The following article is a submission to the September 2011 J-Festa hosted by Japingu with the theme “Events in Japan”.
On December 17, 1996 the official residence of the Japanese ambassador, Morihisha Aoki, in Lima, Peru was raided by fourteen members of the Marxist revolutionary group Tùpac Amaru revolutionary Movement (MRTA). In what began as a festive occasion celebrating the 63rd birthday of Emperor Akihito soon turned into terror as hundreds of high-level diplomats, government and military officials and business executives were taken hostage (including 24 Japanese citizens). During the months that followed, the rebels released all female hostages and all but 72 of the men.
The crisis ended after 126 days in dramatic fashion as Peruvian Armed Forces commandos stormed the complex through underground tunnels, exploded holes in walls and direct assault through the main door, during which one hostage, two commandos, and all the MRTA militants died.
Ironically it may have been due to the diligence of the Japanese that saw a protracted hostage crisis. The Japanese ambassador’s residence had previously been converted into a fortress by the Japanese government. It was surrounded by a 12-foot wall, and had grates on all windows, bullet-proof glass in many windows, and doors built to withstand the impact of a grenade. This made it an easy site to defend from the inside.
Peruvian Commandos assault captured Japanese residence
Due to the high number of officials attending the cocktail party the complex had been guarded by over 300 heavily armed police officers and bodyguards. Nevertheless the 14 terrorists blasted a hole in the garden wall and stormed in. The rebels said they targeted the home of Aoki because of the “constant meddling of the Japanese government” in the South American nation. They singled out Japan’s foreign assistance program in Peru for criticism, arguing that this aid benefited only a narrow segment of society. Alberto Fujimori, Peru’s president at the time, is of Japanese descent and had close ties with Japan.
The MRTA insurgents made several demands, most importantly the release of about 400 of their comrades from prisons around Peru, including the leader, Nèstor Cerpa`s own wife. Publicly the Peruvian president, Fujimori, wanted a peaceful solution to the crisis. He created a negotiation team to find a peaceful solution, a team that included the country’s archbishop Juan Luis Cipriani, the Peruvian Red Cross, and the Canadian Ambassador Anthony Vincent, who had briefly been a hostage. He met the prime minister of Japan, Ryutaro Hashimoto in Canada and even talked with the Cuban leader Fidel castro, raising speculation that the MRTA guerrillas may be allowed to go to Cuba as political exiles. He also travelled to London to “find a country that would give asylum to the MRTA group”. Privately, however, Fujimori had no intention of allowing the rebels to succeed, or, arguably, even to live as upcoming events showed.
Terrorist message
Fujimori´s private plan could be likened to something out of a Cold War spy movie. Over the course of weeks, cameras and microphones were being placed in key locations throughout the building by those hostages with military training, such as Navy Admiral Luis Giampietri. Brought in from the outside, these were hidden in water bottles, books and board games let in by the terrorists. The hostages themselves were allowed to have clean clothes, and the clothes sent in by the Peruvian Government were all light-coloured, which would later allow commandos to easily tell them apart from darkly clothed terrorists.
Extensive tunnels were being dug from adjacent buildings, leading to several key points under the Japanese residence. To conceal the noise patriotic music was played from the outside of the building while tanks repeated rolled back and forward. Terrorist leader Néstor Cerpa did, however, hear the sound of digging, and suspicious of a forced entry attempt moved all the hostages to the second floor, inadvertently helping keep them out of harm`s way.
And the rescue began on 22 April 1997, more than four months after the beginning of the siege. A team of 140 Peruvian commandos mounted a dramatic raid on the residence. Three explosive charges exploded almost simultaneously in three different rooms on the first floor. The first explosion occurred in the middle of the room where the soccer game was taking place, killing three of the terrorists immediately – two of the men involved in the game, and one of the women watching from the sidelines. Through the hole created by that blast and the other two explosions, 30 commandos stormed into the building, chasing the surviving MRTA members in order to stop them before they could reach the second floor.
