The Shining Path in Huancavelica, Peru: Conflict and the Legacy of Exclusion

Hispanic American Historical Review · 2025-04-29

Los años de Fujimori (1990–2000)

Hispanic American Historical Review · 2023

• Computer Science
• Library science
• History

While excellent studies exist of Alberto Fujimori's regime in the fields of journalism, human rights, and social sciences, historians have only recently begun to piece together this period. With Los años de Fujimori (1990–2000), José Ragas is at the cutting edge of this historical scholarship, masterfully synthesizing existing literature with newly available primary sources, popular cultural artifacts, newspapers, campaign ads, government propaganda, and contemporaneous photographs in this highly readable and informative history of Fujimori's Peru.At the heart of Ragas's narrative is an exploration of fujimorismo, a personality-driven doctrine that used national security and economic stability to justify authoritarianism. While the self-coup of April 5, 1992, was surely a fundamental rupture with the return to democracy 12 years earlier, it did not occur in a vacuum. As chapter 1 illustrates, Fujimori's unlikely victory against acclaimed writer Mario Vargas Llosa could be attributed, at least partly, to his collaboration with Vladimiro Montesinos. A former army captain who had been dishonorably discharged and imprisoned for delivering top-secret documents to the United States, Montesinos worked as an attorney representing some of the country's most notorious drug lords. During the 1990 campaign, Montesinos helped Fujimori cover up potentially damaging allegations of fiscal evasion (p. 32). Despite his campaign promise not to embrace his rival's neoliberal austerity measures, Fujimori implemented a painful economic shock policy within months of taking office. Chapter 2 describes the so-called fujishock, which, while ostensibly adopted to stabilize the national economy, had a crippling impact on local economies. Indeed, Ragas's ability to tease out local and regional impacts of national policies infuses his book with a sense of intimacy and cultural sensitivity rarely achieved in political history. In chapter 3, Ragas explores the breakdown of the democratic process under Fujimori. Even before the self-coup, the executive branch consolidated its power in the name of growing the private sector and fighting terrorism, issuing hundreds of decrees and elevating the power of the National Intelligence Service, the intelligence agency controlled by Montesinos (p. 60). In this light, Fujimori's April 5 self-coup was the culmination of a longer, more concerted move toward authoritarianism.If the Fujimori administration had taken incremental steps toward authoritarianism before 1992, the postcoup years represented a determined march, detailed in chapters 4 and 5. Fujimori used the fact that Shining Path, the nation's foremost terrorist threat, had brought its war to Lima to justify increasingly draconian measures. Ragas grippingly describes how Grupo Colina, a government-sanctioned death squad, gunned down civilians and kidnapped, tortured, and killed students and professors at La Cantuta University as part of the regime's war on terror. Remarkably, these actions did little to compromise Fujimori's popular mandate, and he won reelection in 1995 handily. “For fujimorismo,” Ragas writes, “this was its most important victory” (p. 123).Fujimori emerged from the 1995 election emboldened, and he spent the remainder of the decade consolidating power. In one of the book's more sobering episodes, chapter 6 examines the government's forced sterilization of approximately 272,000 women and 22,000 men within the span of five years. At least 2,000 women testified to having been sterilized against their will, although, as Ragas points out, this number is likely low (p. 127). Gathering testimonies of health-care workers and survivors, government propaganda and documents, and recent studies on the topic, Ragas pieces together what the campaign looked like on the ground. Because the government's sterilization campaign targeted rural, Indigenous, and impoverished communities, most middle-class Peruvians did not pay it much attention. Instead, they hailed Fujimori for bringing economic recovery and defeating terrorism. This image, which the regime took pains to craft, was reinforced when military commandos rescued 72 hostages held by Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) guerrillas in the Japanese ambassador's Lima residence in April 1997. Chapter 7 describes the four-month-long crisis culminating in this rescue operation, in which at least some of the hostage takers likely faced extrajudicial execution.As Ragas argues in chapter 10, fujimorismo's authoritarianism solidified in the late 1990s. The regime systematically debilitated public institutions, neutralized political rivals, and waged all-out war on the media to pave the way for Fujimori's third straight election—which was prohibited by his government's own constitution, adopted in 1993. When Fujimori won the 2000 election, many in Peru considered it fraudulent, precipitating the first mass mobilizations against the regime. When the first of a seemingly endless stream of videos emerged showing Montesinos bribing everyone from military top brass to media heads and elected officials in exchange for their loyalty to the regime, it all began to unravel. Montesinos fled the country, only to be detained in Venezuela and extradited, while Fujimori himself fled shortly thereafter, eventually landing in Japan. An effort to return to Peru ahead of the 2006 elections resulted in Fujimori's capture in Chile and his trial and imprisonment in Peru for human rights violations.Los años de Fujimori is not only a brilliant synopsis of Peru's most consequential—and controversial—political regime of the past 50 years. It is not only an astute exploration of democracy's fragility. It is also essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Peru's current political crisis.

