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Julia Paulson204
Abstract
Does the existence of a truth commission report assist in creating national curriculum about recent violent conflict? If a truth commission report does become educational material, what version of the truth commissions explanation of conflict is presented to educators and students? Do truth commissions, by virtue of being state sanctioned, offer a less contested and politicized route towards curriculum about recent conflict? This article draws upon a 2008 'textbook controversy' in Peru to explore these questions. The national textbook used Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission as the source for several pages that present the country's recent violent conflict to students. These pages generated serious political controversy that was widely covered in national media. The article argues that the 'version of the truth commission's version' that was filtered into the textbook relied heavily upon stereotype to tell a circular story of conflict. The structural causes of conflict that the truth commission highlighted do not come through in the national curriculum version. Furthermore, the essay argues that rather than ease contestation, the use of the truth commission version as source contributed to a recasting of politicized efforts to both undermine the truth commission and avoid teaching about the recent conflict.
Introduction
The difficulty and importance of making decisions about teaching history cannot be overemphasized. (Freedman, et al., 2004, p.248)
The development of history curriculum - the story told to a nations young people about their collective past - is a political process (Hobsbawm, 1997; Apple, 2004). Education, after all, is "a site of conflict about the kind of knowledge that is and should be taught, about whose knowledge is official' and about who has the right to decide both what is to be taught and how teaching and learning are to be evaluated" (Apple, 2004, p.xii). In nations recovering from recent conflict, developing history curriculum becomes all the more complicated, political and pressing. Settling on a narrative of a recent conflict is "...inextricably linked to larger political debates about which narratives of history are true" (Cole and Barsalou, 2006, p. 9, emphasis added); debates that are not easily resolved in post-conflict settings were the reasons and responsibilities for conflict remain contested.
Nonetheless, history curriculum revision is generally on the agenda of international actors seeking to support and influence post-conflict educational reform (Buckland, 2005; Davies, 2004; Sinclair, 2004). Indeed, many scholars and international organizations put a great deal of faith in the power of peace education, human rights education and "objective" history education to contribute towards peace, stability, democracy and reconciliation (UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, 20091; Davies, 2004). Evidence to demonstrate the ability of any educational initiative - history, peace, human rights or otherwise - to contribute directly towards the achievement of such goals, however, is scant. Researchers involved in developing history curriculum in post-genocide Rwanda, for instance, found that in the post-conflict context the creation of such a curriculum "reflects in microcosm the forces that drove the country's conflict" (Freedman, et al., 2008, p.684). They found that political manipulation, ethnic stereotyping, economic competition and the power of collective memory are all powerful factors that influence the development of post-conflict history curriculum (ibid).
Given the difficulty of settling on a narrative of the past in the post-conflict context and given the increasing predominance of truth commissions in such environments (Kelsall, 2005) a question emerges around the role of a truth commission within post-conflict curriculum reform. There is an increasing enthusiasm among some scholars and international actors about the potential of truth commissions to contribute towards educational initiatives aiming to explore recent conflict (Cole, 2007; UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, 2009). Truth commissions have among their aims to clarify, bring to light and acknowledge the past (Hayner, 2002). In their status as officially sanctioned bodies, truth commissions are also engaged in the production of what can be, and often is, regarded as an official version of the truth. There seems then to be a natural place for the truth commission within national curriculum - a consensus narrative of conflict that can avoid the politics of curriculum reform and tap into the reconciliatory potentials of history education.
This increasingly identified potential raises several questions in practice. Firstly, does the truth commission's version of conflict actually enter into another official' historical discourse, that of the national curriculum? And, if a truth commission report does become educational material, how is it presented to educators and students? Do truth commissions, by virtue of being state sanctioned, offer a less contested and politicized avenue towards curriculum about recent conflict? If so, does the development of truth commission inspired history curriculum offer a route through the contested territory of post-conflict curriculum development?
