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SENDERO LUMINOSO IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Cynthia McClintock

Dept. of Political Science

George Washington UniversityWashington, D.C. 20052

[email protected]

I. INTRODUCTION

In Latin America, insurgency has been prevalent. Latin America is the most

unequal region in the world, and inequality among social classes, ethnic groups, and

geographic regions has been the context for virtually every insurgency. Also, in virtuallyall the Latin American countries where insurgencies have threatened the state,

democratic political institutions have been weak, failing to represent citizens and to

respond effectively to their demands and concerns.

However, while the context of Latin American insurgencies has been very similar,

it is the argument of this paper that the immediate catalysts have varied. The catalyst, or

trigger, of a revolutionary movement cannot have always been present; if something had

always been present or had not changed, then it cannot explain the timing of the

emergence of the movement. Also, the catalyst must not be occurring simultaneously in

other nations--or else a similar revolutionary movement should be occurring there.

This paper argues that the catalysts of Peru's Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)

were unique. For other strong Latin American insurgencies, fraudulent elections and

political repression, usually under the auspices of an authoritarian regime, were the key

catalysts. By contrast, Sendero Luminoso stands out for its denial of Ch Guevara's

dictum that "One should never try to start a revolution against an elected government, for

the populace will not turn in a revolutionary direction while electoral alternatives remain

an option and retain an appeal."1 Rather, Peru's economic debacle was the pivotal

trigger.

1This is a description of Ch Guevara's view by Wickham-Crowley (1989: 514).


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Of course, anger at repression or poverty is not a sufficient condition of

insurgency; organizational, political, and international variables matter too. In this paper,

however, the emphasis is on the distinct catalysts of insurgency, rather than on the

entire symbiotic revolutionary equation. The paper considers first the political exclusion

and repression that were the common catalysts of insurgency in most Latin Americannations, and in particular El Salvador; it then examines the economic debacle that was

the key trigger in Peru.

At the start, I would like to mention two issues of research methodology. First,

there have been hundreds of revolutionary movements in Latin America; why do I

compare the experience of Peru first and foremost to El Salvador, and secondarily to

Cuba, Nicaragua, and Colombia? The relevant insurgencies are El Salvador's Frente

Farabundo Mart de Liberacin Nacional (FMLN), Cuba's Movimiento 26 de Julio (M-26-

7), Nicaragua's Frente Sandinista de Liberacin Nacional (FSLN), and Colombia's

Fuerzas Armadas de la Revolucin Colombiana (FARC).

One criterion is the strength of the movement: did the insurgency threaten the

state or actually achieve power? What was the number of militants and victims, the

amount of territory controlled, and the degree of popular support? In general, only Latin

American revolutionary movements in which university-educated intellectuals achieved

an alliance with peasants were able to become "strong."2 On this indicator, the

Mexican, Bolivian, Cuban, Nicaraguan, El Salvadoran, and Colombian insurgencies

qualify, as well of course as the Peruvian. The Venezuelan, the Uruguayan, and the

Argentine movements did not come close to defeating their respective governments and

do not qualify; in these nations, the challenges endured only a few years, ending amid

greater democratization in Venezuela and intense repression in Uruguay and

Argentina.3 Guatemala--where the guerrilla coalition did threaten the Guatemalan

regime in the early 1980s, but only briefly, for about a year--is a borderline case.4

2This point was originally highlighted by Huntington (1968: 288-230).3In Venezuela after 1959, the new government of Rmulo Betancourt confronted about 1,000-2,000 guerrillas, primarily university students influenced by the recent victory of Fidel Castro inCuba and disturbed that Betancourt had shifted rightwards; however, popular support for theguerrillas was minimal, and dissipated almost entirely after a successful election in 1963. InUruguay, between roughly 1967 and 1972, elected governments faced about 1,500 Tupamaros;at first, these youthful urban guerrillas' spectacular, selective attacks were supported by manydisaffected Uruguayans, but the guerrillas' violence became more random and the movementbecame politically isolated. In Argentina between 1973 and 1976, Presidents Juan Pern and


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A second criterion is the era of the insurgency. For numerous reasons, in

particular the availability of data and holding era-specific factors constant--the focus is

on movements that began during or after the Cold War. Special attention is given to the

FMLN in El Salvador in good part because the Salvadoran insurgency was active fromthe late 1970s until the early 1990s--a time period almost identical to that of Sendero

Luminoso. The movements that were to compose the FMLN grew during the 1970s, and

their challenge to the Salvadoran state was at its apex between 1979 and the early

1980s, but continued through the decade. At first vigorous in San Salvador, in the late

1970s and early 1980s these movements were severely repressed, and they withdrew to

their rural social bases, primarily in the departments of Morazn and Chalatenango,

where they had been building substantial peasant support since the mid-1970s. In Peru,

the Shining Path originated in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Ayacucho and other

departments of the southern highlands. In the mid-1980s, the movement expanded in

coca-growing areas. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Sendero was active not only

virtually throughout Peru's highlands but also in major cities, including Lima.

A second methodological note is that, in the effort to demonstrate the conditions

that were or were not important to the emergence and expansion of insurgencies, I draw

on both the available objective data and the subjective evaluations of citizens. For the

latter, I worked with respected research teams in El Salvador and Peru to carry out

sample surveys, as well as informal surveys, of particular groups in the two countries.5

then his widow Isabel Pern were challenged by perhaps 5,000 urban guerrillas, in particular theMontoneros; most guerrillas had worked for the return of Pern to Argentina in the hope that hisgovernment would initiate socialist policies, and were angry when it did not. For furtherdiscussion and sources, see McClintock (1998: 6).4Dunkerley (1988:483-491); Barry (1992: 65-71); Jonas (1991: 139-142).

5In Peru, I collaborated with the respected public-opinion agency Datum. Directed by Manuel

Torrado. I worked too with Rodolfo Osores Ocampo, a sociologist trained at the Universidad delCentro in Huancayo who had also earned a post-graduate degree in demography at the CatholicUniversity in Lima. Osores's residence in the central-highlands city of Huancayo was a majorboon to this research, enabling a variety of kinds of surveys in one of the areas most directlythreatened by Sendero. Over the years, he established a team of university-educated relativesand friends whom he trained in interview techniques. In El Salvador, my principal researchcolleague was Victor Antonio Orellana. Director of ISEAC (Instituto Salvadoreo de Educacin y

Asesora Cooperativa), Orellana had vast research experience and had been a professor at theUCA, the respected Catholic university in San Salvador. In Ecuador, I collaborated with thepublic-opinion agency CEDATOS (Centro de Estudios y Datos), a prestigious firm whose polling


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Also, I hope that one of the key scholarly contributions of this paper is a set of thirty-

three interviews with Shining Path militants, conducted in the Huancayo area of Peru in

1993.6 Although the Commission on Truth and

Reconciliation has now carried out interviews with all the key groups, these thirty-three

interviews capture Senderistas' views at a time much closer to the peak years of the

struggle.

II. CATALYSTS OF INSURGENCY: ELECTORAL FRAUD? MILITARY REPRESSION?

Traditionally in Latin America, it has been the intensification of political abuse by

an authoritarian regime that has sparked insurgency. Indeed, not one established,

elected regime has been overthrown by a leftist guerrilla movement--at any time, in any

place in the world.7

results are regularly reported in the Ecuadorean media. For more information on the surveys,see McClintock (1998: 313-319).

6The 33 interviews with Shining Path were carried out by Osores team in Huancayo and itsvicinities in April-May 1993. The focus of the questionnaire was upon the reasons why therespondent had joined the Shining Path, and what he or she liked and disliked about themovement. Twenty-three of the interviews were carried out by a former Shining Path member["Pedro Paredes"] who, in the wake of the capture of Guzmn, was trying to extricate himselffrom the organization. "Pedro Paredes" did not have a permanent job and welcomed thepayment for the interviews; he trusted Osores because they were neighbors in the residentialarea by the Huancayo university, and because Osores had gotten to know one of his relatives atthe Ministry of Health in Huancayo. "Pedro" and Osores conducted some of the interviewstogether. "Pedro Paredes" had completed secondary school, but had no university education.

