This article examines the history and ideology of the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso). The rebels claim to embody a distinctively Peruvian Marxism. However, a close examination of the party betrays a conspicuous indifference to Peruvian culture and traditions. The distinctiveness of this largest and most diverse of the Andean nations disappears in the orthodoxy of a universal Marxism, in this respect placing the Shining Path within the long legacy of the imperial inscription of Latin American history into the preconceived categories and linear narratives of Western philosophy and science.

¹ Quoted inGorriti,Gustavo,Sendero: La historia de la guerra milenaria, vol.I (Lima,1990), pp.66–7Google Scholar. This and all subsequent translations from the Spanish are mine, unless otherwise noted.

² I have borrowed the first part of the title of this article from one of the best early articles on the Shining Path, byTaylor,Lewis,Maoism in the Andes: Sendero Luminoso and the Contemporary Guerrilla Movement in Peru, Centre for Latin American Studies, Working Paper no. 2 (Liverpool:Centre for Latin American Studies, University of Liverpool,1983)Google Scholar. I take some of the phrasing of this opening paragraph fromStarn,Orin, ‘New Literature on Peru's Sendero Luminoso’,Latin American Research Review, vol.27, no.2 (1992), p.212Google Scholar.

³ Arif Dirlik, ‘Mao Zedong and China's History’, in Arif Dirlik, Paul Healey, and Nick Knight, Critical Analysis of Mao Zedong Thought (New York, n.d.), p. 3.

⁴ Two of the best books on the Shining Path areDegregori,Carlos Iván,El surgimiento de Sendero Luminoso: Del movimiento por la gratitud de la enseñanza al inicio de la lucha armada (Lima,1990)Google Scholar and Gorriti,Sendero: Historia de la guerra milenaria, vol. 1. Both are forthcoming in English translation from the University of North Carolina Press. One of the most useful existing English sources on the Shining Path is a recent anthology edited byPalmer,David Scott,Shining Path of Peru (London,1992)Google Scholar. Other valuable recent sources arede Paz,Dennis Chávez,Juventud y Terrorismo (Lima,1989)Google Scholar;Degregori,Carlos Iván,Escobal,Javier, andMarticorena,Benjamín (eds.),Perú: El problema agrario en debate (Lima,1993)Google Scholar;Hinojosa,Iván, ‘Entre el poder y la ilusión: Pol Pot, Sendero y las Utopías campesinas’,Debate Agrario, no.15 (1992)Google Scholar;Kirk,Robin,Grabado en Piedra: Las mujeres de Sendero Luminoso(Lima,1993)Google Scholar; andPoole,Deborah andRénique,Gerardo,Peru: Time of Fear (London,1992)Google Scholar. The most comprehensive chronology and statistics on the war come fromDESCO,Violencia Política en el Perú (Lima,1989)Google Scholar.

⁵ I am influenced here by Cornell West's fine article, ‘The New Cultural Politics of Difference’, inFerguson,Russell et al. (eds.),Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures (New York,1990), pp.19–36Google Scholar.

⁶ I paraphrase fromCésar Vallejo's, ‘The Nine Monsters’ inHuman Poems, translated byEshelman,Clayton (New York,1968)Google Scholar.

⁷ An anthology edited byStern,Steve J.,Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th–20th Century (Madison,1987)Google Scholar offers a fine introduction to the history of resistance and rebellion in the Andean nations.Stern's,Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of the Spanish Conquest (Madison,1982)Google Scholar examines theOnqoy,Taki, or ‘Dancing Sickness’, movement, whileHusson's,PatrickDe la guerra a la rebelión: Huanta, Sigh XIX (Cuzco,1992)Google Scholar takes up the Iquichan wars in the 19th century.

⁸ The song is ‘Ofrenda’, or offering.

⁹ For more on the debate about the concept of ‘Andeanism’, seeStarn,Orin, ‘Missing the Revolution: Anthropologists and the War in Peru’,Cultural Anthropology, vol.6, no.1 (1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar;Mayer,Enrique, ‘Peru in Deep Trouble: Mario Vargas Llosa's “Inquest in the Andes” Reexamined’,Cultural Anthropology vol.6, no.4 (1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the special issue ofAllpanchis, no. 39 (1992); andStarn,Orin, ‘Rethinking the Politics of Anthropology: The Case of the Andes’,Cultural Anthropology, vol.35, no.1 (1994), pp.45–75Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Stern,Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest, p. 182.

¹¹ From theMapa de la Pobreza, Banco Central de Reserva Peruana (1981) cited inWebb,Richard andBaca,Graciela Fernández (eds.),Perú en Números (Lima,1991) p.303Google Scholar.

