The Negative Impact of Shining Path on Indigenous Mobilization in Peru: An Approach from Political Opportunity and New Social Movements Theories

Identity and Opportunity

New social movements theory has its origin in European political philosophy and social theory (Cohen, 1985; Della Porta and Diani, 2011; Klandermans, 2008). It is an attempt to overcome the old-fashioned reductionism of Marxism in analyzing the emergence of social movements and puts at the center of its analysis the issues of social change and collective identity formation as a mobilizing resource (Hunt, Benford, and Snow, 1994). Buechler (1995) notes that it is not a single theory but a group of theories dealing with ideology, movement culture, and identity, among other things. This article focuses on collective identity, which is a key element in analyzing indigenous movements in particular because their members already have a latent collective identity based on ethnicity. As Klandermans (2008) argues, the hypothesized relationship between collective identity and participation, which is “overwhelmingly supported” by the existing empirical evidence, is straightforward: strong identification with a collectivity makes participation on behalf of that collectivity more likely.

For instance, the mobilizations in the 1990s that began with the indigenous movement in Ecuador under the slogan “Never Again Without Us” showed a clear ethnic factor behind a generalized social unrest. The indigenous movement was making specific claims for its peoples by merging ethnic and class-based demands under a new organization, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Becker, 2008). A collective identity is a shared identification of a group that derives from its members’ common interests, experiences, and solidarities (Melucci, 1988; Polletta and Jasper, 2001). New social movements theory views the emergence of collective identities—particularly those arising from the cultural sphere—as key catalysts of collective action. Even after recognizing that an identity is already present in class-based movements, it holds that this identity is “new” when it is used to foster self-realization and autonomy outside of the established political, social, and economic system instead of merely being absorbed by it. Although indigenous movements initially have ethnic commonalities, only after a socialization period do they use these characteristics in forming federations or confederations along ethnic lines.

Pizzorno (1989) says that it is during collective action that identity formation and consolidation take place. What is at stake in this case is not the achievement of a certain benefit but rather the recognition of a certain identity. Similarly, Brysk (1994) maintains that movements produce collective identity and that while most indigenous movements have similar agendas, their precise meanings and applications are developed in the conflicts and negotiations that accompany political resistance. Thus indigenous collective identities are as much a product of movements as a cause of them (Pallares, 2002). Many writers have argued that the latter is a distinctive characteristic of the new social movements (Calhoun, 1991; Cohen, 1985; Melucci, 1982; Pizzorno, 1989). Social movements construct their identities in terms of the so-called identity-oriented paradigm, in which participants in collective action pursue the construction of a new collective identity and its legitimation and expression, and only when this identity is consolidated is it possible to achieve further economic or material objectives.

For del Olmo (2003), ethnic identity can be understood as a form of collective identity based on common social and cultural characteristics that are intrinsic to a group. In the case of indigenous movements in Latin America, the consolidation of identity is proactive; they commonly express demands for expanded civil rights emerging from discrimination and systematic exclusion from political and/or economic participation. For instance, although indigenous movements in Bolivia demanded material rights, under Morales’s Movimiento al Socialismo they used regional, national, and international coalition building to equate indigenous and nonindigenous issues through resonant political analogies that framed Bolivia’s national crisis of political legitimacy in terms of indigenous rights while making common cause with various urban popular sectors that recognized their indigenous cultural heritage as a crucial background to their own struggles against disenfranchisement (Albro, 2005).

For Touraine (1965: 53), ethnic identities may be “defensive, as their ultimate objective is the protection, conservation, and recognition of ethnic traits within a recognized social structure. The consequence of searching for these symbolic interests is the establishment of the identity itself as a pressure group that can no longer be ignored.” Similarly, ethnic identities depend on concrete circumstances, contexts, and opportunities. As postindustrial societies witness the emergence of these new social movements, it is possible to affirm that such societies have some windows of opportunity that allow their emergence (Touraine, 1993). In this sense, “people’s actions clearly confront certain limits that structures engender and structures often demarcate a certain range of possibilities. But structures do not unconditionally dictate what people do” (Selbin, 2005: 128).

From the discussion above, it can be said that the consolidation of a collective identity is the result of a dynamic social process that develops under certain conditions. Therefore, indigenous collective identity formation and consolidation can be understood only by taking its context into account. Accordingly, we must explore some of the features of the political context that might have prevented or created an ideal scenario for the awakening and consolidation of Peruvian indigenous identity.

