The effects of the economic crisis and of adjustment policies on the already miserable quality of life for the overwhelming majority of peruvians must be added to the mix. The cold and terrible statistics indicate that more than half of all peruvians live in extreme poverty. It is difficult to imagine a more dramatic and complex picture-one that abundantly exceeds even the circles in Dante´s Inferno.

As if the combination of these calamities were not enough, there is another component crucial in explaining the deterioration of the situation in Peru and the dark clouds gathering in its future: political violence. This violence is so acute and extensive that it should be characterized as an internal conflict or war, with the logical militarization of certain institutions and behaviors and, as “Peru under fire” demonstrates, the violation of human rights. What has taken place in Peru in recent years is described and analyzed in this book by Americas Watch.

This book and my own experience present questions that I would like to raise. First, why have some many atrocities taken place in a country that in recent years have been under constitutional rule, without any interruption to the spiral of violence and abuse? Second, if solutions exist to this situation, what are they? I do not know if a complete answer to either questions is possible, and it is certainly far more difficult to answer the second.