Testimonies of Pain and Courage
Doris Caqui de Capcha
I am the mother of four children. My husband's name was Teófilo Rímac Capcha. He was a great union leader, and a teacher.
On 23 June, 1986, the military raided my house and grabbed my husband. They took him to the military base, I never saw him again.
At that point, I began to search, to ask for help to find out where my husband was, I feared for his life. On 27 June I received news that my husband had been killed...
The Secretary General of Centromin, asked me to call his house and told me: "They have killed your husband and you must seek justice. They brutally tortured him, they put him in a sack and kicked him around like a football, his jaw and his ribs were broken, they shoved the machine gun in his mouth and the broom through his rectum, and he couldn't bear it all, but despite this, before he died he gave me a message for you. He said tell Doris, my wife, to take care of my children, to make Ivan into a great man. They are killing me and I have done nothing wrong..."
After the disappearance of Teófilo, I slept close to my children for two years... I was arrested on three occasions. They hit me and they threatened me so I would keep my mouth shut about my husband's situation. But I needed to find him...
In the end, in 1991, soldiers raided my house looking for me... I managed to get away disguised as a peasant. We didn't have a house in Lima, the few family members that we had avoided us as if we had the plague. I didn't have a job. I am a teacher. So we wandered the streets, sometimes we had food and sometimes we went without. I finally succeeded in finding work, thanks to the efforts made by my friends in the teachers union.
Teofilo Rimac Capcha, was a leader of a workers' political party, FOCEP. On June 23rd, 1986, army troops raided his house and took him, submitting him to torture in the hope he would incriminate himself. He died from the torture. The whereabouts of his remains is unknown.
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| Reviewed July 31, 2009 |  |
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