The Corner of the Living: Ayacucho on the Eve of the Shining Path Insurgency by Miguel La Serna (review)

When Mario Vargas Llosa arrived in the small hamlet of Uchuraccay in 1983 to investigate the murder of eight journalists and their guide, he realized that his speech about the Peruvian state and democracy was probably as strange to the peasants listening to him as Shining Path’s message of a Maoist revolution. Miguel La Serna’s study challenges this perception of Peruvian campesinos’ inability to engage and adapt outside ideologies. His study contributes to a growing body of literature that seeks to understand the motivations and historical roots of the conflict. Why did some highland peasants originally support Shining Path, while others did not? Why did Shining Path lose support? Through a rich combination of archival materials, testimonies collected by the Peruvian truth and reconciliation commission, and oral history, Miguel La Serna concludes that variations on local “power pacts” explain in large part the traction or lack thereof of both the state and Shining Path ideologies in highland communities.

La Serna’s main argument is that we can understand, at least in part, communities’ decisions with whom to side as a consequence of local perceptions of justice rendered against or evaded by local moral deviants, and that at least in the early years of the war (1980–1983), Andeans were not caught in a crossfire, but rather that at least some acted voluntarily within a “sphere of support” for Shining Path. By comparing the contiguous villages of Quispillaccta and Chuschi—the latter the launching pad of the war—with Huaychao, remembered as the birthplace of the counterinsurgency movement, La Serna presents in six chapters the divergent yet violent responses of indigenous peasants across Peru to the Shining Path, and the continued legacy of these decisions in their communities. Chuschi—a larger town, fairly wealthy in comparative terms, and integrated into regional markets—turned to the Shining Path to settle local scores, but Huaychao, a former hacienda that was isolated, much smaller, and primarily based on subsistence agriculture, did not.

La Serna sees the key difference between these communities’ responses to Shining Path as a difference in the ability of local power holders to enforce compliance with the community’s established norms of rights and obligations—what he calls a “power pact.” Looking back a generation at conflicts during times of relative peace, La Serna traces the life trajectories of moral backsliders—cattle rustlers, womanizers, and elite peasants and mestizos (qalas) who abused their positions—and their fates once Shining Path appeared. In studying these people, La Serna highlights the importance of cultural perceptions of what was considered deviant and legitimate behavior.

In Chuschi and Quispillaccta, traditional structures of justice had broken down to the point of ineffectiveness; neither they nor Peruvian governmental institutions were successful in punishing or reigning in deviants. In the void, those communities turned to Shining Path to exact vengeance upon individuals who had long histories of breaking communal norms and codes, and Shining Path members quickly established themselves as local authorities. Shining Path may have chosen Chuschi as the launching point of their armed struggle because of the well-known conflict between these neighboring communities. Thus, even though the ideological underpinnings of Shining Path did not necessarily resonate fully at the local level, the organization may have been seen as a vehicle for re-establishing normative boundaries. But therein lies a mismatch: whereas Shining Path “demanded justice against a semi-feudal social structure, a reactionary nation-state, and capitalist imperialism, Ayacuchan peasants seemed much more concerned with administering justice against moral deviants, illegitimate power holders, and long-time adversaries who had disrupted public order at the local level” (p. 165). Chuschinos and Quispillacctinos “were willing to experiment with this new system [of justice] as long as it redressed these local grievances” (p.165). In contrast, the customary leaders...