Sybila

Santiago seems to be full of interesting cultural events in the open air - as well as al the amazing murals and graffiti making up "The Museum of Urban Art" there seem to be plenty free concerts and cinema, and at the moment a series of screenings of documentaries.

Last Thursday Nayarett, Angelica, Rocket, Panda, Kristina and I joined the crown in Parque Forestal to watch three fascinating Chilean documentaries:
1. Campamento Sol Naciente - Ignacio Aliaga (1972) about a community of women in Maipú who took possession of their land in order to take control of their lives and combat the extreme poverty they faced.
2. Cuentos Sobre El Futuro - Pachi Bustos (2012) following the lives of four youngsters living on the outskirts of Santiago, as they grow from teenagers into adults, an honest and gritty portrait of life in the city.
3. Sibila- Teresa Arredondo (2012).  The director's investigation into the story and person of her Aunt Sybila, who was accused of being a terrorist and jailed for 15 years for her involvement with the Peruvian revolutionary guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) in the 1980's.

Sybila Arredondo was a Chilean aristocrat who was married first to Chilean poet Jorge Tellier, then to Peruvian writer Jose María Arguedas.  After Arguedas' suicide Sybila continued to live in the mountainous regions of Peru, where she became involved with Sendero Luminoso who were a communist group formed in response to the severe poverty in Peru.  The civil war that was triggered between the Senderos and the government lasted a decade and caused many civilian deaths, and ultimately Sybila and other Senderos were accused of terrorism and imprisoned.  Sybila served her full 15 year sentence, which separated her from her two children, who Teresa also interviews a number of times in the documentary.

Read a review of Sibila in English here - interestingly even this article passes judgement, referring to Sibila's actions with Sendero Luminoso as "transgressions".

Sybila’s story is most interesting for the moral questions it provokes.  Through the documentary we get the sense that the niece is looking for an apology from her aunt, or at least an acknowledgment of the suffering that resulted from the actions of the Sendero Luminoso.   But Sybila remains adamant that the actions of the Sendero were necessary and justified, and that had they not fought against the regime of the 80’s far more people would have died from starvation and malnutrition than died as a result of the Civil War.   She refuses the term terrorist, saying that in the majority of countries it is legal to belong to a communist party, and that violence of the 80’s was an inevitable and unavoidable part of the process of war. – no war can be fought without deaths, and for her this war was necessary and justified.  

In their intense discussion Teresa repeatedly asks what about the victims but Sybila will not apologize on behalf of the dead, nor in respect to personal family issues, for the time lost with her own two children or other relations.  Rather she believes that it was better for her children to live the reality of their country’s plight rather than be shielded from it, and indeed her now fully-grown son spoke of the privilege of his unusual experiences as a child.  Sybila’s attitude comes across as being one of putting the quality of life and future of the wider human family first, above her own  “circle of only 7 or 20 people “ as she puts it.  I admire this conviction of hers which in many ways is self-sacrificing and far-seeing. 

Teresa, as Sybila’s niece still seems unsatisfied by her aunt’s stance at the end of the documentary, perhaps partly because she is still involved in her own process of understanding.  Indeed Teresa’s motivation for making the documentary was in order to find out more about her aunt’s story, particularly as within her childhood home there was silence about the subject throughout the 15 years of her aunt’s imprisonment.  Interestingly though, both of Sybila’s own children are at peace with their childhoods and the time lost with their mother, although both acknowledge that there were difficult feelings and when their mother was released at the end of her sentence there were deep talks when the family moved to France.

The overriding impression I was left with was that Sybila is someone for whom human rights are essential and a very true and raw (not fluffly) love for human beings motivated all her actions with the Senderos.  Throughout the first half of the documentary, being presented with the images of newspaper coverage of the arrests and the bomb materials found in the 80’s, I noticed myself leaning towards viewing Sybila as indeed a terrorist. However, in the second half when she comes onscreen and hearing her interpretation of the events, I was disappointed in myself for having been so readily influenced into thinking like that.  This was a concrete example of the power of the media to convince us that particular individuals are “terrorists”.  It was fascinating to learn that our Angelica from the residency had actually lived with Sybila in her home in France for 3 weeks, so knew her personally.  Angelica said Sybila was always as firm in her stance as she is in the documentary, and that her opinion is that the media coverage of the 80’s , being government controlled, was of course directly opposed to the Sendero’s, leaving Peruvians with a very biased opinion of their actions, whereas Sybila would see it as the Civil War brought about the change that they hoped for, and was therefore entirely justified.

It is a difficult subject though, as even a tiny amount of research online brought up stories of the Sendero Luminosa being responsible for rural massacres with machetes, killing women and children who were exactly the people they were supposed o be representing. Results of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report from 2003 apparently found that the Sendero Luminoso were responsible for 46% of the total 31.331 deaths and disappearances throughout the conflict.  A summary of the report by the Human Rights Watch apparently states that the Senderos killed half the victims, whereas the government were responsible for one third.  It also identified that 75% of those killed or disappeared spoke Quechua as their native language, a disproportionality high figure bearing in mind the 1993 census showed that only 20% of Peruvians speak Quechan or anther indigenous language as their native tongue.

There was even apparently objection to this report from previous Presidents of Peru who think it too biased in favour of the Senderos, accepting their status as “political parties”  when the US, the European Union and Canada all consider them a “terrorist organisation”.

Separate from the difficulties of the moral questions provoked by the organisation of the Sendero Luminoso,  remain the moral questions around the personal actions and choices of Sybila Arredondo.  I remain impressed by her individual choice to put the long term well-being of the wider community of all Peruvians first, beyond her own or even her own families comfort.  A difficult choice but one that leaves me warmed at her belief in the unity and equality of all human beings.