The internal conflict in Peru is an armed conflict between the Government of Peru and the Maoist guerrilla group Shining Path. The conflict's main phase began on 17 May 1980 and ended in December 2000. From 1982 to 1997 the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) waged its own insurgency as a Marxist–Leninist rival to the Shining Path.
As fighting intensified in the 1980s, Peru had one of the worst human rights records in the Western Hemisphere and experienced thousands of forced disappearances while both the Peruvian Armed Forces and Shining Path acted with impunity, sometimes massacring entire villages. Fifty thousand to 70,000 people were killed, making it the bloodiest war in the country's independent history. This includes many civilians who were targeted by all factions. The Indigenous peoples were disproportionately attacked, with 75% of those killed speaking Quechua as their native language. The conflict is characterized by multiple serious violations of human rights.
Since 2000, the number of deaths has dropped significantly, with the conflict becoming somewhat dormant.
Background
The economy and demographic makeup of Peru by the 20th century left a space for the Maoist politics of the Shining Path to enter. Over 40% of the population were part of the rural peasantry, overwhelmingly from an indigenous background that lived in chronic poverty which established a support base for the Shining Path. In addition, the movement of the initially left-wing American Popular Revolutionary Alliance toward the right opened a vacuum for Marxist revolutionary thought.
The first guerrilla outbreaks arose in Peru in the early 1960s, during the Moderate Civil Reform, when the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), a guerrilla group founded and led by Luis de la Puente Uceda, began its first attacks against the Peruvian State in 1962. However, despite training in Fidel Castro's Cuba, the MIR was often in an unstable state, as they were based in the Amazon. As a result, its members were easily killed by the police and the armed forces. During these counterattacks, their leader and founder was killed and the group would eventually collapse completely by 1965. Another guerrilla group that also emerged during this time was the National Liberation Army (ELN), operating from 1962 until 1965, led by Juan Pablo Chang Navarro and trained in Cuba. It was made up of some former members of the MIR and other recruited people. However, this organization suffered the same fate as the MIR, with many of members being infected with leishmaniasis, leading to them being killed by the Peruvian army. After its dismantling, its main leaders fled to Bolivia where they would fight alongside Che Guevara in the Ñancahuazú Guerrilla, until they ended up being assassinated while trying to establish a guerrilla foco in the Andes.
Prior to the conflict, Peru had undergone a series of coups, with frequent switches between political parties and ideologies. On 2 October 1968, General Juan Velasco Alvarado staged a coup d'état and became Peru's 56th president under the administration of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces, left-leaning military dictatorship.
The political reforms of the new government led to a rise in influence of Marxist movements in Peru. The RMG favoured Marxist-orientated trade unions, so much that by 1977, pro-Communist unions were three times larger than APRA's previously dominant unions. Miner unions also came under Maoist influence in this period. While in education, about one-third of Peru's 360,000 teachers had become affiliated with Maoist unions. Workers' strikes became more common place in Peru in this period as many unions became increasingly militant.
Following a period of widespread poverty and unemployment, Velasco himself was overthrown in a bloodless military coup on 29 August 1975. He was ousted by Francisco Morales Bermúdez as the new President of Peru.
Morales announced that his rule would provide a "Second Phase" to the previous administration, which would bring about political and economic reforms. However, he was unsuccessful in delivering these promises, and in 1978, a Constitutional Assembly was created to replace Peru's 1933 Constitution. Morales then proclaimed that national elections would be held by 1980. Elections were held for the Constituent Assembly on 18 June 1978, whilst martial law was imposed on 6 January 1979. The Assembly approved the new constitution in July 1979.
Many who were affiliated with Peru's Communist Party had opposed the creation of the new constitution and split of to form the organization known as the Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path. This led to the emergence of internal conflict, with the first attacks taking place a day before the elections. Despite this, national elections continued and Fernando Belaúnde was elected as the 58th President of Peru on 18 May 1980. Belaúnde had already served as the country's 55th president prior to Velasco's coup in 1968. Between February 1966 and July 1980 approximately 500 people died due to political violence.
Shining Path
During the governments of Velasco and Morales, the Shining Path had been organized as a Maoist political group formed in 1970 by Abimael Guzmán, a communist and professor of philosophy at the San Cristóbal of Huamanga University. Guzmán had been inspired by the Chinese Cultural Revolution which he had witnessed first-hand during a trip there. Shining Path members engaged in street fights with members of other political groups and painted graffiti encouraging an "armed struggle" against the Peruvian state.
In June 1979, demonstrations for free education were severely repressed by the army, with 18 people were killed according to official figures, and non-governmental estimating several dozen more deaths. This event led to a radicalization of political protests in the countryside and the outbreak of the Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path's actions.
