Four Reasons to Understand "Impunity" in Peru

The article offers the study of a singular case rather than a conceptual approach to the problem. Although in Peru, as in other places, impunity is a corrosive factor in social life and a barrier to democratic coexistence, there are at least four reasons that make the issue particularly noteworthy. Crimes against human rights were not the work of a dictatorship later replaced by a democracy; they occurred within the very framework of democracy and wore it down; the horror was two-sided — Sendero Luminoso bore co-responsibility for what happened; the conflict ended after a coup d'état and through military means, and the protagonists of that process still govern the country; and finally, because of the special condition of the victims.