The lone military commissioner on Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission qualified his signature on the commission's final report with a dissenting letter that stressed that Peru's soldiers had fulfilled their constitutional duties between 1980 and 2000. By this lieutenant general's telling, members of the armed forces had heroically risked their lives to protect citizens from Shining Path and Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru (MRTA) terrorists, and the military should not be blamed for the wrongs committed by a few errant soldiers. Historian Cynthia Milton examines these kinds of assertions in her book, exploring how Peru's armed forces have attempted to shape memories of Peru's 1980–2000 armed internal conflict.
Milton's welcome study considers how the military has used cultural efforts to narrate Peru's recent past in a way that emphasizes soldiers' heroism, honor, and sacrifices. Theirs is a casting that explicitly rejects the truth commission's conclusions that the armed forces perpetrated systematic...