First phase (1980–2000)
Belaúnde administration (1980–1985)
When Peru's military government allowed elections for the first time in 1980, the Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path was one of the few leftist political groups that declined to take part. They opted instead to launch guerrilla warfare actions against the state in the province of Ayacucho. On 17 May 1980—the eve of the presidential elections—members of the Shining Path burned ballot boxes in the town of Chuschi, Ayacucho. The perpetrators were quickly caught and additional ballots were brought in to replace the burned ballots; the elections proceeded without any further incidents. The incident received very little attention in the Peruvian press. A few days later, on 13 June, a group of young people belonging to the "generated organization" Movement of Labourers y Workers Clasistas (MOTC) carried out an attack on the Municipality of San Martín de Porres in Lima with Molotov cocktails commemorating the Chuschi incident.
The Shining Path opted to fight in the manner advocated by Mao Zedong. They would open up "guerrilla zones" in which their guerrillas could operate and drive government forces out of these zones to create "liberated zones". These zones would then be used to support new guerrilla zones until the entire country was essentially a unified "liberated zone". There is some disagreement among scholars about the extent of Maoist influence on the Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path, but the majority of scholars consider the Shining Path to be a violent Maoist organization. One of the factors contributing to support for this view among scholars is that the Shining Path's economic and political base were located primarily in rural areas and they sought to build up their influence in these areas.
On 3 December 1982, the Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path officially formed an armed wing known as the "People's Guerrilla Army". The Peruvian guerrillas were peculiar in that they had a high proportion of women; 50 percent of the combatants and 40 percent of the commanders were women.
Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement
In 1982, the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) also launched its own guerrilla war against the Peruvian state. The group had been formed by remnants of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left and identified with Castroite guerrilla movements in other parts of Latin America. The MRTA used techniques that were more traditional to Latin American leftist organizations, like wearing uniforms, claiming to fight for true democracy, and accusations of human rights abuses by the state; in contrast, the Shining Path did not wear uniforms, nor care for electoral processes.
During the conflict, the MRTA and the Shining Path engaged in combat with each other. The MRTA only played a small part in the overall conflict, being declared by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to have been responsible for 1.5 percent of casualties accumulated throughout the conflict. At its height, the MRTA was believed to have consisted of only a few hundred members.
Belaúnde's response and massacres
President Fernando Belaúnde began the authoritarian trend of consolidating power within the executive to combat guerrilla groups, using his support in Congress to enact legislation and limit civil liberties. His crackdown mirrored strategies employed by other anti-communist regimes in the region, such as Brazil's dictatorship, which collaborated with the U.S. to suppress leftist movements under the guise of Cold War anticommunism. Gradually, the Shining Path committed more and more violent attacks on the National Police of Peru until bombings near Lima increased the gravity of the conflict. In December 1982, President Belaúnde declared a state of emergency and ordered that the Peruvian Armed Forces fight Shining Path, granting them extraordinary power. Military leadership adopted practices used by Argentina during the Dirty War, committing many human rights violations in the area where it had political control, with entire villages being massacred by the Peruvian armed forces while hundreds of civilians were forcibly disappeared by troops. The Peruvian military's tactics, including the use of U.S.-trained units like the Sinchis, paralleled broader Cold War patterns where Washington supported authoritarian regimes in Latin America to combat perceived Marxist threats, often at the cost of human rights. A special U.S.-trained "counter terrorist" police battalion is known as the "Sinchis" became notorious in the 1980s for their violations of human rights.
The Communist Party of Peru – Shining Path's reaction to the Peruvian government's use of the military in the conflict was to increase violent warfare in the countryside. Shining Path attacked police officers, soldiers, and civilians that it considered to be "class enemies", often using gruesome methods of killing their victims. These killings, along with Shining Path's disrespect for the culture of indigenous peasants, turned many civilians in the Andes away from the group.
Faced with a hostile population, Shining Path's guerrilla campaigns began to falter. In some areas, fearful, well-off peasants formed anti-Shining Path patrols called rondas campesinas or simply rondas. They were generally poorly equipped despite donations of guns from the armed forces. Nevertheless, Shining Path guerrillas were attacked by the rondas. The first-reported attack was near Huata in January 1983, where some rondas killed 13 guerrillas. In February 1983 in Sacsamarca, rondas stabbed and killed the Shining Path commanders of that area. In March 1983, rondas brutally killed Olegario Curitomay, one of the commanders of the town of Lucanamarca. They took him to the town square, stoned him, stabbed him, set him on fire, and finally shot him. Shining Path responded by entering the province of Huancasancos and the towns of Yanaccollpa, Ataccara, Llacchua, Muylacruz, and Lucanamarca, where they killed 69 people. Other similar incidents followed, such as the ones in Hauyllo, the Tambo District, and the La Mar Province. In the Ayacucho Department, Shining Path killed 47 peasants. Additional massacres would culminate in August 1985, with the infamous Accomarca massacre perpetrated by Peruvian troops on 16 August 1985 and one in Marcas that was perpetrated by Shining Path on 29 August 1985.
García administration (1985–1990)
During the government of Alan García, rivalries between the National Police and the Armed Forces increased. In one incident in 1989 in the Uchiza District, the Armed Forces ignored calls for assistance from the National Police despite being ten minutes away and having helicopters, resulting with the National Police post being captured by Shining Path.