción de materiales, sobre todo del sector minero. Los conflictos son acompañados de mucha violencia represiva por parte del Estado y de las empresas extractivas. La gran mayoría de las veces, los muertos quedan anónimos y las secuelas sobre los numerosos heridos son ignoradas. En este artículo, después de repasar el metabolismo social peruano en el periodo 1990-2018, nos vamos a centrar en los tipos de violencia y las causas de esta violencia que, según nuestra hipótesis, tiene su origen en la colonialidad.

Structural violence: Its many faces and challenges in research, policies, prevention, and intervention

In this themed issue of the Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, each contribution deals with a different face or aspect of violence. A first block, comprising three articles, deals with Gender-Based Violence (GBV): The first article draws a picture of the general situation of Gender-Based Violence (GBV), its numbers, causes, intersectionalities, and consequences, and reflects upon implications for action. The second article focuses on a particular face of GBV: Intimate partner violence IPV, and determines, based on the analysis of DHS data from Peru, the persistence and perpetuating effects of personal history of violence on the likelihood of IPV. The third article on GBV addresses a different aspect: distorted thoughts about women in a sample of men imprisoned for violence against women in Spain, including thoughts on the culture of honor, gender stereotypes, and jealousy and infidelity as justifiers of gender violence. A second block of articles deal with other forms of social violence: The fourth article reviews literature on the variables associated with adolescent antisocial behavior, such as: family and peers with antisocial backgrounds, antisocial peer attitudes, alcohol consumption, offensive behavior, education level, perception of safety in the community, and attention deficit hyperactive disorder, to find support for a bioecological model as a plausible framework for understanding antisocial behavior in juvenile offenders. The fifth article analyzes two experiences in educational settings, with children, young university students, and graduates, aimed at reconstructing and re-processing collective memories with regard to violence during the two decades of armed conflict in Peru. A sixth article experimentally proves the effects of a pedagogic module on political violence in Peru on knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions with regard to violence as a means to exert social control or social domination.

Analyse de l'utilisation asymétrique du pouvoir dans les conflits miniers au Pérou

This article deals with mining conflicts in Peru and mobilizes a Political Ecology approach, focusing on the importance of power asymmetries. After presenting the methodological and theoretical framework of our study, we present a legal and institutional overview of the relationships between the Peruvian state and mining issues. We insist on the historical and territorial dimensions which help to understand why the mining issue exacerbates power asymmetries, already important in Peru. The article then focuses on the Conga case study, to illustrate how the various elements identified at the national level are also taking concrete form on the ground, in this emblematic case. We then discuss the main lessons derived from this analytical framework and from the Conga case study, compared with other socio-environmental conflicts in Peru. The paper concludes with the arguments in favor of a post-extractivist solution and its feasibility conditions, given the persistence of a power asymmetry.