This article explores an episode of truth commission entry into national curriculum in Peru. The story detailed here - aptly described by one Peruvian journalist as one of 'history and hysteria ('Libros: Historia e histeria, 2008) - demonstrates that the presence of an 'official version of conflict does not necessarily offer an easy way out of the contested terrain of narrating the recent past for a nations young people. Indeed, the version of Peru's CVR (Comision de la Verdad y Reconciliation / Truth and Reconciliation Commission) that was repeated in the national secondary textbook discussed here relies more on stereotype and circular logic than it does on an exploration of the structural causes of Peru's recent conflict, which a loyal recounting of the CVR's final report would entail. Furthermore, the CVR based curriculum did not manage to evade the politics of curriculum reform but instead offered a forum for the reiteration and reformulation of political interests that aim to limit, oversee or prevent teaching about the violent past or indeed of acknowledging the atrocities of the recent conflict at all. In order to make these arguments, the article draws upon qualitative research conducted in Peru by the author over a six-month period in 2008.
Conflict and the CVR in Peru
Internal armed conflict started in Peru in 1980 as the country began a shaky transition to democracy after twelve years of military rule. The Shining Path (Sendero Lumi-noso206) declared war against the Peruvian state and launched a revolution aimed at overthrowing the state and imposing a communist regime by burning voting posts in a rural district of Ayacucho Department (CVR, 2004; Theidon, 2004). The conflict that would last two decades began slowly; the newly installed government of Fernando Belaunde did not mount a strong or coordinated response to the Shining Path's early actions and the Maoist group was not considered a serious threat. However, Shining Path's presence grew in communities in the rural Departments that it targeted, where state presence was limited and Shining Path was able to assume control and implement its violent 'popular justice' (Theidon, 2004). As the armed forces did begin to respond to the increasing attacks and violence of Shining Path and, to a lesser degree of the MRTA (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru), in the early-1980s, they did so indiscriminately, committing grave human rights violations against civilians and Shining Path militants alike, particularly in the rural highlands of the country where Shining Path based its activities (CVR, 2004; Theidon, 2004). Military bases were established in Shining Path strongholds that were declared 'emergency zones' in 1983 and, in some areas, would remain for the next fifteen years (CVR, 2004).
The conflict between Shining Path and state forces endured the entire presidency of Fernando Belaunde and that of Alan Garcia who followed him. Garcia, who is again President of Peru as of June 2006, governed from 1985 to 1990 and led the country into severe economic crisis. Garcias term was characterized by massive inflation, rising poverty levels, corruption, Peru's isolation from the international financial community and heightened levels of violence in the fight against Shining Path 'terrorism2' particularly demonstrated in the prison massacres of 1986. By this time, the conflict was no longer contained to the largely rural, Andean departments in which it had started and had begun to take on a national dimension (CVR, 2004). By the close of the 1980s, Shining Path had increased its violent attacks under a 'popular war' strategy increasingly targeted at the nation's capital, Lima.
Garcias government was followed by that of Alberto Fujimori who first won Peru's 1990 elections and then won a second term in 1995. Fujimori maintained an aggressive military strategy against the subversives. In a 1992 'self-coup' (autogolpe) that suspended the constitution and dissolved Congress he introduced anti-terrorist legislation that disregarded due process and increased military powers in emergency zones. In 1992 a police special investigations unit apprehended the leader of Shining Path, Abimael Guzman, and other high-level members of the group, largely disabling the organization. Nonetheless, Fujimori maintained an aggressive anti-subversive military campaign and continued to pass legislation that disregarded human rights, including a 1995 amnesty law. His increasing control of the media enabled his government to continue to wield the 'terrorist threat' in the face of potential protest against the increasing corruption and impunity of the Fujimori regime (CVR, 2004). Soon after being elected to a third term in a corrupt and unconstitutional election in 2000, a scandal demonstrated the depth of the Fujimori's government's corruption and caused Fujimori to flee the country, sending his resignation by fax in November, 20003.
