Civil Resistance against Dictatorship and the Shining Path in 1990s Peru

Peru’s internal armed conflict, from 1980 to 2000, defined the experiences of the urban poor in the capital, Lima. Peripheral shantytowns made up the Maoist Shining Path’s most critical base of support from 1988 to 1992, the height of the group’s presence in the city. Consequently, the 1990s marked a pivotal shift in the state’s counterinsurgency strategy under newly elected President Alberto Fujimori who enforced a larger and more repressive military presence in the city’s shantytowns. In this presentation, I examine how civil society activism in Huaycán, one of Lima’s largest shantytowns, contributed to the defeat of Shining Path locally and enabled the survival of grassroots organizations, which were run primarily by women. These women-led organizations including Comedores Populares, Ollas Comunes, and Club de Madres became political targets for repression from both the state and the Shining Path. For example, in Huaycán, residents elected Pascuala Rosado as the first female Secretary-General in 1991. Under her leadership, Huaycán built strategic alliances with the Catholic Church, the Peruvian state, and urban development NGOs in order to combat both the vilification of Huaycán as a “red zone” and the Shining Path’s violent infiltration. Under the local leadership of Father Tadeo Pasini, the Catholic Church in Huaycán created youth programs that sought to recruit adolescents into community organizing and away from crime and the Shining Path. By prioritizing access to basic foodstuffs and other elements central to everyday survival in the community, Rosado and other local female leaders began to undermine the Shining Path’s strategy to delegitimize grassroots leaders. In an effort to eliminate all political opposition, the state began to target women leaders who were also members of the Democratic Left and Apra.