¹² One of the best introductions to the literature on rural rebellion remainsSkocpol,Theda, ‘What Makes Peasants Revolutionary?’,Comparative Politics, vol.14, no.3 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Quoted inLynch,Nicolás,Los jóvenes rojos de San Marcos: El radicalismo universitario en los años setenta (Lima,1990), p.64Google Scholar.

¹⁴ See Hinojosa, ‘Entre el poder y la ilusión’ for more on the influence of Maoism on Guzmán.

¹⁵ Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru,Interview with Chairman Gonzalo, p. 11.

¹⁶Guzmán,Abimael, ‘We are the Initiators’, quoted inStarn,Orin,Degregori,Carlos Iván, andKirk,Robin (eds.),The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham,1955) p.313Google Scholar.

¹⁷Morote,Osmán, ‘Lucha de clases en las zonas altas de Huanta (distrito de Santillana)’ Bachelor's thesis, Facultad de Antropología,Universidad Nacional San Cristóbal de Huamanga,Peru (1970)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ For a critical overview of the enterprise of ‘Senderology’ see Starn, New Literature on Peru's Sendero Luminoso’, as well as an astute, yet exaggerated, essay byPoole,Deborah andRénique,Gerardo, ‘The New Chroniclers of Peru: U.S. Scholars and their ‘Shining Path’ of Peasant Rebellion’,Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol.10, no.2 (1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ Carlos Iván Degregori, ‘Jóvenes y campesinos ante la violencia política’, unpublished manuscript, p. 3.

²⁰Galindo,Alberto Flores,Buscando un Inca (Lima,1987), p.395Google Scholar.

²¹ One example was the anthropologistAnsión,Juan, ‘¿Es luminoso el camino de Sendero?’,Caballo Rojo, no.108 (1982)Google Scholar. In fairness, Ansión later rethought his position.

²²Strong,Simon,Shining Path: The World's Deadliest Revolutionary Force (London,1992), pp.27, 92Google Scholar. For a more recent, and just as egregious example of this kind of absurd exoticism, seeStavans,Ilan, ‘Two Peruvians’,Transitions no.81 (1994), pp.19, 38Google Scholar. Astonishingly, in the light of all the evidence to the contrary, the Mexican novelist insists that the Shining Path wants to restore ‘mythical Inca heroes’ to Peru, which he describes as a ‘semi-feudal, quasi-modern banana republic’.

²³ Quoted in Kirk,Grabado en Piedra, p. 54.

²⁴ Degregori,El surgimiento de Sendero Luminoso, p. 205.

²⁵Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru,Interview with Chairman Gonzalo (New York,1989), p.76Google Scholar.

²⁶ Quoted inDegregori,Carlos Iván,Qué dificíl es ser Dios (Lima,1989), p.24Google Scholar.

²⁷Ibid., pp. 68–9.

²⁸ Degregori,El surgimiento de Sendero huminoso, p. 198.

²⁹ Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru,Interview with Chairman Gonzalo, pp. 51–3.

³⁰Moral,Roberto Noel,Ayacucho: Testimonio de un Soldado (Lima,1989), p.9Google Scholar.

³¹ A legal party, Red Homeland enjoyed the support of Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese government in the 1980s, and participated in elections as the Union of the Revolutionary Left (UNIR).

³² There is not space to consider the complex dynamics behind the rise of the so-calledrondas campesinas. For introductions to the organisations, including the tremendous differences between the originalrondas in the northern departments of Cajamarca and Piura and their namesakes in the war zones, seeStarn,Orin (ed.),Hablan los ronderos: La búsqueda por lapaz en los andes (Lima,1993)Google Scholar andcoronel,José,Degregori,Carlos Iván,Pino,Ponciano del, andStarn,Orin,La rebelión del coro (Lima,1995)Google Scholar.

³³ Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru,Interview with Chairman Gonzalo, p.68.

³⁴Martínez,Antonio Díaz, quoted inSalcedo,José María, ‘Con Sendero en Lurigancho’,Quehacer, no.39 (1986), p.62Google Scholar.

³⁵Ibid., p. 13.

³⁶ The quote comes from a letter from a party militant to Guzmán from the late 1980s or early 1990s, published and translated in Starn, Degregori and Kirk (eds.),The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics, p. 336.

³⁷Mariátegui,José Carlos,Peruanicemos el Perú (Lima,1970), p.74Google Scholar.

³⁸Ibid., p. 66.

³⁹Ibid., p. 79.

