Truth, Race and Reconciliation; Ayacucho and the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Out of the roughly 13 departments mentioned in the final report of Peru's Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (Truth and Reconciliation Commission), the department of Ayacucho sustained the most damage and the largest internal displacement. It also suffered the largest amount of disappearances and deaths (from both individual assassinations and mass slaughters), and the highest number of other human rights violations such as torture and wrongful incarceration without due process. This latest experience of violence in this department was rife with the social discrimination that had been prevalent in this department for centuries. This discrimination was first exploited by the insurgents to initiate their "people's revolution", then later expressed with terrible consequences by the state security forces entrusted to put an end to it. It was also exercised by the state's political institutions via prolonged impunity towards Ayacucho's demands for justice. The truth commission created in the aftermath of the conflict grounded its works in a moral obligation to address the discrimination and racism of the country. It also filtered its proposals for reparation and the means to reconcile through this obligation. This thesis explores Ayacucho's experience of the Peruvian truth commission and surveys the role of Perú's social structures throughout the process and what the effects and potential scenarios there might be for the resulting struggle for reparation and reconciliation.