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By Root 1203 0

Two of the miners hired to dig the tunnels died, and the rest disappeared: their families have no idea what happened to them. Members of the security forces—trained in the United States at taxpayer expense, and wearing taxpayer-purchased flak jackets (one of their American instructors called the assault and subsequent massacre "money well spent")—prepared for an assault, and listened to the routine inside the compound through a pin-sized microphone smuggled in when a hostage requested a guitar (as well as microphones hidden in the chess set, and in other amenities brought in to help the hostages pass the time). The CIA helped Fujimori prepare the slaughter.

During or after the assault, all the MRTA members were summarily executed. Military microphones picked up the sounds of two of the guerrillas—sixteen-year-old girls—begging soldiers not to shoot. They were, of course, immediately murdered. Other rebels, including Nestor Cerpa, were shot at point-blank range in the forehead. At least one of the rebels was led away to be tortured before his murder. One of the soldiers who participated in the slaughter said, "The order was to leave no one alive. For us, the instruction was to leave no prisoners." Relatives who went to claim the bodies of the dead were beaten and arrested at a military hospital. Nestor Cerpas aunt was allowed to view the bodies. All but two had been cut into pieces and placed in plastic bags. She counted thirty bullet holes in her nephews head. The dismembered bodies of most of the rebels were scattered in unmarked graves, and some relatives who visited marked graves were arrested.

To stop the genocide and ecocide that characterizes—and has always characterized—our culture requires that we learn to fully internalize the implications of one very important fact: we and they—those who are destroying the world—are operating under two entirely different and utterly incompatible value systems. As Frankl said, there are those who are decent, and those who are indecent. We value life, and the living, and they value control and power. On the largest scale it really is that simple (on an individual scale it is much more complex—human rights and environmental organizations are rife with petty power struggles, and there probably exist at least a few in power who retain some level of decency). Time and again we show ourselves willing to die or to live to support ecological and economic justice and lanity, and time and again our enemies—the indecent ones, the destroyers—show themselves willing to lie and to kill to maintain control. Throughout the entire siege, members of the MRTA treated their captives with humanity and grace. In response they were lied to and betrayed. I know of no longterm activists who have not repeatedly experienced this same pattern of lies and betrayal, although for many of us in the more privileged sectors of the world, the full consequences of our enemies' behavior are yet to be brought home with such force and finality as is normally reserved for the colonies.

I have thought long and hard not only about the siege but about what we can learn from it. Isaac Velazco's words roll round and round inside my head: "When those in power lie, the only way to conduct a meaningful dialogue with them is to have in your hands a way to force them to be accountable. Even then you can only be sure they will remain true so long as you continue to hold them tightly in your hands." This statement, and the massacre, have many implications. The first is that, ultimately, negotiations are bound to fail. You cannot negotiate with someone who systematically lies to you. If you win your points during negotiation, the agreement will be broken. Indians have seen this, as have forest activists, toxics activists, nuclear activists, antiwar activists, and so on. This is not to say we shouldn't negotiate. But to expect to be dealt with fairly by those who have shown no scruples about lying and using naked force to take what they want is to engage in magical thinking. It is delusional. It is, to speak of this as we would