The final ten interviews with Shining Path members were conducted in the Huancayo prison, inthe cell block for those arrested on charges of terrorism. These interviews were carried out jointlyby Osores and Samuel Sosa (a friend of Osores's nephew), who had recently completed legalstudies at the Universidad del Centro and was specializing in terrorist law; Sosa had contacts atthe Huancayo jail and brought soap, food, and so forth to gain collaboration from the suspectedand convicted Shining Path militants.

7Regimes surviving less than a year, such as Alexander Kerensky's in Russia in 1917, are not"established." In Eastern European nations after World War II, initial elections were held underthe cloud of Soviet influence; the Soviets did not, however, act as guerrillas.


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The four governments that fell to social revolution in Latin America during the

twentieth century were all authoritarian; three were personalist dictatorships. In Mexico

in 1910, Porfirio Daz had ruled for more than forty years. In Bolivia in 1952, a military

junta had nullified an election won the previous year by the MNR (Movimiento Nacional

Revolucionario). In Cuba in 1959, Fulgencio Batista had cancelled elections and ruledrepressively for more than six years; repression became increasingly intense in Havana,

and long-postponed elections, finally held in November 1958, were rigged. And, in

Nicaragua in 1979, Anastasio Somoza had been the third member of a dynasty ruling

Nicaragua since the 1930s. In January 1978, the leader of the opposition to Somoza,

publisher Pedro Joaqun Chamorro, was gunned down in Managua; the assassination

prompted political strikes and guerrilla offensives that, in turn, led to ever-greater

repression by a now-delusional Somoza.

The Colombian government has not fallen to the insurgency, and is not likely to

do so; however, by our criteria, the FARC is strong. As of 2001-02, it was estimated to

number 20,000 fighters and to control a large swath of territory in Colombia's southeast

and be active in about 40 percent of the country's territory.8 In Colombia, there is a

long-standing tradition of elections and civilian government; yet, repression against the

political left has been severe. The spark to Colombia's guerrilla movements was the

1948 assassination of leftist Liberal leader Jorge Gaitn, who had inspired tremendous

hopes among Colombia's poor. After ten years of political violence, Colombia's two

major political parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, formed an elite pact to share

political power--excluding the left. Hoping for a political opening, FARC leftists laid

down their arms and formed the Unin Paritica to participate in the 1986 elections;

some 6,000 were murdered by military and paramilitary groups.9

In El Salvador, military repression and electoral fraud were key catalysts to the

FMLN. Historically, the Salvadoran military was very closely allied with the country's

upper classes. Prior to 1930, the Salvadoran military developed almost exclusively as

an institution to advance the interests of landowning elites; until the one-hundred hour

1969 frontier war with Honduras, the Salvadoran military did not fight a significant

external war. From 1930 until 1979, in a pact between the military and the oligarchy, the

military gained control of the state apparatus, but governed in the oligarchy's interest.

8Rochlin (2003: 137).


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Until 1948, military dictators led; after 1948, regular elections were held, but a military

officer consistently emerged as president.

In the 1960s and 1970s, this military-upper class pact was increasingly

challenged by popular groups seeking political and economic reforms, but the traditionalelites resisted change. In 1966, a paramilitary organization, ORDEN (Organizacin

Democrtica Nacionalista), was established; its members attacked popular organizations

and stuffed ballot boxes. In 1972, when the Christian Democratic Party's Napoleon

Duarte was leading the early returns in the presidential election, media coverage was

halted, the official party's candidate was declared the winner, and Duarte was captured,

beaten, and put on a plane to political exile. In elections in 1977, the government was

more careful to create non-existent voters, situate ballot boxes far from poor

neighborhoods, intimidate opposition poll watchers, and so forth to achieve its desired

electoral outcome.

In the late 1970s, as the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberacin Nacional) was

growing in Nicaragua, political tensions increased in El Salvador. In 1979, the general

who had won the previous elections was ousted, and various civilian-military juntas

governed until 1982. The years 1979-1982 were the period of most intense repression.

More than 500 political leaders (primarily members of the Christian Democratic Party)

and 3,500 union activists were assassinated by Salvadoran security forces; about sixty

church people and twenty-five journalists were killed as well.10 The total number of

civilian deaths from 1979-1981 was estimated at more than 20,000, of which the military

and paramilitary were responsible for approximately 85%.11 Political violence remained

extremely high in 1983, with more than 6,500 deaths; the annual toll was still over 1,000

in the final years of the decade.12 More than 65% of the deaths during this later period

were attributed to the military and paramilitary.13

9Kline and Gray (2000: 212)10McClintock, Revolutionary Movements, p. 114. Primary sources were Americas Watch and

American Civil Liberties Union publications.11Americas Watch and American Civil Liberties Union (1982a, 37); Simon and Stephens (1982,61); and Berryman (1994, 75).12Annual reports of Tutela Legal. For more information, see McClintock, RevolutionaryMovements, p. 117.13Idem.


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In this context of intense political repression, Salvadoran elections were

obviously not free. During the 1980s, the electoral process did open, but only gradually.

In the mid-1980s, the centrist or center-leftist Christian Democratic Party was accepted

as a legitimate contender. In the late 1980s, social democratic and Marxist leaders who

had been sympathetic to the FMLN but had not actually fought as guerrillas began tocompete, but not without harassment and at least one death. Only after the 1992 peace

accord was the FMLN confident that it could participate without reprisals.

Nor were Salvadoran elections fair. Suspicions about the honesty of vote counts

were rampant. Before the introduction of registration procedures in 1988, double-

voting, ballot stuffing, and other partisan efforts to manipulate electoral outcomes were

blatant. After 1988, incumbent governments seemed intent on oppressing the potential

vote for the political left by raising large hurdles to both registering and balloting. As a

result, the percentage of eligible voters turning out to vote in El Salvador was only about

40 percent in 1989 and 52 percent in 1994, versus figures near 70 percent in Peru. 14

Overall, only 33 percent of Salvadorans in a 1991 Orellana survey judged Salvadoran

elections "correct and accessible to all" versus 60 percent of Limeos in a 1990 Datum

survey.15

By contrast, military repression of political leaders was not severe in Peru

between 1978 and 1992. The Peruvian military was never as tied to landowning elites

as its Salvadoran counterpart, and distanced itself further from these elites in the 1960s

and 1970s. In Peru's elections during the 1980s, the Marxist left participated without

significant fear. There were killings of politically salient civilians by military and

paramilitary groups--an estimated 2 political leaders, 2 union leaders, 2 journalists, and

7 church people between 1982 and 1985, for example--but there was not a pattern of

severe, systematic harassment of activists.16 During the last two and a half years of

the Belande government, however, there was a pattern of severe, systematic

repression in the southern-highlands areas where Sendero was active. The vast

14Calculations from various sources, described in McClintock, Revolutionary Movements, pp.121-122.15For comprehensive information on this survey item, see McClintock, RevolutionaryMovements, p. 111.16Figures calculated from all relevant publications by the U.S. Department of State CountryReports on Human Rights Practices, Americas Watch, the Instituto de Defensa Legal, AmnestyInternational, and the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights.


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majority of the more than 3,500 people indiscriminately killed by the security forces were

impoverished Quechua-speaking peasants.17 Especially by the late 1980s and in the

countryside, the quality of elections was damaged by political violence, but most violent

actions were perpetrated by the guerrillas themselves.