The intent of political opportunity theory is to explain when collective action occurs, and its basic claim is that the context in which a movement arises influences its development and potential impact (Meyer, 2004: 125). Consequently, political opportunity theorists direct many of their explanatory efforts to the world outside a social movement. Drawing on the work of McAdam (1982) and Tarrow (1989), we identify four clusters of political opportunities that align with the openness or closedness of institutional mechanisms within states: the degree to which people participate in political life, the stability of political alignments and their changes, the presence of allies and support groups, and state actions repressing or facilitating dissent. This article emphasizes the first and fourth of these clusters, since these were the opportunities that were most compromised by the emergence of Shining Path in Peru.

A number of studies have shown that participation in the social sphere (protests, social movements, and strikes) occurs where citizens enjoy full political rights (Norris, Walgrave, and Van Aelst, 2005; Tarrow, 2011; Van Aelst and Walgrave, 2001). A second group of studies suggests that political rights are achieved precisely through mobilization, protests, and the pressures exerted by social movements (Dalton, 2013) and that citizens who are disappointed with established channels of representative democracy are more likely to engage in protest and other forms of collective action. Regarding the state’s response to dissent, empirical studies point to two different consequences of repression for collective action and mobilization. Some conclude that high levels of repression diminish collective action as citizens face high costs for engaging in it (Jenkins and Perrow, 1977; Opp and Roehl, 1990). Others suggest that high levels of repression foster solidarity and promote collective action by increasing the cost of doing nothing (Francisco, 1996; Khawaja, 1993; White, 1989). Still others, such as one conducted by Siegel (2011), indicate that the extent to which repression influences participation depends on the structure of social networks. For example, in the case of the indigenous movement in Ecuador, the lack of repression—especially in the Amazonian region—allowed indigenous organizations to form confederations by taking advantage of existing social networks and to organize along ethnic lines (Yashar, 2006).

This article contends that because openness to citizens’ participation in Peru was minimal and repression—both by the government and by Shining Path—was severe, Indians had little incentive to organize through collective action. Although ethnic identity was a common factor in several indigenous communities, it could not be “awakened.” However, the Peruvian indigenous movement was able to partially consolidate itself in the Amazonian region, where the civil conflict barely arrived and, when it did, indigenous groups successfully resisted Shining Path and others seen as representing a threat (Rénique, 2009). This adverse political scenario for indigenous populations translated into potential opportunities for Shining Path. The lack of political opportunities helps explain how Shining Path could arise and why the indigenous movement in Peru never had the chance to develop and consolidate its identity as a mobilizing factor. At the same time, revolutions theorists (Foran, 2005; Selbin, 2018) suggest that structural conditions alone cannot explain how specific groups act and evolve, implying a need for evaluation of both the structure of and agency within social movements’ consolidation.

The Structural Context of Mobilization in Indigenous Communities

Shining Path took advantage of the limited range of political opportunities in the rural areas of Peru. In addition, it constrained the political context of the indigenous communities when it turned rural areas into the headquarters of its guerrilla strategy and repressed all perceived counterrevolutionary mobilization. Prior to the emergence of the insurrectionist group, Peru had historically been marked by the difference between urban areas, which were more industrialized and had a mostly white and mestizo population, and the rural areas, which were almost entirely agricultural and inhabited largely by Indians. The rural regions were also characterized by gamonalismo (exploitation by caciques), which had been in place since the nineteenth century and had led to extreme concentration of landownership. According to the 1961 agricultural census, 1 percent of the landowners owned 80 percent of the private land (Albertus, 2020: 4). This was conducive to the establishment of oligarchic relations between landowners and Indians, and the government increasingly supported the elite in maintaining its control over the territory.

Xenophobia has existed in Peru since colonial times with regard to the indigenous population and governmental policies concerning the “Indian Problem” (de la Cadena, 2000; Méndez-Gastelumendi, 1996; Sulmont, 2005). Nonetheless, during the Peruvian Revolution (1968–1980) the government implemented two main sets of reforms that reconfigured the political scenario in the rural areas: the agrarian reform and the declaration of the “social death of the Indian.” On the one hand, it expropriated most of the landowners’ holdings and distributed them among peasant cooperatives and societies. According to Albertus (2020), this land reform was crucial to the development of the insurrectionist conflict: it was in the regions more affected by the land distribution that Shining Path faced more resistance. On the other hand, inspired by Western socialist thought, the government encouraged Indians to consider themselves peasants and abandon their indigenous identity (Yashar, 2006: 258). It increasingly discouraged indigenous mobilization, considering the Indians’ values and culture “remnants” and ultimately “ethnic” (Méndez-Gastelumendi, 2001: 158).

