Toma de Tierras: Struggles for Lands and the Terror of the 1980s in the Peruvian Southern Andes

Native communities in Andes have been resisting for their lands and a place in the world for as long as we have historical records of them. Native communities’ unrelenting actions in defense of their lands have characterized the colonial period in the Andes. Scholars asserted that during the first century after independence native communities in the Andes experienced the most devastating attack on their possessions since conquest. Elite sectors and government policies attempting to encroach on community lands have remained a constant feature in the imagination of the Peruvian Andean communities until the mid-20th century when a military revolutionary government stormed into power promising to redeem peasants and restore the lands to their legitimate owners.

The renamed Comunidades Campesinas (peasant communities) in the Peruvian southern Andes in the 1970s followed the government reforms with expectation. However, after years of contentious processes they realized that the promises that the “peasants will no longer be foreigners on their own lands... that their poverty will no longer enrich their masters” remained mainly just that, promises. Instead, they only witnessed the lands being transferred from the haciendas to the government sponsored Empresas Asociativas (EEAA) managed by government appointed local administrators. Faced with this reality many communities organized massive mobilizations across the region demanding the lands to be returned to them and some decided to carry out “toma de tierras,” they themselves seized the lands from the EEAAs. In the 1980s in the midst of the violent military confrontations between the self-proclaimed communist party Shining Path and the Government forces, communities in the Southern Andes continued their struggles for their lands. In this essay, I seek to demonstrate that the long-term community struggles for lands acted as a vital cohesive factor that reduced the destructive effects of the violent years of the Peruvian internal conflict.