Also, overall, Peru's elections were considered fair. The results of Peru's three

presidential elections, in 1980, 1985, and 1990 were not questioned by the major

political parties. Nor were there charges of serious irregularities in the 1980 or 1983

municipal contests. However, in the 1986 municipal elections, the governing party's use

of official funds for partisan purposes was criticized, and in the 1989 municipal elections,

political violence marred many rural races. Still, in general, as indicated above, turn-out

was high and, even as of 1990, 60 percent of Limeos considered elections "correct and

accessible to all."

These different objective contexts in El Salvador and Peru are reflected in the

different backgrounds and perspectives of guerrilla leaders and rank-and-file. Whereas

FMLN militants frequently cited political exclusion as the main reason for their decision

to join the movement, Shining Path guerrillas did not. While of course FMLN leaders

were concerned about poverty and injustice, most believed that, if they were allowed to

compete freely in fair elections, they would win, and then they would be able to

implement socioeconomic reform; accordingly, electoral reform was the first priority.18

In El Salvador, during the 1970s and early 1980s, most future FMLN leaders

were at the National University of El Salvador, in the country's capital, where they

personally suffered political exclusion. In the 1972 presidential election, many National

University of El Salvador students campaigned vigorously for the Christian Democrats.

Enraged by the electoral fraud, the students protested massively, and the government

closed the university--provoking further student anger and protest.19 Paramilitary

violence in the capital escalated--including the 1980 assassination of Catholic Church

leaders such as Archbishop Romero--and further galvanized rage.20 Many of the

17Comisin de la Verdad y Reconciliacin, Hatun Willakuy (Lima: Comisin de la Entrega de laComisin de la Verdad y Reconciliacin, 2004), pp. 207-223.18See, for example, Castaeda (1993: 103).19Harnecker (1993: 43-45).20Pearce (1986: 193).


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original FMLN leaders were themselves victims of electoral fraud and repression. By

contrast, in Peru, the Universidad Nacional de San Cristbal de Huamanga was in the

remote southern-highlands department of Ayacucho, and Shining Path members'

outlooks were not shaped by national-level politics. None of the Shining Path leaders

sought to participate in electoral politics prior to their commitment to the movement; nordid any of the leaders personally experience or witness political repression.

Consider, for example, some of the FMLN's best-known leaders. Shafik Handal,

head of the Salvadoran Communist Party for many years and the FMLN's 2004

presidential candidate, was arrested and beaten seven times during the 1960s and

1970s--and beaten.21 In 1976, Ana Guadalupe Martnez, who was to become the

second-in-command of a key FMLN group, was arrested; for seven months, she lived in

a tiny cell where she was raped and tortured. Just as many FMLN leaders, whenMartnez wrote, her topic was her suffering at the hands of the security forces; her book

was entitled Crceles Clandestinas de El Salvador.

Leaders' explanations for their commitment to the FMLN regularly emphasized

electoral fraud and political repression. Said Joaqun Villalobos, leader of one of the

most important groups within the FMLN:

"The good people of Morazn started to organize,

many of them in Christian communities. They began

to organize against economic injustice, the repression of the National

Guard, and the frauds of the PCN. We adopted armed

struggle not because we liked violence, but because we had to fight for the

structural changes that would establish new rules for participation."22

Said Facundo Guardado, one of the highest-ranking FMLN leaders of peasant

extraction:

"I arrived at the movement in two ways.

First, I was an activist in the Christian Democratic

Party from the time that I was a small boy; and then,

by way of the cooperative movement promoted by

21Bonasso and Gmez Leyva (1992: 20-30).22Joaqun Villalobos, interviewed for "Fire in the Mind," Program #9 of the video series "The

Americas" (Annenberg/CPB collection), filmed in 1992.


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the Church in which I had become active. Through this

movement I began to affiliate with the peasant

organizations Many of us came from the ranks of the

Christian Democratic Party; we had lost all hope by this time

that we could find a solution through this party; we were people who haddeveloped our human and social consciousness through the Christian

movement."23

The FMLN was allied with the FDR (Frente Democrtico Revolucionario), a

group of civilian leaders who were sympathetic to the FMLN but did not take up arms.

The President of the FDR during most of its existence was Guillermo Ungo, who had

become the head of a social-democratic party and was the vice-presidential candidate

on the doomed 1972 ticket with Duarte. Said Ungo shortly before his death in 1991:"Democratization is the main issue. The

Salvadoran army must be democratized

and changed....24

The best-known FDR leader was Rubn Zamora, who became the presidential

candidate of the FMLN/MNR/Democratic Convergence coalition in 1994. In January

1980, Zamora's brother Mario was killed by death squads; in April, Rubn joined the

FDR. Explaining the formation of the FDR, he said:

"First, we [the Christian Democrats] took part in

elections, but they were fraudulent, and then we were

arrested. I was jailed after every election in that period. Then, we tried

extra-parliamentary means--strikes and protests. But they were met

with repression. Every demonstation ended up in a massacre."25

Among the FMLN rank-and-file, peasants predominated. By one estimate, about

80% of the FMLN's rank-and-file were peasants in the early 1980s, and the figure had

23Harnecker (1993: 153-154).24Guillermo Ungo, at a breafast discussion of the Inter-American Dialogue, January 30, 1990, inWashington, D.C. Ungo (1984: 219-230) makes a similar emphasis upon political exclusion.25Zamora in an interview on the "Fire in the Mind," Program #9 of the video series "The

Americas," Annenberg/CPB Collection, filmed in 1992.


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reached 95% by the late 1980s.26After a two-week visit in the early 1980s to Morazn,

a department largely conrolled by the FMLN, New York Times journalist Raymond

Bonner provided a profile of the peasant revolutionary in the zone: "born and raised in

Morazn; two years of school; at least one parent or sibling killed by government

soldiers; living brothers and sisters participating in the revolution."27 For most, an

egregious violation of human rights was the direct antecedent to their decision to join the

guerrilla movement.28 Also, in Morazn and other pro-FMLN departments, the

liberation theology sector of the Catholic Church was influential, and the security forces'

abuses against Catholic priests were pivotal catalysts as well.

Explained a former peasant who had become a zonal commander, Ral

Hercules:

"' I was raised on the message of Father Alas and

Father Grande. Though others [than the priests] said

we would never bring change without guns, we thought

it was possible. We demonstrated, we organized, and

we said 'no' for the first time in our lives. You know

what it brought. You've heard the stories....[Father]

Alas was kidnapped, drugged, beaten, and left for dead.

Father Rutilio was machine gunned. My own father

was cut into pieces."29

In sharp contrast to FMLN interviewees, not one of the 33 Senderistas

interviewed by the Osores team mentioned political exclusion or problems of the

electoral process as reasons for their joining the movement. Three (9 percent) reported

a specific human rights abuse (in all three cases, soldiers' killing one or more of their

relatives during a raid into a highlands village) as an impetus to their decision--a

considerable percentage but much smaller than among the Salvadorans.

26Estimate by FMLN leader Facundo Guardado in an interview in El Salvador with Hugh Byrne,reported to the author by Hugh Byrne on July 19, 1995, in Washington D.C. See also MenaSandoval (n.d.: 340); the New York Times, March 15, 1981, p. 4.27The New York Times, January 26, 1982, p. A4.28Caesar Sereseres, Professor of Political Science at the University of California at Irvine,carried out interviews with about 30 FMLN members at different ranks from the five groups withinthe coalition. He reported that a "very high percentage" said they joined because of abuses totheir relatives and/or to priests. Author's interview, September 8, 1994, in Carlisle, Pennyslvania.


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Finally, most scholars have also emphasized the exclusive, repressive

Salvadoran regime as the original catalyst of the country's revolutionary movement.30

By contrast, analysts of the Shining Path concurred that political exclusion was not a

factor in Peru's revolutionary equation. As Palmer writes: "Sendero did not grow out of

a national context of systemic and official repression or a systematic thwarting of

opportunties for access to national politics...Democracy should have been a major

bulwark against the advance of Shining Path in Peru."31

III. CATALYSTS OF INSURGENCY: INTENSIFIED POVERTY? DASHED MIDDLE-

CLASS EXPECTATIONS?

