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Peru Shining Path and Its Impact
The social history of the 1960s and 1970s is background
for
the emergence of the disturbing Shining Path (Sendero
Luminoso--
SL) movement. Its many violent actions have been directed
against
locally elected municipal officials and anyone designated
as a
gamonal in the departments of Ayacucho,
Huancavelica,
Apurímac, Junín, Huánuco, and portions of Ancash and Cusco
departments, as well as some other areas designated as
emergency
zones where government control was deeply compromised. The
Maoist-oriented SL opposed Lima as the metropolis that
usurps
resources from the rest of the nation. Like most past
revolutionary movements (as opposed to peasant revolts)
acting on
behalf of the poor, the SL leadership has consisted of
disgruntled and angry intellectuals, mestizos, and whites,
apparently from provincial backgrounds. Many adherents
have been
recruited from university and high school ranks, where
radical
politicization has been a part of student culture since
the late
nineteenth century. Others have come from the cadres of
embittered migrant youths living in urban lower-class
surroundings, disaffected and frustrated school teachers,
and the
legions of alienated peasants in aggrieved highland
provinces in
Huancavelica, Ayacucho, and adjacent areas.
Peru's socioeconomic and political disarray has taken
on its
present pattern after four decades of extravagant
demographic
change, a truncated land reform that never received
effective
funding or ancillary support as needed in education, and
incessant promises of development, jobs, and progress
without
fulfillment. The SL has sought to eliminate the
perpetrators of
past error to establish a new order of its own. The SL's
vengeful
approach appeared attractive to many, coming at a time
when the
migration pathway to social change appeared blocked, the
ability
to progress by this method stymied by the economic crisis,
and
rural development was at an all-time low ebb.
The immediate impact of the terror-inspiring violence
of SL
actions and the correspondingly symmetrical responses of
the
Peruvian Arm (Ejército Peruano--EP) has had a devastating
effect
on rural and urban life, public institutions, and
agricultural
production, especially in the emergency zone department of
Ayacucho. Since the SL's first brutal attack on the
defenseless
people of Chuschi, its actions and the violent reactions
of the
police and army have produced chaos throughout the central
highlands and deep problems in Lima.
From 1980 to 1990, an estimated 200,000 persons were
driven
from their homes, with about 18,000 people killed, mostly
in the
department of Ayacucho and neighboring areas. In five
provinces
in Ayacucho, the resident population dropped by
two-thirds, and
many villages were virtual ghost towns. This migration
went to
Lima, Ica, and Huancayo, where disoriented peasants were
offered
little assistance and sometimes were attacked by the
police as
suspected Senderistas (SL members). Many communities have
responded to SL attacks by organizing and fighting back.
Towns or
villages in La Libertad and Cajamarca departments, in
particular,
greatly amplified the system of rondas campesinas.
Elsewhere, the army organized local militias and patrols
to
combat and ferret out SL cadres. Unfortunately, in
addition to
providing for defense all of these actions left room for
abuses,
and there were numerous cases of personal vendettas taking
place
that had little to do with the task.
There was no question that the SL's revolutionary
terrorism
was producing major disruptions and profound changes in
Peruvian
society. Surveys indicated that 71 percent of Peruvians
agreed
that poverty, social injustice, and the economic crisis
were
together the root cause of the SL's revolution, and that
68
percent identified the SL as the nation's most serious
problem.
Drug trafficking was ranked a distant second by only 11
percent
of respondents. At least one conclusion, however, seemed
abundantly clear: Peruvians had to address their
longstanding and
deeply interrelated ills of poverty, inequity, and
ethnoracial
discrimination if they hoped to take control of the
situation.
Data as of September 1992
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