Because of these changes, the power of the hacendados significantly decreased and oligarchic relations were replaced by a new cooperative-based system, but this system was not successful in resolving the historical problems of the rural areas. First, it was perceived as ineffective by the rural people, who had expected a quick and complete land redistribution. With the empowerment of cooperatives, resentments among neighboring communities increased, especially because the cooperatives began to lease the land of nonmembers in exchange for labor and to hire them at low wages. Consequently, people resented the government and the cooperatives for depriving them of their rightful land and for perpetuating an exploitative elite. This situation led to the frustration of further peaceful organization among communities, which were now distrustful of each other (Degregori, 2000: 90).

In addition, even among those who agreed with the land distribution, the establishment of a cooperative system was perceived as a threat to the social status quo. Isbell (1994: 81–82) described the concern among the Chuschi as follows: “The argument that won the debate in the public assemblies was that if a cooperative was established, the community would lose control over its resources.” Second, the land reform dramatically reduced the power of the landowners without expanding the presence of the government, thus decreasing the influence of the government in the region—since it could no longer use the landowners as intermediates—and generating a political vacuum. As a result, while the land reform reduced the concentration of landownership, it increased the isolation of the rural areas and disaffection with the government.

As a result, when Shining Path started the revolutionary struggle, it found a very favorable political context including a political disconnect between the rural regions and the central government, a political vacuum left by the end of national policies concerning the demobilization of indigenous communities and the abandonment of Indian identity, and an increase in social unrest due to unfulfilled expectations about the land reform. Stern (1998: 8) argues that, although Shining Path aimed at reducing the conflict to a class struggle, it also involved historic resentments, economic inequalities, ethnic conflicts, and cultural legacies. Shining Path initially benefited from the rural areas’ distance from cities, where the government had its strength, in gaining supporters in indigenous communities. This expansion benefited from the disdain of inhabitants of big cities, who considered Shining Path’s emergence a localized issue among the “uneducated and illiterate peasantry” (Palmer, 1992) and therefore refused to implement counterinsurgency measures until the beginning of its expansion to the cities.

In fact, during the first years Shining Path filled the void that the central government had left in rural areas. It offered peasants protection and acknowledgment of injustices through its initial selective use of violence—especially against the corrupt authorities and the cattle rustlers—and the promise of a new political reality in which their rights would be respected (La Serna, 2012). In Manrique’s (2007: 21) words, “Against the chronic injustice and abuse, Sendero assumed a moralizer and avenger role that provided it legitimacy in rural, urban, and social areas.” For this reason, Shining Path found support in the poorest rural areas of the country (Ayacucho, Apurimac, and Huancavelica), where these grievances were commonly experienced. According to Degregori (2000), it originated and developed in the authoritarian contexts of Andean peasant-mestizo-elite relationships, taking advantage of the political vacuum left by Alvarado’s land reform.

As a result, Shining Path was able to spread over the rural areas of Ayacucho and gain support for its revolutionary struggle. Inspired by Maoism, it implemented a peasant-based revolution oriented toward the establishment of a rural guerrilla force—what Mao called a “from the countryside to the city” revolution. It was able to take control of extensive rural areas of the country and expel the governmental authorities (Manrique, 2007: 32), and this success allowed it to create a parallel state through comités populares (popular committees) that exerted control over the territory and repressed any perceived antirevolutionary behavior. For the indigenous communities, after an initial period of cooperation, this implied a dramatic reduction of political opportunities, since they were the object of increasing suppression of any kind of alternative mobilization outside Shining Path’s Marxist agenda. This revolutionary violence included physical punishment, torture, and mass executions (CVR, 2003).

After this first defensive stage of the revolution, Shining Path developed a military campaign aimed at the urban areas, launching attacks on the national economy (e.g., destroying the electrical infrastructure) or directly on the population through kidnapping and murder, including car bombs and selective assassinations (Gorriti, 1990). This tactic—attacking the urban areas and quickly returning to the security of the rural ones—was aimed at destabilizing the government as a preliminary step toward assuming full control of the country.

