After Guzmhn proposed a peace agreement with the government, Shining Path split into two factions. Both seek to resolve the same problem: how to keep the organization alive and relevant after suffering numerous defeats. By declaring the start of a "pro- longed popular war" in 1980, Abimael Guzmin, the leader of the Communist Party of Peru, known as Shining Path, plunged Peru into a brutal cycle of violence. For the next 13 years, Shining Path was the lead actor in the country's unfolding drama. In the fall of 1993, one year after his arrest, Guzmdn brought this cycle of violence to an end when he offered to negotiate a peace agreement with the Fujimori govern- ment. His peace proposal, which split Shining Path into two factions, opened up a new, more muted phase of violence in Peru. Guzmdn's original script was premised on a double hypothesis: that A soldier patrol reads, "Long liv Peru's state-led capitalism would disin- tegrate, and that democratic institutions in place since 1980 would collapse. Any political project based on these two pillars, he argued, was destined to fail. The only option was to leap outside the system, announce its impending collapse, recruit the millions of margin- alized Peruvians, educate them with dynamite, deni- grate and execute conciliators, create power vacuums, and slowly fill them with Shining Path's popular com- mittees. The final episode would take place in Lima-- the headquarters of the reactionaries-which would fall exhausted beneath a portrait of Guzmin painted on a red background. Some of Guzmdn's prophecies had a grain of truth to them. Peru's so-called bureaucratic capitalism did col- lapse under the weight of hyper-inflation and Fujimori's neoliberal reforms. Fujimori's autogolpe dealt the final blow to Peru's fledgling democracy in 1992. Since then, all the political parties have either drowned completely or are barely holding their heads above water. Guzmin's predictions were, however, mistaken on a number of other counts. These errors were decisive in the ultimate failure of his strategy for taking power. In particular, Guzmin underestimated the resilience of the survival mechanisms that the Peruvian people have developed over decades, and the faith in progress that underscores their Sisyphean efforts. He failed to appre- ciate the true dimensions of this age-old game of resis- tance and adaptation, of skepticism and expectations, and of simultaneous rejection and acceptance of the rules and the predominant institutions. The idea of radical rupture is profoundly alien to Peruvians. Shining Path sought to implant it through VOL XXX, No 1 JuLY/AUG 1996 Carlos Reyna Izaguirre is a sociologist and journalist who has written extensively on political violence for the Lima bi-monthly Quehacer. He is a researcher at the Lima-based Center for the Study and Promotion of Development (DESCO). Translated from the Spanish by NACLA. 37REPORT ON PERU the use of terror. They killed hundreds of campesinos for bettering themselves as traders and sellers, for serv- ing as state officials, for voting in elections, and for being mayors or grassroots leaders opposed to the armed struggle. They tried to boycott elections, devel- opment projects, and the markets where campesinos sold their products. They wanted to turn every protest march into a general "armed strike." They tried to impose the fiction of their own authorities and popular committees. Shining Path had some success, but it was precarious. In the end, they invited military repression and intervention in the areas where they organized. In this way, the spiral of terror grew from both sides. Shining Path's insurrection became a revolution of campesinos against campesinos- a popular war against the people. But the pragmatism of the campesinos eventually led them to forge an alliance with the army, since it had both more power and the representa- tion of the state. Despite the military's record of brutality, tens of thou- sands of campesinos began forming, under military tutelage, civil- defense patrols to fight off Shining Path. Shining Path's insurrec- tion thus became a revo- lution of campesinos against campesinos--a popular war against the people. Shining Path had most appeal among social groups located on the periphery of productive activity: students, teachers, unemployed young people from the shantytowns. With this membership, Shining Path devel- oped more as a sect than as a movement with a popular base of support. This lack of consistent social support would prove to have dire consequences for the Party. Between 1989 and 1992, Shining Path stepped up its armed activities in Lima, badly shaking the govern- ment's confidence. During this same period, after sev- eral years of striking out blindly against the population, the state began to reformulate its counterinsurgency strategies. Even though the police and the military did not coordinate their efforts-indeed, there was a great deal of rivalry between the two institutions-these shifts hastened Shining Path's demise. Through stepped-up intelligence efforts, the police were able to arrest a number of key intermediate-level leaders, weakening Shining Path's internal organization. By the time Fujimori and the military announced the auto- golpe in 1992, the Special Intelligence Group (GEIN), a small elite police unit, had already uncovered a trail of clues that would eventually lead them to Guzmdn. The cycle of political violence begun in 1980 came to an end during the brief period framed by two watershed events: Guzmdn's arrest in September, 1992, and the declaration by Shining Path leaders still at large of their opposition to Guzmdn's peace proposal in February, 1994. "It is a norm of the Communist movement that Party leadership cannot be exercised from prison:' said the dissident faction in direct allusion to Guzmin. The play's final scene is the division of Shining Path into Guzm6n's pro-peace faction, and the faction that con- tinues to wage war. oth factions are trying to resolve the same prob- lem: how to keep Shining Path alive and relevant after the many defeats the Party has suffered. For Guzm6n, saving the Party requires halting all sabotage and guerrilla activities and engaging in unarmed politi- cal activities for several years. Those who oppose him, led by Oscar Ramfrez Durand ("Comrade Feliciano"), believe the Party's only salvation lies in continuing its armed activities, though with less intensity than before, and emphasizing the reconstruction of its grassroots cells via the classic ant-like work of its clandestine mil- itants. Despite their opposing prescriptions for action, both sides perceive that Shining Path has entered a new phase of its existence. Guzmin has even said so explic- itly in his new manifestos. Feliciano and his comrades, by reducing their activity and prioritizing underground political activity, recognize implicitly that times have changed. Aware that Shining Path has lost the leading role that it held in the early 1990s, both groups share the common goal of remaining in the wings, like under- studies, in anticipation of better times. It is unlikely that Shining Path will disappear from Peru's political stage any time soon. But given the reduced size of both factions, the violence will be low- key and will take place mainly in parts of Peru that are of little political or economic importance, such as shan- tytowns in Lima and towns in the jungle or Andean highlands. Shining Path is no longer proclaiming-to audiences in Peru and the rest of the world-the existence of their popular committees or their impending overthrow of the state. Rather, they are hoping to exercise a combi- nation of political hegemony and terror at the local level. Occasionally, they will carry out a spectacular act of sabotage or ambush a military patrol. These activities will not endanger the stability of the state or even cause foreign investors to leave Peru in search of safer pas- tures. The principal aim of such activities is to remind everyone of their continued presence on the political stage. Shining Path poses few risks to Peru's stability in the short term, but the risks may grow as time marches on.
