In the crossfire, protest deaths fuel anger in Peru

Edgar Prado, a mechanic and driver from the southern Peruvian city of Ayacucho, spent much of December 15 in his garage working on his white pickup truck as protests broke out at the airport a block away.

At 5.56pm he suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the chest and was dead the next morning, according to autopsy results and security camera footage reviewed by Reuters. She was one of the ten people who died in Ayacucho in the fierce wave of violence that has rocked Peru in recent weeks.

about 22 people have died in the protests, the worst in years even in troubled Peru, and the youngest victim was just 15 years old. The victims threaten to aggravate the social unrest, although there has been a pause in the wave of violence during the Christmas celebrations, in a fervently Catholic country.

The confrontations arose after the December 7 ex-president Pedro Castillo tried to illegally dissolve congress to avoid a political trial that he feared losing. He was sacked soon after and arrested for “rebellion“. The ex-governor of the left rejects the accusations.

His arrest triggered an outpouring of suppressed anger against Peru’s political elite and Congress, discredited by corruption scandals and abuses of power, especially in impoverished southern regions where rising energy and food prices hit more vulnerable.

The government of the new president, Dina Boluartedeclared a state of emergency on December 14 in an attempt to quell the protests, which included blockades of roads, burned buildings and invaded airports, which deprived the population of some civil rights and allowed the armed forces to intervene to recover the public order.

A day later, on December 15, protesters in Ayacucho occupied a highway that leads to the regional airport, one block from the garage where Prado worked and lived on Los Angeles street. The terminal had to suspend flights and the army was deployed to regain control.

A security camera near the airport shows protesters invading the runway around 2 pm, some throwing rocks and burning tires as troops assembled. Military helicopters hovered over the complex. The Ombudsman’s Office said gas grenades were thrown at the protesters.

At 5 pm the violence spread outside the airport limits and shooting began in the streets. By the end of the night, the clashes left 10 people dead or fatally wounded. The last of them died on December 21.

At 5:55 pm, security camera footage from a store on Los Angeles Street in front of Prado’s house shows a group of protesters and other people standing on the sidewalk.

The crowd is suddenly startled and begins to run. On the sidewalk, at the other end of the street, a person falls to the ground. A group comes to help him, including Edgar, who appears walking from the other side and was right at the entrance of his house. He kneels in front of the victim and stays by his side while others run away.

A minute later the footage shows Edgar being shot and falling. He died the next morning, December 16, from hemorrhagic hypovolemic shock and lacerations of the liver and lungs, as well as open chest trauma caused by the gunshot to the chest, according to his autopsy report.

“So the military is supposed to be prepared so that they can fight terrorism, not so that they can take our neighbor’s lives that way,” his sister Edith told Reuters.

“Virtually, he’s been killed by the military or by the military.”

Edith said that Edgar had left the house where they lived after they heard shots in the doorway and saw injured protesters, a version that seems to agree with the recordings reviewed by Reuters. She also showed bullet casings and marks on the door.

“The only thing I want is justice, justice for my brother.”

Use of deadly force as a “last resort”

The army said it was under serious attack, giving them reason to use force in response.

On December 15 at 1 pm, a military unit that was heading from the city center to the Ayacucho airport was attacked “by a mob with blunt objects, explosives, and handmade firearms,” ​​according to a statement issued by the Ministry of Defense a day later.

The situation, according to the army, put “the physical integrity at risk” of the troops, who decided to act “following the legally established procedure, strictly applying the rules on the use of force.”

Peru’s protocol for the armed forces indicates that, in a state of emergency, its agents “may use firearms in self-defense or in defense of others, in case of imminent danger of death or serious injury, or with the purpose of avoiding the commission of a particularly serious crime involving a threat to life”.

It also maintains that the use of deadly force should be the “last resort.”

Reuters he made repeated attempts to interview Peruvian police and military leaders by phone and in person. A reporter went to the military base in Ayacucho to speak with the local general in charge of operations, but was denied access.

The United Nations has called for an investigation deaths of minors in protests. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has condemned the violence by both the security forces and the protesters and has called for dialogue.

The deaths are condensing the anger and indignation of locals in the poorest Andean and Amazon areas, where many feel ignored on lands rich in oil and copper resources. Many groups want major political change and constitutional reform.

“A miserable massacre because it has no other name to say, that they have aimed war bullets at our brothers,” said Rocío Leandro Melgar, a protest leader in Ayacucho who blamed the government for allowing the violence. “We will keep moving forward. This is not going to stay like this.”

These events open wounds in a region that at the end of the last century was in the midst of a war between the security forces and the Maoist group Sendero Luminoso, which left 69,000 dead and disappeared throughout the country, according to a Truth Commission. In Ayacucho the insurgent group was born.

“Full Shootout”

Other video from a security camera in a car park near the airport, seen by Reuters, shows a man standing by a building looking down a road. Something hits him on the arm and he runs to hide behind a tree.

A few seconds later, a second man is seen running across the tree-lined square in front. He runs across the street towards the parking lot camera and suddenly falls to the ground. The parking lot owner said the person died.

Several residents in the same neighborhood surrounding the airport said sporadic shooting continued well into the night.

Edith Aguilar said her son, José Luis, 20, was working at a soft drink factory until 6:30 pm on the day of the protests and died on his way home from work. The autopsy report reviewed by Reuters shows that he died of severe head trauma from a gunshot.

“Total shooting all over this street and here you couldn’t even get out, nothing,” said Aguilar, who lives in the area surrounding the airport.

Aguilar said her sister-in-law called her to ask if her son had come home. She had seen him walking down the street before and she had heard that someone matching her description had died.

“My son was coming home from work that day,” he declared. “That is a lie, those who call us terrorists.”

The most recent fatality, Jhonathan Alarcón, 19, died of internal bleeding on December 21, a week after being shot in the hip during protests in Ayacucho, his aunt told Reuters and according to data from the Ombudsman.

In an act of protest, on December 22, his family carried his coffin to the square where he was shot, leaving him on the ground while a band played music. A mourner shouted protest slogans from a megaphone beneath a large red banner remembering the victims of what he called a “massacre.”

“They were not stray bullets or simply an accident. They were direct shots fired by the military,” Luzmila Alarcón, an aunt of Jhonathan’s who also attended the ceremony, said during the funeral.

He affirmed that the deaths will spread the anger of the population and that they will seek to reach those responsible.

“It cannot be possible for any government to take responsibility,” he claimed. “That is not the way to want to calm the population.”

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