From a structural perspective, Shining Path took advantage of the isolation and the political vacuum that existed in Peru’s rural areas and the latent disdain for the rural areas in the cities to spread across the territory. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, because of the distance from the cities to the locations of the first attacks by the Shining Path guerrillas, the Peruvian authorities ignored them, allowing the consolidation of the organization in terms of both territory and population (CVR, 2003: 56). For the government, putting down a rebellion in the poorest areas of the country was not worth mobilizing a military force strong enough to locate and defeat a guerrilla movement hidden in the tropical and mountainous areas of Ayacucho. Shining Path also benefited from the national political context. Some writers have pointed out that the government was reluctant to send military forces to the rural areas because it feared a military coup such as the one in 1968 (Degregori and Rivera Paz, 1993: 9). It was not until Shining Path began a campaign against the main cities that the government took the insurrectionist challenge seriously. By that time Shining Path had already reached a high degree of consolidation in most of the rural communities of Ayacucho, and defeating it would have required not only the support of the local authorities but also the mobilization of numerous forces and resources.

Concerning the counterrevolutionary response, Albertus (2020) provides compelling evidence that the land reform had a positive impact on the government’s capacity to identify the insurgency’s members and coordinate and strengthen peasant groups—the rondas campesinas—to confront Shining Path. Lacking a consistent security strategy and facing constant attacks from guerrillas hidden within the population, during the first years the government alternated periods of inaction with massive retaliation in the areas where Shining Path was established. Consequently, the indigenous communities faced the additional threat of indiscriminate governmental repression aimed at defeating Shining Path (Marks and Palmer, 2005). For example, the military campaign that developed between 1983 and 1984 caused more than 5,000 casualties among the population (Degregori and Rivera Paz, 1993: 9–10). Additionally, during the antiterrorist campaign, the governmental armed forces were barely monitored by the national media, which were established mainly in the urban areas. In the context of guerrilla expansion, this lack of external control allowed the development of extreme repression in the rural areas; mass torture and executions of indigenous people became common practice, since the government forces were often unable to distinguish between Indians and Shining Path’s fighters (Sánchez-Cuenca and de la Calle, 2009). According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, about 20,000 of the 70,000 total casualties in this conflict were caused by forces under direct or indirect instructions from the government (CVR, 2003: 55). Considering that Shining Path barely exceeded 1,000 fighters, the evidence of massive repression of the rural population is very clear (CVR, 2003: 13).

As a result, Shining Path’s guerrilla strategy put the rural areas under a double threat: direct repression by Shining Path of any perceived antirevolutionary behavior and repression by governmental forces (Starn, 1995). It is estimated that of the 70,000 people killed, 75 percent were indigenous. The people of Ayacucho, where Shining Path began its consolidation, undoubtedly suffered the most (CVR, 2003: 54).

When there is openness to citizens’ participation, the existence of collective action becomes more likely. In Peru the repression was severe because of the radicalization of the conflict. Shining Path took advantage of Peru’s internal problems to spread throughout the rural areas and impose control over the population. Its attacks on the urban areas provoked an inconsistent response from the government that also involved repression of the population. This context negatively affected the political opportunities of the indigenous communities in that the increased repression narrowed the already scarce opportunities for participation in these communities.

The Replacement of Indigenous Identity with a Peasant-Based Agenda

While the indigenous communities faced limited political opportunities to mobilize and these opportunities radically deteriorated because of Shining Path’s revolution, this structural perspective is not enough to explain the changes of the period. Indigenous communities were also experiencing a threat to their identity that eventually led to their political demobilization as Indians. To fully understand the impact of Shining Path on indigenous mobilization it is necessary to examine the thought of its charismatic leader, Abimael Guzmán, an ideology officially known as Pensamiento Gonzalo, concerning the “Indian Problem” (Degregori, 2000; Gorriti, 1990; Palmer, 1992). Shining Path’s main goal was to adapt the Marxist revolution—created in a context of urbanity and modernity—to a country like Peru, where Indians made up a substantial part of the population and often maintained semifeudal political relations. To this end, Guzmán drew upon Mao Zedong and José Carlos Mariátegui, who expanded the context in which revolutions could take place. As did Mao, Guzmán understood the peasantry—instead of the proletariat that is the focus of the Western Marxist tradition—to be the revolutionary subject in agrarian countries and proposed a strategy focused on rural areas. Mariátegui (1970) adapted Marxist theory to the Latin American context and pointed out the convergence between indigenous claims and the socialist project.