Traditionally in Latin America, poverty has been a constant backdrop--rather thana catalyst--of insurgency. For the most part, this was the case in Cuba, Colombia,

Nicaragua, and El Salvador. By contrast, in Peru during the late 1970s and 1980s,

poverty was far from a constant. The economic plunge in Peru was extraordinarily deep

and severely afflicted both university-educated aspirants to the middle class and the

peasantry. Of course, economic decline was not the only factor in the expansion of the

Shining Path. Peru's economic plunge was a spark igniting dry political timbers; it

provided an unprecedented opportunity to a shrewd revolutionary organization and

provoked new problems for a state whose legitimacy was limited in any case.

Cuba during the 1950s was one of the more prosperous countries in Latin

America; also, although during the decade national economic growth was low, it was

positive.32 However, concerns that the growth was in the mode of "casino capitalism"

were intense. In the countryside, seasonal unemployment and landlessness were

worsening problems. Land insecurity was especially severe in Oriente, where Fidel

Castro's movement gained a social base.

29Clements (1984: 122-123).30See Vilas (1995: 82).LeoGrande (1990: 144), Dunkerley (1988: 375), Baloyra (1982), (1985),and (1993: 4). Seligson (1996: 155). Wickham-Crowley (1992: 228-229). Montgomery (1995:269). and Carothers (1991: 14).31Palmer (1995: 253 and 302).32Gonzalez (1974: 18).


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Although Colombia's living standards during the 1960s-1980s were below

regional averages, its economic growth rates during these decades met regional

norms.33 The only Andean nation that did not implement a significant agrarian reform,

Colombia has been wracked by landlessness and land conflict. However, when the

FARC expanded during the 1990s, there were no particular changes in these economic

conditions.

In Nicaragua and El Salvador, the insurgencies were emerging during the 1970s;

economic growth rates in the two countries were robust, as in the region generally.

National living standards were not declining during the period that the insurgency was

emerging.34 Newly educated young people were able to find employment that met their

expectations for middle-class status. As political violence intensified, however, it did

take a toll on the countries' economies. In the countryside, landlessness and ruralunemployment were increasing; however, other socioeconomic trends in the countryside

were positive, and peasants' subsistence was rarely threatened.35 In El Salvador, the

departments where the FMLN gained a strong social base were not the departments of

most severe misery.

National Economic Trends and Middle Class Opportunities in El Salvador and Peru36

From the 1970s through the early 1990s, national economic trends in Peru were

among the most negative in the region. Peru's decline in GDP per capita from 1971 to1990--roughly -2% annually--was among the worst in the region: declines were steeper

only in Guyana and Nicaragua.37 By numerous criteria, between 1985 and 1990 Peru

recorded "one of the worst economic performances in modern history."38 By contrast,

average annual GDP growth in El Salvador was moderate between 1961 and 1979;

33Inter-American Development Bank (1990: 28).

34Inter-American Development Bank (1990:28). The most controversial case is El Salvador.Seligson (1996: 151-155) is the scholar who I consider most rigorous on this question, and it ishis view that helped shape mine here.35Brockett (1988).36The official statistics on which this section are based are subject to many reservations.However, I sought the best data available. See McClintock (1998: 162).37Inter-American Development Bank (1992: 286). See also Paredes and Sachs (1991:73). Adetailed discussion is provided in McClintock (1998: 162-164).38Glewwe and Hall (1994: 715).


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Salvadoran per capita income attained an apex in 1978.39 GDP plummeted by 10

percent in 1980--but primarily as a result of the armed conflict.40

In Peru, the opportunities to find regular employment at a middle-class wage

declined precipitously in the 1980s. Whereas in Lima approximately half the

economically active population was adequately employed in the mid-1980s, by 1990 the

figure plummeted to about 6 percent, versus roughly 40 percent in El Salvador and the

region as a whole.41 In 1989, Peru's real minimum wage deteriorated to only 23% of its

1980 value; this decline was the worst by thirteen percentage points among the nineteen

Latin American nations for which figures were reported by the Inter-American

Development Bank.42 The drop was on top of an almost 20 percent decline between

1969-70 and 1979-80.43

How much were people earning? In contrast to wage trends, dollar wage values

are infrequently reported, in part because the calculation to dollar values is difficult.

However, in 1990 Per Econmico calculated the dollar value of the monthly minimum

wage for fourteen Latin American countries; the figure for El Salvador was $90, but for

Peru $35, the lowest with the exception of Bolivia.44 Wages in Peru's public sector--

where teachers, nurses, and many other presumed members of Peru's middle class

worked--were also low and decreasing. In 1980, the average monthly public-sector

wage in Peru was estimated at $232; by 1988, the wage was $111, and by 1990, $39.45

By contrast, in El Salvador, the average monthly public-sector wage in 1988 was $227,

only slightly lower than in 1980.46 The decline in teachers' wages closely paralleled the

decline in public sector wages overall (as did the steadiness of teachers' salaries in El

39Bulmer-Thomas (1983: 272) and Funes (1992: 44).40Boyer (1991: 11); Funes (1992: 44).

41Data for Peru from Cunto (1991: 30). For data for El Salvador and the region as a whole, seeMcClintock (1998: 164).42Inter-American Development Bank (1990: 28).43Webb and Fernndez Baca (1991: 811).44Per Econmico, Vol. 13, No. 8 (August 1990), pp. 43-44.45Cunto (1991: 31). Rosenberg (1991: 11) reports a scant $45 per month salary for nurses.See figures for teachers directly below.46My calculation from various sources; see McClintock (1998: 188). For nurses' and teachers'salaries, see Gregory (1991: 23 and 30).


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Salvador).47 Not surprisingly, at such wage levels, many of Peru's teachers could not

provide their own children three meals a day.48 In Peru, but not El Salvador, people

often spoke of "inhuman" salaries.

Peru's economic collapse was especially serious because it occurred as many

more young people gained an education and expected to rise into Peru's middle class.

Many of these young people were of peasant origin; they had struggled to attend

provincial universities. Between 1970 and 1993, university enrollment jumped from

19% of the relevant age group to 40%--a much bigger jump than the Latin American

average.49 The increase in university enrollment was even greater in Ayacucho than

nationwide. Between 1960 and 1980, the number of university students nationwide

multiplied about 8 times, versus 20 times in Ayacucho.50

However, most educated young people of highlands-peasant origin, many of

whom were the first in their families to gain an education, could not find a middle-class

job in a city. They often returned--deeply frustrated--as schoolteachers to the peasant

communities of their birth. Explained Rodrigo Montoya:

"In provincial universities such as those in Ayacucho or Puno, it is

difficult...to distinguish a student from a quechua peasant. Not only are the

indigenous physical traits the same, but also the dominance of quechua and

the difficulties with Spanish. An economist graduated from theAyacucho university in these conditions cannot get a job at the Central

Reserve Bank and is not resigned to being a low-ranking teacher in a remote

village where nobody wants to go. But there is no other way to survive

but to go there. In his family and social milieu--where so many hopes

47For Peru, see Ansin, Del Castillo, Piqueras, and Zegarra (1992: 44) and The New YorkTimes, June 26, 1991, p. A8; for El Salvador, Gregory (1991: 23). Kirk (1992: 21) reports that akindergarten teacher's salary was $55 a month in approximately 1990. Strong (1992: 259)reports $85 in June 1991.48The New York Times, December 8, 1991, p. E3. For the decline in the capacity to buy food inLima generally, see Crabtree (1992: 146-147), Washington Post, 27 November 1991, p. 22A, andNew York Times, 15 December 1991, p. 21.49World Bank, World Development Report, 1996 edition, table 7, pp. 200-201 and 1994 edition,table 28, pp. 216-217.50Degregori (1990: 253).


