the wikipedia article Shining Path - Wikipedia mentions that the movement originated among college students and have shown little regard for the culture of the rural areas that they were fighting to control. But no further ethnic info is provided.
So what was the demographic background of all this? Was it a gang of white college grads? Or a mix of whites and mestizos with college grads only in the leadership? Were they urban dwellers adapting to the guerilla war in the rural areas or were they subsequently able to recruit large numbers of local rural people?
In terms of the locals that had the misfortune of having them in the neighborhood, were they Amerindians or mestizos? Could they at least speak the same language with the “liberators” or did it all look like a foreign invasion in the classical sense?
Following Guzman’s capture, I read a New Yorker article about Sendero Luminoso. I seem to recall somebody claiming that many of these college students came from religious and somewhat backwards high schools, so that Guzman could successfully conflate anti-fundamentalism, appeals to modernity and a Communist ideology. Recall also that the original university was located in Ayacucho, a city of 150,000 in a mountainous and rural part of Peru.
According to “A History of Sendero Luminoso”, a Master’s thesis by Russell W. Switzer (google for the .pdf), Guzman’s cadres took over the high school curriculum in Ayacucho region by the mid 1970s. Reportedly, Party Committees of the time consisted of 1/3 party members, 1/3 poor peasants and 1/3 middle class peasants. Training was conducted in Quechua, the local language, rather than Spanish.
very interesting, thanks. So it sounds like this Ayacucho region itself is basically Amerindian and Quechua speaking.
Also, so it sounds like it wasn’t so much an “invasion” as it was an “armed revolt by your local school teachers”. These guys first integrated into the local professional services economy, such as it were, and then proceeded to try grab full power for themselves and their followers.
I continued skimming the Master’s thesis. Apparently, the government wasn’t eager to wage war on Sendero for a couple of years – they would just denounce them as thugs. When the situation became untenable, they sent in the army. It was at that point that divisions grew between peasant and fanatic. The army would blow into a village and commit various abuses as the rebels fled to the hills. When the rebels returned, they would retaliate against those who they thought provided information. Sendero’s popularity declined shortly thereafter, despite some sympathy for their land policies.
From my memory of the New Yorker article:
The army utterly failed to make headway against Guzman until a certain Major decided to apply -wait for it- conventional police techniques. Instead of beating the crap out anyone who looked suspicious, they would tail known rebels. The Major wouldn’t take bribes and after a while his men emulated him. Guzman was located through rock-solid detective work, not electric prods.