Mario Vargas Llosa: The Coverup Artist of the Uchuraccay Massacre

On January 26, 1983, eight journalists and an Andean guide were brutally massacred by peasants from the community of Uchuraccay (Ayacucho) who had been trained and directed by the Peruvian Navy. Following the massacre, an investigative commission was created, presided over by the writer Mario Vargas Llosa, today a Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. The investigative commission determined that the community members of Uchuraccay had believed the journalists were members of Shining Path, confusing their cameras with rifles, and that the massacre was the result of "cultural differences between the Quechua-speaking peasants and the journalists from an urban world," and that the "Armed Forces had no responsibility in the matter." "We are all guilty," said Vargas Llosa in his final conclusion.