The world today is faced with many obstacles concerning all the peoples of the world. The issues range from globalization to the state of the environment with every political, economic, and human interest lying in between. It is these human interests that will be brought to light by examining the revolutions of the Incan indigenous beginning in the early part of the twentieth century. Running parallel to their North American neighbors, the native peoples of Peru have lived in seriously impecunious conditions as the result of ethno racial discrimination handed them by their colonial occupiers; Spanish speakers.
These revolutions, namely Shining Path, would eventually define the gap between the rich and the poor, the 1st and 3rd worlds, and those peoples struggling with the effects of a traditional world falling into the hands of modernity. Unfortunately Shining Path, the dominant revolutionary organization, would be widely regarded as a terrorist organization as opposed to a liberation movement.
This negative attitude toward Shining Path can be directly attributed to their misrepresentation of these native peoples and also to their style of warfare which has made Shining Path the great example of an ideology gone astray; leaving the hopes of its followers and the fate of the Peruvian people in the dust and rubble of its destructive wake. While the constituents of left and right wing political parties would battle each other for both power and affect throughout the first half of the twentieth century, neither end of the ideological spectrum would effectively bring about change in regard to the interests of the native Peruvian peoples.
This is due largely in part to the marginalization of left wing parties as a result of their own military weakness and also the outright indifference on the part of conservatives to make serious, or even arbitrary, reforms to early constitutions. The reign of President Augusto B. Leguia came to define the first thirty years of Peruvian politics in the twentieth century. Leguia ruled as a typical right winger; his economic plans overwhelmingly benefited the states oligarchic class, leaving action in the interest of the native Incan populations to a minimum.
In fact, treatment of this sector of the population was no more than sub-human in nature. Socially, he made attempts to incorporate indigenous people into the world of the free market as one aspect of his modernization program. Modernization and the free market would later come to be areas of interests to revolutionary groups of the 1970’s who were beginning to look beyond the Peruvian highlands and out into a global world beyond. Ever since the time of Spanish colonial rule, Incans were being treated completely unfairly.
And in the late 18th century, Peru began to see the first of its native revolutions under Jose Gabriel Tupac Amaru II in 1780. These uprisings were headed by Indian nobility who showed antipathy towards the Spanish administration as a result of being forced to subject their own people to taxes, unfair market prices, and slave labor. The Incans throughout the time of Spanish colonial rule had hopes for the renewal of their age old empire. However despite at least 100 revolts against colonialism the empire was never revived. (Strong 41)
It was not until the 1920’s that the Incan rebellion would make any significant progression excluding the pride they may have taken in brutal revenge and retaliation murders and massacres against Spaniards. In this decade Peru witnesses the first shift from predominantly unorganized revolution to serious political development. Although the movement known as Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) was crushed under the Leguia regime, the faction was the first political party to legally call for reform in regard to the condition of the highland populations or peasantry.
Strong points out that its leader, Victor Haya de la Torre, had a poem dedicated to him wherein one line reads: You are the light that shines on the path. These words would be taken by the founders of our topic of subject, Shining Path, in the naming of the organization in an effort to commemorate Haya de la Torres aspirations. The 1930’s witnessed a modification in revolutionary action in that it turned communist in nature and name, running along the lines of the harmonious communist system of their forefathers and their forefathers before them.
By 1930 the work of Jose Carlos Mariategui generated the Peruvian Communist Party. The party was however quickly prohibited and went underground, placing the next notable revolt of the peasantry at the feet of Hugo Blanco. Blanco, a mestizo like many guerilla leaders, led the bands of native supporters in revolts based out of Cuzco. These acts of disobedience made for no more than an attack on the status quo by way of organized strikes and land seizures. However, there was a new consciousness among the mestizo leaders of these guerilla groups.
They wore the faces of Incans before them, and using the underdog image as a motivation, they drove the heart of Incan ideals into the frustrations of centuries of abuse that would culminate in the bloody revolution of Abimael Guzman and the Sandero Luminoso or the Shining Path. (Strong 45-49) The last 60 years of Peruvian political history had resulted in a decisive failure on the part of Indigenous and mestizo revolutionary leaders in their efforts to liberate Peru from the holds of its modernized foreign occupiers.
