Guerrillas and militarization ON MAY 18, 1980, the day of the elections that were to put in office a civilian government after 12 years of military rule, Sendero Luminoso (SL) burned the ballot boxes in the village of Chuschi in the department of Ayacucho. In this way it showed that it was declaring open war against the state, regardless of whether the government was civilian or military.
Six years passed between that action, which went almost unnoticed at the time, and the prison mutiny staged by Sendero activists on June 18 and 19, when the Socialist International was meeting in Lima. The army, sent in to suppress the uprising, killed several hundred prisoners.
hectares. signiticantly, the land was handed over under the eye of the army, which is ever-present in the region.
The FDCP congress decided to occupy the land the peasants needed without relying on the good will of Alan Garcia, and to defend these actions against the growing military pressure on the region by building peasants' self-defence organizations.
Not only has the government sought to discredit the peasant leaders and the IU representatives supporting them by accusing them of belonging to Sendero Luminoso, it has not hesitated to resort to violence in an attempt to break the Puno peasant movement.
The official violence of the armed forces has been compounded by that of APRA's paramilitary commandos, which have directed their attacks at the same time against the peasants and their self-defence groups; IU activists; and the Church, which through Monsignor Francisco de Altaroche, bishop of Puno, has taken the
In the beginning, SL only attacked material objectives, dynamiting bridges and rail lines. In 1981, it started carrying out more daring operations and executing those it called collaborators with the government. In 1982, the movement no longer confined its activity to the departments of Huancavelica and Apurimac but extended them to Lima. In February 1986, the capital was put under a state of siege, with the institution of a curfew from 1.00 a.m. to 5.00 a.m. At present, 25 provinces of six departments are under a state of siege.
While it is difficult to draw balance sheet of Sendero Luminoso's activities, if only because it only exceptionally signs its actions, the officially published figures, give an idea of the growth of the movement.
In 1980, when Sendero Luminoso first appeared, there were 261 operations (terrorist attacks, sabotage and guerrilla actions). This figure rose to
701 operations in 1981; 891 in 1982; 1,226 in 1983; 2,408 in 1984; and 3,079, or nearly ten a day, in 1985.
The emergence of Sendero Luminoso in Ayacucho was the result of a situation common to the Andean highlands as a whole: poverty, injustice, subjection, an ancient tradition of humiliation for the Indian population. The reopening of the University of San Cristobal in Huamanga in 1959 provided a catalyst for this discontent. It was to play the role of detonator of the movement and of a breeding ground for the cadres of the guerrilla organization.
It was through university students who became teachers, nurses. and agronomists that Sendero Luminoso was to begin to build a base among the peasants in the region. Moreover, a lot of Sendero Luminoso fighters are high-school or university students from peasant backgrounds who have lived in Lima. Education has only increased their frustration, owing side of the peasants. [See the PUM press statement.]
The unification of all the peasant organizations in the FDCP is well underway. The government has announced a second distribution of land. Undoubtedly, this sudden concern is not unrelated to the fact that municipal elections are to be held in November throughout Peru.
The popularity that Alan Garcia enjoyed at the time of his election has sagged considerably. The demagogy of this politician who called himself the "president of the peasant communities" has fizzled out, and these elections are a major test both for the left as a whole, and, more broadly, for the Peruvian mass movement.
Poverty in Peru: one reason for the support for Sendero Luminoso (DR)
International Viewpoint 10 November 1986
17
PERU to the lack of perspectives in a crisiswracked society incapable of offering them any social advancement.
The first phase of Sendero's strategy, between May 1980 and the end of 1982, was carried off with a minimum of violence. When there was violence, it was against the elements that had dominated the communities for centuries and made themselves odious by their abuses merchants engaging in usury, judges, mayors, landowners who took community lands and cattle thieves. This policy won them the support of the population. For example, at the end of 1982,
15,000 people from Ayacucho attended the burial of Edith Lagos, one of the movement's leaders.
This attitude was to change when the Senderistas began to forbid the peasants to develop saleable crops and, in order to starve the towns, ordered them to confine themselves to purely subsistence agriculture. The brutal methods Sendero Luminoso used against those who refused to carry out these orders helped to deprive it of part of its initial capital of sympathy.
It is in the villages and small towns in the high Andean valleys that Sendero Luminoso put down its deepest roots. The poor inhabitants of these settlements derive only a part of their income from only a part of their income from agriculture. A lot of them are obliged to supplement seasonal agricultural work with other occupations that take them out of their villages.
These semi-peasants are at the same time itinerant peddlers, building workers or miners, depending on what jobs they can find. This situation, far from being specific to Ayacucho, is common to most of the Andean departments. It has been aggravated by the effects of the economic crisis that is hitting Peru and breaking down the traditional social structures.
The rural exodus, which is yearly swelling the shantytowns of Lima, is helping to magnify the numbers of the unemployed or at best semiemployed who are living from hand to mouth, going from one precarious job to another.
According to Alan Garcia himself, 70 per cent of the Peruvian population live on the margins of the economy. This is one of the factors that explains the spread of the movement outside Ayacucho, its birthplace.
The state of emergency brought a suspension of constitutional guarantees and authorized the repressive forces to make searches and arrests without any warrant. The militarization of entire areas of Peru, under the pretext of fighting Sendero Luminoso, has had tragic consequences for the people. 18
Since the proclamation on
October 12, 1981, of a state of siege in five provinces of the department of Ayacucho, and especially since the official involvement of the army in
December 1982 and the extension of the state of siege to the entire department, the number of victims has been increasing at a staggering rate.
While 11 deaths were registered in 1981, there were more than a hundred in 1982 and 2,000 in 1983.