Only in 2001 in the interim government of Valetin Paniagua was political space opened for the discussion and eventual creation of a truth commission (Laplante and Theidon, 2007). The CVR legislated for under the transitional government began its work under the newly elected government of Alejandro Toledo, a relatively new arrival to Peru's political scene with no links to the twenty-year conflict. The CVR's mandate called on it to: analyse the conditions and causes of conflict; clarify crimes and human rights violations, identify responsibility where possible; make proposals for reparations and the restoration of victims' dignity; outline recommendations for institutional reforms; and develop a plan for monitoring its recommendations (Decreto Supremo N.065-2001 PCM, 2001). It investigated the full twenty-year period from 1980-2000 over the course of two years (2001-2003). The CVR took testimony from more than 17,000 people, held fourteen public hearings - including one 'political violence and the University community' and one on 'political violence and the educational community' - and produced a nine volume final report (Laplante and Theidon, 2007; CVR, 2003a). The CVR's final report revealed that 69,280 people were killed over the course of the conflict (CVR, 2004). The figure vastly surpassed earlier estimates and came as a surprise to many in the nation's capital and in the country's middle and upper classes. Indeed, as the CVR described, the conflict was one that affected particular regions and social sectors of Peru, while others were able to remain insulated from its ravages.
In a strongly centralized country, the distance of power and of the centres of decision making allowed that the 'problem of violence' - crucial and quotidian for hundreds of thousands of Peruvians - remained relegated among the public and private priorities of the country for many years. CVR, 2004, p. 19
Most of those who lost their lives Peru's conflict came from its most poor localities; 85% of victims came from the predominantly poor departments of the country's Andean and jungle regions (Ayacucho, Apurimac, Huanuco, Huancavelica, Junin and San Martin). The vast majority of victims lived in rural areas. 75% of victims spoke Quecha or another indigenous language as their mother tongue - a figure made all the more stark considering that according to a 1993 census, only one fifth of Peruvians have an indigenous mother tongue (CVR, 2004). 68% of victims did not have a secondary school education (ibid.).
The CVR found that Shining Path was responsible for 54% of deaths and disappearances; state forces4 were responsible for 37% (CVR, 2004). In its analysis of the conflict and its causes, the truth commission found that the "immediate and decisive cause" of the conflict was Shining Path's decision to undertake a 'popular war' against the Peruvian state (CVR, 2004, p. 333). However, it also identified a number of historical and material factors that enabled and explain the depth of atrocities committed over twenty years. Throughout these pages of the CVR's final report a "the multiple inequalities that spread across the country" are described (ibid., p. 337). The CVR describes a nation in which regional, socio-economic, ethnic, linguistic and rural/urban inequalities are maintained by institutional indifference, social exclusion, and powerful prejudice to the extent that twenty years of violence can devastate certain communities while leaving others virtually unmarked.
The educational sector's role in maintaining these inequalities does not go unnoticed by the CVR. The truth commission described education as a 'beachhead' for the Shining Path, who "sought to instrumentalize educational institutions" as sites for recruitment and ideological training (CVR, 2003b, p. 136). The CVR points out that the long-standing tradition of authoritarian rote learning in Peru meshed well with Shining Path's dogmatism, facilitating their easy entry to some the nation's classrooms. Since Shining Path held influence in the national teachers union and recruited from its ranks, it was able to deploy teachers - especially to rural schools - in order to transmit Shining Path ideology, gain community support and recruit young people. The CVR also found that the dismal quality of state education offered to poor students (particularly in rural areas) and Peruvian society's inability to respond to the educational aspirations of youth from marginalized backgrounds ensured that education played a role in fostering conflict in Peru (CVR, 2004).
Shining Path's success with recruiting some teachers, university professors and students led to a harsh state response against education from the armed forces - military bases were established on campuses and university students were massacred on two occasions (ibid.). The CVR assigns serious responsibility to the state for its neglect of education, for intimidating and stigmatizing entire communities of teachers and students (primarily those from poor and marginalized backgrounds) and for allowing grave human rights against them simply for their status as such (ibid.).
The CVR's recommendations were principally directed towards rectifying the historical conditions that had allowed space for the 'problem of violence'. Among these recommendations were several addressed towards the educational sector. These aimed to improve educational equality -particularly in long-neglected rural schools- to democratize educational processes and make them relevant for diverse populations, to transform authoritarian pedagogical and management style, and to introduce content that respects differences and prevents violence (CVR, 2004, p.417). The CVR sought to reform the "simplistic visions and distortions of Peruvian history" within the national curriculum and stated that "[m]odifications of the content of the programmes of history study and the humanities are particularly urgent" (CVR, 2003a, Vol. 5, p. 135).
