Changes

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.”[27] 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.”[28]  Senderistas were rumored to regularly deliver the ‘coup de grace’ in targeted assassinations and popular trials, further building their image as cold and deadly.[29] 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.”[30] 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. ===Women Opposed to the Shining Path===The violence of the 1980s and 1990s threatened Peruvian families, compromising parents’ ability to protect their children, separating men from their families and leaving women to organize associations to defend and heal their communities. During the 1970s labor and political movements were almost exclusively male, but as men left rural communities, joining or fleeing the Shining Path, women “filled the void,” and formed groups that resisted the Shining Path.[31] Some women, like Maria Elana Moyano, had been politically active for years, others formed in reaction to the war between the Shining Path and the Peruvian State. The conditions in Peru, the violence, the hunger, and the terror of the areas affected by the violence, necessitated the fusion of the roles of mother and political actor. The power and significance of Peruvian women may have previously been invisible, dormant, or even repressed, but was now brought to the fore by women’s compelling resistance to the Shining Path. Maria Elana Moyano’s years of political activism had their roots in the incomplete land reform of the Vargas regime. In 1971, when she was twelve years old, Moyana accompanied her parents in a land take over, after their expectations of land redistribution had been unmet.[32] The land they and the neighbors occupied outside of Lima became the Villa El Salvador.[33] Moyano remained politically active in the town; she was a member of a church group that was influenced by Liberation Theology, president of the Villa El Salvador Womens’ Federation, and in 1987, Vice Mayor of the town.[34] In 1989, the Agency for International development showcased Villa El Salvador as a model town. Moyano’s power was neither invisible nor radical, she worked within legal institutions and pursued social change. The Shining Path aggressively pursued obedience and loyalty from the inhabitants of Villa El Salvador, using violence and terror to achieve the townspeople’s cooperation. Moyano would not endorse the People’s War and gave an interview to journalist Mariella Balbi in 1991, after the Shining Path had blown up a food ware house that supplied ninety-two soup kitchen.[35] “Until a little while ago, I thought the Shining Path was wrong-headed but that they in some way wanted to fight for some kind of justice,” she said, “…now they have touched grassroots organizations, made up of the poorest people. Who participates in the soup kitchens and the ‘glass of milk’ program? People who can’t afford to eat in their houses, so I don’t understand this unbalanced group. They want to snuff out survival organizations so that levels of malnutrition and death rise.”[36] Moyano led a march to protest the violence of the Shining Path and gave interviews like the one cited above criticizing the movement’s tactics. On February 15, 1992, Moyano was murdered by female Shining Path members at a community chicken barbeque she had organized.[37]  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.”[38]  Senderistas attempted to disrupt the march and intimidate those advocating peaceful solutions, but they were expelled by the female marchers. Without the support of women, the Shining Path struggled for legitimacy and control, in the face of explicit opposition from Peruvian women, the group asserted their influence though violence and repression. The potential contribution of Peruvian women may have been overlooked by the masculine organizations that formed in the 1970s, but within the extraordinary conditions of the war, women’s foundational position within society became clear. 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.[39] 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.[40] 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.[41] 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.[42] Andean women recognized the value of their political participation, and sought to ensure their continued political involvement. In Ayacucho in 1994 and 1995, Andean women created the “Proposal of the Women of Ayacucho.”[43] The women demanded guarantees they would retain their position in the economy, state aid for nutrition and health programs, women and children displaced by the violence and attention to the mental health of Peruvian children. They recognized their role in maintaining their visibility, and pledged to coordinate and organize local, regional and national women’s groups, learn Spanish and engage in family planning.[44] This effort to claim space for themselves in the public sphere shows the dedication of these women to their goals, and according to historian Steve Stern, “women’s new prominence as citizen-subjects, with their own political organizations and agendas, has left an important and probably irreversible legacy.”[45] ===Women Remember the Shining Path===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. [46] 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. [47] 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.  The inclination toward rape and sexual torture, as seen in Peru during the violence of the 1980s and early 1990s could speak to the need of the state’s military and bureaucratic machine to break down and reorganize marginalized and indigenous populations. Raping with impunity is a powerful tool, it breaks down family bonds and degrades the mothers and sisters of the families, damaging and disempowering the victims of state violence in ways that undermine entire communities. In Peru, as elsewhere, sexual violence was used against women to assert state control over target populations, the results were damaging to the women and their bodies, their communities, and the legacy of the Peruvian state’s victory over the Shining Path. Testimonies continue to speak to scholars and other members of the international community. The state-sanctioned sexual violence recorded in the PTRC is personalized by interviews and testimonies by both victims and torturers. For example, Betty was a militant Shining Path member, but left the party after becoming pregnant. She lived in fear of being found by either the Shining Path or state authorities. Eventually the police began questioning her about rumors of her Shining Path involvement, periodically arresting, torturing and raping her. Betty’s life was ruined by this violence, she lived in constant insecurity and “never knew when one of the policemen who had raped her would pass her on the street and smile that secret smile of knowing.”[48] “Pancho” was a veteran of the Navy and fought in the early 1980s against the Shining Path in Ayacucho, and he gave an interview that is recorded in The Peru Reader, History, Culture, Politics. He matter-of-factly told of raping and abusing girls and women, “When I searched women, the first thing I did was undress them. Old or young, I stuck my fingers in them just the same. You may not believe me, but there was one time when I found one explosive, pardon me, two. It’s because they have big cunts,” he said, “So from that moment I began to search all the cholas…sometimes little girls thirteen years old. They were sluts.”  “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.”[49] 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.'”[50] 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.”[51] ===Conclusion===The power of women becomes explicit when it is shown in the public sphere. Under the kind of conditions created by the war between the Shining Path and the Peruvian state, Peruvian women were able to act in ways both maternal and political, and show the influence they wielded in a variety of ways. Women acted as revolutionaries, soldiers, community organizers, and national consciences because of a combination of factors, among them: their dedication to party doctrine, the Marxist appeal to female inclusion, the dwindling number of men in many communities, their need to feed their children, and their decision to testify to the PTRC. Although the Shining Path and its remaining followers claimed to be instruments of the emancipation of the women of Peru, it was the organization that benefited from the women’s membership.  The movement acquired greater ideological legitimacy and a dark air of mystery and danger associated with indigenous female warriors, adding even more to the movement’s credibility. Women were visible sacrifices to the movement, and the martyrdom of Edith Lagos drew support from many quarters. Women played a crucial role when communities began to resist the Shining Path and form alliances with state representatives, and also began to act publicly by forming substantial social organizations that addressed matters of nutrition and child welfare. Finally, the testimonies of women will continue to verify claims of the Shining Path that the Peruvian state’s victory was sullied by the systematic application of sexual violence during the war.  ===References===<references/>