Chapter nine: The Terror

This weeks readings focused on 'terror' in Peru, and its effects on the "peasants" in the highlands. Document 9.1 Vargas Llosa states that "the peasants are coerced by those who think they are the masters of history and absolute truth. the fact is that the struggle between the guerrillas and the armed forces is really a settling of accounts between privileged sectors of society, and the peasant masses are used cynically and brutally by those who say they want to 'liberate' them". To me, this is a useful way of understanding what was happening in Peru in the 1980's. Dawson points out that university students in Ayacucho "idealized the image of the disciplined, communal, and revolutionary peasant. They imagined that they would lead this peasant in a revolution that would…destroy the capitalist state". Because "few of the movement's actual militants were peasants", and most were former university students, seems to hint that the "privileged" students were the ones who were most passionate about the movement while peasants sympathizers saw Sendero as and "opportunity to form a strategic alliance". Fujimori on the other hand "cast himself as a representative of Peru's poor and disenfranchised indigenous masses…in search of votes. Having said this i also agree with Dawson that Vargas Llosa had a superficial view of peasant and indigenous cultures. Vargas Llosa seems to emphasize a ritualistic characteristic of the Iquichanos. Such assumptions, as Dawson puts it, render them as "fundamentally primitive and unaware".  I do not suggest that the indigenous peoples did not have agency in the movement. First of all i am in no position to make claim either way as i still struggle to understand what exactly was happening. It seems plausible however, that the 'peasants' became tied into a movement which was not initiated by them. It would make sense that those who supported either side did what they needed to do to survive in an area immersed in brutality and violence. My heart fell heavy as i read document 9.4. It reminds me that at violence is violence, no matter what side you are on. and in my opinion it should never be justified. dominance and mistreatment over others angers me, naturally, but to celebrate violence as  Chairman Gonzalo does in document 9.2, is to celebrate document 9.4 all the same.