The School of Commandos, Body and Violence in pre and post-conflict Peru

• In Event: Government Response to Fight Violence and Crime in Latin America

Abstract

In the 1960s and 1970s, in the context of the Latin American Cold War, Latin American armies created units specially prepared to fight against insurgencies. These military schools emphasized very masculine notions about being a military man. Extreme severity of the physical tests and very low graduation rates were key characteristics of these training courses, to the extent that the officers who graduated from these programs became key trainers in the units in which they were assigned. This paper discusses Peru’s special operations program, the School of Commandos, created in 1961. It explores the influence that the school’s paradigms had in the Peruvian army’s behavior during the Internal Armed Conflict in Peru (1980-1993). At the core of the school’s institutional training was a selective use of violence against the human body. During the Peruvian war a type of masculinity which had been restricted only to a very small group of officers and non-commissioned officers, which focused on the overcoming of physical pain and suffering, became main-stream in the Peruvian army.

Author

• Lourdes C Hurtado, Franklin College