Through these works, Shining Path consolidated two cornerstones of its ideology: the strategy of class struggle as “from the countryside to the city” guerrilla warfare and the role of Indians as part of the peasant revolutionary subject. We have seen that the first of these put the indigenous communities in the crossfire, increasing their repression. At the same time, although the relevance of Indians in Pensamiento Gonzalo might seem conducive to indigenous mobilization, it quickly turned into a severe handicap. The explanation for this apparent contradiction is that this relevance depended on a strict materialist-based analysis—what Stern (1998: 471) calls a “hyperideologized vision of the dialectic and scientifically revealed path to revolutionary triumph.” Thus, while Shining Path recognized the indigenous population as part of the revolutionary subject of Peru, it was only as part of the peasantry. In Guzmán’s words, “For the first time ever the country is being led by workers, peasants, and progressives, understood as those who want to change this country in the only way that it can be done, through popular warfare” (El Diario, July 24, 1989). Shining Path emphasized class over any alternative feeling or identity—including ethnicity or gender—because they were all perceived to be the results of the prevailing economic relations. In this sense, it systematically promoted the abandonment of indigenous identity and the reorientation of indigenous political claims toward a peasant-based agenda. This attitude is consistent with that of the traditional left, which tended to consider cultural diversity something that would disappear with the unification of the working class (Selverston-Scher, 2001: 65).

As a result, indigenous values were never introduced into the Shining Path’s statements, and indigenous militants did not play significant roles in the organization. Degregori (1991: 243) points out that Shining Path’s “official documents entirely omit the ethnic dimension or directly reject Andean cultural re-evaluation as ‘folklore’ or bourgeois manipulation.” Consequently, despite their formal recognition, indigenous values were subject to increasingly hostile attitudes from Shining Path’s leaders. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Shining Path “never took into consideration the necessities and hopes of the peasantry or its own organizations or of their cultural specificities, considering the peasantry a ‘mass’ subject to the will of the party [and] punishing dissidence with death, including mass slaughter” (CVR, 2003: 129). In Guzmán’s view, socialist revolutions were the result of socialist collectivization and social life programs instead of indigenous sociopolitical dynamics. Thus Shining Path promoted intense reeducation in materialist values—totally ignoring indigenous culture— and coordinated political activities in the rural areas within “people’s organizations” such as the Movement of Poor Peasants, which established a peasant-oriented political agenda (Strong, 1992: 88). Del Pino’s (1996) analysis of this organization showed that Shining Path, despite recognizing ethnic differentiation, considered it part of the countryside-city conflict. These dynamics actively prevented any consolidation of collective identity. In fact, several writers point out that because social movement mobilizations tend to both generate and depend on collective identities (Bernstein, 2005; Gamson, 1991; Hunt, Benford, and Snow, 1994), denying Indians’ collective identity was a direct threat to their mobilization.

Shining Path’s hierarchical structure—always led by Guzmán and seconded by a select group of academics—systematically excluded Indians from its political decisions. Its organization was concentrated in a hermetic central committee whose task was limited to the planning of the military and political line, leaving the implementation of its decisions to the militants. Ironically, “the new party’s internal organization replicated the colonial stratification of regional society: a privileged elite of white professionals commanded a mass of brown-skinned youth of humble origin” (Starn, 1992: 405). Most of Shining Path’s leaders, including Abimael Guzmán and the central committee, did not speak Quechua, the most relevant indigenous language of the area, and did not come from Ayacucho (Palmer, 2017: 429).

Even the design of the political education process, directed by professors in the rural areas, evidenced the verticality of the organization and the structural separation between the Shining Path “academy” and its armed wing (CVR, 2003: 19–21). During his time as a teacher at the University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga, Guzmán exerted a strong influence on a generation of students who eventually became rural teachers and proselytized for Shining Path’s ideology (Palmer, 1986). The latter process was exacerbated by Guzmán’s revisionist paranoia—his disproportionate efforts to eradicate perceived antirevolutionary behavior. This disdain for indigenous identity can be traced back throughout Peruvian history (Jima-González and Paradela-López, 2020). For example, Méndez-Gastelumendi (1996), who studied the process under the Peruvian–Bolivian Confederation, says that the creoles’ appropriation of a rhetoric glorifying the Incan past existed side-by-side with a condescending judgment of the Indian. Later, during the twentieth century, the government of the Peruvian Revolution actively promoted the abandonment of indigenous identity and declared the “social death of Indians” (Thorp, Caumartin, and Gray-Molina, 2006). Finally, socialists like Mariátegui (1969; 1970) also highlighted the materialist facets of indigenous oppression, thus undervaluing the spheres of culture and identity.

