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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</I>, 67-70.</ref>
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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.
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.<ref>Kirk, <I>The Monkey’s Paw</I>, 106.</ref> “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.”<ref>Maria Elana Moyano, “There have been Threats,” <I>The Peru Reader</I>, 372.</ref> 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.<ref>Kirk, <I>The Monkey’s Paw</I>, 106.</ref>
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>
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.<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>
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.” <ref>Corder, “Women in War,” 165-170.</ref> 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.<ref>Corder, “Women in War,” 165-170.</ref> 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.”<ref>Steve Stern, <I>Shining and Other Paths</I>, 343.</ref>
===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.<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.
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.
“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.”<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.”<ref><I>CSRP</I>, “Who is Oppressing the Revolutionary Women of Peru?”</ref>
===Conclusion===
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.
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===References===
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