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proefschrift mario 12/11/02 10:45 Page 73 3 Early counter-rebellion Donde la sangre del pueblo ¡ay! se derrama, ahi mismito florece, amarillito flor de retama – Ricardo Dolorier Urbano, “Flor de Retama” 3.1 Revolutionary war and initial peasant responses to Shining Path: 1980-83 The democratic elections of 1980 were intended to symbolize Peru’s return to civil- ian governance and democracy after more than a decade of military rule. But Sendero chose the very eve of the election to initiate its revolutionary war against the Peruvian state by burning ballot boxes in the rural town of Chuschi, Cangallo Province, department of Ayacucho. The seventeenth of May would thereafter be celebrated on the revolutionary calendar as the Inicio de la Lucha Armada (ILA); but the decision to embark on the path of guerrilla war had already been made in 1979, at the Central Committee’s IX Expanded Plenum.1 With this first act of war, Shining Path embarked on a series of vigorous, nation-wide operations that aimed at the disruption of public life by dynamiting buildings and sabotaging national infrastructure. Its actions were also directed at making dramatic symbolic statements (like blowing up Velasco’s tomb, hanging dead dogs from lampposts, and painting political slogans on walls), and at building up its weapons arsenal by robbing dynamite from mining camps and seizing firearms and uniforms from police stations and policemen. The death toll during the first two years of the insurgency was extremely low: six policemen and seven civilians, none of whom were peasants (DESCO 1989:43). At first, the government of President Belaúnde did not take these acts seriously, and merely dismissed the militants as “infantile terrorists,” “petty livestock-rustlers,” and “bandits.” Consequently, the responsibility for confronting the guerrillas in the first three years of the insurgency was placed exclusively in the hands of the police. During this period, the President expressed repeatedly that he was reluctant to commit the armed forces to suppressing the rebellion. Nor did he deem it a necessary measure. Even so, the political crisis eventually worsened to such an extent that the government saw no alternative but to declare a state of emergency over the entire department of Ayacucho on 3 March 1982.2 As armed clashes between the rebels and the police escalated between 1981 and 1982, it became painfully obvious that the police were unable to come to grips with the small, mobile columns of guerrilla fighters. By late 1982, Shining Path detach- ments were even able to occupy the city of Huanta for twenty-four hours, and to overrun the police station at Vilcashuamán. Practically helpless to prevent surprise attacks on stations in cities let alone on small posts in outlying villages, the police became increasingly frustrated and demoralised. As a matter of practicality, the Civil Guard eventually decided to abandon their more remote rural posts, withdrawing to 73 proefschrift mario 12/11/02 10:45 Page 74 From Victims to Heroes reinforced garrisons in major towns (Gorriti 1999:164). “Consequently, by the latter half of 1982 Sendero became the only effective authority (apart from the traditional peasant community leaders) over large areas of Ayacucho, with the police restricting their activity to non-too-frequent, heavily armed day-time patrols” (Taylor 1983:32). Why was Shining Path able to flourish and expand its field of operations in the Ayacuchan countryside so quickly? It is often noted in the literature that, in terms of guerrilla warfare, the Senderistas were more than a match for the poorly trained and motivated policemen. This disparity in motivation and capability is hardly surprising, given that for most being a policeman was simply a matter of employment, while for the guerrillas being a Senderista was a matter of zealous conviction. But besides the apparent inability of the police to suppress the insurgency, another reason appears to have been that Shining Path enjoyed a great degree of sympathy (if not actual com- mitment or active support) from the rural population, at least in the beginning. According to Berg, “the movement of the guerrillas was said to be facilitated by a net- work of safe houses, sleeping spots and sources of supply. The guerrillas also received food, although opinions varied as to whether this was given by sympathizers or by people frightened into assisting” (1992:92). In the rural district of Tambo, I asked people to describe for me their first encounter with Sendero. “At first the Senderos came,” recalled Daniel, a displaced peasant from Huancapampa now living in one of Tambo’s desplazado settlements. At first the Senderos came and told us: ‘We’re going to do this and that, we’re going to work together. If you don’t have animals, you’ll get some. Let’s kill those who have lots of animals—these we’ll give to the poor. And we’ll all have [animals] equally.’ Everyone believed what they said. In this way they fooled us, and the people had believed that that all this would come true.3 Others gave different explanations. Pascual Quispe Vargas, a displaced person and former rondero who was just a young teenager in the early years of the insurrection, insisted that apart from a few students and teachers, most people in Tambo town and the surrounding rural villages cooperated with the guerrillas only “through fear,” for they were initially powerless to resist or to defend themselves.4 Whatever the reasons behind the active assistance given, there is little doubt that the guerrillas enjoyed a large measure of sincere public sympathy. Consequently, in the first three years of the insurgency, the guerrillas proved themselves to be the proverbial fish in water—mov- ing fluidly through the countryside, striking targets when and where they pleased, cunningly eluding the police with ease. Shining Path’s field of operations in Ayacucho department initially encompassed the provinces of Huanta, La Mar (especially in the districts of Tambo and San Miguel), Huamanga, Cangallo, and Víctor Fajardo (DESCO 1989). The last two are poor provinces where recognised peasant communities are prevalent, and schools are in abundance. Given that teachers and students have always been the core aficiona- dos of Shining Path in Ayacucho, this choice of operational setting was thus a strate- gically prudent one. In Huanta Valley, the movement gained active assistance from the young students and passive support from their peasant parents, particularly the estab- 74 proefschrift mario 12/11/02 10:45 Page 75 Early Counter-Rebellion lished smallholders (Coronel 1996:45). From 1980 until the end of 1982, villages in Huamanga Province and in the Huanta and Pampas river valleys were frequently vis- ited by guerrilla groups preaching the message of “a new life; a government of the people, of the peasants; a New Democracy in which there would be no more exploita- tion or corruption, a society without the rich” (Coronel and Loayza 1992:524). Whereas Shining Path’s vague yet passionately vitriolic rhetoric of a sanguinary class struggle to usher a new utopian social order was something that held great appeal for frustrated and discontented youths with some degree of education, the measure of sympathy they initially drew from the older, less-educated peasantry can perhaps be attributed to a number of their early concrete actions, rather than to their ideology. In particular, their daring clashes with the police received enormous popu- lar approval. Of the various representatives of the State, the police are particularly reviled by Ayacuchanos. People in Huamanga, Tambo, Chuschi, Uchuraccay, and practically everywhere else I travelled in the department in 1997 and 2000 told me that they thought of most policemen as corrupt and exploitative, frequently abusive and inconsiderate, and often disrespectful towards civilians, particularly peasants. The stereotype is not without foundation. On the road from Huamanga to Tambo, I observed on numerous occasions the rough way in which they searched through the belongings of travellers: ripping open sacks, nonchalantly scattering items on the dusty ground, thrusting metal probes with serrated tips into bags and boxes piled on the tops of vehicles in search of cocaine paste, never asking first if they contain live chickens or guinea pigs. At random checkpoints on secluded roads throughout the emergency zone, policemen toting Kalashnikovs and wearing sunglasses so large as to obscure their faces would stop and circle menacingly round the parked vehicles, bark- ing questions in an intimidating tone that suggests immediate suspicion. Their anonymity—and therefore their potential to enact abuse or violence with impunity— is made complete by the absence of nametags on their dark-green uniforms. It is also common at their checkpoints for them to refuse to let a vehicle through unless the driver first pays them a small bribe. Policemen in the highlands are rarely from the area where they are posted, and often not even from the department. The majority are criollos or mestizos who do not speak much Quechua, if at all, and their short posting period of about three to four months in any one place means that they rarely have the opportunity—nor do they often have the desire—to form intimate relation- ships with the populace. A policeman in Tambo once told me that he would be there for only three months, and so he was not interested in taking the time to know the history, culture, and customs of the locals. The peasants’ dislike for the police is also based on the historical fact that “all across Peru, the police have been the point men for the state in containing campesino mobilisation. They evict land invaders, break strikes, and keep constant tabs on peasant leaders” (Starn 1989:66).

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