Peru peasants recount savage attack

AYACUCHO, Peru (AP) - The hooded rebels arrived before dawn, gathered the villagers in the plaza, separated out the men, 23 in all, and killed each of them by crushing their heads with rocks and slicing their throats, so that they died slowly, in agony.

  The horrific account Tuesday from survivors of one of the many peasant massacres carried out by ferocious Shining Path guerrillas came on the second day of public hearings by a government truth commission.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission's mission is to determine the root causes and political climate that led to the deaths of 30,000 people and to the disappearance of at least 6,000 more from 1980 to 2000.

Ayacucho province, a region of rugged mountains and deep, jungle-cloaked valleys, was the birthplace of the Shining Path and the site of the worst atrocities in a state-sponsored campaign of brutal repression.

The Shining Path, a Maoist-inspired rebel movement that tolerated no opposition, resorted to terror to force peasants to support its drive to overthrow Peru's elected governments.

On Monday, the first day of the first-ever hearings allowing victims to tell their own stories, testimony focused on torture, assassinations and disappearances at the hands of security forces battling the rebels.

On Tuesday, commission members and Peruvians listening to the nationally broadcast testimony heard a different story.

Paulina Abarca, 49, wearing a rainbow-colored poncho wrapped around her shoulders, and Marcelino Chumbez, 26, told a tale of terror that drew looks of horror from commission members.

In the audience were Indian women wearing felt hats decorated with flowers and men in patched trousers and worn sandals. They listened intently, anguish showing on their faces as the story unfolded.

Speaking in Quechua, the ancient language of the Peruvian highlands, Abarca and Chumbez gave the following account:

Before dawn on Dec. 10, 1989, the people of Paccha were awoken by a volley of gunshots. Some 250 Shining Path rebels had surrounded their village, which had recently formed a peasant militia at the army's insistence to defend against rebel attacks.

But the militiamen were armed only with slings and lances. Taken by surprise, they put up no resistance when the rebels dragged families from their small adobe-brick homes and lined them up in the village plaza.

There they separated out the village's 23 men.

"They tied their hands and began killing them, hitting their heads with rocks, and then using knives to cut their throats, stab them in the heart, in the back, cut out their tongues, their intestines," said Chumbez, whose father Esteban was the village's elected leader.

"I watched my father die," he said, trying not to show emotion as he recounted the elder Chumbez's agonizing death.

As they killed the men one by one, the rebels cursed and insulted them, saying, "You miserable yanayuma, this is what you want?" Chumbez recalled.

"Yanayuma" is a Quechua word that means "black heads," a reference to the black hoods used by soldiers to hide their identity when they patrolled the countryside.

Before fleeing, the rebels plundered the impoverished village, taking blankets, ponchos, sewing machines, radios, cooking pots, just about anything of value, and setting five houses ablaze as they withdrew.

Beatriz Alva, one of the commissioners, thanked Chumbez and Abarca for their testimony.

"You can be certain that this account of all the suffering your community has experienced will not only help us in our investigation but will help Peruvians to understand as well what you suffered," Alva said.

Chumbez asked to put in a final word.

He said that none of the four governments in power since the massacre have helped his village to rebuild.

"We want other countries to know what happened here, the United States, Japan, Chile, Brazil, and help with what they can," he said. "The community of Paccha has been destroyed. There is no work in Paccha. Our hope is that some institution might help us."

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