Shining Path went a step farther, exacerbating this dynamic and increasing the pressure on indigenous communities. For the insurrectionists, advancing the revolution meant that it was necessary to destroy the existing social and political institutions and build a new society based on revolutionary organizations and popular committees (El Diario, February 7, 1988). Under this radicalized interpretation of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, indigenous organizations were conceived as an extension of the “old political order,” which reproduced colonial inequalities and alienated the Peruvian peasantry. Therefore, Shining Path oscillated between considering Indians alienated people who were remnants of the feudal-capitalist system and repressing them as counterrevolutionary elements. In either case, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that Shining Path exhibited racism and a sense of superiority toward the indigenous population. Although the emergence of collective identity is associated with conditions of sociocultural change or challenge, in Peru socioeconomic and political exclusion, political breakdown and renewal, and the radical repression of Indians’ identity blocked any kind of mobilization despite the existence of the material conditions to initiate it.

Wheat (1990: 47) identifies this duality in the words of a Shining Path mid-level leader: “First they will be given political reeducation, and if that fails, they will receive what we get now: dictatorship, prison . . . death.” Although there are numerous reports of this kind of behavior toward other groups, it was especially intense toward the indigenous communities, since Shining Path could quickly take control over large rural areas and implement reeducation campaigns. Under what Degregori (1988) called “utopian authoritarianism,” it launched a campaign of execution of peasant leaders and organizations that refused to cooperate with its revolution (Kent, 1993: 451), among them Alejandro Huamán, the indigenous leader of Uchuraccay, killed in 1982 (Perú.21, January 31, 2013), and 55 Ashaninka peasants in 1993 (El País, August 20, 1993). Degregori (1991) reports that 80 peasants were killed in Lucanamarca in 1983 because of their alleged collaboration with the government. The latter was “justified” by Pensamiento Gonzalo’s idea that “the blood quota” was necessary for the triumph of the revolution and warned of the need to prepare for an inevitable “bloodbath.” This glorification of violence—including the repression of dissidents and terrorist attacks on the cities—led to massive repression of civilians, who were 98.3 percent of Shining Path’s total casualties (CVR, 2003).

Thus, during this manchay tiempo (time of fear), Indians were increasingly forced to join Shining Path even though it was a peasant organization and part of an extremely hierarchical organization controlled by a white-mestizo elite. Any effort to generate indigenous political mobilization faced intense repression because it was considered part of the traditional oppressor system or a direct antirevolutionary threat. As a result, the mobilization of the rural areas was increasingly developed in nonindigenous terms. When the government finally designed a consistent security strategy and the rural population began to organize against Shining Path, these rondas campesinas —some promoted by the government and some self-organized—tended to refer to themselves as peasants seeking self-protection (Sulmont, 2005: 49).

Conclusion

Our research has simultaneously considered the structural context and the cultural processes surrounding the Shining Path uprising. From the structural perspective of political opportunity theory, we have shown that Shining Path initially took advantage of a context of isolation and a political vacuum in the rural areas to gain influence and legitimacy in the indigenous communities. In addition, the hesitation of the government and its mistrust of the armed forces allowed the expansion and consolidation of the insurrectionist organization. When Shining Path established itself in a new territory, it began a campaign of repression of any kind of alternative political mobilization, which it considered counterrevolutionary. Furthermore, the erratic response of the government forces—often incapable of distinguishing the guerrilla fighters from others—also resulted in significant repression of the rural population. This context placed the indigenous communities in an extremely negative structural context and jeopardized any possibility of organized mobilization.

From the cultural perspective of new social movements theory, we have shown that Shining Path implemented a strategy of co-optation and repression of indigenous communities. On the one hand, this exacerbated the tendency of the Peruvian Revolution and the socialist writers to discourage indigenous identity. Because Shining Path recognized the peasantry as Peru’s revolutionary subject, it approached indigenous communities to persuade them to join and collaborate with the revolutionary cause. However, because its ideology depended on a materialist theory, this collaboration implied reeducation and the abandonment of indigenous identity and culture. Any effort of these communities to develop autonomous political mobilization was perceived as counterrevolutionary and severely repressed.

Through this analysis, we have highlighted the benefits of examining Shining Path’s impact in both structural and cultural terms, taking into account the interplay between agency and structure. The insurrectionists benefited from a political vacuum and internal political confrontation to take control of rural areas and repress their population, and the cultural dynamics they had inherited from the Peruvian Revolution and prominent socialist writers deprived the indigenous movements of political opportunities. Although one cannot establish a direct causal link between the Shining Path irruption and Peru’s shortage of organized indigenous groups, all these processes contributed to the inactivation of a unified indigenous movement.