Competing Visions of the 1986 Lima Prison Massacres: Memory and the Politics of War in Peru (original) (raw)

2014, A Contracorriente: Revista de Historia Social y Literatura en América Latina

In the bleak, grey winter of June 1986, the streets of Lima teamed with international dignitaries. Journalists, politicians and foreign heads of state filled the local hotels and restaurants, in eager anticipation of the Socialist International. All eyes rested on a freshly minted Alan García, one year into his first presidency. García was a rising star within the APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) party, one of the strongest and longest standing parties in Peru. Despite APRA's age, numerical strength and populist appeal, García's election in 1985 represented APRA's first presidential win. Promising a return to APRA's center-left roots, García saw the hosting of the Socialist International as a platform to announce his own brand of social democratic policies. This was a moment of great expectations for the young Peruvian president. 1 Then, with unprecedented ferocity, the bitter war with the Maoist Shining Path insurgent group, Sendero Luminoso, previously relegated to 1 I would like to thank Steve Stern, Jaymie Heilman, Michele Leiby, Julie Gibbings and Yesenia Pumarada Cruz, as well as this journal's anonymous readers, for their helpful comments on various incarnations of this article.