National curriculum since the CVR
Like the CVR's recommendations as a whole, most of those directed towards the educational sector have not been systematically acted upon by government (Lerner Febres, 2008)5. Although not in direct response to the CVR, the national curriculum has been entirely reformed since Peru's conflict. The 2006 National Curriculum Design (Diseno National Curicular, DCN6) replaced a curriculum that was generally agreed to be outdated and didactic and that had been slated for overhaul since at least 1993 (Rivero, 2007). The DCN was one result of a wide educational consultation undertaken over several years in the early 2000s; it reconfigured the earlier memoristic curriculum in favour of one oriented around a series of skills, learning outcomes, competencies and capacities (Ministerio de Education, Republica del Peru, 2006). History is a not a subject of its own right within the DCN, marking a serious departure from the earlier curriculum in which the nation's history was repeated through idealization of its various conquests, battles and military generals. While posters of military heroes still decorate the classrooms of most state schools, history is now taught at the secondary level within a 'social sciences' subject that also concentrates on politics, geography and citizenship education.
Within the social sciences syllabus for the final (fifth) year of secondary school, Peru's recent conflict is raised for the first time in the DCN. It comes as a part of lessons on 'the second half of the twentieth century: Peru and the world.' (ibid., p.191). Here a bullet on a list that also includes 'the cold war,'' the international politics of the United States,' and 'processes of decolonialization,' reads: 'subversive movements and peace processes in Peru' (ibid., p. 191). Later under the 'citizenship' component of the same syllabus appears: 'violence and internal conflict in contemporary Peru. Truth and justice' (ibid., p. 192). These syllabus bullet points exist independently of any explicit Ministry of Education policy on teaching about the violent past or, indeed, any form of support (training or otherwise) for teachers on how to do so. Aside from these bullets, Peru's Ministry of Education lacks an explicit statement that endorses the need to teach about recent conflict within Peru's national curriculum.
The advent of the new DCN led to the production of many new, nationally approved textbooks. Textbooks in Peru are created through a tender process, by which publishers bid to produce textbooks based on the Ministry of Education syllabi for each year and subject. A Colombian publishing house, Editorial Norma, won the tender for the social science textbook for secondary year five and was therefore mandated by the above described bullet points to produce content related to Peru's conflict of the 1980s and 1990s. A Peruvian historian was contracted to develop sections relating to Peru's recent past, including those that addressed the conflict, which he based on the CVR's final report ('Libros: Historia e histeria', 2008). The Editorial Norma textbooks were distributed to schools in mid-2007 with little fanfare. Hardly any mention was made of them until August 2008 when sensational headlines ran across newspapers for weeks.
'Apology for terrorism in our secondary schools'?
The controversy sparked when a Congresswoman from Peru's ruling APRA party, Mercedes Cabanillas, -herself an ex-Minister of Education from current President Alan Garcias earlier (1985-1990) administration- denounced the final year social science textbooks on national television. Cabanillas alleged that the textbooks contained an 'apology for terrorism,' presented 'ideological contraband,' and were 'insulting to the armed forces' ('Textos escolares con supuesta apologia al terrorismo causan malestar en Peru, 2008). The controversy that ensued was by far the most covered educational issue in the last several decades, dozens of articles were published in Peru's newspapers between August and October 2008, and the textbook was regularly discussed on television and radio.
The various actors from the Ministry of Education who responded to Cabanillas' denouncement did not refer to the few bullet points that mention Peru's recent conflict within the national curriculum guidelines. Rather than defending or justifying the textbook content, Ministry officials tended to either assure the public that the Ministry would review the book or to deny personal responsibility for its content. At no point during the controversy did the Ministry of Education issue a statement supporting the idea of teaching about Peru's recent conflict within the national curriculum nor did it explicitiy defend the manner by which it had chosen to do so in the Editorial Norma textbook. Indeed, as the media controversy burgeoned, actors outside the Ministry were the ones who defended the textbook and they did so by insisting that its content was based on the final report of the CVR. Debate then shifted to be as much about CVR legitimacy as it was about educational content and policymaking.
