Peru Lurching Toward Anarchy

By Guy D. Garcia

On an average day in Peru, six people die by political violence. One day it is a government agent organizing peasant cooperatives. One day it is a ruling- party mayor. One day it is a government-aligned journalist. Most days it is peasants who get in the way.

There was the day in early February when the killing came to SAIS Cahuide, a private co-op in Peru's central Junin department. It was a thriving agricultural concern then, boasting up to 130,000 head of livestock, 800 workers who sold 10,000 liters of milk a day, and 170 administrative and technical advisers. A column of guerrillas armed with machine guns, members of the 5,000-strong Maoist revolutionary group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), marched in to destroy everything and starve anyone who did not cooperate with them. The rebels killed or took most of the animals, executed one director and three administrators of the co-op, and destroyed tractors, before disappearing into the countryside. Today the cooperative is nearly deserted, and those who remain live in constant fear that the guerrillas will return. "We are abandoned here," says a co-op official, whose requests for protection from the authorities have been in vain.

The fate of SAIS Cahuide has become a familiar tale in Peru, which is reeling from the double punch of guerrilla insurgency and economic stagflation. The confluence of crises has brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy and shaken the nation's institutional foundations. While a military coup does not appear imminent, the basic conditions for civilian democracy are ! eroding at an alarming rate. Approximately 150,000 Peruvians emigrated last year. Rural families who lack the money to leave have migrated to urban centers, straining city budgets and turning the pueblos jovenes, or shantytowns, into breeding grounds for subversion.

Violence has become a fact of Peruvian life. Government studies count 12,965 people dead in terrorist-related violence since 1980, when Sendero Luminoso began its campaign to overthrow the government. Already this year, 794 killings have been tallied, though the actual number is no doubt much higher. Outside the major cities, hundreds of police officers and mayors have deserted their posts after receiving death threats from terrorists. In the area around Huancayo, the capital of Peru's breadbasket department of Junin, Sendero Luminoso is locked in a battle for dominance with the Cuban-oriented M.R.T.A. rebels. The city, says Raul Gonzalez, a sociologist and expert on the Sendero Luminoso, "is now the critical spot to Sendero's future." From there, the Shining Path, which already controls at least one-third of the countryside, intends to take Lima, only 120 miles away, by encircling it and cutting it off from the rest of the country.

Yet despite the looming guerrilla menace, the deteriorating state of the economy is the immediate worry of most Peruvians. The country's inflation rate topped 1,720% last year, and could reach an unbelievable 10,000% in 1989. Buying power has dropped 50%; up to two-thirds of the working population is either under- or unemployed. In the capital, bread, rice and sugar are becoming scarce, and powdered milk is unavailable in many neighborhoods.

Outside help is not likely to rescue the country. One of President Alan Garcia Perez's first moves after taking office in 1985 was to reduce payments due on Peru's $14 billion foreign debt. As a result, Peru is virtually cut off from all fresh foreign credits. Last September Garcia imposed a rigorous austerity plan designed to curtail imports, stimulate exports and cancel subsidies. But critics say his efforts are still insufficient to halt Peru's downward slide. And Garcia refuses to make any deal with international banks that would require the country to pay more on its debt than it would receive in new money. "It's not that Peru is refusing to pay," says Garcia. "But we are going to negotiate in such a way that the flow is positive or equal."

Garcia's erratic economics have cost him his once overwhelming popularity. A + February poll by Apoyo, Peru's leading independent polling firm, charted his approval rating at a dismal 13%. Last December Garcia's support within his own APRA (Popular American Revolutionary Alliance) Party eroded to the point where he was forced to resign as its leader. Nevertheless, the President, whose five-year term expires in 1990, has stubbornly ignored calls for him to step down.

Despite persistent rumors that it might attempt a coup, the military has shown no desire to end nine years of civilian rule. But Peruvian society is on the verge of polarization between the extreme left and right. Last July marked the appearance of the Rodrigo Franco Command, a death squad said to be made up of dissident APRA Party members. The group has assassinated several leftists and critics of the government and has threatened to kill many more.

At least 80% of Peru's weary populace wants the government to open a national front against terrorism. Perhaps in response, the government two weeks ago announced an ambitious campaign against the rebels. Still, few Peruvians are confident the government can quell the warfare before the economy reaches the point of no return. As retired General Sinescio Jarama warns, "Sendero is not winning, we are losing."

With reporting by Laura Lopez and Sharon Stevenson/Lima