How Difficult It Is to Be God: Shining Path’s Politics of War in Peru, 1980–1999

Title Page, Copyright

How Dif­ fi­ cult It Is to Be God  C r i t ­ i ­ c a l H u m a n ­ R i g h t s Se­ ries Ed­ i­ tors Steve J. Stern T Scott ­ Straus Books in the se­ ries Crit­ i­ cal Human ­ Rights em­ pha­ size re­ search that opens new ways to think about and under­ stand human ­ rights. The se­ ries val­ ues in par­ tic­ u­ lar em­ pir­ i­ cally ­ grounded and in­ tel­ lec­ tu­ ally open re­ search that es­ chews sim­ plified ac­ counts of human ­ rights ­ events and pro­ cesses. The war ­ between ­ Peru’s Shin­ ing Path rev­ o­ lu­ tion­ ar­ ies and the state ­ sparked a human ­ rights cri­ sis. Atroc­ ities ­ claimed some 69,000 lives, hit es­ pe­ cially hard at na­ tive An­ dean peo­ ples, and ­ sparked mys­ tery. How could a tiny ­ Maoist sect in a re­ mote high­ land re­ gion turn into a war ma­ chine that ­ brought a whole so­ ci­ ety to the edge of col­ lapse? How did it re­ late to ­ youths and In­ dians? How did its cult of war af­ fect the clas­ sic human ­ rights doc­ trine of state re­ spon­ sibil­ ity? The late anthro­ pol­ o­ gist Car­ los Iván De­ gre­ gori of­ fered contra­ rian an­ swers, and laid a foun­ da­ tion for ­ Peru’s Truth and Rec­ on­ cil­ i­ a­ tion Com­ mis­ sion. How Dif­ fi­ cult It Is to Be God is the only ­ English-language book to pro­ vide his ma­ ture re­ flec­ tions on a trag­ edy that ­ defied stan­ dard inter­ na­ tional ­ scripts about human­ rights. How Dif­ fi­ cult It Is to Be God Shin­ ing Path’s Pol­ i­ tics of War in Peru, 1980–1999 Car­ los Iván De­ gre­ gori Ed­ ited and with an intro­ duc­ tion by Steve J. Stern Trans­ lated by Nancy Ap­ pel­ baum, ­ Joanna Drze­ wie­ niecki, Héc­ tor ­ Flores, Eric Hersh­ berg, Judy Rein, Steve J. Stern, and Kim­ berly Thei­ don The Uni­ ver­ sity of Wis­ con­ sin Press  The Uni­ ver­ sity of Wis­ con­ sin Press 1930 Mon­ roe ­ Street, 3rd Floor Mad­ i­ son, Wis­ con­ sin 53711-2059 uw­ press.wisc.edu 3 Hen­ rietta ­ Street Lon­ don WCE 8LU, En­ gland eu­ ros­ pan­ book­ store.com Copy­ right © 2012 The Board of Re­ gents of the Uni­ ver­ sity of Wis­ con­ sin ­ System All ­ rights re­ served. No part of this pub­ li­ ca­ tion may be re­ pro­ duced, ­ stored in a re­ trieval ­ system, or trans­ mit­ ted, in any for­ mat or by any means, dig­ i­ tal, elec­ tronic, me­ chan­ i­ cal, photo­ cop­ y­ ing, re­ cord­ ing, or oth­ er­ wise, or con­ veyed via the Inter­ net or a web­ site with­ out writ­ ten per­ mis­ sion of the Uni­ ver­ sity of Wis­ con­ sin Press, ex­ cept in the case of brief quo­ ta­ tions em­ bed­ ded in crit­ i­ cal ar­ ti­ cles and re­ views.­ Printed in the ­ United ­ States of Amer­ ica Li­ brary of Con­ gress ­ Cataloging-in-Publication Data De­ gre­ gori, Car­ los Iván. [Qué ­ difícil es ser Dios. En­ glish] How dif­ fi­ cult it is to be God : Shin­ ing ­ Path’s pol­ i­ tics of war in Peru, 1980–1999 / Car­ los Iván De­ gre­ gori ; ed­ ited and with an intro­ duc­ tion by Steve J. Stern ; trans­ lated by Nancy Ap­ pel­ baum . . . [et al.]. p.   cm.—(Crit­ i­ cal human ­ rights) In­ cludes bib­ lio­ graph­ i­ cal ref­ er­ ences and index. ISBN 978-0-299-28924-9 (pbk.: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-299-28923-2 (e-book) 1. Sen­ dero Lu­ mi­ noso (Guer­ rilla group)   2. Vi­ o­ lence—Peru—His­ tory—20th cen­ tury. 3. Po­ lit­ i­ cal vi­ o­ lence—Peru.   4. Peru—Pol­ i­ tics and govern­ ment—1980–   I. Stern, Steve J., 1951–   II. Ap­ pel­ baum, Nancy P.   III. Title.   IV. Se­ ries: Crit­ i­ cal human ­ rights. HV6433.P4D4513    2012 985.06´4—dc23 2012010942 ...