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were placed in education as the route to social mobility--this exile is

interpreted as failure, a very painful failure. "51

Echoed Gianotten, de Wit, and de Wit:

"Most of the students in the department of education [at the university

in Ayacucho] had to go back to their communities after ending their studies.

Children of peasants, who had worked themselves upwards with

many financial difficulties, and become teachers, had to go back to the

poverty from which they came. They went back to villages where there was no

drinking-water, no electricity...[Their students] had not even enough money

to buy a pencil...The deep frustration of blocked aspirations

and a future perspective without any hope of improvement led to a

growing militancy...."52

As Degregori emphasized, the strategic genius of Sendero's founders was to

target teachers and, through them, students and young people in general.53 In

whatever area Sendero was seeking to expand, it focused first upon its university.54 By

the early 1990s, perhaps 30,000 teachers--or 15% of all Peru's teachers--were

Senderistas.55 One nine-member ideology and propaganda "support group" for

Sendero included two university professors and two primary school teachers, as well as

two students and a self-employed public accountant.56 Among the 33 Senderistas

interviewed by my research team, 15% were teachers.

The Peasantry

During the 1960s and 1970s, peasants did not fare well in either Peru or El

Salvador. The deterioration of peasants' living standards was much sharper in Peru,

51Montoya (1992: 91).52Gianotten, de Wit, and de Wit (1985: 190-191).53Degregori (1986: 261), (1989b: 28), and 1991: 26).54Manuel Jess Granados, cited by Bonner (1988: 35). An excellent comprehensive analysis is

Ansin, Del Castillo, Piqueras, and Isaura Zegarra (1992).55This estimate was made in late 1990 by Gloria Helfer, minister of education at the time in theFujimori government. The estimate was frequently cited; see for example INIDEN (1991: 43).


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however, and only in Peru was peasants' subsistence threatened. As Starn (1991) and

Mitchell (1991) emphasized, there was "explosive pain and discontent in the

highlands."57 In Peru there is a clear correlation between the departments of most

severe poverty and the rise of Sendero, but in El Salvador there is not.

Traditionally, both Peru and El Salvador were among the Latin American nations

where land was most scarce and most unevenly distributed.58 Also, landlessness was

increasing in both countries.59 To improve land distribution, agrarian reform programs

were implemented, and the results of the reforms were similar in the two countries: a

small group of peasants--for the most part, peasants who were already more

advantaged--benefited, while most did not.60

Both the Peruvian and Salvadoran reforms were least effective in precisely the

departments where guerrilla movements either were to become strong, as in Peru, or

already were strong, as in El Salvador. In El Salvador, these departments were already

dominated by the FMLN when the reform began, and the FMLN effectively blocked the

reform.61 In Peru, the southern highlands were remote and accordingly access for

reform officials more difficult; also, the rocky and precipitous land and the tensions

among different peasant groups, specifically peasant community members and hacienda

workers, limited the benefits of reform. To try to resolve the tensions between peasant

community members and hacienda workers, the Peruvian government established SAIS

cooperatives, but conflict endured and was exploited by Sendero.62 Most southern-

highlands peasants were not reform beneficiaries at all; in 1975, of economically active

families in agriculture, 87% were not reform beneficiaries in Ayacucho, 82% in

Apurmac, and 54% in Huancavelica--versus 50% in La Libertad and Lambayeque, two

56 La Repblica, April 14, 1993, pp. 12-16.57Starn (1991: 79) and Mitchell (1991: 196-197).58Martnez and Tealdo (1982: 39).

59For Peru, see McClintock (1981: 61 and Appendix 3). The precise dimensions of the problemin El Salvador are controversial. See Brockett (1990:149), Lehoucq and Sims (1982: 2), Ruben(1991: 15), and Simon and Stephens (1982: 2) and Seligson (1995).60For Peru, see Martnez and Tealdo (1982: 20); Matos Mar and Meja (1980: 64-70); Caballeroand Alvarez (1980: 63); and McClintock (1981: 60). For El Salvador, see McClintock (1998: 175-178).61McClintock (1998: 177-178) and U.S. Department of State (1984: 6); Ministerio de Agriculturay Ganadera (1989: Table 1).62Manrique (1989: 160) and Rnique (1993) and (1994).


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north-coast departments.63 While coastal reform beneficiaries were very rarely

attracted to the Shining Path, southern-highland peasants were more frustrated after the

reform than before it and inclined to listen to Sendero's message.

Various other government policies were also adversely affecting the Peruvian

peasantry. Trends in the terms of trade for agricultural products, in agricultural credit,

and in public investment in agriculture were either negative or considerably less positive

than in most Latin American nations.64 Amid Peru's 1988-1992 economic crisis,

government ministries were seriously lacking in resources, and in part as a result, such

important programs as potable water installation and rural access to health services

lagged way behind the regional average.65

The incomes of disadvantaged peasants in Peru were low, and declining. As of

1970-1971, annual family peasant incomes in the Peruvian highlands averaged about

$188; by comparison, as of 1975, annual family incomes for the rural Salvadoran

landless averaged roughly $315, and for those with less than one hectare of land

approximately $400.66 In the late 1970s, annual per capita income among peasants in

eight communities of the central and southern highlands was approximately $75 in Peru,

versus somewhat below $225 for landless farm-worker families in El Salvador.67 The

availability and remuneration of seasonal agricultural labor worsened considerably in the

Peruvian highlands.68 In Apurmac, the daily agricultural wage was a mere $.50 in

1982.69 In El Salvador, job availability and wages were also declining--but the daily

agricultural wage was approximately $1.80.70

63McClintock (1989:74) Calculation is based on Ministry of Agriculture (1975: Table 4).64McClintock (1998: 180-181).65McClintock (1998: 190-199).

66Data for Peru from Caballero (1981: 208); data for El Salvador from North (1985: 49).Calculation into dollars for Peru by Caballlero, for El Salvador by the author.67Data for Peru from Figueroa (1983: 68) and for El Salvador from Diskin (1989: 432).Calculations into dollars in the original text. Diskin writes that the Salvadoran incomes were"below" about $225.68Deere (1990: 255-260); Mitchell (1991).69Berg (1986/87: 182).70Ruben (1991: 22, 60) and Menzel (1994: 33 and 49) and Rosenberg (1991: 246). Both Menzeland Rosenberg report the wage in dollar terms.


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Accordingly, even in highlands peasant communities that had benefited from the

agrarian reform, peasants were very critical. In 1980 in Vilca, a member of the large and

prosperous SAIS Cahuide, 84% of twenty-five respondents said that the community's

progress in recent years had been "bad."71 Vilca peasants were also asked, "What

have been the achievements in your community in recent years?" Despite the optimistic

phraseology, 92% of the respondents answered, "None." Of 55 respondents in two

other sites, one a coastal cooperative and the other a prosperous peasant community

near Huancayo, only 7% said that progress had been "bad."

Indeed, disadvantaged peasants' subsistence was threatened in Peru during the

late 1970s and 1980s. By one estimate, daily per capita consumption among lower-

class people throughout the country fell from 1,934 calories in 1972 to 1,486 in 1979.72

The World Bank reported that, in Peru's rural highlands, per capita calorie consumption

dropped from 2,085 calories daily in 1972 to 1,971 in 1980--a 5% decline.73 In the

southern highlands, conditions approximated famine; there were reports of consumption

of as little as 420 calories a day.74 These adverse trends were exacerbated in 1982-83

by bad weather during a severe El Nio. In that year, the southern highlands was

devastated by drought; production of the potato plunged by at least 40 percent.75 The

human toll was tragic:

In the southern Andes, severe drought

completely destroyed the harvest, forcing peasants to

consume surplus seed intended for this year's planting.

