I met Jaime Castillo Petruzzi in the maximum security prison in Lima,
the Castro Castro. It was 2004 and I had been living in that fascinatingAndean country for about two years. I had arrived there in 2002, with a
project of the Italian embassy to teach the Italian language and culture
in universities and cultural institutes. After the dictator of Japanese
origin Alberto Fujimori Fujimori, responsible for massacres and
violations of human rights, had resigned by fax and fled to Japan in
2000, the country had held general political elections. The candidate of
Andean origin Alejandro Toledo had won. During the transition period
that lasted a few months, the incumbent president Alberto Paniagua had
established an important government commission that would have the task
of investigating the violation of human rights in the country. The
Commission of Truth and National Reconciliation. After about twenty
years of civil war between the State and the two most important
guerrilla groups, the Shining Path of Maoist origin and the MRTA, the
Tupac-Amaru Revolutionary Movement, of Guevarist origin, the country had
about 69,000 victims, most of them of peasant origin. The
president/dictator Alberto Fujimori and his vice, Vladimiro Montesino,
had created a paramilitary group called the Hill Group. Its members,
belonging to the Secret Services, had the task of eliminating students
and political and union activists. In addition to the thousands of
people tortured, killed and "disappeared", the Hill Group was
responsible for two important massacres: that of the Guzmán y Valle La
Cantuta National University, and "Barrios Alto". As I write in my book
"Jaime Castillo Petruzzi. History of a Latin American Guerrilla":
"On July 16, 1992, two bombs with 1,000 kg of explosives were placed on
Talara Street, in Miraflores, in the heart of the upper-middle-class
neighborhood of Lima. They caused the death of 25 people, injured 155,
and destroyed, partially or totally, 183 homes, 400 offices and 63 cars
parked in the adjacent streets. The terrible attack was claimed by the
Maoist group Sendero Luminoso and, in response, the paramilitary group
Collina, at the service of Alberto Fujimori's dictatorship, entered
Enrique Guzmán y Valle University, La Cantuta, two days later, and took
nine students and a professor. They were taken to the outskirts of Lima
where the paramilitaries made them dig their own graves and killed them
with a shot to the back of the head, in cold blood. Their bodies were
found, years later, by a man without a gun. fixed abode who contacted a
journalist who reopened the case and brought it to the attention of the
public. Years later, Alberto Fujimori's extradition was requested. In
2005, Interpol arrested him in Chile and, in December 2007, extradited
him to Lima where the trial against him for crimes against humanity
began. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison for both the Cantuta
massacre and the Barrios Altos massacre where, on November 3, 1991,
fifteen people, including an eight-year-old child, were killed in cold
blood, guilty of organizing a social dinner for humanitarian purposes".
In this political and social climate I arrived in Lima in 2002,
contacted by the Italian embassy. My first commitment was to teach
Italian language and culture at the universityà Tumbes, in the north of
the country. As soon as I arrived, they offered me the chance to
collaborate with the government commission that was in charge of
denouncing human rights violations against the civilian population. I
entered the city's maximum security prison with Jorge Omar Santa Maria
Murillo, the President of the country's Constitutional Court. We met and
interviewed various militants and supporters of the Maoist group Sendero
Luminoso. They entrusted me with the case of José. He had been in
preventive detention for more than ten years because a repentant, under
torture, had given his name. He had declared that José was an active
member of the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla group and had been guilty of
various crimes. When the repentant was released, he declared to the
press that José was innocent and that he had to give random names so
that the military would stop torturing him. Despite this, José had to
remain in prison because otherwise the State would have had to
compensate him. When I entered the maximum security prison, I opened a
file on his case. He told me about the torture he had suffered and about
his ten years spent in prison waiting for a trial and a sentence that
never arrived. I wrote on the file the word forbidden to many local
activists: INNOCENT. The president of the Constitutional Court told me
«you are Italian, protected by the embassy of your country. If you
present me with a file with INNOCENT written on it, I cannot help but
consider it urgent. You do your duty, then I will do mine». No sooner
said than done, a week later José was free and came to visit me at home.