MRTA Terrorist
Two other moves were made simultaneously with the explosions. In the first, 20 commandos launched a direct assault at the front door in order to join their comrades inside the waiting room, where the main staircase to the second floor was located. On their way in, they found the two other female MRTA militants guarding the front door. Behind the first wave of commandos storming the door came another group of soldiers carrying ladders, which they placed against the rear walls of the building.
In the final prong of the coordinated attack, another group of commandos emerged from two tunnels that had reached the backyard of the residence. These soldiers quickly scaled the ladders that had been placed for them. Their task was to blow out a grenade-proof door on the second floor, through which the hostages would be evacuated, and to make two openings in the roof so that they could kill the MRTA members upstairs before they had time to execute the hostages.
In the end, all 14 MRTA guerrillas, one hostage (Dr. Carlos Giusti Acuña, member of the Supreme Court who had pre-existing heart health problems) and two soldiers died in the assault.
According to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), MRTA member Roli Rojas was discovered attempting to walk out of the residency mixed with the hostages. A commando spotted him, took him to the back of the house, and executed him with a burst that blew off Rojas’ head. The DIA cable says that the commando’s intent had been to shoot just a single round into Rojas’ head, and due to the mistake the commando had to partially hide Roja’s body under that of Nestor Cerpa. The cable also says that another female MRTA member was executed after the raid.
The rescue created much controversy which continues to this day. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency report, Fujimori personally ordered the commandos participating in the raid to “take no MRTA alive”. Peruvian TV also showed Fujimori striding among the dead guerrillas immediately after the raid; some of the bodies were mutilated. Fujimori was famously photographed standing over the bodies of Nestor Cerpa and Roli Rojas on the main staircase of the residence, and Rojas’ destroyed head is noticeable in the photograph. Shortly thereafter President Fujimori was seen riding through Lima in a bus carrying the freed hostages. The military victory was publicized as a political triumph and used to bolster his hard-line stance against armed insurgent groups. His popularity ratings quickly doubled to nearly 70 percent, and he was acclaimed a national hero. For everyday Peruvians the effectiveness of the rescue bolstered national sentiment. Antonio Cisneros, a leading poet, said it had given Peruvians “a little bit of dignity. Nobody expected this efficiency, this speed. In military terms it was a First World job, not Third World”.
Peruvian Commandos assault captured Japanese residence
Doubts about the official version of events arose soon after the rescue. Some aspects of what happened during the rescue operation remained secret until the fall of the Fujimori government. Evidence appeared to show that surrendered MRTA members had been executed extrajudicially:
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One Japanese hostage, Hidetaka Ogura, former first secretary of the Japanese Embassy, who published a book in 2000 on the ordeal, stated that he saw one rebel, Eduardo Cruz (“Tito”), tied up in the garden shortly after the commandos stormed the building. Cruz was handed over alive to Colonel Jesùs Zamudio Aliaga, but along with the others he was later reported as having died during the assault.
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Former agriculture minister Rodolfo Muñante, declared in an interview eight hours after being freed that he heard one rebel shout “I surrender” prior to taking off his grenade-laden vest and turning himself over. Later, however, Muñante denied having said this.
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Another hostage, Máximo Rivera, then head of Peru’s anti-terrorism police, said recently he had heard similar accounts from other hostages after the raid.
Media reports also discussed a possible breach of international practices on taking of prisoners, committed on what was, under rules of diplomatic extraterritoriality, sovereign Japanese soil, and speculated that if charged, Fujimori could face prosecution in Japan.
What complicated matters further was that the bodies of the guerrillas were removed by military prosecutors; representatives from the Attorney General’s Office were not permitted entry. The corpses were not taken to the Institute of Forensic Medicine for autopsy as required by law. Rather, the bodies were taken to the morgue at the Police Hospital. It was there that the autopsies were performed. The autopsy reports were kept secret until 2001.
