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Peru The Military in the 1990s
The armed forces of Peru entered the 1990s with a
strong
institutional tradition, excellent training at both the
officer
and technician levels, and substantially renovated and
updated
equipment and matériel in each service. However, the
services
faced major challenges that would have seemed almost
inconceivable only a decade earlier when concerns revolved
primarily around how to effect an orderly transition back
to
civilian democratic rule and return to the barracks and
bases
after twelve years of military government.
The most significant of these challenges from the
standpoint
of the military as an institution was Peru's severe
economic
crisis, particularly the 1988-90 hyperinflation. The 1990
estimated defense budget of US$245 million was less than
half of
1989 estimated expenditures, which totaled US$544 million.
In
other words, defense expenditures in 1990 dropped from 1.6
percent of gross domestic product
(GDP--see Glossary),
which was US$34.7 billion in 1989 current dollars, to 0.7 percent of
1989 GDP. (This compared with 3.3 percent in 1969 and 5.7
percent in 1978.)
Such a dramatic drop in available resources meant sharp
cutbacks in every area of defense spending, from salaries
to maintenance. Officers complained of having only about
US$0.20 daily to feed each foot soldier in the field, soldiers who
were being paid less than US$10 a month in 1991. Some officers
and technical personnel resigned because of the financial
hardships (180 officers and 370 technicians between January 1 and
June 7, 1991, in the army alone and about 400 navy officers,
one-fifth of the entire active officer corps, from 1990 to mid-1991);
finally in mid-1991, both the army and navy temporarily halted
acceptance of resignations or early retirement. With salaries sharply
eroded to a fraction of their former levels as a result of the
inflation (US$192 a month for a general before tax and pension
deductions in July 1991, compared with US$910 for his Bolivian
counterpart) and the inability of the government to keep up with tax
collections (less than 4 percent of GNP in 1990) such
discouragement was not surprising. One Lima news magazine,
Sí, noted that the situation had gotten so bad by
1991 that a janitor at Peru's Central Reserve Bank (Banco
Central de Reservas--BCR, also known as Central Bank) earned twice
the monthly salary of a general. The government turned down
the military's 1991 request for US$279 million in an emergency
supplemental budget allocation, approving just US$75 million. One
disturbing indicator of the potentially dire consequences
of this pattern of underfunding was the armed forces' readiness
status, which measured the level of preparedness of the military
against an ideal level. In 1985 readiness status was determined to
be 75 percent; in July 1990, it was only 30 percent.
The other quite unanticipated and unwanted challenge
was that posed by the guerrillas. The SL timed the start of its
"peoples' war" to coincide with national elections in May 1980,
calculating correctly that neither the outgoing military regime nor
the incoming civilian government would be anxious to take it
on or even willing to recognize a problem. The circumstances of
returning to civilian rule and opening access to both
local and national government by multiple parties of the Marxist
left did not support the SL's own analysis at the time that
worsening conditions were conducive to guerrilla war. Nevertheless,
the SL's dogged pursuit of the peoples' war soon created
conditions favorable to its continuance. Sabotage and destruction of
infrastructure slowed economic growth and contributed to
individual hardship. Selective assassination paralyzed
many local governments and led to withdrawal of police, military, and
rural development personnel (Peruvian and foreign), particularly
in more remote rural areas.
Military responses, beginning late in December 1982 in
the region encompassing Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and
Andahuaylas, slowed the SL's progress but also displaced the SL to
other areas. The armed forces' detachments also intimidated many
of the citizens whom they were supposed to protect, with hundreds
of human rights violations recorded. Furthermore, over 500
military personnel at all levels and 1,000 police personnel lost
their lives between 1982 and 1990. Although the military's
response to the insurgent challenge--first against the SL and later
against the MRTA as well--often included important successes, the
guerrilla problem was much more widespread at the end of
the decade than it was at the beginning.
The economic crisis fed the flames of the insurgency in
at least four ways: it made daily existence much more
precarious for the civilian population and thereby increased its
susceptibility to the SL's revolutionary appeal; it reduced sharply the
resources available to the armed forces to combat the SL
at the very moment they were most needed; it made military
personnel more susceptible to corruption by drug traffickers; and it
severely limited the state's capacity to provide the
economic aid
for development programs designed to address popular
needs,
particularly in the economic, social, and geographical
periphery.
Given this situation, new economic resources from abroad
were
viewed as crucial to keep matters from deteriorating
further.
Peru successfully reinserted itself into the
international
financial community with a US$2.1-billion negotiated debtrefinancing package in September-October 1991, along with
several
hundred million dollars in economic assistance from a
support
group of developed countries, including the United States.
For
1992 the United States Congress approved a US$95-million
executive branch request, including US$30 million in
counternarcotics assistance. These resources were expected
to
help Peru achieve net economic growth in 1992 for the
first time
in five years. However, Fujimori's autogolpe of
April 5,
1992, resulted in the temporary suspension of most of the
funds,
including all but humanitarian and counternarcotics aid
from the
United States. This postponed by at least a year Peru's
domestic
economic recovery.
The substantial buildup and strengthening of the
military's
forces in the 1970s and 1980s gave it reserves from which
to draw
when forced to face both the economic and guerrilla
challenges.
However, much of the new capability of the FF.AA. was
designed
for more conventional purposes, such as border and ocean
defense,
and it was difficult if not impossible to adjust
sufficiently to
the insurgency problem. In 1992 most of the equipment and
over 80
percent of the military personnel remained positioned on
the
borders or at sea where they could do little to affect the
course
of the insurgency. Although the military had shifted more
personnel into conflicted areas by that May, more than
two-thirds
continued to be posted at border bases.
Data as of September 1992
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