Indeed, undermining the CVR may have been part of the Congresswoman's intentions. Her initial cry of apology for terrorism' was conveniently delivered in the same week as CVR actors were publicly celebrating the five-year anniversary of the presentation of the CVR's final report. As Theidon (forthcoming) notes, certain political actors, including APRA members, have often used the phrase apology for terrorism' to describe the work of CVR. The five-year anniversary was perhaps an apt moment for APRA to again attempt to delegitimize the CVR. Since the CVR does attribute responsibility for particular human rights violations to Garcias earlier administration, it is unsurprising that the current Garcia government is not keen to respond to CVR recommendations or to draw attention to its findings. On this occasion, therefore, national curriculum became the avenue for a broader anti-CVR agenda that APRA is keen to promote in order to maintain distance between the present administration and Garcias previous disastrous five years in government. Cabanillas used what Theidon (forthcoming) argues is a common APRA strategy - undermining potentially challenging initiatives by linking them with terrorism. Theidon shows how "implying that a person or a group had something to do with Sendero [Shining Path] has been used to justify the use of violence against them, both in the past and the present" (ibid.). In this case, Cabanillas' denouncement intended not only to discredit the CVR, but also to derail the entry of the CVR's version of conflict into curriculum, thus conveniently excluding any discussion of the recent conflict from the national narrative.
The Congresswoman's denouncement also, arguably, aimed to effect internal Ministry of Education politics. Cabanillas placed the blame for the inflammatory textbooks on the Vice-Minister of Pedagogy within the Ministry of Education and called for his resignation due to his "unacceptable failure" ('Textos escolares con supuesta apologia al terrorismo causan malestar en Peru, 2008). Importantly, this Vice-Minister is a well-recognized educational specialist without clear political ties to any party, in his role since the transitional government of 2001. Many analysts of the educational sector read Cabanillas' denouncement as a move to destabilize the Ministry of Education, remove progressive elements, and, according to some, position herself as a possible future minister (ibid.) Others argued that Cabanillas aimed to deflect attention from more pressing educational issues (the full adoption of the National Educational Plan that resulted from the same large scale consultation as the DCN, for instance) that APRA does not support ('Historia e histeria, 2008).
Many Peruvian commentators were inflamed by Cabanillas' call that the textbooks be reviewed by a committee made up of officials from the Ministry of the Interior and the National Police force's Anti-Terrorism Division (Dircote). One commentator argued that "this is historical revisionism, whereby recent history must be first chewed by the police and later taught (Bustamente, as quoted in 'Historia e histeria', 2008). For many, the denouncement offered evidence of the desire of "official and conservative sectors of the state" to "rewrite history in accordance with their taste and their interests" (ibid.). The Ministry of Educations response, however, did not echo these complaints and instead continued to focus on defending the Vice-Minister's job and securing a review committee that included educational and pedagogical specialists and members of the National Education Committee.
Keeping in mind the political elements behind the denouncement, it is important to explore the actual content of the textbook that so offended Mercedes Cabanillas. Called into question were about a dozen pages within the 262-page textbook. According to the Congresswoman, these pages described the conflict through a pro-Shining Path lens, disrespected the armed forces and presented factual error. She was particularly upset with a passage in which subversive groups were explained to be "fighting for a better country" ('Historia e histeria, 2008). The textbook includes mention of Garcias first government, briefly outlining the economic crisis it stimulated as well as the military repression of terrorism under Garcia, including the 1986 Fronton prison massacre. The text is balanced, however, with the mention that Garcia established the special intelligence force within the police that eventually captured the leader of Shining Path in 1992. As one commentator noted, "...the text can be taken as unfriendly towards APRA, but the information provided does not lie" (ibid.).