On 2 January 2001, the Peruvian human-rights organization APRODEH filed a criminal complaint on behalf of MRTA family members against Alberto Fujimori and some members of the Special Police and military. The bodies of the deceased MRTAs were exhumed and examined by forensic physicians and forensic anthropologists, experts from the Institute of Forensic Medicine, the Criminology Division of the National Police, and the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team, some of whom have served as experts for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Statements were taken from various officers who took part in the rescue operation and from some of the rescued hostages.
The examination done by the forensic anthropologists and forensic physicians revealed that Cruz Sánchez had been shot once in the back of the neck while in a defenseless posture vis-à-vis his assailant. Other forensic examinations established that it appears that eight of the guerrillas were shot in the back of the neck after capture or while defenseless because of injuries.
Domestic and international efforts to have the matter brought before the courts were eventually thwarted. Despite ongoing questions about the rescue, the commandos were honored and decorated, including those whom the judicial branch had under investigation for alleged involvement in the extrajudicial executions. On 29 July 2001, the commando squad was selected to lead the Independence Day military parade. This appeared to have been done to exert more pressure on the Supreme Court justices who had to decide the jurisdiction question raised by the military court, in order to make certain that it would be the military court that investigated the extrajudicial executions. The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the military court system had jurisdiction over the 19 officers, thus declining jurisdiction in favour of the military tribunal. It held that the events had occurred in a district that at the time was under a state of emergency, and was part of a military operation conducted on orders from above. It further held that any crimes that the 19 officers may have committed were the jurisdiction of the military courts. It also ruled that the civilian criminal courts should retain jurisdiction over anyone other than the commandos who may have violated civilian laws.
Roughly ten months after the crisis began, Japan demolished its bombed-out and gutted diplomatic residence located in Lima’s residential area of San Isidro. “We are erasing the last remains of this nightmare,” a special policeman on guard outside the residence said at the time. “It’s a little bit more relaxed after all that tension”. The colonnaded home, built as a mockup of the antebellum home in “Gone with the Wind”, had been a shell since. The mansion’s walls were pockmarked with bullets and damaged by the bombs that exploded from tunnels underneath, while its crater-laden interior was blackened by fire.
In March 2006, a Peruvian court sentenced the leader of the MRTA to 32 years in prison. Victor Polay Campos was found guilty of nearly 30 crimes committed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Other four high-ranking rebels also received long prison sentences. Polay and his fellow commanders, who were charged with crimes ranging from kidnappings to an attack on the US embassy compound, had been imprisoned at a naval base in Callao near Lima since 1992. They were sentenced to life in prison by a military court in the 1990s. But in 2003, Peru’s constitutional tribunal ruled that their conviction was unconstitutional and ordered a retrial at a civilian court.
This article was also featured in the February 2011 Japan Blog Matsuri hosted by reesan with the theme “Famous Japanese Events”.
Sonrisasenperu hosted a Christmas party for the children at Westfalia Orphanage. It was an amazing day and we made sandwiches, jelly, bought chips, drinks, cakes and lollies. We played games such as musical chairs, pass-the-parcel (which they`d never heard of before and took some explaining!) and we even made up a game with water balloons. It was a fun day for these kids who call this orphanage their home and the other children their family.
A quick thank you to Geraint and Sue and the team at International Business Wales for making the effort to send toys, hats, shirts, pens and other stationery all the way to Peru from New York. They were a great hit with the kids, especially the toy dragons! Thanks to Pamela and Stef for making the effort to come all the way to Cieneguilla again to help out as well as supplying soft-drinks! The caffeine kept me going!
And a big thank you to all those who have sent donations, whether it be money, clothes, toys, food, or their time. These children who have come from abusive homes, who have come from the streets, who have no family really feel the love from the help they receive. Over the last year I have seen incredible changes in the confidence and self-worth of these kids. I have seen children who couldn`t look you in the eyes or sometimes not even talk to you now chatting away and making jokes. I have seen children who felt that they were unwanted now feel a part of a big family at Westfalia. So a big thank you to all those that have helped and also those that maybe couldn`t afford to help but have followed the work and told their friends and family about www.sonrisasenperu.org
Sonrisasenperu is planning new projects for 2011 including new classes for Westfalia Orphanage, more museum and cultural trips for the kids as well as weekly visits to terminally-ill children in hospital. If you would like to help out please click here or help spread the word. Thanks!
