"Poverty doesn't imply necessarily violence"
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“Poverty doesn’t imply necessarily violence” is the kind of antiseptic sentence politicians reach for when the ground under them is already shaking. Fujimori isn’t offering a sociological observation so much as a preemptive defense: if unrest is happening, don’t blame structural deprivation; blame the people who choose to riot, organize, or insurgently resist. The phrasing drains poverty of political consequence. It suggests that material hardship can be safely managed as an economic variable, not a detonator of legitimacy.
Coming from Fujimori, that move isn’t abstract. His presidency is inseparable from Peru’s brutal fight against Shining Path and MRTA, a conflict that fused rural poverty, state neglect, and terror into a national crisis. To say poverty doesn’t “necessarily” lead to violence is technically true, and the adverb is doing heavy lifting. It leaves room for compassionate policy in theory while keeping the state’s hands free in practice: repression can be justified as a response to “criminals,” not a symptom of failed governance.
The subtext is an argument about accountability. If poverty doesn’t cause violence, then counterinsurgency doesn’t need to be paired with redistribution, land reform, or institutional trust-building; it can be solved with policing, intelligence, and emergency powers. That aligns with the Fujimori-era logic of order first, rights later. The line also flatters the “responsible poor,” holding them up as proof that dissent is elective, even deviant. It’s a rhetorical firewall: separating suffering from anger so the state can address the former on its own timetable, while treating the latter as a security problem.
Coming from Fujimori, that move isn’t abstract. His presidency is inseparable from Peru’s brutal fight against Shining Path and MRTA, a conflict that fused rural poverty, state neglect, and terror into a national crisis. To say poverty doesn’t “necessarily” lead to violence is technically true, and the adverb is doing heavy lifting. It leaves room for compassionate policy in theory while keeping the state’s hands free in practice: repression can be justified as a response to “criminals,” not a symptom of failed governance.
The subtext is an argument about accountability. If poverty doesn’t cause violence, then counterinsurgency doesn’t need to be paired with redistribution, land reform, or institutional trust-building; it can be solved with policing, intelligence, and emergency powers. That aligns with the Fujimori-era logic of order first, rights later. The line also flatters the “responsible poor,” holding them up as proof that dissent is elective, even deviant. It’s a rhetorical firewall: separating suffering from anger so the state can address the former on its own timetable, while treating the latter as a security problem.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
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