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Shining and Other Paths:
War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995
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Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995. Edited by steve j. stern. Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nations. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Photographs. Maps. Tables. Figures. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. xiv, 534 pp. Cloth, $64.95. Paper, $21.95. Steve J. Stern, professor of Latin American history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has prepared with utmost care a rich and satisfying intellectual banquet in Shining and Other Paths. When he convoked the 1995 conference in Madison that gave rise to this volume, his goals were to "improve understanding and interpretation of Peru's recent history" and to "develop . . . fresh knowledge and analysis." These goals were to be accomplished in a "carefully designed and multigenerational collaboration" based in large measure on the fieldwork of intellectuals who "had 'come of age' intellectually during Peru's war years" (p. xi). As one of the participants at this conference of the older intellectual generation, I can attest firsthand to the excitement we felt over the presentations and exchanges and the prospect that these would become a significant book. The eagerly awaited results do not disappoint.
Shining and Other Paths is a masterfully crafted and satisfying volume on several counts. First, it contains carefully and clearly written summary introductions by the editor for each of the book's five thematic sections (historical roots, failed struggle, destruction of third paths, women's war experience, and consequences) to help orient the reader and put the essays in context. Second, 11 of the 14 contributions have been beautifully translated from Spanish. Third, the editing and production are absolutely superb, and the book includes 25 photographs and 3 vital maps of Ayacucho, its Sello de Oro jungle area, and Puno. Fourth, there is an extensive, up-to-date bibliography of some 500 of the most important writings on Peru and Shining Path. Fifth, one finds consistency of the highest quality across the contributed essays, always a challenge requiring great tact and diplomacy by the editor as well as a sharp pencil. Finally, the essays offer in a single volume much new material and interpretation of Shining Path and contemporary Peru not hitherto available in English.
Brief observations on the individual contributions highlight their significance. In the section on historical context, Marisol de la Cadena, anthropologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, writes on the hitherto understudied twentieth- century rise of an insurgent intelligentsia and its race and class cleavages as important for understanding Peru's Left and Shining Path. Iván Hinojosa, Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Chicago, follows with an analysis of Shining Path as "one logical culmination" (p. 19) of Left projects and parties of the 1960s and 1970s and the strong Maoist influence there in the political space opened up by the 1968-1975 military regime's reforms. Florencia Mallon, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, concludes with an explanation for growing receptivity of the Left to the armed struggle in the disillusionment engendered over the early 1970s land invasions and land reform in Andahuaylas.
In the second section, on the failed struggle of Shining Path, Carlos Iván Degregori, [End Page 152] anthropologist and director of the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP), explains how the extraordinary insensitivity of young, educated Sendero militants to Ayacucho farmer practices and values turned peasants from supporters to violent opponents. Ponciano del Pino, professor of history at the Universidad de San Cristóbal de Huamanga, then analyzes how the violence and intemperateness of Shining Path in Ayacucho provoked a heightened sense of peasant identity, the reassertion of core values, and a culture of resistance led by mothers and evangelical Protestants. Nelson Manrique, historian at the Universidad Pontificia Católica del Perú, follows with an insightful analysis of how responses to Shining Path in Junín varied with type of local community--much greater resistance among upper...
Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995 (review)
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