This week I was able to visit Heroes de la Breña, a primary school located on the outskirts of Lima. The school is located in a very poor area and was a perfect place to hand out the clothes and books donated by the students of Canterbury College in Brisbane, Australia.
A big thanks to Ms Rebecca Shadbolt and the students at Canterbury College who went to Cusco, Peru this year to build chimneys and install water tanks in the town of Huatatato. They travelled all the way from Brisbane, Australia through 4 airports and gave me 8 big bags of clothes, books, pens, shoes and other school materials. Not to mention frisbees and AFL footballs! Amazing effort!
The children in rural Peru are almost always in a state of need whether it be food, clothes, books or other school materials. As always, if you can help in any way please click How Can I Help?
Westfalia is an orphanage situated about 90 minutes outside of Lima, Peru and provides housing and care for around 100 children with ages varying from 4 to 17. While Westfalia Orphanage has several self-sustaining strategies in place such as growing their own fruit and vegetables and baking their own bread, the constant needs of 100 children and carers are very demanding. There are only so many potatoes they can grow, and they can’t supply all the children’s needs.
Rural schools and institutions do not receive the necessary government support and Westfalia constantly struggles to maintain food levels. The actual government supply the orphanage receives is only a monthly quota of rice. They are forced to rely on charity to meet its needs. The situation is always so extreme that meat is not included in their diet. The kids will only have meat on special occasions, when available, sometimes once per month.
So sonrisasenperu is organising a food drive in the lead up to Christmas. Simply donating as little as $5 will make a difference in the food levels at Westfalia Orphanage. So if you can help out please click here and help make a difference in the lives of these kids. If you are in Lima and wish to donate food items (or clothes, books, etc.) simply send us an email. You can also help out by sending this link to your work colleagues and friends. These kids really need help and its not hard for us to make a difference. Thanks!
To celebrate Independence Day in Peru I took the Westfalia Orphanage English class to El Museo de la Nacion in Lima Peru. It was the first time that the kids got to see the huge national museum and get a sense of the history of Peru. The exhibits are housed in vast salons spread over 3 floors and are ordered chronologically which is very helpful for getting to grips with the many cultures dispersed across Peru. There is also a comprehensive range of traditional costumes from around the country and miniature models depicting life in pre-Conquest times as well as a good collection of ceramics and mummies.
There was a lot of commotion and giggling in the elevator as it was the first time for some of the kids. It was really funny hearing them laughing and grabbing their stomachs when the elevator went up.
There was a also a great fereria out back selling traditional Peruvian wares such as chuyos, manta Inca, wawas and ceramics which the kids loved. They also got to observe the artists at work.
Help make trips like this possible for the kids of Westfalia Orphanage and other kids in need in Peru by telling your friends about sonrisas or making a donation to help with the ongoing costs involved in the projects. Thanks!
The kids from Westfalia Orphanage had their dance performance after their 3 month block lessons. They had lessons every week and were continually practicing in their spare time for the performance. We caught the bus from Cieneguilla, a small district in the hills on the outskirts of Lima. After an almost 2 hour bus ride we connected to the new Metropolitano Bus system and caught the bus to Chorillos, a beach suburb of Lima.
After a short walk we were at Angels D1 dance School. We met our two dance teachers and they gave us a tour of the dance school. After looking around the girls began some practice. They were extremely nervous being at one of Lima`s best dance schools with professionals and a big audience yet extremely excited at the same time.
After watching a performance from another group it was the girls` turn.
Watch them in action —> Westfalia Orphanage dance performance Lima Peru
The performance was amazing, especially considering they only had 12 official classes to learn the routine. I was really proud of them. They were all so excited, it was really amazing to see them so happy. We watched a little bit of the next performance but had to leave for the long journey home. After finally being able to drag them out of the school we had some food at a local restaurant before the almost 3 hour bus rides home.