Starvation is rampant among subsistence farmers; illness,

particularly tuberculosis, has spread alarmingly. News

reports documented cases of peasants selling their children

for $25.76

71This was a nonrandom survey by the Osores research team, primarily to men, of a briefquestionnaire. For further information, see McClintock (1981: 102-105).72Fernndez Baca (1982: 89-90).73World Bank (1981: 140).74Gonzlez (1982: 43), for unspecified southern highlands zone as of approximately 1980.75McClintock (1984: 69).76Andean Focus (November-December 1983), p. 1. The map provided by Torres Guevara(1997: 14) shows the close correlation between the zones of drought during El Nio and thesouthern-highlands areas where Sendero was expanding at the time.


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In a 1984 study, chronic malnutrition was evident in more than 70 percent of the children

under six in the homes of subsistence peasants and day agricultural laborers.77 In

1988, children in a village in Puno were so hungry that they were eating newspaper.78

Unfortunately, comparisons to rural El Salvador are not possible because the

data for El Salvador are not broken down by sector or department.79 Some national-

level data, however, are available. In the Statistical Abstract of Latin America, daily per

capita calorie supply in Peru was calculated to have declined from 2,272 calories in

1975 to 2,120 in 1980-87, versus an increase in El Salvador from 2,061 to 2,456.80

Similar trends were reported by the World Bank.81 Also, a World Bank study in the

early 1980s determined that Peru, but not El Salvador, was one of three Latin American

nations where average food consumption per person was less than 90 percent of

national standards.82

Also, my own and other analysts' impressions were that hunger was much more

prevalent in Peru than in El Salvador.83 When I was travelling in El Salvador, including

in Morazn and Chalatenango, residents rarely mentioned hunger; if I asked if hunger

were a problem, they usually replied that it was restricted to orphans, the disabled, or

broken families.84 By contrast, without my posing a question about hunger, rural

Peruvians often expressed rage and despair about it:

77Mitchell (1991: 128).78Kathryn Leger, "Peruvians struggle to get by as economy deteriorates," Christian ScienceMonitor, 1 November 1988, p. 9.79For example, data are missing for El Salvador's rural sector in Jazairy, Alamgir, and Panuccio(1992: 386).80Wilkie and Contreras (1992: 171-172).81World Bank (1991: 89, 93, and 245).82Haiti and Bolivia were the other two countries. The results of the study are reported by U.S.

AID (1984: 3), but publication information about the World Bank study is not provided.83Concurring with this analysis are, among others, Gabriel Marcella (in a conversation inCarlisle, Pennsylvania, 8 September 1994), and Alberto Enriquez, Salvadoran leader, in author'sinterview, in Washington D.C., 11 September 1994.84Interviews, as a member of a delegation of the Commission on United States-Central

American Relations, with peasants in the villages of San Francisco Gotera and Delicias deConcepcin in Morazn, 19 January 1983; conversations as a member of the Center forDemocracy's International Election Observation Mission, with Morazn communities on 10 March1991. Also, as a member of the election-monitoring delegation of the U.S. Citizens ElectionsObserver Mission (USCEOM), I posed this question on 20 March 1994, in the town of Aguilares,


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There's no help from the government. On the

contrary, everything costs more. Living has just

become impossible and every day it's more

difficult, especially when you have kids and depend

solely on your land.85

Here, they've always forgotten us. There's no help.

Exactly the opposite--the cost of everything has

risen too much, and that's not the way to help.

They're killing the poor people.86

A Comparison of the Regional Social Bases of Sendero Luminoso and the FMLN

The nature of the regions where the Shining Path and the FMLN established theirprimary social bases was wound into the appeal of the insurgencies. The two

insurgencies expanded because their strategies and goals corresponded to key

characteristics of these regions.

Why did the groups that were to become the FMLN choose to establish social

bases in Chalatenango and Morazn? There was a broad consensus among

Salvadorans that, in general, Chalatenango and Morazn were disadvantaged

departments; the land was stony and mountainous, and demographic pressure in the

wake of the return of thousands of Salvadorans from Honduras in the wake of the 1969

Soccer War was severe.87 However, these departments did not almost invariably

cluster at the nadir on indicators of poverty for El Salvador; the map of poverty is

blurred.88 Also, by Salvadoran standards, landlessness was not a severe problem in

the two departments.89 Overall, it was not economic factors that drew the FMLN to

these departments, but the capacity to organize politically there. In the country's

western departments, memories of a 1932 peasant massacre endured, and FMLN

which is in the department of San Salvador but near the border with Chalatenango, and in the

town of Arcatao in Chalatenango.85Peasant in Canchapalca, near Huancayo, to my research team, 1981.86Peasant in CAP Mara Laura on the north coast near Vir, 1983.87Pearce (1986: 45-49); Browning (1975: 406-417); Simon and Stephens(1982: vi).88Consider the data for infant mortality, number of people per doctor, and stunted growth inMcClintock (1998: 172), from various Salvadoran sources.


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leaders feared that peasants would be too frightened to join the insurgency. and

haciendas were.90Also, the liberation-theology sector of the Catholic Church was very

influential in Morazn and Chalantenango.91 Explained leader Villalobos:

"There was food in Morazn, and people could

eat enough to live. There was not extreme poverty.

Poverty was worse in Usulutn, where there were

many landless peasants and high rates of deliquency.

We saw that it was possible to organize. There was not

a great deal of migration outside of the department for

temporary work. Rather, families were cohesive. The

Catholic Church had a strong education effort there, and

the Jesuits had organized a peasant confederation."92

By contrast, in Peru, inequality between the southern highlands departments and

elsewhere is very sharp; Ayacucho and other southern highlands departments almost

invariably cluster at the nadir of poverty indicators in Peru. Compared to residents of

northern and central highlands departments as well as coastal departments, in the late

1970s and early 1980s southern highlands residents earned much less, died much

younger, and were much less likely to be literate or enjoy basic services such as potable

water and an available doctor.93 In 1961, agricultural incomes in the southern

highlands were less than half of those in the northern and central highlands, and less

than one-seventh of incomes in Lima.94 Moreover, agricultural incomes in three

Ayacucho provinces of early core support for Sendero--Huanta, Huamanga, and

Cangallo--were lower than for all but 9 of Peru's 155 provinces.95

Insurgents' Backgrounds and Explanations

89Wickham-Crowley (1992: 243-244). See also Stahler-Sholk (1994: 22) and Paige (1996: 132),who further discusses Wickham-Crowley's data.

90Irma Seguna Amaya, author's interview, in Washington D.C., March 10, 1995.91Dunkerley (1988: 418); Barry (1990: 62); Lpez Vigil (1994: 42) and Pearce (1986: 178).92Author's interview with Joaqun Villalobos, September 11, 1994, in Washington D.C. Forsimilar conclusions, see Kincaid (1993: 138-140) and Dunkerley (1988: 365-366).93 McClintock (1984: 60 and 1989: 66-67)94McClintock (1984: 60).95Webb (1977: 119-129).


