Guilt, repentance and innocence: Lori Berenson and her baby might be going back to prison

Editorial By Rick Vecchio
Peruvian Times Editor ~

Lori Berenson could be going back to prison with her baby if a state prosecutor has her way.  The New Yorker, now 40 years old with a 14-month-old baby boy, was released in May after serving nearly 15 years of a 20-year sentence for collaborating with a Marxist guerrilla group.  But political forces threaten a short-lived liberty.

The appeal seeking to rescind Berenson’s parole filed by Prosecutor Edith Chamorro together with the public advocate against terrorism for the Interior Ministry was taken up last Wednesday by a three-judge panel.

This legal development occurred with hardly a mention in English language media.  But several Peruvian news outlets — right-wing daily newspaper Expreso in particular — have dedicated nearly daily coverage to Berenson’s release,  depicting her as unrepentant for her crimes and a continuing threat to Peruvian society.

Berenson and her family had hoped President Alan García would commute the remaining five years of her sentence, allowing her and her baby to return to the United States. The day of her release, Berenson sent a hand-written petition to the Pardons Commission, accepting her guilty verdict and asking to be allowed to leave the country with her son.

“I assume my criminal responsibility for terrorist collaboration,” she wrote in the May 28 letter. “I would also like to say that I very much regret the harm I have caused Peruvian society, and I ask forgiveness from people who have been affected by my actions or words.”

The day the letter was delivered, Cabinet Chief Javier Velásquez said that Peru’s executive would  examine whether to commute her sentence. A few days later, Justice Minister Victor Garcia recommended that President García grant the pardon to permit Berenson to be expelled from Peru in light of strong public opposition to her release.

But García’s administration has decided Berenson’s case is “not a priority.”

In the meantime, Berenson’s iconic image as a symbol of the political violence that plagued Peru is coming back in full force.  This comes ahead of next year’s presidential elections, replete with recriminations, finger pointing and defensive denials over who is responsible for letting the dangerous terrorist Berenson loose on Peruvian society.

Thus the political backdrop to Lori Berenson’s latest legal woes. But there is an element missing in the equation — her son. If the judges rule to put  Berenson back in prison for five more years, they will not be imposing sentence on her (Berenson has already been sentenced) but on her baby. His fate would be to either live in an overcrowded cell to the maximum age of 3 and then be deprived of his mother, or lose his mother now.

A former Massachusetts Institute of Technology student, Berenson was arrested on a public bus in downtown Lima on November 30, 1995, and charged with helping plan a thwarted takeover of Peru’s Congress. Berenson was sentenced to life by a secret military court for “treason against the fatherland,” but that conviction was vacated in 2000 and she was retried and convicted the following year by a civilian court.

There is no doubt that Lori Berenson collaborated with the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.  The Tupac Amaru rebels viewed her as an emissary and friend when she arrived in Peru in her twenties in 1994 after serving as a personal aide to a top leader of El Salvador’s Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).

She and Panamanian painter Pacífico Castrellón — a key prosecution witness against her — did rent the four- story house that the Tupac Amaru rebels used as their secret base to store a huge arsenal of weapons and house 20 guerrillas. Three Tupac Amaru guerrillas and one policeman died during the 11-hour shootout at that house.

Castrellón returned home to Panama last month after serving 11½ years in a Lima prison and three more years on conditional release.

Clearly Lori Berenson does not have Peruvian public sentiment on her side. She may never erase from the country’s collective  memory her Jan. 8, 1996, appearance before television cameras, when she made her now famous declaration in defense of the guerrilla group. With fists clenched at her sides, her face contorted in anger, she shouted: “There are no criminal terrorists in the MRTA. It is a revolutionary movement.”

In a recent national poll, 74 percent said they opposed her parole, and 73 percent said they did not believe she was repentant for her crimes. But asked if her sentence should be commuted and she should be allowed to go home, 50 percent said yes, 43 percent said no, and 7 percent offered no opinion.

Peruvians found it offensive when Berenson described herself as a political prisoner. But who can deny the mileage Peru’s political class has gotten, and continues to get, as she  is transformed into a latter day Peruvian Willy Horton?

Lori Berenson is not innocent, but who can deny that she has paid a significant debt to Peruvian society? Who can deny that her toddler, who was born in prison and took his first visit to a park and saw his first tree when he was eight months old, is innocent?

Lori Berenson and her baby pose no threat to Peruvian society. Don’t free Lori Berenson. Free Lori Berenson and her baby son.

Apoyo Opinión y Mercado national poll on Lori Berenson:

National poll conducted by Apoyo Opinión y Mercado S.A., published by Diario El Comercio on June 20, 2010. Poll based on interviews from June 16-18 with 1,200 people between the ages of 18 and 70. Margin of error +/-2.8 percentage points in provincial cities and +/-4.4 percentage points in Lima.

García administration should end offensive against British missionary

Editorial:

Where is the middle ground for the impoverished inhabitants of Peru’s Amazon region to stand up against the threats encroaching in on them? What is their best option for action in Peru’s fragile democracy? Who do they turn to?

Cocaine traffickers offer them a pittance, which they accept at the barrel of a gun, to cultivate coca. In the bargain, their land is decimated by erosion and their water poisoned with acetone, kerosene and sulfuric acid that leaches from clandestine maceration pits.