The Indian masses at this point were still disenfranchised and would not be granted suffrage until 1979 when a linguistic clause to voting rights was changed, allowing Quechua speakers to overlook Spanish as a prerequisite to democracy. The population of Peru had doubled in the period of 1920-1960 making the amount of usable land decrease as Peru became increasingly feudal. By 1960, 80 percent of the arable and pastoral land in Peru was owned outright by 3 percent of population.
The rich were becoming richer and the poor, while they may not have even noticed, were getting poorer. In 1968, Juan Velasco took control of Peru after ousting President Fernando Belaunde Terry. The next year he installed a system of agrarian reforms (1969-1975) which did away with large landholdings in an attempt to “end for all time [the] unjust social order that has maintained in poverty and iniquity those who have always had to till someone else’s land, a social order that has always denied this land to the millions of campesinos” (Gall 1971).
However, in his book Shining and Other Paths, historian Steve Stern suggests that these reforms were also part of an overall attempt on the part of the Velasco regime to thwart radical Marxism and put an end to rural social movements (45). Further complicating Peruvian politics and buttressing the Shining Paths agenda, Strong suggests; was the fact that Velasco’s reforms had caused a complete decline in agriculture as a result of poorly conceived and corrupt agricultural cooperatives.
In mist of the overall political system and its ability to keep a thumb over the indigenous peoples was also a de jure acceptance and excuse for the abuse of agricultural workers by rich landholders. This is evidenced by a 1963 strike by workers protesting these conditions. This is the setting with which Guzman was met at the time of Shining Paths founding in the late 1960’s. While Shining Path would take action in the late 60’s and moving into the 1970s’s, the brunt of their military action would be undertaken from 1980 onward.
The main action of Shining Path in its early days began in 1973 when it gained control of student councils in the both the Tacna and Huanuco universities. However, by 1975 the organization decided to reconsolidate itself. In 1980, Shining Path began the ideological revolution of its members along the lines of the Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong. In its “First Military School”, militants of the party were educated in military tactics and also given weapons instruction in anticipation of their soon to come highland campaigns.
At this military school, members engaged in criticism and self-criticism during group conversations where members would denounce their peers as being unsatisfactory revolutionaries. These students and professors were devoted to developing clear and all-encompassing discourses which followed the strictest of communist orthodoxy (Degregori 35). It is as a result of these intellectual battles that Abimael Guzman would rise as leader and therefore, further thrust the Maoist ideology into the core of action undertake by Shining Path in months and years to come.
A rudimentary understanding of Maoist doctrine is therefore essential in the process of conceptualizing Shining Paths own unique course of action. Maoism is a philosophy grounded in Marxist-Leninist thought yet it detaches itself specifically from these groups in that its revolution focuses on a mobilization of rural peasantry as opposed to the urban proletariat. It contains a vital military doctrine and openly connects political ideology to military strategy. Maoist guerilla warfare contains three stages of military action need for a successful “peoples war.
The first is a mobilization of the rural peasant population followed by the setting up of rural base areas to promote co-ordination between guerillas. Thirdly, Mao was committed to the transition to conventional warfare. The failure of Shining Path to follow this doctrine from the beginning would give way to their demise. According to Cynthia McClintock, the key components of their ideology were identical to Mao. That being that (1) society is semifeudal, (2) Violence is central to revolutionary process both as a strategy and as a practice, (3) Maoism alone is truth, and (4) the peasantry is the key to the revolution.
The 1970’s was a decade noted for the rise of leftist Peruvian politics. These groups were taking aim at the status quo, often falsely in the name of native Peruvians. Shining Path never allied itself with any other organization, in fact it would go on to proscribe the leaders of these semi-parallel movements on account of their lacking Maoist influence and grounding. Hence, Shining Path was obviously unaccustomed to the democratic system as evidenced in its plight against all opposing parties. Therefore it is of no surprise that the organization would resist the democratic opening of Peruvian politics with the free elections of 1980.
Guzman saw the victory of Fernando Beluande Terry as a representation of a continuing fascism in Peru. Attacks on election booths in the province of Chuschi, Ayacucho proved to serve little impact in disrupting the elections and received little attention in the Peruvian press. Shining Path was then faced with the impossibility of being a political group under the thumb of an elected leader. Furthermore, Shining Path felt a responsibility to continue the practice of Maoist based politics after the 1976 death of Mao Zedong. It declared itself the leader of world revolution with Guzman being the “fourth sword” of Marxism (Degregori 37).
