During the early hours of January 29, 1992, in Pativilca, a town in the province of Barranca, more than 170 kilometers north of Lima, several groups of hooded men broke into the houses of John Calderón Ríos, 18 years old, Toribio Ortiz Aponte , 25, Felandro Castillo Manrique, 38, Pedro Agüero Rivera (35), Ernesto Arias Velásquez (17) and César Rodríguez Esquivel.
They kidnapped them, tortured them, shot them to death and dumped their bodies in sugarcane fields.
In the surroundings they left a terrifying impression: “death to snitches.”
A Chinese businessman, who coveted land in the Caraqueño and San José annexes, accused the people who occupied these areas of being part of the Shining Path terrorist group, and asked for the “help” of the then head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces, Nicolás Hermoza Ríos.
That help consisted of kicking them, burning them with a blowtorch and then killing them with shots to the head.
According to the judicial file, the macabre operation was under the direction of Santiago Martín Rivas, who was in charge of the Colina paramilitary group and depended on the orders of Vladimiro Montesinos, Alberto Fujimori's presidential advisor.
This Monday, 22 years later, during the oral trial of the Pativilca case, in a virtual session, Montesinos took advantage of the legal figure of early conclusion and, with this, accepted his responsibility for the crimes of which he is accused: forced disappearance and homicide.
“Yes, I accept, Madam President,” he said briefly.
While this was happening, Fujimori, in a light blue shirt, was checking his cell phone.
The former president, prosecuted for the same case, informed the court that he will not accept the early conclusion and, therefore, the trial against him will continue.
The patriarch of the Fujimori clan was released from prison at the beginning of December due to a ruling by the Constitutional Court that contravenes a decision of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Although he has not given interviews and has maintained a low profile, his followers from the Fuerza Popular party, led by his daughter Keiko, have insisted that his release is “an act of humanity and justice.”
In that sense, the fact that his right-hand man, Montesinos, has accepted his guilt in a massacre does not leave him in a good position in his attempt to reinvent his image and disguise his legacy.
“Basically, the 'advisor' is finishing up legally and historically destroying the president,” summarizes political scientist José Alejandro Godoy.
It was a member of the Colina group who with his testimony incriminated Nicolás Hermoza Ríos, Vladimiro Montesinos and Alberto Fujimori.
This is the Second Division coach, Jorge Ortiz Mantas.
“In the Army, nothing is done without a superior order,” he said in a hearing in 2008. Lawyer Gloria Cano, from the Association for Human Rights (Aprodeh), which for decades has assumed the defense of the victims of Pativilca, among others. massacres whose responsibility has fallen on the Peruvian government of the 1990s, links Montesinos' confession with Fujimori's guilt.
“If she is accepting the terms of the accusation, then she is accepting participation in the development of the strategy.
That means that she directed it together with Fujimori, that the Colina detachment was created, all the terms of the accusation,” she told the Infobae portal.
For analysts, Montesinos' acceptance is not necessarily an act of repentance, but rather a strategy to avoid adding more years in prison.
His defense has requested that by availing himself of the early conclusion, his sentence be compurified, that is, that it be paid with the 22 and a half years that he has already spent in prison.
The prosecutor's request is for 25 years in prison.
This Wednesday morning the sentence will be handed down.
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