Jhon Enciso Arias, 18, went to see the protest and returned home dead. The family still does not understand how the Police and the Army were able to shoot at the people who were 400 meters from the confrontation, in a high area and without any participation in the mobilization on Monday, December 12.
“He went to look. He died with clean hands. He was not aggressive ”, tries to explain Janet Enciso, his older sister, who still cannot believe that her brother had lost her life in such a cruel and unexpected way.
“Right now I am completely devastated”, describes her emotional state.
Jhon Enciso Arias was born on July 28, 2005 at the Andahuaylas Regional Hospital. He was studying in his fourth year of high school at the Gregorio Martinelli school, in the Talavera district, twenty minutes from the city of Andahuaylas.
He was the youngest of five brothers, but the one with the most projection in the future. He had planned with his family that he would apply to the National Police, to later save money and study Medicine at the university. He wanted to dedicate himself to saving lives.
On Monday, December 12, Jhon Enciso had lunch at home. At around 1:30 in the afternoon, his brother Noé told his brother-in-law, Waldo Cárdenas, to go and look at the mobilization that was taking place on El Ejército avenue. Before leaving, Jhon Enciso decided to accompany them.
They went up to the Colonial Bridge, located near the confrontation zone. In the place, Jhon told his brother-in-law to climb the Huayhuaca hill because the dispute was becoming more and more heated.
“Upstairs we arrived at three in the afternoon. The protesters and the Police were there in lawsuit. Noah returned home and I stayed with John. Then he told me that we better go up the hill because it was strong below. It was already 4:30 in the afternoon. We were more or less 400 meters from the confrontation. Then we heard sounds, we couldn’t tell if they were bullets or rockets. We were looking towards the fair. There was the PNP and the Army”, narrates Waldo, Jhon Enciso’s brother-in-law.
According to Waldo Cárdenas, the members of the Police and the Army began to shoot, from the roof of a three-story house, at the people who were looking at the top of the Huayhuaca hill, in the center of Andahuaylas.
There are videos that show how the bullets raise dust when they hit the hill and people begin to throw themselves to the ground to avoid the impact. Waldo Cárdenas remembers that he tried to keep himself safe while he moved bent over. Jhon Enciso was behind. At that moment, he heard that behind him a person began to cry and say that there was a dead person. When looking for his brother-in-law, he found it on the floor. A projectile had hit his shoulder and then entered his neck.
“He was behind me. We did not know how to differentiate what was being shot at at that moment. My brother-in-law Jhon did not bend down well and fell [una bala]. They have given him a direct shot ”, he sentences.
According to the death certificate, the cause of death was a perforating wound from a firearm projectile (PAF). The family claims the autopsy to initiate legal action, but the document does not arrive.
death on the lookout
On December 12, Wilfredo Lizarme Barbosa, 18, was on his way to the house of his friend Beckham Quispe, who had died the day before in the protest. But he could not arrive because the confrontation had already taken the main road. Seeing that, he decided to climb the Huayhuaca hill to protect himself. However, hours later, a bullet allegedly fired by the Police would take his life.
Wilfredo Lizarme was born in the town of Ccacce, an hour from Andahuaylas. He studied elementary school in his community, but for secondary school his parents enrolled him in the San Francisco boarding school, located in the province of Abancay. He was preparing to study Nursing at a university in Ayacucho. He was the third of nine siblings.
Antonio Lizarme, his father, is a farmer who goes out to work on the farms every day to feed his family. He remembers that his son Wilfredo Lizarme looked for any job on weekends to get some money. His mother, Isidora Barboza Rojas, remembered him this way: “He was more concerned with his studies, he did not like to go out to parties, he was calm and a believer.”
Wilfredo Lizarme, like Jhon Enciso, died on the Huayhuaca hill, while he was observing the confrontation on El Ejército avenue, near the Colonial bridge. He was not a protester.
Cerilo Lizarme, his uncle, was on the hill at the time Wilfredo received a deadly projectile, but they were not together because the police began shooting and they did not meet.
“He called me and I told him that I was in Huayhuaca, and I told him that there was a lot of shooting. I even sent him my location. He met one of his little sisters, so he didn’t get to where he was. A neighbor told me that there were two dead people downstairs. At that time, I called my nephew and he no longer answered me. Then another neighbor told me that he was my nephew. From there they took him to the hospital, but on the way he died, ”says Cerilo Lizarme.
The victim’s father, Antonio Lizarme, says that he found out at approximately 5:30 in the afternoon through a call from his brother.
“We are not terrorists. We are humble people. We want justice”, says Antonio Lizarme.
another unexplained death
The bullet that killed 16-year-old Roberto Medina Llantoherhuay is still in his body. The family decided to take the body from the Chincheros hospital before they performed the autopsy because the ambulance was going to take hours to reach the place and the sadness was overwhelming.
Roberto Medina was born in the Chincheros hospital, and was the eldest of six children. He was in his fourth year of high school at the school in the town of Casabamba, located an hour and a half on foot from the center of Chincheros.
As part of a family that was dedicated to the cultivation of potatoes, corn and wheat, and because he was the older brother, Roberto Medina was one more worker.
On the morning of December 12, Ángel Medina had told his son Roberto Medina that he would attend a demonstration in the Plaza de Armas in Chincheros, Apurímac province, an hour and a half from Andahuaylas by vehicle.
However, Ángel Medina did not know that his son, together with his schoolmates, had positioned himself behind the community members who were marching towards the plaza. He just spotted it arriving at the concentration point.
“When we returned, we saw that a larger group was going down towards the square. In that course the shooting begins and the explosion of tear gas bombs. So, I decided to look for my son. He couldn’t find it. After a while, I hear that they say that a person has died. I ask one of those who were running and they give me details of the person, then I realize it was him. I found his body 400 meters from the police station, in an area that is narrow. He received a projectile in the chest, ”recalls the father.
Nobody explains anything to him. No one can explain the loss of a 16-year-old son from a bullet. And even if they tell him, nothing will bring Roberto’s life back.
