Photo Essay: A Final Adíos, the La Cantuta Massacre 16 Years Later

(Click here to see this blog entry accompanied by Jonathan Moller's photographs.)

Lima, Peru--On July 18, 1992 agents from a secret detachment of military intelligence officers, known as the Colina death squad, entered the La Cantuta University campus in a midnight raid and abducted 10 supposed "subversives"--9 university students and a university professor. The death squad agents loaded the captives into two 4x4 vehicles registered to the Ministry of Defense, took them to a field off of the highway on the outskirts of Lima, and murdered them execution style. In an effort to conceal the crime, the death squad members buried them in a shallow grave and covered their bodies with lime, a caustic substance famous among the Colina agents for "eating the flesh" of their victims.

Still nervous that the hasty execution and burial had left incriminating evidence of the massacre, the Colina agents twice returned to the scene of the crime: once to rebury their victims and a second time to disinter their remains, incinerate their bodies, and deposit their ashes in two pits dug from the desert moonscape of Lima's surrounding foothills.

This past Fiday, 16 years to the day of their disappearance, the remains of the La Cantuta victims finally returned home for burial from a forensic laboratory in France, where they have undergone extensive analysis as evidence in the prosecution of Alberto Fujimori, Peru's ex-president and former dictator who stands trial as a principal architect of Colina and an enthusiatsic enabler of its murderous heyday.

From July 15 to 24, an 11-member delegation from the Denver Justice & Peace Committee will participate in the Fujimori trial as international observers and attend the funeral services for the La Cantuta victims at the invitation of their family members, who have fought tirelessly and heroically to bring their loved ones' perpetrators to justice for the horrific crimes committed against them.

Under international law, widespread and systematic human rights violation, such as those committed by the Fujimori regime, constitute crimes against all of humanity, not just a single individal, community, or even nation. In offering our solidarity and accompaniment to the La Cantuta family members, we aspire to give purposeful meaning to this important legal principle and send a clear message to the Peruvian government--indeed to all governments, including our own--that the practice of extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, and torture will never again be tolerated or excused as an isolated incidents against anonymous, faceless victims.

When crimes against humanity occur, they imperil the rights and security of everyone. Their impact is universal. In adding our voices to the clamor for justice in Peru, we hope to demonstrate that the condemnation of mass violence is equally widespread.

--Photos by Jonathan Moller, text by Hayden Gore

Click here to see this blog entry accompanied by Jonathan Moller's photographs.

(Photos taken at the 16th annual commemoration of the La Cantuta Massacre--Universidad Nacional de Educación Enrique Guzmán y Valle, "La Cantuta University". July 18, 1992.)