Women who are victims of rape in the emergency zones have tended to be brown-skinned, poor, Quechua speakers, often monolingual. They have been forced to provide soldiers at local bases with meals, cleaning services and their bodies; or they have been raped during military incursions into their villages.
One local authority from Huancavelica described how soldiers threatened local women after a base was established in Acobamba in 1983:
To save their lives, the women put themselves at the service of the soldiers, even if they are good girls, and also the soldiers are leaving the women pregnant and when the children are born, no one accepts paternity. Even if the woman has principles and is married, the soldiers ignore it, they have their list, "No, you must join us tonight, let's see, we're going to take your statement." So there are 300 or 400fatherless children. . . [then] the soldiers go to another base, who can you complain to, they are the only ones because they are the highest authorities.153
On the rare occasion women press for justice, they are met with silence or open ridicule. In 1991 María went with her father to ask an army commander to gather his troops so that she could identify the soldiers who raped her near Pampa Cangallo, Ayacucho. He complied but began to make fun of her in front of the troops. His scorn was so intense—including suggesting that she call her gestating baby "Navyman" if the rapist was a sailor, or "Little Soldier" if it was an army recruit—that María gave up in tears.154
Unlike rape in interrogation, rape in emergency zones has had a regional character, concentrated in the southern highlands of Ayacucho and Huancavelica. Only rarely has it occurred in urban centers or very populated areas. Often large numbers of soldiers participated; many women have been gang-raped by twenty or more men. Frequently, the rape has occurred in the context of a running confrontation between the security forces and armed insurgents, when troops were moving from village to village in search of a guerrilla column. Finally, these rapes often have transpired in front of women's families, including children.
"Probably less than 10 percent of the women who are raped in the emergency zones, especially in Ayacucho and Huancavelica, ever make a formal report," Sabina Villarroel, a social worker who helps internally displaced women, many of whom are rape victims, told us. "The main reasons are fear and shame, as if talking would advertise the terrible thing that happened to them."155
Lorenza Quispe, thirty-eight years old, is originally from Tinquoy, Ayacucho. In 1983 she says soldiers came to her and husband's house and forced her husband to accompany them, ostensibly to learn how to use a weapon. Later, Quispe learned her husband was being held in the Tambo military base.
Quispe made unsuccessful efforts to find her husband. Nevertheless, she kept pressuring soldiers at the base for information. In 1986 Quispe saysthat, after she left some papers at the base related to her husband's disappearance, two soldiers began following her:
They said to me, "Your husband's body was put there, in the gorge." Innocently, I thought it could be true. I followed them. And there they caught me, saying, "Why are you always bothering us? I don't know where your husband is. Do you want to live or will you die?" There is where they raped me. One stood watch, it was just him. . . [Afterwards] people have asked me why I went with them, but I reply that it was a rape.156
Quispe told us that she never reported the rape, however. She says they told her that if she talked they would kill her or "disappear" her like her husband. "Who would care for my children?" Quispe asks, "I am their father and mother."157
On June 5, 1988, Nilda, fourteen years old, says she left her Huamanga home early to visit the market. A truckload of soldiers picked her up, demanding identity documents. The soldiers forcibly dragged her into the truck, gagged her, then held her down as four of them raped her. The soldiers left Nilda lying in the street. According to the doctor interviewed by the reporter who collected Nilda's testimony, in less than a month he had treated four women raped by soldiers.158
Florencia, thirty-nine years old, says she not only lost her husband to a Shining Path execution squad on March 12, 1992, but also was raped by the guerrillas and then, a week later, raped by the army. She says the guerrillas killed her husband and six others because they were local authorities in San José de Ticlias, Ayacucho. When the army arrived a week later, they accused the villagers of having collaborated with guerrillas. The soldiers arrived by helicopter and immediately separated the men and women. Florencia told Human Rights Watch the men were made to lie face down in the dirt while soldiers marched over them, beating them with rifles. Other soldiers began pulling at her skirt. Her children, watching, screamed and cried. She did notremember how many raped her. Bastante, many, is all she could remember.159
On June 7, 1992, fourteen-year-old Froyli Mori Veal reported to the public prosecutor that she was raped after soldiers searched her family's home in the hamlet of La Unión, Nueva Lima district, San Martín. They said a Lieutenant "Juan" and six soldiers entered the house around midnight.
After searching the house, they insisted that I accompany them, because they needed to talk to me. When both my parents and I refused this request, they threatened my parents with their weapons and made a soldier guard them so they couldn't leave the house while they dragged me outside. They took me to the back of the garden behind the house and there they raped me one after the other, beginning with the lieutenant. All seven raped me.160
A medical exam requested by the local priest was performed three days later. The doctor found that Mori had a serious vaginal infection, inflamed labia and a broken hymen. However, the doctor's inexperience with rape cases was evident. He took no note of any presence of sperm, focusing primarily on the infection.
153 COFADER testimony from Acobamba, Huancavelica.
154 Interview, Huamanga, Ayacucho, July 5, 1992.
155 Interview, Sabina Villarroel, Lima, July 6, 1992.
156 Interview, Lorenza Quispe, Huamanga, Ayacucho, July 3, 1992.
157 For other cases, see Human Rights Watch, Untold Terror, pp. 35-41.
158 Mariella Balbi, "Ayacuchanos viven entre dos fuegos," La República (Lima), June 27, 1988.
159 Interview, Lima, July 6, 1992.
160 Sworn testimony of Froyli Mori Vela.
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