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In sharp contrast to their FMLN counterparts, Shining Path members emphasized

socioeconomic misery as the key impetus to their decision to join the revolutionary

movement.96 The guerrillas bemoaned the hunger, malnutrition, and generally abject

conditions of living and dying in Peru, and they also contended that the Peruvian

government was responsible for these conditions. In a new usage of the word hambre

(hunger), the Peruvian state was often described as hambreador--making the people

hungry. Whereas in El Salvador FMLN members who described the government as

committing "genocide" were usually thinking about political murders, in Peru the

Senderistas who described the government as "genocidal" were often referring to it as

intentionally "killing the people with hunger."97

Top Senderista leaders' statements about their movement were often steeped in

abstract Marxist terms. A noteworthy exception is the 1969 book Ayacucho: Hambre yesperanza by Antonio Daz Martnez, a professor of agronomy at the Ayacucho

university and leading early ideological influence on Sendero. The book argues that

external "aid" programs, supposed to help peasants, actually hurt them. Also, in a

eulogy for a teenage boy, another top Shining Path leader, the commander of the

shantytown Raucana, gave a quintessential Sendero statement:

"They say we are terrorists because, in this land, he who

has the most economic power is he who rules, because

he who does not have anything is worth nothing. The law,

the political constitution of the state, serves only for those

who have money, but for those who do not have money,

the justice is not justice, it is a tremendous injustice. The terrorists are those

who kill us with hunger every day. The

terrorists are those who give us a minimum wage that is

not even enough to pay for a grave or the most miserable

of food; those are the terrorists."98

96The interviews in question are the 33 by the author's research team as well as numerousinterviews by U.S. and Peruvian journalists. A thoughtful discussion of the problems of interviewswith Senderistas during this era is Kirk (1992).97See for example the interview with Isidoro Nunja Garca in Caretas, May 30, 1988, p. 32.98Flix Cndor, in Raucana, a Shining Path stronghold near Lima, cited in Strong (1992: 263).


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Among the 33 Senderistas interviewed by the Osores team, the highest-ranking

was Rosa, a 42-year-old sociologist taught by Guzmn in Ayacucho, who was the

political leader for Junn-Huancavelica in Socorro Popular. She explained her decision

to join Sendero:

"I entered Sendero Luminoso becauseI could no longer bear seeing on one side

so much hunger and misery, and on the other

side wealth and extravagance. The exploitation

has to stop. There has been enough injustice and

abuses, humiliations and contempt. The discussion

has finished. It's the hour for action. I think that

no one can look objectively at the situation here

without trying to remedy it and fight for change."99

Said a 35-year-old architect who had been active in a Lima branch of Sendero:

"I entered Sendero Luminoso because of the need

to change our country, which for centuries has

been the estate and the property of the rich. The

injustices and the abuses committed always against

the poor pushed me to enter the ranks of the Communist Party

of Peru, the only true director of the popular war, aiming at the

conquest of power in order to install the dictatorship of the

proletariat."100

The Senderista "Javier" was a twenty-three-year-old Limeo law student who

also worked in a stockbroker's office. "Javier" was overheard by a U.S. journalist as he

responded to his mother's angry criticism of his guerrilla activities:

" 'What kind of kid goes around killing people?' she ["Javier"'s mother] said,

standing and waving her arms..."Javier" had heard this before...'The system kills

99Interview #19 by the Osores research team. It was not possible to ascertain definitivelyleadership levels, but Rosa's comments in answer to our question about her familiarity withShining Path leaders indicated a high rank.100Interview #18 by the Osores research team.


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people with hunger,' he said. 'Sixty thousand children die before their first birthday

each year in Peru. What's going to help them?'"101

Among the Senderistas interviewed by the Osores team, six (18%) were

peasants.102 This figure probably somewhat under-represents peasants in Sendero

nationally; in interviews with an 80-member Sendero zonal committee in the southern

highlands in 1991, a journalist judged 30% of the committee members to be of

indigenous peasant stock.103 Said a 29-year-old peasant who had worked his own land

in Junn about why he became a Senderista:

"I came to understand that the popular war is the only way out of the

misery and poverty in which we live today, and that many of our brother

peasants don't even have anything to eat.104

Explained a combatant who had worked on a coffee farm near Huancayo:

"In reality, the movement sought to take from the rich to give to the poor and the

needy."105

Salvadorans' and Peruvians' Perceptions of the Causes of the Insurgencies

Table 1 shows the dramatic differences between Peruvians' and Salvadorans'

assessments of the primary reason for the emergence of the insurgencies in the two

countries.

101Rosenberg (1991: 148).102Includes two former workers on what they describe as haciendas and four peasants whodescribed themselves as working their own plots, without indicating whether or not they weremembers of peasant communties.103Casas (1991: 30).104Interview #26, Osores research team.105Interview #28, Osores research team.


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Table 1

CITIZENS' OPINIONS ABOUT THE PRINCIPAL CAUSE OF THE GUERRILLA

MOVEMENTS106

(percentages)

Peru El Salvador

Lima, Junn, Junn, Nationwide, San Salvador, Eastern

1990 1990 1991 1987107 1991 Depts., 1991

(N=400) (N=200) (N=130) (N=175) (N=231)

1. Economic

Crisis, 61 71 55 35 35 30

Social

Injustice, &

Poverty

2. Ambition,

Struggle 7 0 12 25 34 31

For Power

3. Bad Gov- 20 8 22 13 9 11

ernment

4. Com- 3 0 2 6 3 7

munism

5. Will of God 0 0 0 0 7 9

106Source: Authors' commissioned surveys. Exception is data for El Salvador in 1987. In allsurveys, item read, "What do you think is the principal reason for the existence of the guerrillas inPeru/El Salvador?"107 Martn Bar (1989: 75). Sample size is not given.


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6. Other 6 11 8 7 3 3

7. Don't 3 10 1 11 11 10

know,

no answer

Among Peruvians, socioeconomic misery problem was overwhelmingly cited as

the principal cause of the guerrilla movement. Strong majorities of Peruvians in both

Lima and Junn attributed the rise of Sendero to economic crisis, social injustice, and/or

poverty, whereas 35% or less of the Salvadorans attributed the rise of the FMLN to such

factors. The second-most favored explanation in Peru was "bad government," endorsed

by 20% or so of the respondents.108 By contrast, Salvadorans were most likely to cite

the political reason "ambition, struggle for power"--implying the FMLN's desire for

political power--as the principal cause. Peruvians' emphasis upon economic factors was

indicated in other surveys as well. For example, in a June 1991 survey in Lima by

Apoyo, those who considered subversion "justifiable" were asked why; of the 76

respondents, 33% said "poverty or misery"; 20% "social injustice"; 18% "abuse" or

"exploitation;" 14% "economic crisis;" 12% "corruption or immorality:" 2% governmental

failure;" and 1% centralization.109

IV. CATALYSTS AND CAUSATION

108The data suggest a likely increase in the percentage of respondents attributing Sendero's riseto "bad government" between 1990 and 1991 in Junn. The difference in the two samples'responses might also reflect the higher educational level of the 1991 Junn sample.109QueHacer, No. 72 (July/August 1991), p. 41.


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Although political repression was a catalyst to El Salvador's insurgency and

economic crisis was a catalyst to Peru's, in neither country was this catalyst a sufficient

"cause" of the insurgency. Rather, causation was cumulative and interactive. Anger

made citizens available for violent protest. To achieve a threat to the state, however,

anger had to be channeled by an effective insurgent organization; the state had torespond ineffectively; and international actors had to play into the hands of the

insurgency. Of course, all these factors cannot be fully discussed here for both

countries; I will provide merely a very brief overview.

Sendero's fundamentalist, disciplined, cohesive organization fit the emotional

needs of many newly educated youth in the southern highlands. Many of these students

were seeking "truth;"

Sendero proposed a "simplified and accessible version of a theory that defined itself as

the only 'scientific truth,' and was legitimized through references to the Marxist

classics."110 Guzmn was "the caudillo-teacher."111 In comparison to FMLN

members, Senderistas were much more likely to applaud the effective organization of

their movement, the validity of its ideology, and the brilliance of their leadership. Among

FMLN militants, reference to the FMLN as an organization or to Marxist ideology were

very rare.

Sendero attracted supporters in other ways as well. To a much greater degree

than the FMLN, Sendero provided material benefits to its supporters. In the wake of

attacks, Sendero would often be able to transfer money, livestock, or other goods for

distribution among community members. Also, by the late 1980s Sendero was paying

salaries to its militants. Both the amounts and the numbers of persons receiving funds

appear to have been very large by Latin American standards. The common salary

range--$250 to $500 per month--was about three to eight times the salaries of most of

Peru's teachers.112 In the 33 interviews with Senderistas by the Osores research team,

57% said that they received salaries, and another 36% that they received food, housing,

110Degregori (1990/1991: 15-16).111Degregori (1990/91: 16).112The New York Times, June 26, 19991, p. A8, and various interviews by the author.