We hugged each other like two great friends. We had a drink together and
chatted. At that point José told me about Julia, a classmate of his. She
had also been arrested years before with him, on generic charges of
belonging to the Moist group Sendero Luminoso. Immediately after their
arrest they had been tortured in the prison of Tumbes. Afterwards they
had decided to transfer them, with other political prisoners, to the
prison of Trujillo. Several trucks loaded with police and prisoners
moved towards the south of the country. At a certain point, on the
seashore, they stopped. They grabbed Giulia by force, they pulled her
and, in rhyme with the sea, they all raped her, by order and rank. José,
tied up and blindfolded, hearing her screams, tried to go towards her to
protect her. He was hit by a blow to the temple with the butt of a rifle
and fainted "Giulia where are you? What did they do to you?" Giulia was
seventeen and loved children. After that terrible gang rape she was
forced to have an abortion. The journalist who reported the case was
immediately fired and received death threats. This was what happened in
Peru, during the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori Fujimori. A few weeks
later I went to visit Giulia. She lived in a modest house on the
outskirts of the city. Given the cruelty of the case I did not want to
interview her.We met several times in the city center to take a walk by
the sea or to share a hot meal.
After my experience at the super prison in Tumbes, the Italian embassy
decided to transfer me to the University of Cuzco, near the famous Machu
Pichu. I stayed there for a year and, from that fascinating place in the
Andes, I visited Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil,
Ecuador, Bolivia. I ventured on political and cultural trips that lasted
months. Working at the university in the country, I had "summer"
holidays from Christmas to Easter, and I used them to explore the
continent. Much of my political and personal experience can be found in
my book "Trelew, story of a journey in the South of the world" published
by the publishing house Sensibili alle foglie in Rome.
In 2004 I was transferred to the Enrique Guzmán y Valle "La Cantuta"
University in Lima. That was the university famous because, in 1992, the
death squad of the dictator Alberto Fujimori's Collina group had taken
nine students and a professor in the middle of the night and killed
them. It was still a highly politicized university and it was wonderful
to work with those students who were fighting to honor their comrades
who had been murdered by the State. I remember, in particular, the
political group "Amauta", which was inspired by the Peruvian poet Cesar
Vallejo and the writer José Carlo Mariategui who had published the book
"Seven essays on the interpretation of Peruvian reality" about the
peasant world of the country. At that time in Lima I also worked at the
Antonio Raimondi Italian School and the Institute of Italian Culture on
Avenida Arequipa. One day, the director of my Institute told me that
there was an agreement signed between the Italian Embassy, the Peruvian
government and the Castro Castro maximum security prison, to teach the
Italian language to political prisoners of Sendero Luminoso and the
MRTA. Did I want to go?
I didn't think twice and, every Saturday afternoon, for four years, I
went to the maximum security prison in the country. Most of my students
were members of the revolutionary group Tupac-Amaru, a group that had
made headlines in the world press for the siege of the Japanese embassy
in 1996. Among them I met Jaime Castillo Petruzzi, known as "the
torito". Chilean and militant of the MIR, the Revolutionary Left
Movement, at seventeen he had to flee Chile after the coup d'état of
Augusto Pinochet. From Santiago he had taken refuge in Paris, studied
history at the Sorbonne Paris XII Vincennes University and then his
political group, the MIR, had decided to send him to Cuba, for
political-military training as a guerrilla fighter. After three years of
living in Havana, he then went to Nicaragua, to fight with the
Sandinistas. From there he returned to Chile several times to organize
guerrilla groups against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. From
Chile, to Peru as a political organizer of the revolutionary group
Tupac-Amaru during the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori. He was arrested
in 1993 and immediately sentenced to life imprisonment by hooded judges
at the service of the dictatorship. He was taken to the terrible
punitive prison of Yanamayo, near Puno. At more than 4,000 meters above
sea level, political prisoners did not even have blankets to protect
them from the cold and had to sleep on the floor, on cement. When in
2000 the dictator Fujimori fled the country and resigned by fax, the
common and political prisoners began a hunger strike that lasted several
months to ask the Ibero-American Court of Human Rights for a new trial.
Some of them, from Yanamayo were transferred to the super prison Castro
Castro in Lima, where I had the opportunity to teach Italian and get to
know them. After 23 years in prison, Jaime was finally released in 2016
and expelled from the country that same night. As a Chilean, he returned
to live in Santiago with his partner Maite and their two children.
Jaime and I have been in touch ever since we first met in 2004. When he
was released, we decided to write a book together about his life.
This book, entitled "Jaime Castillo Petruzzi. History of a Latin
American Guerrilla Fighter", was published in Italy by the publishing
house Sensibile alle foglie. Jaime had an Italian grandfather, from
Oppido Lucano. Thanks to him he obtained Italian nationality and will be
in Italy in a few weeks, in Rome, Naples, Taranto and Palermo to present
his book. It is an intense book that talks about the life of a man who
dedicated his life to fighting against various dictatorships in various
parts of the world. However you judge it, it is worth reading.
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
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