My mother arrived to pick me up from my friend\u2019s house on a Saturday afternoon.\u00a0 As she briefly exchanged some words with my friend\u2019s mom at the front door, I heard a woman\u2019s voice screaming words difficult to understand.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t clear right away from where she was approaching.\u00a0 My mom and I took a few steps back from the door and saw an elderly woman running down the middle of the road from the direction of the main street.\u00a0 She stopped a few feet from us and exclaimed with the little breath she still had in her, \u201cthere\u2019s a bomb; at the circus; they\u2019re trying; to diffuse it.\u201d<\/p>\n
My mother grabbed me by the arm and we dashed to the car. \u00a0My grandpa was sitting on the driver\u2019s seat.\u00a0 She said, \u201cgo dad, go, go, go!\u201d\u00a0 As we sped away, I saw my friend\u2019s red Volkswagen bug back out from the garage, he and his mother had jumped into their car to get away from the potential explosion.<\/p>\n
The Russian Circus had set its tent on one of the few remaining open areas of Benavides Avenue in the district of Santiago de Surco in Lima.\u00a0 It was immediately behind my friend\u2019s house.\u00a0 Had that bomb exploded, it would have been the closest I would have been to one of the countless bombings which happened during my childhood.<\/p>\n
This was not an uncommon experience.\u00a0 I remember the booms and the shaking like an earthquake, followed usually by the loss of electricity.\u00a0 Sometimes power returned after a few hours, but it could be days.\u00a0 Curfews, murders, and kidnappings.\u00a0 Welcome to Lima, Peru in the 80s and early 90s when the city was under attack from two significant terrorist groups.\u00a0 I was a child.<\/p>\n
After this particular experience, I remember my mother say, \u201chow can they target a circus where so many children would be killed?\u201d \u00a0One thing was bombing a bank, a television station, or the airport, a whole different story was the attack on a circus full of happy children.<\/p>\n
I remember the July 1992 bombing of Tarata Street in the heart of Lima\u2019s affluent Miraflores district.\u00a0 I recall watching the news as a ten-year-old \u2013 the scene of people dead blasted against the walls of their apartments, their clothes stuck on the walls like wet spaghetti intertwined with the guts of the dead.\u00a0 A few months after the blast, my mother, my sister, and I drove down the street to survey the burnt-out buildings before they were either demolished or retrofitted.<\/p>\n
By the mid 90s, the Peruvian government\u2019s response to terrorism proved effective.\u00a0 Years later however, Peru\u2019s president who oversaw the fight against terrorism was sentenced to life in prison due to his involvement in the execution of civilians.\u00a0 Fujimori, despite all the good he did for the country, now awaits his death in the high security prison he ordered built.\u00a0 When innocent civilians are killed, there must be consequences, regardless of who the perpetrator is.<\/p>\n
After the founder of the Shinning Path terrorist group was arrested in September 1992, I recall watching the news with my grandmother.\u00a0 A delegation from the United States had arrived to Lima, and the leader of the delegation spoke of the human rights of Abimael Guzman.\u00a0 Peruvians were ready to execute the man in public \u2013 he was responsible for the death of about 80,000.\u00a0 The United States stood as a beacon of virtue, defending the rights of every human person regardless of his or her background.<\/p>\n
Civilians die in every conflict, yet in today\u2019s modern world, there is a greater awareness that countries at war must do everything within their ability to avoid the targeting of civilians.\u00a0 Countries have a right to defend themselves, but do not have the right to kill civilians indiscriminately.\u00a0 Otherwise, we are no better than the Crusaders who fought against the Albigensians in Southern France in the thirteenth century, who massacred all and justified their actions saying, \u201cGod will know his own.\u201d<\/p>\n
Does a horrendous act of terrorism justify another act of terrorism?\u00a0 Can a wrong be made right with another wrong?\u00a0 It is impossible to remain indifferent to the suffering of millions of civilians whose lives are at stake?\u00a0 Do their lives have less value than the lives of others?\u00a0 Does their pain and suffering not cry up to heaven?<\/p>\n
As war continues in Israel and Gaza, these are the thoughts that run through my mind.\u00a0 The end goal does not justify the means by which one achieves it.\u00a0 I pray for all the civilians caught up in the middle of this war \u2013 the kidnapped, the dead, the ones who have lost family members and their material possessions.\u00a0 I pray that those in authority will find a path of harmony and mutual respect. \u00a0May they recognize the right for the other to exist, to live and to thrive.<\/p>\n
Picture from the Tarata attack on July 16th, 1992, in Miraflores, Lima, Peru (as I remember seeing it a few weeks after it happened)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My mother arrived to pick me up from my friend\u2019s house on a Saturday afternoon.\u00a0 As she briefly exchanged some words with my friend\u2019s mom at the front door, I heard a woman\u2019s voice screaming words difficult to understand.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t clear right away from where she was approaching.\u00a0 My mom and I took a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2533,"featured_media":7250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[205],"tags":[539,2210,47,116,2216,680],"class_list":["post-7247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","tag-bombings","tag-civilians","tag-death","tag-peru","tag-shinning-path","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"\n