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135  6 Har­ vest­ ing ­ Storms Peas­ ant Ron­ das and the De­ feat of Shin­ ing Path in Ay­ a­ cu­ cho Can a spark rebel ­ against a bon­fire? . . . How can ­ grains de­ tain the grind­ ing of the mill? They will be ­ ground into dust. Ab­ i­ mael ­ Guzmán, “Por la Nueva Ban­ dera” When the war began in May 1980, Shin­ ing Path was a party con­ sist­ ing ­ mainly of teach­ ers and uni­ ver­ sity pro­ fes­ sors and stu­ dents with lit­ tle in­ flu­ ence among the re­ gional pea­ santry. None­ the­ less, by the end of 1982, when the armed ­ forces as­ sumed mil­ i­ tary and po­ lit­ i­ cal con­ trol of Ay­ a­ cu­ cho, Shin­ ing Path had eas­ ily dis­ placed the po­ lice­ forces from broad rural zones of the ­ region’s north­ ern prov­ inces, and it was pre­ par­ ing to lay siege to the de­ part­ men­ tal cap­ i­ tal.1 Rural Youth and the Pea­ santry The key to this ver­ tig­ i­ nous ex­ pan­ sion was the sig­ nif­ i­ cant num­ ber of rural youth with ­ secondary-school ed­ u­ ca­ tion, or in some in­ stances no more than a ­ primary-school ed­ u­ ca­ tion, who ­ swelled the party ranks and con­ sti­ tuted the most ac­ tive sec­ tor of Shin­ ing ­ Path’s rural “gen­ er­ ated or­ gan­ iza­ tions.” Sub­ se­ quently, they were in­ cor­ po­ rated into the ap­ pa­ ra­ tus of the “new 136 H a r v e s t i n g S t o r m s state” that Shin­ ing Path was con­ struct­ ing. Shin­ ing Path ­ clearly ­ needed this sec­ tor. Where it did not exist, Shin­ ing Path found it very dif­fi­ cult to es­ tab­ lish solid links with the pea­ santry.2 These were the po­ lit­ i­ cally and so­ cially “avail­ able” youth who, in their sec­ on­ dary ­ schools, had been ex­ posed ei­ ther to Shin­ ing Path dis­ course, or at least to what Por­ to­ car­ rero and Ol­ i­ art (1989) refer to as the “crit­ i­ cal idea of Peru”: ­ thought crit­ i­ cal of the so­ cial order in a con­ fron­ ta­ tional yet au­ thor­ i­ tar­ ian man­ ner. The pres­ ence of other par­ ties of the Left in some parts of the re­ gion, how­ ever ten­ u­ ous, also en­ cour­ aged youth­ ful rad­ i­ cal­ ism. In ad­ di­ tion these were youth in ­ search of an iden­ tity; their ­ parents’ “tra­ di­ tional” An­ dean iden­ tity­ seemed re­ mote after ex­ po­ sure to the “myth of prog­ ress” (De­ gre­ gori 1986b). This myth was dis­ semi­ nated in the ­ schools and mass media, and was even pro­ moted by their own par­ ents. These were youth, fi­ nally, who had lit­ tle hope of achiev­ ing such prog­ ress by way of the mar­ ket, mi­ gra­ tion, or more ed­ u­ ca­ tion. Sud­ denly, they were pre­ sented with the con­ crete pos­ sibil­ ity of so­ cial as­ cent­ through the new Sen­ de­ rista state.3 Shin­ ing Path mil­ i­ tancy may thus be seen, in part, as a path for so­ cial mo­ bil­ ity. Ar­ turo, a youth from the com­ mu­ nity of Rumi, re­ calls: “They said that Ay­ a­ cu­ cho was going to be a lib­ er­ ated zone by 1985. A fa­ mous il­ lu­ sion that they ­ created among the mu­ cha­ chos was, way back in 1981, that by ’85 there would be an in­ de­ pen­ dent re­ pub­ lic. ­ Wouldn’t you like to be a min­ is­ ter? ­ Wouldn’t you like to be a mil­ i­ tary ­ leader? Be some­ thing, no?” Power se­ duced these sec­ on­ dary stu­ dents, who were also cap­ ti­ vated by the ex­ am­ ples pre­ sented by other youth, the uni­ ver­ sity ­ students-cum-guerillas, who made up the ma­ jor­ ity of the Shin­ ing Path col­ umns. Nic­ a­ rio, also of Rumi, re­ called his en­ coun­ ter with one of them: This guy from the Uni­ ver­ sity of San ­ Cristóbal in­ vited me. So I, well, I ac­ cepted eas­ ily...

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