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6. Harvesting Storms: Peasant Rondas and the Defeat of Shining Path in Ayacucho
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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...