Beyond the Gonzalo Mystique: Challenges to Abimael Guzmán’s Leadership inside Peru’s Shining Path, 1982–1992

Latin American Research Review · 2023-06-05 · 3 citations

Abstract From the moment it launched its armed insurgency in 1980 until the death of its former leader in September 2021, Peru’s Shining Path mesmerized observers. The Maoist group had a well-established reputation as a personality cult whose members were fanatically devoted to Abimael Guzmán, the messianic leader they revered as “Presidente Gonzalo.” According to this narrative, referred to here as the “Gonzalo mystique,” Shining Path zealots were prepared to submit to Guzmán’s authority and will—no matter how violent or suicidal—because they viewed him as a messiah-prophet who would usher in a new era of communist utopia. Drawing on newly available sources, including the minutes of Shining Path’s 1988–1989 congress, this article complicates the Gonzalo mystique narrative, tracing the unrelenting efforts by middle- and high-ranking militants to challenge, undermine, disobey, and even unseat Guzmán throughout the insurgency. Far from seeing their leader as the undisputed cosmocrat of the popular imagination, these militants recognized Guzmán for who he was: a deeply flawed man with errant ideas, including a dubious interpretation of Maoism, problematic military strategy, and a revolutionary path that was anything but shining.

The Stripe-Painted Dog

University of North Carolina Press eBooks · 2020-06-15

Lucero Cumpa and Nestor Cerpa plan an attack on Moyobamba, the capital of San Martin. Daniel Bravo joins a column led by Tito Cruz Sanchez on the aborted attack. Esperanza Tapia escorts a wounded MRTA guerrilla from the Moyobamba attack to the hospital. A betrayal in the ranks leads to Lucero Cumpa’s arrest. Fujimori issues his Law of Repentance, leading to further desertion and betrayal among Daniel Bravo’s column. Abandoned and isolated, Bravo and his remaining comrades meet Rolly Rojas, aka The Arab.

The General’s Station Wagon

University of North Carolina Press eBooks · 2020-06-15

Tigre, a teenager from Pucallpa, joins an MRTA column in the Oxapampa jungle. There, he witnesses MRTA abuses of Ashaninka villages, including the murder of Indigenous leader Alejandro Calderon. The Ashaninka form their own civilian militia to avenge Calderon’s murder and defend their communities against MRTA incursion. Rodrigo Galvez commands the MRTA’s Northeastern Front in San Martin. MRTA groups target members of the LGBTQ community in San Martin and assassinate retired Defense Minister Enrique Lopez Albujar.

Mary Is Sick!

University of North Carolina Press eBooks · 2020-06-15

In the months before Operation Chavin de Huantar, hostage Luis Giampietri gathers intel on his captors and establishes secret contact with SIN, the national intelligence force headed up by Vladimiro Montesinos. Giampietri, Marco Miyashiro, and Francisco Tudela, the Peruvian chancellor, are among the hostages rescued in the operation. Fujimori greets the rescued hostages as a national hero.

Rodrigo’s Journey

University of North Carolina Press eBooks · 2020-06-15

Rodrigo Galvez is a young MIR activist in San Martin who enlists in the Peruvian military to gain combat training. When he returns, he joins the MRTA’s newly established guerrilla front in San Martin.

In the Wolf’s Mouth

University of North Carolina Press eBooks · 2020-06-15

Daniel Bravo is a teenager in 1991, and he joins the Peruvian military. Some MRTA members in captivity at his military base in San Martin recognize him and turn him. He is tortured for days on end before finally escaping from the base, seeking refuge in an MRTA camp headed by Nestor Cerpa

Where the Potatoes Are Cooking

University of North Carolina Press eBooks · 2020-06-15

Lucero Cumpa’s newfound fame makes her an easy target. The MRTA leadership deploys her out of the country. Peter Cardenas and Victor Polay are recaptured.

Fujishock

University of North Carolina Press eBooks · 2020-06-15

After their daring prison escape, Victor Polay and Alberto Galvez convene a meeting of the MRTA Central Committee in August of 1990.The meeting coincides with the new president, Alberto Fujimori, issuing sweeping austerity measures popularly known as the “Fujishock.” The MRTA kidnaps Gerardo Lopez, a congressman from Fujimori’s political party, Cambio 90, in an effort to negotiate with the new president, but Fujimori refuses to negotiate. Lucero Cumpa is arrested, but her comrades break her out of police custody, turning her into a media darling. Alberto Galvez is also recaptured.