At the Fujimori Trial: General Pedro Villanueva--June 2, 2008

General Pedro Villanueva is a graduate of the School of the Americas where he claims to only have received courses in engineering and weaponry—not in counterinsurgency theory. Since then Villanueva has held various prestigious positions in the national military. This establishes the witness as a powerful figurehead with an extensive military background. On the stand he could be characterized as assuredly defensive and slightly goofy by his responses. Villanueva’s testimony was no where near as lively as Montesinos, who preceded him.

Villanueva described his relationship with Fujimori as administrative and thus, the former president could not give him an order of any kind. This declaration, along with others, was in direct conflict with previous testimony given by the General. When questioned by the Supreme Court Judge César San Martín Castro, Villanueva bluntly stated that he had no explanation for the discrepancies.

Given the scale of the threat presented by Sendero Luminoso to the nation, Villanueva was questioned about the formation of a special group, for example, Grupo Colina, whose goal would be to mitigate or eliminate the threat. His answer was simple and clear, ‘no and no.’ However, Villanueva did confess that in order to combat Sendero it was necessary to ‘win the population.’ In order to accomplish ‘winning the population,’ he explained that schools, roads and medical clinics were constructed.

The core of the testimony given by Villahermosa revolved around recognition of military manuals particular to subversion and low intensity war fare. Despite the General’s extensive career and knowledge of internal military structures, he denied having ever seen the majority of the manuals presented by Fujimori’s lawyer, Nagasaki. Villahermosa consistently complained to Supreme Court Judge about Nagasaki’s repetitive line of questioning and the constant need to identify (or not) an extensive collection of military manuals.

Much of this testimony could be categorized as a complete denial of involvement or knowledge of actions that could have led to the Barrios Altos or the Cantuta massacres.

-Michelle Doherty