Why is police violence invisible to many people? by Marco Avilés (Wayka [Spanish] - 1/24/2023)

Why is police violence invisible to many people? by Marco Avilés (Spanish)

In a live broadcast, a news cameraman manages to capture the exact moment in which a police officer hits and throws a detained woman to the ground, during the government intervention at San Marcos University.

The scene is brutal. But the most amazing thing about the clip is that, while this is happening, while the cameraman or camerawoman is trying to show that episode of violence, the host of the program is more concerned about the fence that everyone saw being knocked down by a police tank. And for this reason, from the set he asks the reporter on the street:

Has that fence been knocked down by the police or by students?

That small moment, apparently insignificant, contains an essential part of the climate in which we live in Peru. For almost six weeks now, the government's messages (amplified many times by its political allies on social networks and the media) have focused on reinforcing a key association: protester = terrorist. It does not matter why a person protests or how he does it, the protester is a terrorist who must be annulled even before he can start demonstrating and without the presence of prosecutors. The so-called "acts of vandalism" contribute efficiently with their spectacularism to solidify that idea. Whether real or fabricated, they are the "evidence" that the "terruqueo" needs.

The 'terruqueo'* messages are machine-gunned 24/7 by the government, congressmen, newspapers, newscasts, organically amplified by networks like WhatsApp, so that the social and ideological climate we breathe is one where, for many, the people who protesters are no longer people: they are enemies. Vandals or about to be. And, as enemies of the homeland, they deserve hatred and immediate punishment, in the very place where the events occurred, without investigation or judicial process involved. Everyday language and propaganda feed that common sense where "good citizens" face antisocial monsters.

So, if a police officer hits a "terrorist", she is not really hitting a human being, but the enemy. And we are facing violence -that of the State- that has become not only tolerable but also invisible, part of the landscape, and even desirable.

For this reason, a journalist who believes that the Police are actually intervening and saving us from terrorists housed at the University of San Marcos, no longer even has to make the unethical decision to hide police violence. It happens that, according to his logic, that violence that other people notice is not violence but pure police routine. Perhaps that is why the presenter does not "see" (or decides not to see) what the cameraman tries to show, the beating of a woman, and is interested in the state of the objects.

The "terruqueo" is a useful tool for an authoritarian and populist government, but it also has an immense social cost. The wounds and violence that "el terruqueo" cultivates are not erased just like that after the elections. In fact, the "terruqueo" is part of our endless post-war: although most of the actors of that moment have already disappeared from public life, active politicians are not willing to let the language of those years and their violence go away as well. as long as they are useful.

Marco Avilés writes in Choloblog

* Ed. note: The term 'terruqueo' is derived from the word terruco, or "terrorist" in English, a neologism which originated from individuals in Ayacucho describing Shining Path guerrillas during the internal conflict in Peru. Historian Carlos Aguire said that the -uco replaced the ending of the word terrorista by Quechua speakers since they typically terminate words with -uco. Since the 1980s, the word terruco has been carelessly used by right-wing politicians in Peru to target left-wing, progressive, and indigenous groups, with this baseless attack being called a terruqueo.

Tags: #Peru #Protests #UNMSM #PNP #Violence #Terruqueo