This is collection of essays about Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path) written just after the collapse of the movement after its leader was arrested in Lima. The book is important both for its discussion of Peruvian history and politics, and for its truly multiperspectival look at SL, with articles from researchers from different regions and different subject positions.
Palmer, David Scott. "Introduction: History, Politics, and Shining Path in Peru." The volume's introductory essay, but also a very good overview of Peruvian political dynamics, which have been incredibly volatile and not particularly democratic for most of the country's history.
Smith, Michael L. "Taking the High Ground: Shining Path and the Andes." Offers 7 propositions to explain Sendero, and since I'm a sucker for numbered lists, they are as follows:
1. Sendero bases its strategy on an understanding of the interplay between Andean society, politics, geography, and ecology.
2. In practical terms, Sendero's frame of reference works within a local or regional setting.
3. Sendero plays off the friction within the interface between urban and rural worlds.
4. Sendero's fetish for violence serves as a compass in navigating the waters of Andean ecopolitics.
5. Sendero's aim is to disorganize politics.
6. Sendero fills the vacuum it has created with three elements: a militarized party apparatus, armed violence, and an iron-clad ideology.
7. Sendero's pedagogical roots and experience give its ideology and praxis a utilitarian, didactic approach that belies its dogmatism.
Degregori, Carlos Ivan. "Return to the Past." Argues that Sendero is best understood in the context of Peruvian political history, especially the importance of education, authoritarianism, and indigenous narratives.
de Wit, Ton and Vera Gianotten. "The Center's Multiple Failures." "The underlying context for Peru's violence is a weak civil society and a weak state -- a society made up of disarticulated groups that are seldom mutually involved and a state unable to process effectively and respond appropriately to the demands of it population. Given this context, state coercion is the mechanism often used to maintain order and putative national unity." (73)
Isbell, Billie Jean. "Shining Path and Peasant Responses in Rural Ayacucho." A discussion of Sendero in Chuschi, which was where they initially launched their military campaign. Initially, the local population was very receptive, because Sendero promised both education and eradication of commonly accepted "public enemies" like cattle theives. However, the Sendero campaign of violence quickly turned the population, who redefined them as naqas, "flesh-eating beings feeding off a population with no more fat to give", and requested that the government station security forces in the town. (93)
Berg, Ronald H. "Peasant Responses to Shining Path in Andahuaylas." Another case study of Sendero history in a highland province. An excerpt:
"Our case study of Andahuaylas has focused on the specific economic and social processes in the region, particularly since the agrarian reform beginning in 1969. The state thwarted a radical, grass-roots movement for land reform and imposed its own bureaucratic cooperative structure. The cooperatives lacked accountability and functioned in many repects as the haciendas had. [See also Elisabeth Jean Wood's discussion of Salvadoran government cooperatives] Because their very creation ended the possibility of large-scale land redistribution, the cooperatives became foci of resentment by the peasants.
During this same period the economy became increasingly polarized and social tensions mounted. And entrepreneurial class filled the commercial vacuum left by the departure of the landlords, and these entrepreneurs prospered with the help of loans for commercial agriculture. At the same time, the downturn of the Peruvian economy led to depressed wages and unemployment for the rest of the population.
The emergence of Shining Path should not be seen simply as a reflection of poverty [see also Lichbach] but rather in terms of these specific circumstances. Sendero has been adroit at taking advantage of this situation, recruiting a core of devoted followers, organizing over a period of years, and attacking the objects of popular resentment -- upwardly mobile peasants and state-sponsored cooperatives.
The specific character of this peasant economy conditions the form of the rebellion. A majority of households depend on wage labor, both locally and in the cities, and the increasing dependence on wage labor makes peasants especially vulnerably to economic fluctuations. At the same time, Andahuaylas remains a region of small-holding peasants whose desire for land is intense. As peasant-workers, the agriculturalists of Andahuaylas rely on wages for a portion of their income, but they retain landholdings as a source of economic security. They also depend on forms of economic reciprocity as a central element in the agricultural economy. Peasant economy and society still are central to an understanding of Shining Path's growth in these areas.
Many peasants sympathize with Sendero because the movement reflects their longstanding aspirations for local control and for the ownership of plots of land. The movement attacks elements in rural society that are perceived as unjust and as in conflict with these fundamental goals. In this sense, support for SL fits a pattern of peasant rebellions against haciendas and the state since the end of the nineteenth century. For Sendero sets itself up as a moral authority and as a voice for peasants' grievances, playing upon cultural principles including notions of folk justice and opposition to mistis. Although many of Sendero's active supporters are young, mobile people with urban experience, their aspirations and values are shaped by their peasants background.
In spite of its ability to attract sympathy and support among parts of the peasantry, it is highly unlikely that Sendero will be able to capture state power or even to control large areas of the Andes for long periods of time. Sendero's secretive cell organization leads to effective small-scale guerrilla harassing operations, but not to the mobilizations of mass support. Its ideology is foreign to the peasants and at odds with many of their fundamental beliefs. It remains a highly destructive organization, offering the illusion of the resurrection of the Andean community but the reality of short-lived revenge against some of the objects of popular resentment." (120-121)
Gonzales, Jose E. "Guerrillas and Coca in the Upper Huallaga Valley." Sendero taxed coca production to fund its organization and UHV produces a lot of coca leaf. Of note in this article is a discussion of the successful counterinsurgency waged there by a maverick general who agreed to ignore the coca growers if they would help him fight SL. (130-133) The article concludes that when the Army ignores coca and focuses on SL, the growers flourish and SL wanes, but when police and DEA really focus on drug production, then the opposite is true.
