The Santa Massacre was a

massacre A massacre is an event of killing people who are not engaged in hostilities or are defenseless. It is generally used to describe a targeted killing of civilians Glossary of French words and expressions in English#En masse, en masse by an armed ...

of nine campesinos carried out by

Grupo Colina The (), formally the Lima Detachment (), was a military anti-communist death squad created in Peru that was active from October 1991 until November 1992, during the administration of president Alberto Fujimori. The group committed several human ...

in the Santa Province of the

Ancash Region Ancash (; ) is a department and region in western Peru. It is bordered by the departments of La Libertad on the north, Huánuco and Pasco on the east, Lima on the south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. Its capital is the city of Huaraz, ...

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

. The massacre occurred on May 2, 1992. After carrying out the massacre, members of Grupo Colina, a

death squad A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings, massacres, or enforced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in w ...

operating out of the

Army of Peru The Peruvian Army (, abbreviated EP) is the branch of the Peruvian Armed Forces tasked with safeguarding the independence, sovereignty and integrity of national territory on land through military force. Additional missions include assistance in ...

, painted pro-

Shining Path The Shining Path (, SL), self-named the Communist Party of Peru (, abbr. PCP), is a far-left political party and guerrilla group in Peru, following Marxism–Leninism–Maoism and Gonzalo Thought. Academics often refer to the group as the ...

graffiti as a

false flag A false flag operation is an act committed with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on another party. The term "false flag" originated in the 16th century as an expression meaning an intentional misrep ...

operation. All of the members of Grupo Colina have since been jailed. The victims of the massacre were finally exhumed and identified in August 2011 and reburied in late November of the same year with the

Peruvian government The Republic of Peru is a unitary state with a multi-party semi-presidential system. The current government was established by the 1993 Constitution of Peru. The government is composed of three branches, being executive, judicial, and legisla ...

formally apologizing to the relatives of the victims in name of the state.

Preparations

Between 1990 and 1992, the Santa Province was considered a strategic area, with both the Shining Path and the MRTA vying for hegemony there.http://www.cverdad.org.pe/ifinal/pdf/TOMO%20VII/Casos%20Ilustrativos-UIE/2.53.%20CAMPESINOS%20DEL%20SANTA.pdf The area had been declared a red zone. On April 30, 1992, Major Santiago Martín Rivas summoned the heads of the operational subgroups of the Colina Detachment, at the "request of the general commander icolás de Bari Hermoza Ríos" to a meeting at the apartment of the Fung brothers, owners of the San Dionisio Mill in Miraflores. One of the Fungs, Jorge, was a friend of Juan Bosco Hermoza Ríos, Nicolás's brother. At the meeting, the Fungs indicated that they had information on the Shining Path members operating in the Santa area, especially those who participated in the March 29, 1992, attack, where 30 hikers placed explosives in the administrative offices of the San Dionisio Mill, burned machines and 50 bales of ginned cotton; Furthermore, as a result of this attack, a fire broke out that destroyed the mill. At the meeting, it was arranged that two collaborators would meet with the members of the Colina Detachment in Casma to identify those involved in the act. After the meeting, Agent Sosa Saavedra commented that the operation was "a private job because Mr. Fung was a friend of the Commanding General." On May 1, 18 members of the Colina Group left Lima for Santa aboard several vehicles, carrying long and short-range firearms. At the same time, on May 1, a group of Shining Path members raided Coishco, Santa, blocking the Pan-American Highway North, destroying a vehicle from the Carolina company and taking over the tunnel where they painted. After the raid, the hikers, after leaving several marines wounded, fled to the top of the Coishco hills while another group fled through La Huaca.

Event

At 8:00 p.m., members of the Colina Group arrived in Casma. The vehicles were parked near the Plaza de Armas. Martín Rivas, along with Carlos Pichilingüe, met with the two collaborators at a bar where they drank beer. After 10:00 p.m., they reappeared with the collaborators, got into the vehicles, and Martín Rivas ordered them to move forward. Before reaching the Javier Heraud neighborhood, the groups were divided up. In the early morning of May 2, 1992, Colina members, dressed in military uniforms and wearing balaclavas (except for one whose face was uncovered), entered the villages of La Huaca, Javier Heraud, and San Carlos, located in Santa, and forced nine peasants linked to labor and trade union movements into their trucks. The victims were not Fung workers. The collection of the victims lasted nearly two hours, and the victims were selected based on information provided by informants gathered in Casma. After completing the collection, the paramilitaries painted pro-Senderista graffiti, as part of a false flag operation. After collecting the victims, they headed to the Chao Valley. At that location, they stopped and got out of the vehicles. The victims were divided into two groups, moving in opposite directions, while a member of the Colina Group followed each group. The informants, for their part, remained in the vehicles. The victims were shot with a silencer. The bodies were dumped in three mass graves located in Huaca Corral (La Libertad), at km 468 of the Panamericana Norte.

Aftermath

The victims were exhumed and identified in August 2011 and reburied on November 13 of the same year. The Peruvian government issued a formal apology to the victims' families on behalf of the state. According to subsequent investigations, the massacre was allegedly instigated by private interests through General Nicolás Hermoza. The sentence that convicted three members of the Colina Group for the massacre highlighted that the victims were not related to the Shining Path.

Victims

The murdered campesinos were: * Carlos Alberto Barrientos Velásquez * Roberto Barrientos Velásquez * Denis Atilio Castillo Chávez * Federico Coquis Velásquez * Gilmer Ramiro León Velásquez * Pedro Pablo López González * Jesús Manfredo Noriega Ríos * Carlos Martín Tarazona More * Jorge Luis Tarazona More

References

External links