The historical Context
The demographic situation
Perù, with 24.6 million inhabitants has been experiencing a growing urbanization that transforms cities into the center of attraction for the poorest populations from rural areas, who search for a home in the urban suburbs by occupying unused land through mass illegal “invasions”. The Peruvian incidence of family living below the level of extreme poverty is manifested differently in urban (4.6%) and rural (36.1%) populations (INEI 2002). In terms of health indicators such as maternal mortality, Perù has the second-highest rate in the Americas after Haiti and one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the world.
The economic crisis and Fujimori's election
Fujimori was elected president of Perù in 1990 in the context of collapse of Perù traditional parties' and a spiraling economic crisis. During the earliest years of his government, Fujimori re-inserted the Peruvian economy into the international financial community and re-negotiated debt servicing. However, the decline of inflation did not improve the standard of living of minorities. In 1992, Fujimori suspended the constitution, closed congress, and began to rule by decree – an increasing authoritarianism that was called dictablanda (soft-dictatorship). The strong economic grown during 1993-1995 and the capture of the most important leaders of Sendero Luminoso (Shining path) in 1992, configured a discourse of progress and stability supported by the media, Congress, Supreme Court, and many other institutions under Fujimori’s control. In 1995, Fujimori won a major victory with 64.6% of the vote popular support that “legitimized” his authoritarian regimen, and he granted amnesty to military personnel involved in human rights abuses (UBC,2004).
The Sterilization Campaign
In terms of reproduction, the
earliest Fujimori government discourse was framed in a “progressive” umbrella never seen before in the Peruvian society. Appearing at a United Nations conference on women in Beijing 1995,
Fujimori vigorously defended women’s access to information and the provision of contraceptive methods, and even gender equity and women’s reproductive rights. Fujimori emphasized sexual education
and family planning as tools to fight against poverty and for social injustice.
In this sense, an apparently favorable environment for sexual and reproductive health and even a positive window for sexual
and reproductive rights was part of the middle 1990s in Perù. However, at the base of the Fujimori regime discourse was the explicit association between reproduction and poverty as a “vicious
circle poverty-unwanted children”. Fujimori argued in national and international speeches that Perù had to reduce the family size in order to eliminate poverty, in this sense; the population
control was synonymous with progress and modernization. This was the social and political context in which the sterilization campaign was designed and executed in Peru, explaining in part the
difficulties and obstacles that human rights institutions confronted when they discovered and denounced the first cases of forced sterilizations.
This website is edited by:
Alessia Turi Denisa Cosnita Francesca Russo Martina Caradonna Natascia Bettoni