'Two fires' and the textbook: Translating the CVR's version
What, then, does the information provided in the text do? What Version of the CVR's version has been translated (by a Colombian publisher) into the textbooks distributed to Peru's senior secondary students? The explanation of conflict that emerges from the textbook is akin to the 'narrowing of possibilities' that Elizabeth Oglesby (2007, p. 91) observes in educational resources produced by non-governmental organizations in Guatemala. The resources aim to introduce children -independently from the national curriculum, as they are not approved for use in it- to the civil war in the country, which killed over 200,000 people, 93% of whom were killed by government military or state sponsored paramilitary (Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999). Oglesby notes that rather than engage in the specific and complex stories that characterised most Guatemalans' experiences of that country's lengthy armed conflict, materials tended to present conflict as either "limited to two opposing armed groups or as so broad to be meaningless" (2007, p. 91). For Oglesby, in explaining conflict as either a discrete struggle between two distinct and bounded entities or as a generalized 'culture of violence,' the materials obscured the politics, agency and decision-making processes that characterized the conflict and that members of armed groups, sympathisers and civilians alike negotiated. The Peruvian textbook, like its Guatemalan counterparts, presents a conflict in which "[s]tate violence is recognized but ultimately reified, as its targets are drained of their identities as historical protagonists" (ibid, p. 91-2).
Oglesby argues further that workbooks produced based on the Guatemalan truth commission perpetrated a "powerful trope persisting to this day in Guatemala" namely that "Mayan Indians were passive victims of violence, caught between two armies or manipulated by outsiders" (ibid, p. 91). A similar sense of 'innocent victimhood' (Theidon, forthcoming) among rural communities and indigenous populations most affected by violence during Peru's conflict does come through in the CVR final report and certainly in the version of it that filters into the Editorial Norma textbook. In Guatemala, Oglesby argues that the resistance and political actions of the groups that tended to be victims of the country's conflict have been written out of the of versions that recall it. In Peru, Kimberly Theidons work explores the various ways in which rural, indigenous people negotiated, tolerated, collaborated with and resisted the daily presence of either or both of Shining Path and the armed forces have also been reduced to either participation in auto-defence committees or victimhood in CVR narratives (Theidon, forthcoming; 2004).
Thus, the CVR relies, at least to a degree, on the common popular discourse that often emerges from truth commissions of "two distinct homogenous groups, imagined as mutually exclusive: victims and perpetrators," (Theidon, forthcoming) represented in Latin America with entre dosfuegos (between two fires) image. Where in the CVR this is image is tempered with the consistent acknowledgement of the ways that inequality and social factors contributed towards conflict in Peru, in the Editorial Norma version the 'two fires' confrontation offers virtually the only explanation of conflict. An activity in the textbook places young people squarely within the dosfuegos logic, asking them to imagine themselves as an innocent peasant caught between the demands of a subversive organization and their country's armed forces (see Figure 1).
Seductive in its simplicity, the dosfuegos discourse becomes central to the version of the CVR filtered into the textbook: Shining Path vs. the state, with the helpless poor trapped in the middle. The presentation of conflict as a struggle between fanatical terrorists and a Peruvian armed forces operating under now non-existent and never-to-be-replicated conditions fails to create space for young people to engage with the varied experiences of conflict within their own families and communities.
Furthermore, in the textbook, one of the fuegos presented - the Peruvian military and police forces - becomes an understandable and necessary one guilty only of certain excesses. While state human rights violations are acknowledged, the textbook highlights the number of deaths caused by subversive groups. While the textbooks do describe the central government's lack of understanding and distance from the conflict, neither the structural and historical causes of violence, nor a look at Peru's deep and entrenched inequalities are presented. The CVRs insistence that all Peruvians bear a share of responsibility for the conflict of the 1980s and 1990s is not found within the pages of the Editorial Norma textbook.
Response to the rather narrow version of the CVR's version presented within the textbooks, however, was never an aspect of the 'the textbook controversy'. The Peruvian historian who had been contracted to produce parts of the book assured the public that, where the textbook referred to Peru's recent conflict, the content was based entirely upon the work of the CVR. He explained that:
The parts of the book that deal with the theme of violence are based on the Final Report of the CVR, an official document. There are sections that mention human rights abuses because this happened. ('Libros: Historia e histeria, 2008)
The former CVR President also joined the debate, stating that:
Our work was official, supported by the government of then-President Alejandro
Toledo, therefore the CVR is a state source.