⁴⁰ Quoted in Carlos Iván Degregori,Después de la caída (Unpublished manuscript, n.d.), p. 5.

⁴¹ Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru,Interview with Chairman Gonzalo, p.147.

⁴² Many Marxists in the 1960s and 1970s took their pseudonyms from characters in Greek and Roman mythology, or Shakespeare (Carlos Iván Degregori, personal communication). Degregori himself, now a scholar of the Shining Path, was militant of the Movimiento Independiente Revolucionario (MIR) in Ayacucho in the 1970s, and took the name ‘Héctor’ after Troy's leading defender inThe Iliad. Guzmán liked to quote Shakespeare; Degregori, and other leading students of the Shining Path I have consulted, think there is a good chance that Gonzalo's famous speech inThe Tempest about utopia and society may have inspired the adoption of the name by the Maoist chief, whose original pseudonym was ‘Alvaro’.

⁴³ Quoted in Poole and Rénique,The New Chroniclers of Peru, p. 144. I use their translation.

⁴⁴ Revolt against the Shining Path in Huanta is discussed inCoronel,José andLoayza,Carlos, ‘Violencia política: Formas de respuesta comunera’, inDegregori,Carlos Iván et al. (eds.),Perú: El problema agrario en debate (Lima,1992)Google Scholar; for Huancayo, seeManrique,Nelson, ‘La década de la violencia’,Márgenes, vol.3, no.5–6 (1989)Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Mariátegui,Peruatticemos el Perú, p. 62.

⁴⁶Mar,José Matos,Desborde popular y crisis del estado (Lima,1983)Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Degregori,El surgimiento de Sendero Luminoso p. 205.

⁴⁸ Luis Arce Borja, quoted in Poole and Renique,The New Chroniclers of Peru, p. 144.

⁴⁹ See the special supplement ‘Por la emancipation de la mujer’ inEl Diario, March 13, 1988.

⁵⁰ These figures come from Kirk,Grabado en piedra, p. 14.

⁵¹Andreas,Carol, ‘Women at War’,NACLA: Report on the Americas, vol.24, no.2(1990)Google Scholar offers one such positive assessment. SeeRadcliffe,Sarah andWestwood,Sallie (eds.), ‘Viva’: Women and Popular Protest in Latin America (London,1993)Google Scholar for a good overview of the questions of women and popular protest in Latin America.

⁵²Hartmann,Heidi, ‘The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union’,Capital and Class, no.8 (1979), p.1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵³ Interviews byKirk,Robin in Canto Grande prison in June 1991 (personal communication), andLa Nueva Bandera, vol.1, no.3 (1994), p.20Google Scholar.

⁵⁴Soto,Hernando de,The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World (New York,1989)Google Scholar. Although De Soto's book played an important role in calling attention to the so-called ‘informal economy’, it also romanticised the potential and accomplishment of ‘popular capitalism’, underestimating how barriers of poverty and racism structure access to capital and the market in Peru.Golte,Jurgen and Norma Adams offer a critique of de Soto inLos caballos de Troya de los invasores: Estrategias campesinas en la conquista de Gran Lima (Lima,1987)Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Kirk,Grabado en piedra.

⁵⁶Ossio,Juan,Violencia estructuralen el Perú: antropologia (Lima,1990)Google Scholar offers an interesting, if also unsatisfying, comparison between the Shining Path and Pentecostal churches.

⁵⁷ The statement is reproduced in the Foreign Broadcasting Information Service (FBIS),Latin America, 2 February 1994, pp. 32–41.

⁵⁸ SeeAmnesty International,Human Rights During the Government of Alberto Fujimori (New York,1992)Google Scholar on human rights violations; on internal refugees, seeKirk,Robin,The Decade of Chaqwa: Peru's Internal Refugees (Washington,1991)Google Scholar andTo Build Anew: An Update on Peru's Internally Displaced People (Washington, 1993).

⁵⁹ This information comes from my own visit to Paccosan, and interviews with survivors of the attack, in June 1993.

⁶⁰ See theScudder Latin America Fund, First Quarter Report, 31011994Google Scholar.

⁶¹Mariategui,Jose Carlos, ‘El Hombre y el Mito’,Mundial, 16011925, p.1Google Scholar.

⁶² The phrase ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ comes from the title of the Colombian writer's novel.

⁶³ Nobel acceptance speech byMarquez,Garciá, published inThe New York Times6021983Google Scholar, translated from the Spanish by Marina Castãneda. My use of the speech borrows heavily from a superb article by historianStern,Steve J., ‘Reply:“Ever More Solitary”’,American Historical Review, vol.93, no.4,1988Google Scholar.