On the bus the girls couldn`t stop talking about the performance. It was an amazing day. A big thanks to Paola, the teachers and staff at Angels D1 dance School in Lima for their help. And a special thank you to those who have donated money to make these lessons possible. Without donations it would be impossible to have the dance classes or any other outings or activities for the kids. Thanks! And if you have a spare $10 in your wallet, please help us help these kids by clicking here.
Sonrisasenperu provides hip-hop, modern and breakdance classes for the kids at Westfalia Orphanage. Arguably they are the most popular class we provide to Westfalia, located in the hills of Cieneguilla on the outskirts of Lima, Peru. The kids are crazy about the classes, learning a lot and taking away more than just new dance moves.
We hire the dance teachers from the famous Angeles D-1dance group in Lima, itself a successful collaboration of street kids on dance scholarships. The kids can really relate to the young dance teachers and know that anything is possible with hard work and dedication. While the classes are a great way to learn new skills for the children of Westfalia Orphanage, they are also an amazing confidence builder. The kids take a sense of achievement and pride from the classes as well as a lot of fun!
We need your help to continue providing these classes as well as the other programs we run. Help us make a difference by clicking the donate button. Every dollar helps!
June marks 6 months since sonrisasenperu.org was created. In this time Sonrisas has been involved in several schools as well as Westfalia Orphanage providing funds, educational materials such as texts, books, writing equipment, clothes, shoes and food. We’ve also provided classes teaching English, dance, drama and swimming.
Sonrisas continues to provides the poor, rural communities with assistance, both educational and the simple necessities such as clothing and food. In terms of education we seek to reduce the burden of the cost of studying on families already struggling to make a living. Rural Peru is a very poor place where some children don’t receive any kind of education, instead made to work in the fields with the parents. Simply minimizing or removing the cost of studying is one less barrier for the parents in being able to provide their children with some sort of education.
I remember arriving in Peru and sitting at my desk for several days with a pen and paper just wondering where to begin. How could i help these schools? How was i going to find the funds to provide the help for these communities? It was a very perplexing time but deep down i knew that i would one day look back upon these obstacles and laugh at how worked up i got. Slowly but surely the projects have grown and sonrisasenperu has made a real difference in the lives of so many.
Sonrisas has been able to make this difference with the support and help of people like yourself! People who see the website, see the photos of the differences we are making and help in any way they can…whether it be a donation, sending clothes or materials, or simply telling your friends about the site. So i want to thank everybody who has donated money, clothes, resources and time to the project as well as those simply following the site, the facebook page and spreading the word.
I would also like to thank some people who have helped me with the operation of sonrisas. First-and-foremost to my friend Lee Giddins, creator of www.loneleeplanet.com. Lee spent many hours helping create the site, he was the first financial contributor by donating the domain name sonrisasenperu.org, he hosts the site on his domain, and continues to help me with the technical aspects of the site…all at no cost! I couldn’t be doing what I’m doing without his amazing help.
Thank you to John and Tisha Kelly of The Parlour Irish Bars of New York (www.theparlour.com) for their financial help with the first shoe drive and for all their help in NYC. Thanks to two other former Irish pub bosses Paul O’Brien of P.J.O’Brien’s Irish Pubs in Australia (www.pjobriens.com.au) and Chris Shine for their support.
Thanks to David Olano and Paola Vecco for their friendship and help in Peru. David, thanks for the Spanish translations! And Paola thanks for your help with the dance teachers at Angeles D1 dance company and to your amazing parents and household for always opening their doors to me and the kids. Thanks Camilla Vecco for your amazing job teaching drama at Westfalia. I’m always amazed at the high quality work you do and the kids love you! Thanks to Doris Galloso and Melena Miljanovich of The Lions Club Cieneguilla for your help and introductions to the schools. And Male thanks for always giving your time and even opening up your house to the kids from Westfalia! They are always asking about you!