('Consultan si hay apologia al teror en texto escolar', 2008)
Relying on the official' nature of the CVR to justify the Editorial Norma content, instead of overcoming political contestation around post-conflict history curriculum as some have hoped it might instead opened space for political attempts to discredit the CVR. Cabanillas responded by drawing parallels between human rights and CVR actors and terrorists and by stating that the CVR's final figures on the conflict's death toll remain unconfirmed. Here the issue of truth commission legitimacy and longevity as government changes is illustrated in educational terms, which of course have educational consequences. In this case the consequences of a reliance on the CVR (albeit on a narrowed version of it) as the only source for educational content about the recent conflict, along with the lack of articulated conviction within the Ministry of Education to teach about the conflict, enable not just a political opportunity to undermine the CVR but also to undermine the entire educational project of teaching about the recent conflict.
The 'official version' and national curriculum post-conflict
The textbook controversy related herein offers an important glimpse into the complexities of post-conflict educational reform in Peru. The controversy shone a light on the murky and politicized terrain that must contextualize any attempt to understand the degree to which Peru's conflict is (or is not), acknowledged, narrated and learned about. The Editorial Norma controversy enabled a familiar Garcia government approach to dealing with the CVR, namely to attempt to delegitimize it. The Caba-nillas denouncement allowed APRA to make a political connection between educational content about the recent conflict and a 'rekindling of terrorism' in order to try to put a halt to, or at least reign in, re-write and control learning about the recent past. APRA's desire to the spare the armed forces from insult is underpinned by a clear interest to discredit the truth commission along with its still outstanding imperatives (recommendations, reparations and prosecutions). These, in addition to demanding commitment to action from the current administration, might also turn the spotlight back on the crimes of Garcias first term. For an already unpopular government - Gar-cia's approval rating was around 20% at the time of the textbook controversy (Reuters, 2008) - a look backwards, no matter how necessary for reconciliation, is politically undesirable.
The Commission that eventually evaluated the Editorial Norma textbooks found them to be free from 'apology for terrorism' and 'ideological contraband' and did not recommend their recall from Peruvian public schools. While this limited the impact of Cabanillas' denouncement, it likely did little to quell the political intentions behind it.
The idea of teaching about recent conflict within the national curriculum has not been appealing to or prioritised by post-conflict administrations in Peru. The textbook controversy did not spark the development of educational policy around teaching about the recent conflict in Peru, nor did it spark calls for such an initiative within the Ministry of Education. That there was no strong policy rationale upon which to depend in order to counter or overrule Cabanillas' denouncement enabled it to gain force. Without such a policy justification the Ministry of Education, instead of defending the need to explore the realities of conflict with younger generations, responded to Cabanillas' denouncements by trying to skirt the blame for the supposedly inflammatory nature of its textbooks. Indeed, in the Peruvian context where educational policies are certainly not lacking (Balarin, 2008) the policy silence around teaching about the recent conflict is a telling one. It is illuminative of broader politics of reconciliation in the country, namely of the hesitancy to engage in a reconciliation that may challenge pre-conflict structures of inequality.
The discomfort with how (and whether) to narrate conflict (and its actors) in national curriculum extends well beyond educational policymakers within the Ministry of Education, deep into other sectors of the state - Congress, and the military, for instance - who have objected strongly not just to CVR content in the curriculum but more generally to the idea of teaching about the recent violent past. This unease certainly demonstrates a continuity of actors and interests within the Peruvian state over the conflict / post-conflict period. However, it also points to intense political difficulty around a full acknowledgement of state responsibility for human rights violations; an act that would, arguably, extend beyond the formal acceptance of the CVR final report to include such things as acknowledgement within national narratives, such as national curriculum.