The administration of President Alan García, while impotent in its efforts to put a meaningful dent in Peru’s growing cocaine trade, opens the Amazon to unprecedented mining and oil exploration and drilling — eroding the land and poisoning the water with lead, cadmium and hundreds of barrels of raw crude dumped directly into the rivers. Read more…

Van der Sloot: Peruvian justice, public passion and the media’s responsibility

By Rick Vecchio
Peruvian Times Editor

The absence of one word left a gaping hole in our story yesterday about Joran Van der Sloot’s interrogation by Peruvian police — and we weren’t alone.

The word was “allegedly,” a somewhat technical, cumbersome term.

Who really ever utters “allegedly” in everyday conversation?  That is why so many editors deplore its use in news stories. Perhaps that could explain why it was absent from much of the mainstream media’s breaking coverage of the Van der Sloot case.

But unlike other abused and misused words in the journalistic lexicon, like “amid” and “mishap,” the judicious application of “allegedly” in news stories is vital. Read more…

Reader’s comment on Peru lawmaker’s reaction to Arizona’s illegal immigrant law

Dear Peruvian Times Readers,

It has come to our attention that the “Comment” form on our Web site is not working properly, and we are working to fix the problem as soon as possible. In the meantime, we received the following message from one of you concerning our story posted April 29, titled “Peru’s foreign relations commission to analyze controversial Arizona law, “ offering a heart-felt, alternative perspective.

The views expressed below by Mr. Rodriguez in no way reflect the editorial position of the Peruvian Times. Read more…

Where else besides Machu Picchu should Peru enlist the help of stars like Susan Sarandon?

By Rick Vecchio

Susan Sarandon added a big dose of Hollywood sparkle last week to the reopening ceremony of Peru’s crown jewel, Machu Picchu. Peru would be well served to apply such Tinsel Town treatment  to its other historic attractions.

Against the iconic backdrop of Inca Pachacuti’s 15th century citadel, the Academy Award winning actress posed with Andean children in traditional dress. The Huayna Picchu peek loomed in the distance. The photo-op was a unmitigated success, announcing to the world that Peru’s most popular tourist attraction was again open for business, two months after torrential rains and landslides wiped out train access to the mountaintop shrine.

A battalion of reporters and paparazzi managed to stay mostly on message, asking Sarandon repeatedly what she thought of Machu Picchu — as opposed to probing personal questions about her recent separation from Tim Robbins.

“I had no idea there were so many journalists at Machu Picchu,” joked Sarandon, who was flanked by a U.S. Embassy bodyguard and Peruvian Tourism Minister Martín Pérez. “Oh, (this is) just for me? I though it was like this all the time. So I guess that means maybe I’ll have to see Machu Picchu when you all go and then I’ll have a better idea of what it’s like.”

Inviting Sarandon was a brilliant how-to in “top-down promotion” for Peru’s tourism industry, wrote newspaper columnist Juan Paredes Castro in Sunday’s El Comercio. He posed the question: “How many Susan Sarandons does Peru need?” Read more…

Peruvian Times complaint to Agencia Andina

UPDATE to original post: Agencia Andina has added links on its posts back to our original stories. Peruvian Times appreciates the corrective action.

Lima, March 31, 2010

Laura Vásquez
English Website Editor
Andina Agencia Peruana de Noticias

Dear Ms. Vásquez,

Once again Agencia Andina’s English Website has blatantly plagiarized a Peruvian Times article for use on its English language news page. Read more…

Why to root against The Milk of Sorrow’s Oscar nomination

By Rick Vecchio

It was with bemused surprise that I saw Claudia Llosa’s “The Milk of Sorrow” nominated the other day in the category of Best Foreign Language Film for the 82nd Academy Awards. But the slow groan of disbelief didn’t really start rumbling in the back of my throat until the  Oscar nod was hailed by Peru’s government as a huge advance for the country’s image in the world.

“This nomination will bring Peruvian destinations into fashion and will be key to boosting tourism in Peru,” declared Peru’s minister of Foreign Trade and Tourism, Martin Pérez.

A remarkable statement, if you believe, as I do, that “The Milk of Sorrow” does for Peru and Peruvians what John Boorman’s “Deliverance” did for the Appalachians and the mountain people of Georgia. Read more…

Fujimori, Arana, massacres, impunity and immunity

By Paul Goulder ~

In April ex-President Fujimori was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison and the long fight for justice by relatives of those killed at Cantuta and Barrios Altos, and who had absolutely no connection with terrorism, have seen some belated and grim reward. It has been called “un hito jurídico mundial[i]” (an international legal milestone). Read more…

OPINION: State of emergency against Indigenous Amazon tribes

Editorial column from Monday’s Diario La Primera

~ By Roger Rumrill* ~

Dr. Alan Garcia Perez’s government has decreed, as of Saturday, May 9, a state of emergency in almost the entire Amazon territory, out there where the indigenous organizations are protesting with strikes, marches and even blockades of rivers and highways against a package of “perro del hortelano” laws that open the door for the transnationalization of Peru’s Amazonia. Read more…

OPINION: The Innocence of the Guilty

By José Luis Mejía
All politicians are guilty, or almost all of them. If they were judged by a court made up of good men (in the true sense of the word) –as the Spanish poet Antonio Machado would say—nine out of ten would land up, bones and crimes, in jail. Power corrupts and few go through the Government Palace without getting their hands dirty, with money or with blood, which is why they make laws with back doors, enact special rules and weave a legal web that guarantees their impunity. Read more…

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