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Peru Students
Like the labor unions, the student movement has seen
its rise
and fall in Peru, and its fate was also inextricably
linked to
that of the SL. Compared with Peru's other social welfare
indicators, Peru had a relatively high rate of literacy
(80
percent), owing in large part to the strong emphasis that
both
Belaúnde regimes placed on education. The numbers of
students
enrolled in universities increased dramatically in the
1960s,
and, consequently, so did their level of organization.
Critics
had justifiably contended that the emphasis on education
was at
the expense of other key social welfare expenditures, such
as
health
(see Health and Well-Being
, ch. 2).
Students had a strong tradition of political
organization in
Peru. For example, APRA began as a student and workers
union.
Student leaders, both of APRA and of the left, also played
an
important role in the protests against the military regime
in the
late 1970s. Congruent with the growth in relative strength
of the
Marxist left in politics was an increase in their presence
in
student organizations. In early 1991, there was a host of
university student organizations, most allied with
different
factions of the left or with APRA. Some organizations were
also
allied with the SL or MRTA. Student supporters of the
"new"
right, such as the Liberty Movement, had also emerged,
although
they were by far in the minority. The increase in student
organization had occurred in conjunction with the curbing
of
financing for universities and the shrinking of economic
opportunities for university graduates, which had resulted
in a
radicalization of the university community in general.
Although a
few prestigious private universities continued to
guarantee their
students top degrees and professional opportunities, the
quality
of the education attained by large numbers of students at
state
universities was by no means universal and was often quite
poor.
Thus, many universities increasingly had become havens for
frustration
(see Universities
, ch. 2).
The extreme manifestation of this phenomenon was the
birth
and growth of the SL in the University of Huamanga
(Universidad
de Huamanga) in Ayacucho in the 1970s. Abimáel Guzmán
Reynoso, a
professor at the university and eventually director of
personnel,
was the founder and leader of the SL. The SL virtually
controlled
the university for several years, and students were
indoctrinated
in the SL philosophy. The university trained students,
mainly
from the Ayacucho area, primarily in education; but a
degree from
Huamanga was considered inferior to the Lima universities,
and
students had few opportunities other than returning to
their
hometowns to teach. As jobs for graduates were few and far
between, becoming an active militant in the SL provided an
opportunity of sorts
(see Internal Threats
, ch. 5).
An analogous phenomenon occurred in most of the Lima
universities in the 1980s. Poorly funded and staffed,
universities had far more students than they could
adequately
train. Employment opportunities had virtually disappeared,
and
university graduates often ended up driving taxis. The
oldest
university in the Americas, the state-funded San Marcos
University, had become the center of Peru's student
radicalism.
SL graffiti covered the walls; police raids on the
university
yielded large caches of weapons and ammunition, as well as
arrests. Professors who openly sympathized with the SL
were the
norm. In 1989 student elections, members of the student
organization that supported the SL won in first place and
controlled facilities such as the cafeteria.
Like union members, university students often were
confronted
with a dire predicament. They were the focus of SL
organizational
efforts, and at the same time their economic opportunities
had
virtually disappeared. Peaceful organizational efforts to
improve
their position had little potential in the current
context, yet
violent efforts were inextricably linked to the SL.
Radicalism
was in theory an appealing alternative, but in reality the
ultraviolent form in which it manifested itself in the SL
was
hardly an alternative. Unfortunately, finding a job was
also less
and less a realistic alternative.
Data as of September 1992
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