To Shining Path, the sword was not only a weapon against the Peruvian government under the veil of indigenous liberation by also a weapon of retaliation and self defense against the capitalist world entity. Guzman stated himself that the capitalist system puts “60,000 infants a year to death before the age of one. ” This propaganda served to justify what Guzman called a “quota of blood” imperative for revolution which would be but a meager price to pay in mounting a more egalitarian system along the lines of communism (Smith, 24). In the late 1970’s Shining Path had already begun to make attacks on police patrols in the highlands.
Most of which consisted of dynamiting rural posts. Aside from this focal target, Shining Path pursued abusive merchants, cattle thieves, corrupt judges, and drunken husbands. They did so as part of a system which this author would call “protect and purify” where the purification of society was used as the cornerstone to further protect it from itself and its active government. Guzman’s militants engaged in a system of social cleansing, subjecting the population in the highlands of Ayacucho, Huancasuncos, and Cargallo to “peoples tribunals.
The guilty would then be punished or killed after receiving judgment. While the problems of the peasantry were indeed societal obstacles, Degregori points out that confronting these obstacles did not require the development of a “war machine” that ripped through the countryside in a bloody torrent of rage. This point is substantiated by the relative success of the Rondas (peasant patrols) of Piura and Cajamarca in dealing with the problems without the use of force. (Degregori 135-137) The people’s tribunals undertaken resulted in opposition from the peasantry.
The testimony of a Cargallo resident of the time may provide further support and understanding: Now the people are unhappy because [those of Shining Path] have done many stupid things. They have killed innocent people. (Degregori 17) Numbers of the Peruvian peasantry who were not offended by the methods of Shining Path revoked support after the organization abandoned residents of Chuschi dear a government military attack on unarmed supporters of Shining Path within the village. Here in the Pampas River Valley, Shining Path had underestimated the peasant’s observance to their actions.
The peasants of this region, with many others to follow in the coming decade, concluded that their wishes would be more likely granted by the government already in place as opposed to Shining Path. Therefore, both elements of the protect and purify theory resulted in the failure of Guzman to adhere to Maoist doctrine in that any opposition from the peasantry would obviously deal a heavy blow to the first stage of the revolution; mobilization of a peasant army. It also highlights the lack of foresight and knowledge of these leaders.
Any revolutionary who is not completely idealist in nature knows that states will always be faced with the petty social problems which Shining Path went to such great lengths to attack. It is in this authors opinion that simple propaganda against the standing government, filled of course with rhetorical leanings toward “Incan renewal” as done by previous rebellions, would have accomplished than the “purification” of ones only support. The failure of Shining Path to follow Mao’s doctrine from the beginning is both evidence and a symbol of their failed attempts at the liberation of Peru.
Despite their dealings in the highlands with members of the peasantry, Shining Paths successes against Peruvian military and police posts proved to be beneficial in both the territorial and human growth of their organization. From here, Shining Path leaps forward into full scale, nationally recognized, revolutionary movement with the destruction of Lima’s electrical transmission towers which consequentially resulted in cross city blackouts in 1983. In the next two years it would bomb the governing offices of Popular Action, again destroy electrical towers feeding Lima, and set fires to several shopping malls in the city.
The revolution had become public, and with publicity the people are then given the question of who they would side with. For the peasantry, 16 massacres of 12 or more people from 1987-1992 was proof enough for many sectors of the peasantry to join in the now growing fighting of the Armed Forces against Shining Path. (Degregori 147) It is important to note that during the growth of Shining Path in the mid 1980’s another organization called the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement arrived upon the scene in the midst of the 1985 election of Alan Garcia Perez for president.
Despite his range of social and economic reforms, the cost of military action against the groups proved to be far too expensive considering the strain on the economy and inflation. The failure of Garcia Perez to boost the economy of Peru and thereby gain popular support throughout both the urban and rural sectors of society proved to be fatal in that it allowed Shining Path to grow both politically and territorially. By 1992, they would be the first movement to pose a real threat to an established democratic state.