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or money for expenses. Senderistas of peasant origin were especially likely to express

satisfaction at the financial benefits of membership.113

Further, while Sendero's extreme violence alienated most Peruvians, at some

places and in some times violence facilitated Sendero's image as an organization that

punished wrongdoers and that "worked." Sendero combined the use of force and

symbols to create a sense among many Peruvians that it was a better, and more

powerful, alternative than the Peruvian state.114 One of Sendero's greatest strategic

achievements was that, for many Peruvians by 1991 and 1992, their march to power

appeared inexorable.115

Sendero's expansion both exacerbated traditional weaknesses in the Peruvian

state and provoked new problems--in other words, as Sendero expanded, it further

delegitimitized a state that had never enjoyed broad or deep support.116 The weakness

of Peru's state was a reason for the expansion of the revolutionary movement; however,

the weakness of the state in Peru was not independent of the country's economic crisis

nor of the attacks by the guerrilla movement itself. Estimates of the toll taken on Peru's

economy by the Shining Path's attacks were as high as $20 billion--have also been

made by economists.117

The cumulative causes came together in Sendero's capacity exploit the problem

of corruption. There is no evidence that corruption was actually worse in Peru than in

many other Latin American nations.118 However, poor Peruvians experienced

corruption as worse both because Sendero stressed the issue so adroitly and because,

in the context of scarce to non-existent resources, corruption was more often a life-or-

death issue. For example, when public-hospital administrators absconded medicines so

113Five of the six peasant respondents said that they received food and money as a result oftheir activities for Sendero. See especially interview #26, Osores research team.

114See for example the analysis by Jaime Urrutia, a professor at the university in Ayacucho, inan interview with Gonzlez (1989: 42-46). Peasants, of course, are particularly sensitive tochanges in power balances; see Starn (1995: 405).115This point has been made by Smith (1992: 29) and David Scott Palmer, in "PoliticalInterview," The Peru Report, August 1993, p. 1.116This point has also been made by Palmer (1995: 301-303) and especially Mauceri (1991: 3and 28).117Alvarez and Cervantes (1996: 155).


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that they could sell them, or soup-kitchen managers stole food for the same purpose, the

sick or the hungry were more likely to die--and, for many Peruvians, these deaths in turn

justified Sendero's killings.119 In Lima's shantytowns in the late 1980s and early

1990s, poverty was extreme, and manipulation, envy, and mistrust common; rumors of

corruption were heightened and exploited by Sendero.120 Sendero would create a

culprit on whom problems could be blamed and then, by punishing this culprit, appear to

satisfy the popular demand for justice.

International actors also played a critical role. There was virtually unanimous

agreement that U.S. aid to the Salvadoran government prevented a takeover by the

FMLN.121 Said FMLN leader Joaqun Villalobos himself: "the level of intervention

developed by the North American government constituted an external factor that began

to alter the correlation and, as a result, the war changed its character. This was the

most decisive factor of them all."122 From the opposite side, Alvaro Magaa,

provisional president of El Salvador between 1982 and 1984, agreed: "The attitude of

the U.S. government, during my tenure as interim president, was what definitely saved

this country."123 Given the continuing human-rights violations in El Salvador, however,

U.S. support for the regime was controversial within the United States; U.S. support

would probably have been less massive if the Salvadoran government had not

responded at least somewhat to the U.S. demands for political opening. Previously,

when the Cuban and Nicaraguan dictatorships had refused to respond to U.S. requests

for a political opening, the U.S. government had decided not to rescue the threatened

despot.

118See the various surveys on this issue in McClintock (1998: 194-199).119This was the case not only among the very poor. Through the years, numerous middle-classor upper-middle-class Peruvian said to me, sometimes with dismay at their own feelings, thefollowing words, more or less: "Yes, I was happy when Sendero killed him. He was guilty of so

many crimes. He had hurt so many." Carol Graham heard the same comments; see her"Sendero's Law in Peru's Shantytowns," The Wall Street Journal, June 7, 1991, p. A13.120Sendero's effective use of the corruption issue in Lima's shantytowns was highlighted by Burt(1994: 14), Poole and Rnique (1992: 92-94), and by Cecilia Blondet, speaking at the GeorgeWashington University Andean Seminar, November 22, 1991.121Among the many scholarly assessments, see Wickham-Crowley (1989: 528), Byrne (1994:166-167), Walter and Williams (1994: 3) and Dix (1984: 4).122Villalobos (1986: 8).123Magaa, cited in Manwaring and Prisk (1988: 238).


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For a variety of reasons, however, the U.S. government did not try to bolster the

Peruvian government as it did the Salvadoran. Sendero was expanding as the Cold War

ebbed; the movement was Maoist, unaligned with any superpower rival to the United

States and unlikely to become so aligned in the future. Accordingly, the extent to which

Sendero was a threat to U.S. strategic interests in Latin America was not clear. Giventhat Sendero was a response to a very different set of problems than had traditionally

been the case for Latin American revolutionary movements, the appropriate U.S.

response was also not clear. Indeed, the U.S. priority in Peru appeared to be the anti-

drug effort, despite the fact that, as the anti-drug effort was fashioned, it made

counterinsurgency more difficult.

V. CONLCUSION

This paper has argued that the catalyst triggering the expansion of Sendero

Luminoso was very unusual. For most Latin American insurgencies, and in particular for

the FMLN in El Salvador, political abuse was the key catalyst. In the case of El

Salvador, in 1972 the Christian Democrats' victory in the presidential election was

denied by the military; during the decade, protests at political exclusion, especially

among university students, intensified. Many student leaders were arrested and abused,

and ultimately opted for a strategy of violence as a last resort against the authoritarian

regime. In their own explanation of their decisions, FMLN members and leaders

emphasized the importance of political repression.

By contrast, for Sendero, economic catastrophe was the pivotal trigger. During

the 1970s, rural inequality and land scarcity were increasing in highlands Peru--

ironically, despite an ambitious agrarian reform effort--and a threat to peasants'

subsistence emerged. Then, during the 1980s, Peru's overall economic performance

was disastrous. The 1980s economic decline exacerbated the already-serious plight of

Peru's rural-highlands poor; it also dashed the middle-class expectations of the vast

numbers of new university graduates in Peru. Peru's teachers, many of whom were thefirst in their families to gain an education and had aspired to professional lifestyles,

found themselves unable to provide for their families' basic human needs, and were

especially angry. Whereas the departments where the FMLN was strong did not cluster

at the nadir of poverty indicators in El Salvador, they did in Peru. In their own


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statements about their decisions to join the insurgency, Senderistas emphasized

hunger, malnutrition, and socioeconomic misery in general.

Citizens' anger at political repression or desperate poverty is not a sufficient

condition of insurgency. Their anger is channeled by an insurgent organization againsta state that has relationships with foreign powersfor Latin American states, the U.S. in

particular. With respect to these factors, Perus experience was unusual too. Most Latin

American insurgent movements, including the FMLN, have been somewhat loose and

unwieldy coalitions, whose ideologies prioritized democracy. By contrast, Sendero was

a cohesive, disciplined, hierarchical organization whose ideology was fundamentalist,

repudiating elections and exalting violence. Confronted by economic crisis and a

shrewd, savage revolutionary movement, the traditionally weak capabilities of Peru's

state further eroded. Whereas usually, when a Latin American state is threatened by

insurgency, the U.S. government's policy is an important factor in the survival or demise

of the incumbent regime, in Peru the U.S. government's role was relatively minor.

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