The controversy explored here illuminates several subtleties and complications of the seemingly straightforward logic of including truth commission versions in national curriculum. Firstly, it highlights that without an explicit policy of post-conflict educational reform -of which curriculum might be only one part- political priorities can easily undermine and overrule educational ones. In the absence of explicit policymaking (or initiatives to support teachers) in the Ministry of Education, versions of the truth commissions version have become the de facto choice for educational content about the conflict7. This de facto choice has not allowed for the apolitical and straightforward entry of educational content about the recent conflict into classrooms, nor has it opened the reconciliatory opportunities that some have expected from linkages between truth commissions and national curriculum. Perhaps a sound and explicit educational policy that at once justified teaching about conflict and chooses a truth commission version consciously might enable a less dramatic and more meaningful consideration of recent conflict in the national curriculum.
Secondly, the fact that many of the pervasive and divisive stereotypes that the CVR identified as feeding into conflict in Peru are repeated in the narrowed 'two fires' version of the CVR that is presented in the textbook demonstrates that the existence of a truth commission version of conflict does not in itself imply the existence of an appropriate educational avenue. The ways in which truth commission reports are translated into educational curriculum open and close possibilities for young people to engage with conflict. As Oglesby writes:
[T]he important issue is not the suppression of the report per se, but the ways in which certain portions of the report are repeated while others are muted, and how particular framings of historical memory are actively produced through these processes. These framings, in turn, have clear implications for the kinds of social and political reform projects that may emerge from the truth commission experience. (Oglesby, 2007, p.79)
Finally, that even this particular and narrowed version of the 'official version' met with substantial political objections from sectors within the state, who attempted to influence, if not overrule Ministry of Education authority over national curriculum reinforces the political nature of the creation of historical narratives post-conflict. In this setting, education actors are likely to face serious challenge even when accompanied by well-developed policy aimed at addressing conflict legacies and post-conflict reform. The hysteria generated by textbook controversy explored here suggests that, truth commission version or not, the development of curriculum about recent conflict remains itself "a site of conflict" (Apple, 2004, p.xii).
References
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Buckland, R (2005) Reshaping the future: Education and postconflict reconstruction Washington D.C.: World Bank.
Cole, E.A. (2007) "Introduction: Reconciliation and history education" in Cole, E.A. (Ed.) Teaching the violent past: History education and reconciliation Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Cole, E.A. & Barsalou, J. (2006) Special report: Unite or divide? The challenges of teaching history in societies emerging from conflict Washington D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Special report 163.
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(Endnotes)
1 For the purposes of understanding the composition of the group of teachers, the apartheid classifications have been used. The Apartheid state divided and sub-divided South Africans into a number of racial groups: whites, blacks, coloureds (mixed race), Indians (Asiatics). Black South Africans were further divided into 'tribal' groups: Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho and so on. Coloured South Africans also has several sub-groups. An explanation of the numbers on the apartheid identity documents included: Cape Coloured, Malay, Other Coloured.... There was also a category of'Other Asian!
1 Note that this source is in draft form.
The full name of is the Communist Party of Peru for the Shining Path of José Carlos Ma-riategui (El Partido Comunista Peruano por el Sendero Luminoso de José Carols Mariategui). Shining Path was established in 1970 when it broke from Peru's Community Party (Partido Comunista Bandera Roja).
2 The term 'terrorism is popularly used in Peru to refer to the twenty-year period of internal armed conflict and members of Shining Path and other violent subversive groups are popularly known as 'terrorists'.
3 Fujimori has since faced trials in Peru for human rights abuses, embezzlement and corruption; he has been found guilty in each trial and is currently serving a lengthy prison term.
4 Including the armed forces, the police, 'auto-defence committees' formed by communities and supported by the state, and paramilitary groups (CVR, 2004, p. 19).
5 See Paulson (2010) for a description of a CVR supported educational resource that remains unapproved for use in the national curriculum.
6 A new DCN was released in 2009. This article refers to the 2006 DCN since it was this curriculum that guided the 2007 textbook that generated the controversy that will be discussed here.
7 A CVR supported educational resource based on the final report also encountered political challenges in its implementation and was never approved for use in the national curriculum. See Paulson (2010) for further details.
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