Uchuraccay: The Perpetual Mourning of the Press
Breathless, senseless: the Uchuraccay massacre and its subsequent politicization have been the worst tragedies in national journalism, without mercy. Every year, Javier Ascue — a leading journalist at El Comercio to this day and someone who could have been the ninth martyr — remembers December 29, 1982 for two opposing reasons. First, on that day he arrived in Ayacucho as a correspondent to cover an imminent invasion: Sendero announced it was going to take Huamanga, and General Clemente Noel was named political-military commander of the emergency zone in the criminally notorious barracks Los Cabitos. And second, that day was his birthday. Published on January 24, 2009.