Changes

The Shining Path appealed to women within Andean communities, building its membership and ideological legitimacy. They did this by holding trials of wife-beaters, adulterers, and rapists.<ref>Kirk, <I>The Monkey’s Paw</I>, 80.</ref> Later publications of Shining Path propaganda recount their role proudly, “Peru’s traditional Andean peasant culture is quite a lot more rigid than prevailing in the urban areas. Peasant women who would stray from their husbands are severely punished but sexual harassment and adultery on the part of men is rather prevalent. On the other hand, where the Party established its influence, divorce is introduced and sexual harassment is not tolerated.”<ref><I>CSRP</I>, “The Other Half of the Sky,” 5-6.</ref> Previously “invisible,” in the words of Isabel Coral Cordero, and trapped within a system that recognized only their domestic contributions, the Shining Path gave Peruvian women education, social justice, and opportunities to act alongside men in the People’s War.

Yet at the same time, gender issues were not part of the Shining Path’s platform, only their rhetoric. Guzman, like the primary influences in his life, Marx, Lenin, Mao and Mariategui, found gender insignificant in comparison to class struggle, but recognized the necessity of women’s involvement in the Revolution. “Only the direct and massive participation of revolutionary women, principally working women,” Guzman is quoted as saying “…in the (the revolution) remains the sole guarantee of genuine defense and promotion of women’s rights within a real and concrete path of liberation.”<ref> <I> CSRP</I>, “The Other Half of the Sky” 6.</ref> The Shining Path recognized the need for women in the movement, yet it cannot be said that they offered Peruvian women emancipation or political agency, only that they sought their support through policies and rhetoric that validated their significance within Peruvian society and the revolution.

In contrast to the image of invisibility, domesticity, and sacrifice of Peruvian women described above, the figure of the female Senderista fighter inspired fear. The perception of these women warriors often had racial and gendered implications, harkening back to both stories of fierce Andean females, and the teachings of Mariategui. Mariategui described the nature of women as, “Lack[ing] a sense of justice. Women’s flaw is to be too indulgent or too severe. And they, like cats, have a mischievous inclination for cruelty.”<ref>Kirk, <I>The Monkey’s Paw</I>, 74.</ref> Robin Kirk conducted interviews and research on the role of women in the Shining Path and found two prevailing perceptions of the “crazy” women drawn to join the People’s war, either “sexless automatons,” or “bloodthirsty nymphomaniacs.” Kirk writes that “It was as if Nature had delivered a totally new creature…it frightened and gave Guerillas an aura of unnatural, witchy power,” and quotes her cabdriver’s sentiment that “women from the mountains were, strong-willed, warlike.”<ref>Kirk, <I>The Monkey’s Paw</refI>, 67-70.</ref>

Senderistas were rumored to regularly deliver the ‘coup de grace’ in targeted assassinations and popular trials, further building their image as cold and deadly.<ref>Kirk, <I>The Monkey’s Paw</I/>, 65.</ref> The Shining Path reinforced this racialized perception of Andean women in its literature, quoting a 1923 El Tiempo newspaper article that described Andean women’s “rich history” of involvement in rebellions in the Ancco and Chusqui districts, saying, “They mistreated the mayor and the chief tax collectors of theses districts in a cruel and inhumane way, and left them fatally wounded.”<ref><I>The New Flag Magazine</I>, “How Women Advance and Join the Revolution,” (1998), 2.</ref> The Shining Path did not create this image of strong, dangerous Peruvian women, they merely applied it in order to legitimize their appeal to indigenous communities, using both fear of women’s innate cruelty, and pride in Andean resistance and independence.