Smith, Michael L. "Shining Path's Urban Strategy: Ate Vitarte." Ate Vitarte is poor district in Lima, and was the base from which Sendero launched its campaign of urban violence within Lima proper.
"A snapshot of the situation in mid-1990 shows that Sendero had secured its beachhead on the Central Highway and in Lima. Through infiltration, it paralyzed many of the grass-roots organizations along the Central Highway. Its hyperactive curiosity and hunger for intelligence led its activists to penetrate a whole range of local groups (soup kitchens, school milk programs, evangelical groups, temporary emergency work programs, and political parties). It meant there were no free forums where the local community could debate resistance without being fingered by spies and sympathizers ...
Across the range of its activities Sendero shows some consistent patterns. It uses the local conflicts to push for polarization and armed violence. It harnesses the processes of decline or anarchy, Peru's self-destructive tendencies, to the goals of the revolution. Prisons and courts, universities and secondary schools, striking trade unions and squatter settlements are foci of radicalization. By this approach, SL hopes to break down the organizations already in place and pick up those pieces that it may be able to turn to armed revolt. Frequently the government and its security services do Sendero a service by increasing pressure on these same foci. This tactic allows Sendero to concentrate its efforts on key leverage points within Peruvian society. Such a focusing of forces means that SL magnifies its presence and impact on grass-roots organizations well beyond its number of activists ...
As separate parts, Sendero's urban presence may seem insignificant. These parts, however, are integral to an overall strategy that augments its impact over time. With carefully laid plans, centralized command, organizational discipline, and meticulous care for detail, Guzman's followers have strategic and tactical advantages over their political adversaries. While mainstream parties, trade union federations, and the government mustered forces to meet peak moments (the November 1989 March for Peace, for instance), they could not sustain a coherent policy over the medium term.
Throughout the period under review, Sendero found itself aided and abetted in Lima by a breakdown in the presence of the state, just as was occurring in the countryside. Not only could the state not expand its services and authority into areas of need, but it lost control over neighborhoods and services that it already had in place. Schoolteachers no longer had adequate monitoring, police no longer patrolled the streets, and corruption became the currency to make things works. Those political and social forces that wanted to work through the system found themselves frustrated. Sendero and others who worked outside the established order found a more open track.
Finally, a host of individuals and institutions, from the presidency down to organizations that claimed to back Lima's poor and marginalized, failed to grasp Sendero's changing scope and thrust in urban areas. Although evidence began to pile up after the 1986 prison mutiny and intensified in mid-1988, Peru's elites put little effective effort and resources into confronting this threat. It was as if the lessons of Ayacucho and the Andes had been in vain." (162-163)
Gorriti, Gustavo. "Shining Path's Stalin and Trotsky." Key lesson: Do not have a threesome involving the girlfriend of the leader of a violent revolutionary organization. And, if you do, ensure you lock the door. Abimael Guzman Reynoso (aka Comrade Gonzalo) was the 'Stalin' of SL, and in the rise of the organization worked closely with the more charismatic and charming Luis Kawata Makabe (aka Kabo) who was insturmental in the early (nonviolent) phase of the organizations formation. Then Gonzola caught Kabo in flagrante delicto and life for Kabo quickly went downhill. By 1987 "[h]e had only a few of his teeth left and his skin was all dried out and stretched over his fragile face. His worn clothes also accurately displayed his misfortunes and current situation ... He told his friends that he had asked for an explanation for his expulsion from the party to which he had dedicated the best years of his life. 'I don't understand what's going on' he said. 'Let them explain things to me or let them kill me,' he observed, and then added with a toothless smile, 'Cheers!' ... Instead of seeking out his Trotsky to kill him, Guzman systematically broke his will to resist instead and then used what remained for whatever purpose suited him. As Guzman's Trotsky, Kawata lives and serves, and example to all who might resist the discipline and the orthodoxy of the party that their only course is to march onward in lock step for the cause of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Gonzalo." (185-187) So a note to all would-be revolutionaries -- hands off the boss' wife, mistresses, girlfriends, and assorted other consorts!
Tarazona-Sevillano, Gabriela. "The Organization of Shining Path." An excellent overview of how SL is set up, how people advance within the organization, the role of women, etc.
Marks, Tom. "Making Revolution with Shining Path." A short article that applies a theoretical framework to Sendero as an insurgency in order to explain the utility of terror as an insurgent tactic.
Woy-Hazelton, Sandra and William A. Hazelton. "Shining Path and the Marxist Left." A discussion of the relationship between legal parties and Sendero -- in short, Sendero's pursuit of violent revolution put the leftist parties in quite a pickle, because they were forced to ask to what extent they were contributing to the advent of world, or even Peruvian, social revolution. The answer split the leftwing parties and prevented the formation of an effective electoral coalition.
McClintock, Cynthia. "Theories of Revolution and the Case of Peru." Another application of theories of revolution to the specifics of the Peruvian case.
Palmer, David Scott. "Conclusion: The View from the Windows." This essay is really amazing and summarizes the rest of the book. Really, any questions about Sendero Luminoso should start here, then reference the rest of the book as necessary. It's another bulleted list, but has 18 items and requires explanation of each point, and I don't really feel like retyping the whole chapter.
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