UN General Assembly
1985

It is no coincidence that terrorism has arisen in the most economically depressed zones of the country. It arose in what we have called the Andean trapezoid, whose population has been subjected from colonial times to exploitative bGdSism and to a rigid centralist system. Millions of Peruvians were left mired in a subworld of oppression. United by the same language, mainly Quechua, united by the same culture - the Andean - and united by the same system of agricultural production, these Peruvians were neglected and injured by a state that never represented them. Ayacucho, the region where terrorism initiated its activities, is in that Andean trapezoid. In Ayacucho, out of every thousand births, over 270 die before the age of one, whereas the average in Latin America is 73 per thousand. In Ayacucho, 74 per cent of the population is illiterate. In some places only one out of every hundred houses has water and only five out of every hundred has electricity.