Cynthia McClintock suggests that Peru’s economic plummet as a result of failed leadership throughout the late 70’s and through the 1980’s were the main reason for the guerilla war: In 1989-1990 surveys that I commissioned in Lima and Huancayo, about two-thirds of the respondents (relative to only about one third in El Salvador) blamed “the economic crisis,” “unemployment,” “poverty,” or “social injustice for the war. (Congres, 27) In mid-1991 13 million people (more than half the population of Peru) were living on less than $15. a month.
By 1989 the prospects for a Shining Path takeover of Peru were on the horizon. 1986 had put anywhere from 20-100 million dollars in the hands of leadership as a result of their operations in the drug-trafficking sector of the Upper Huallaga Valley. According to McClintock the number of emergency zones designated by the government had increased rapidly between 1989 and 1992. In 1991-1992 it infested the slums on the outskirts of Lima which enabled the climax of Shining Paths resistance on the capital. (Congress 26)
In 1990, Alberto Fujimori defeated an author named Mario Vargas Llosa in the presidential election. The first two years of his presidency were filled with complete turmoil as Shining Path came to its climactic attack on Lima and its sudden fall into political and historical oblivion. It struck the heart of Lima, strategically and emotionally. In February of 1992 Shining Path assassinated Maria Elena Moyano, a well known community worker dedicated to solving the housing crisis in the Liman shantytown of Villa El Salvador.
In immediate reaction to the attempted siege of Lima, Fujimori mounted counterattacks and defensive strategies throughout the cities and highlands of Peru. 70% of the population was now living in the chaos of Peru’s cities as a result of the Shining Path Diaspora of highland communities and the growing need for work. After an attack on Taranta Street in Lima which killed 40 people and destroyed multiple buildings, Fujimori suspended the constitution and declared a state of emergency which was needed to fight the guerillas, drug traffickers, and corruption.
As a result, by September of 1992, many of the leaders had been captured and jailed including Abimael Guzman. According to Gustavo Gorriti, Guzman’s capture proved fatal to the movement: I do not know of any Communist party, especially a Maoist party, which recovered from the loss of its leader during the revolutionary stage. (Congress 19) The triumph of Fujimori over the guerillas can be largely attributed to the efforts of peasant movements, supposedly the people who were to make Shining Paths social base, in that their indifference to the organization caused it to splinter.
After the capture of Guzman the group would slowly dwindle away and the revolution is largely recognized by all reports to have ended in 1995. However, the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement did make attacks in the mid-90’s, proving that Peru was to some extent still unstable despite the return of democracy under Fujimori. The most notable attack came on Dec, 17 1996 when MRTA guerillas held 600 hostages in the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima. Peruvian forces raided the estate in April of 1997 freeing 72 hostages and killing 14 guerillas.
The attack would not impede the success of the Fujimori government. Recently however, a group known as Proseguir (“Onward”) has taken up the call of those remaining fanatical Shining Path militants. In June of 2003 the group took hostage of 68 Argentine employees working for Technit, a company building a gas pipeline from Cuzco to Lima. The attack however, happened in Ayacucho, this would suggest that the movement is only a small one, considering that it works only out of Shining Paths original and deepest stronghold.
Regardless, the combat between Shining Path and the Peruvian Armed Forces led to the deaths of 22,507 and the disappearances of 46,773 people according to President Alejandro Toledo’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 2003. It seems as though the ability of guerilla movements to adhere to a strict moral doctrine before a political one must be essential in the development of support and legitimization. Shining Path refused to act morally in their dealings with the Peruvian poor and powerful alike.
What we can be sure of, is that no matter where the revolution, history dictates how revolution is to be molded and this mold thereby constitutes the level of its success. In the case of Shining Path, their inability to mobilize the mass, to touch base with the very people communism represents is the cause for their demise. So then, what is to be said to future revolutionary leaders? One, no matter what the revolution, the people must come first. Two, armed military action should be carried out with morality, not only for the sake of the reputation of the movement but also to bind the population after victory.
And three, the most essential of all, is that even leaders must be continuously self-critical of their actions. The lesson that Abimail Guzman did not learn in his studies is that throughout history oppression breeds extremism. Extremism both in the ideologies and actions of these revolutionary movements. For any movement to be successful in the long term it mustn’t lend itself to the forces of evil which only result in tragedy for all parties involved.
