After Guzmhn proposed a
peace agreement with the
government, Shining Path
split into two factions. Both
seek to resolve the same
problem: how to keep the
organization alive and
relevant after suffering
numerous defeats.
By declaring the start of a “pro- longed popular war” in 1980, Abimael Guzmin, the leader of the Communist Party of Peru, known as Shining Path, plunged Peru into a brutal cycle of violence. For the next 13 years, Shining Path was the lead actor in the country’s unfolding drama. In the fall of 1993, one year after his arrest, Guzmdn brought this cycle of violence to an end when he offered to negotiate a peace agreement with the Fujimori govern- ment. His peace proposal, which split Shining Path into two factions, opened up a new, more muted phase of violence in Peru. Guzmdn’s original script was premised on a double hypothesis: that A soldier patrol reads, “Long liv Peru’s state-led capitalism would disin-
tegrate, and that democratic institutions in place since
1980 would collapse. Any political project based on
these two pillars, he argued, was destined to fail. The
only option was to leap outside the system, announce
its impending collapse, recruit the millions of margin-
alized Peruvians, educate them with dynamite, deni-
grate and execute conciliators, create power vacuums, and slowly fill them with Shining Path’s popular com-
mittees. The final episode would take place in Lima–
the headquarters of the reactionaries-which would fall
exhausted beneath a portrait of Guzmin painted on a
red background.
Some of Guzmdn’s prophecies had a grain of truth to
them. Peru’s so-called bureaucratic capitalism did col-
lapse under the weight of hyper-inflation and
Fujimori’s neoliberal reforms. Fujimori’s autogolpe
dealt the final blow to Peru’s fledgling democracy in
1992. Since then, all the political parties have either
drowned completely or are barely holding their heads
above water.
Guzmin’s predictions were, however, mistaken on a
number of other counts. These errors were decisive in
the ultimate failure of his strategy for taking power. In
particular, Guzmin underestimated the resilience of the
survival mechanisms that the Peruvian people have
developed over decades, and the faith in progress that
underscores their Sisyphean efforts. He failed to appre-
ciate the true dimensions of this age-old game of resis-
tance and adaptation, of skepticism and expectations, and of simultaneous rejection and acceptance of the
rules and the predominant institutions.
The idea of radical rupture is profoundly alien to
Peruvians. Shining Path sought to implant it through
VOL XXX, No 1 JuLY/AUG 1996
Carlos Reyna Izaguirre is a sociologist and journalist who has
written extensively on political violence for the Lima bi-monthly
Quehacer. He is a researcher at the Lima-based Center for the
Study and Promotion of Development (DESCO).
Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.
37REPORT ON PERU
the use of terror. They killed hundreds of campesinos
for bettering themselves as traders and sellers, for serv-
ing as state officials, for voting in elections, and for
being mayors or grassroots leaders opposed to the
armed struggle. They tried to boycott elections, devel-
opment projects, and the markets where campesinos
sold their products. They wanted to turn every protest
march into a general “armed strike.” They tried to
impose the fiction of their own authorities and popular
committees. Shining Path had some success, but it was
precarious. In the end, they invited military repression
and intervention in the areas where they organized.
In this way, the spiral of terror grew from both sides.
Shining Path’s
insurrection
became a
revolution of
campesinos against
campesinos-
a popular war
against the people.
But the pragmatism of the
campesinos eventually
led them to forge an
alliance with the army,
since it had both more
power and the representa-
tion of the state. Despite
the military’s record of
brutality, tens of thou-
sands of campesinos
began forming, under
military tutelage, civil-
defense patrols to fight
off Shining Path.
Shining Path’s insurrec-
tion thus became a revo-
lution of campesinos
against campesinos–a
popular war against the
people. Shining Path had most appeal among social
groups located on the periphery of productive activity:
students, teachers, unemployed young people from the
shantytowns. With this membership, Shining Path devel-
oped more as a sect than as a movement with a popular
base of support. This lack of consistent social support
would prove to have dire consequences for the Party.
Between 1989 and 1992, Shining Path stepped up its
armed activities in Lima, badly shaking the govern-
ment’s confidence. During this same period, after sev-
eral years of striking out blindly against the population,
the state began to reformulate its counterinsurgency
strategies. Even though the police and the military did
not coordinate their efforts-indeed, there was a great
deal of rivalry between the two institutions-these
shifts hastened Shining Path’s demise. Through
stepped-up intelligence efforts, the police were able to
arrest a number of key intermediate-level leaders,
weakening Shining Path’s internal organization. By the
time Fujimori and the military announced the auto-
golpe in 1992, the Special Intelligence Group (GEIN),
a small elite police unit, had already uncovered a trail
of clues that would eventually lead them to Guzmdn.
The cycle of political violence begun in 1980 came to
an end during the brief period framed by two watershed
events: Guzmdn’s arrest in September, 1992, and the
declaration by Shining Path leaders still at large of their
opposition to Guzmdn’s peace proposal in February,
1994. “It is a norm of the Communist movement that
Party leadership cannot be exercised from prison:’ said
the dissident faction in direct allusion to Guzmin. The
play’s final scene is the division of Shining Path into
Guzm6n’s pro-peace faction, and the faction that con-
tinues to wage war.
oth factions are trying to resolve the same prob-
lem: how to keep Shining Path alive and relevant
after the many defeats the Party has suffered. For
Guzm6n, saving the Party requires halting all sabotage
and guerrilla activities and engaging in unarmed politi-
cal activities for several years. Those who oppose him,
led by Oscar Ramfrez Durand (“Comrade Feliciano”),
believe the Party’s only salvation lies in continuing its
armed activities, though with less intensity than before,
and emphasizing the reconstruction of its grassroots
cells via the classic ant-like work of its clandestine mil-
itants.
Despite their opposing prescriptions for action, both
sides perceive that Shining Path has entered a new
phase of its existence. Guzmin has even said so explic-
itly in his new manifestos. Feliciano and his comrades,
by reducing their activity and prioritizing underground
political activity, recognize implicitly that times have
changed. Aware that Shining Path has lost the leading
role that it held in the early 1990s, both groups share
the common goal of remaining in the wings, like under-
studies, in anticipation of better times.
It is unlikely that Shining Path will disappear from
Peru’s political stage any time soon. But given the
reduced size of both factions, the violence will be low-
key and will take place mainly in parts of Peru that are
of little political or economic importance, such as shan-
tytowns in Lima and towns in the jungle or Andean
highlands.
Shining Path is no longer proclaiming-to audiences
in Peru and the rest of the world-the existence of their
popular committees or their impending overthrow of
the state. Rather, they are hoping to exercise a combi-
nation of political hegemony and terror at the local
level. Occasionally, they will carry out a spectacular act
of sabotage or ambush a military patrol. These activities
will not endanger the stability of the state or even cause
foreign investors to leave Peru in search of safer pas-
tures. The principal aim of such activities is to remind
everyone of their continued presence on the political
stage. Shining Path poses few risks to Peru’s stability in
the short term, but the risks may grow as time marches
on.
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