Thanks to Becky May for your help with the initial wording of the site, Lan Dai Zuppa for coming up with the sonrisas name! Thanks Arturo for midnight runs to the airport and your continued support of Westfalia Orphanage. Thanks to Bec Shadbolt and the students from Canterbury College of Brisbane, Australia for lugging almost 10 bags of clothes, books and materials over 30 hours of flights for the kids (photos to come!). Big thanks to Naomi for all your support and great advice! And thanks to Bronwyn Tutty, Noela, Matty Bart, Annie Tran, my Aunty Kris and Mardie, my Uncle Bobby Barr, Eva Wayne and her work crew, all my New York friends, Kerin & Jordan, Pamela, and everybody who has donated and helped make a difference here in Peru. Thank you for all your help and the countless others who make sonrisasenperu.org possible!
Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian Inca site located 2,430 metres (7,970 ft) above sea level.It is situated on a mountain ridge above the Urubamba Valley in Peru, which is 80 kilometres (50 mi) northwest of Cuzco and through which the Urubamba River flows. Although there are numerous theories on the exact purpose of the site, most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472). Often referred to as “The Lost City of the Incas”, it is the most familiar icon of the Inca World.
The Incas started building the estate around AD 1400 but it was abandoned as an official site for the Inca rulers a century later at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Although known locally, it was unknown to the outside world before being brought to international attention in 1911 by the American historian Hiram Bingham. Since then, Machu Picchu has become an important tourist attraction.
Machu Picchu was built around 1450, at the height of the Inca Empire. It was abandoned just over 100 years later, in 1572, as a belated result of the Spanish Conquest. It is likely that most of its inhabitants were wiped out by smallpox before the Spanish conquistadores arrived in the area, and it appears that they were aware of a place called Picchoalthough there is no record of the Spanish having visited the remote city. The Conquistadors defaced sacred rocks in other locations but they are untouched at Machu Picchu.
One of the earliest theories about the purpose of the citadel, by Hiram Bingham, is that it was the traditional birthplace of the Incan “Virgins of the Suns”. Research conducted by scholars, such as John Rowe and Richard Burger, has convinced most archaeologists that Machu Picchu was an estate of the Inca emperor, Pachacuti. In addition, Johan Reinhard presented evidence that the site was selected because of its position relative to sacred landscape features such as its mountains, which are purported to be in alignment with key astronomical events that would have been important to the Incas.
Although the citadel is located only about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Cusco, the Inca capital, it was never found by the Spanish and consequently not plundered and destroyed, as was the case with many other Inca sites. Over the centuries, the surrounding jungle grew over much of the site, and few knew of its existence. On July 24, 1911, Machu Picchu was brought to the attention of scholars by Hiram Bingham, an American historian employed as a lecturer at Yale University. Bingham was led up to Machu Picchu by a local 11 year old Quechua boy named Pablito Alvarez. Bingham undertook archaeological studies and completed a survey of the area. Bingham coined the name “The Lost City of the Incas”, which was the title of his first book.
Machu Picchu is Peru’s most important and most visited tourist site, receiving around 1 million visitors annually and has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Sonrisasenperu.org is providing ongoing drama and acting classes to the children of Westfalia Orphanage. The kids have classes every week and are working toward performing a show at the end of classes.
Children often evaluate their self-worth and make judgments about their abilities based on experiences they have in their lives. Lacking a family, coming from very difficult situations and living in an orphanage often limits this self-worth. These classes are a means to develop the children’s self-confidence, and we hope to help them to believe in themselves and know that people do care about them.
Sadly it is becoming more and more difficult to continue to provide the funds to run these classes. Ongoing costs include the pay and transport for the dance and drama teachers, materials for the classes as well as transport for the children. We desperately need your help to continue to help these kids so if you have ever thought about helping out a great cause, now is the time! Every dollar helps.
Make a difference from as little as $5 by clicking the donate button.