Moyano was able to make a political space for herself in Peru, before the Shining Path invaded her town. She was neither silent nor disempowered in Villa El Salvador because her position gave her power to defy the Shining Path as a politician and a woman. Other women resisted the Shining Path informally, without political clout. Peruvian women collaborated in “Mother’s Clubs,” soup kitchens and glass-of milk programs, functional organizations that addressed nutritional needs of children and communities. Yet the violence and terror of the war between the Shining Path and the Peruvian state, these women’s federations became politicized. In August, 1988, the Mother’s Clubs Federation organized a march for peace, one participant saying, “Because we give life, we defend it.”<ref>Corder, “Women in War: Impact and Responses,” <I>Shining and Other Paths</refI>, 360.</ref>

The war also inspired women in the Peruvian countryside to act in the public sphere in order to protect their children and their communities. As the number of casualties grew and the men left, women in Andean communities formed self-defense organizations, or Rondas Campesinas.<ref>Corder, “Women in War,” 356.</ref> Although accounts of the successful opposition to the Shining Path often include gendered language and references to masculine resistance, women, or Ronderas, played central roles in the community organization.<ref>Kimberly Theidon, “Disarming the Subject: Remembering War and Imagining Citizenship in Peru,” 70.</ref> Although some described their activities as “making ourselves macho,” or “put[ting] ourselves in the position of men,” the efforts of women to oppose the Shining Path dealt the People’s War a serious blow.<ref>Theidon, “Disarming the Subject,” 74.</ref> Gendered language aside, the outcome of the Ronderas’ involvement in the war against the Shining Path was significant, communities cooperated with the Peruvian state to identify, attack, and purge Senderistas.<ref> Starn, “Villagers at Arms: War and Counterrevolution in the Central-South Andes,” <I>Shining and Other Paths</I>, 232-233.</ref>

The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (PTRC) found that the Shining Path was responsible for fifty-four percent of the deaths during its war against the Peruvian state, and was principally guilty for the violence because the organization had deliberately sought to elicit a violent response from the state.<ref><I> PTRC II</I>, 13.</ref> One key distinction between the terror perpetrated by the Shining Path and that of the military and police was the state officials’ systematic application of sexual violence against women.<ref><I>PTRC III</I>, 46.</ref> The use of sexual violence by state representatives, such as military and police, was widespread under military dictatorships in the Southern Cone, and state repression and civil wars elsewhere in South and Central America during the twentieth century. These violations were generally committed against civilian women, while in Peru, the presence of women in the Shining Path complicates the understanding of this distinction.

“Pancho’s” interview shows that as he battled the Shining Path, he victimized women he felt could be enemy combatants, perhaps this allowed him to justify his crimes, while racism also allowed him to distance himself from the pain he caused. He narrated his participation of another rape and murder of a young indigenous girl with his military comrades, asking his interviewer, “You understand don’t you. This happens the world over.”<ref> “Pancho,” “Vietnam in the Andes,” <I>The Peru Reader</I>,345.</ref> He then reminded his interviewer of Vietnam, as if to establish their mutual culpability in wartime rape. Yet, by the time the PTRC released its report; sexual violence was increasingly acknowledged and condemned by an international community that was more responsive to reports of systematic sexual violence.

Women testified to the PTRC, and their experiences will forever be a part of Peru’s official history. Remaining adherents to the Shining Path, such as the Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru (CSRP) exploited the PTRC’s report, as seen in an article in the weekly newspaper, Revolutionary Worker, and reprinted by the CSRP: “One of the most heart-wrenching sections of the Commission report documents case after case of torture of women revolutionaries by the military and police,” the article goes on to describe acts of torture, and ends by quoting the PTRC, “The Commission concludes that sexual violence against women by the armed forces of the state was a ‘generalized practice that took on a systematic character connected to the repression of the subversives in the provinces of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurimac.'”<ref> <I>CSRP</I>, “Who is Oppressing the Revolutionary Women of Peru?”</ref> In the production of memory, the Shining Path has won an important victory, and even after its destruction in the mid-1990s, the movement continued to celebrate its treatment of women. Later in the article the authors remarks, “One of the things that really stands out about the People’s War in Peru is how steadfastly the PCP (Peruvian Communist Party) has struggled against women’s oppression, and how it has led the masses against every form of degradation faced by women in Peru.”CSRP”<ref> <I>CSRP</I>, “Who is Oppressing the Revolutionary Women of Peru?”</ref>