ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief narrative history of the internal armed conflict that rocked late-twentieth-century Peru. It begins with a discussion of the revolutionary trajectory of Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán, a young philosophy professor who took up a university position in the highland department of Ayacucho in the early 1960s, only to launch a full-fledged guerrilla insurgency nearly two decades later. In addition to highlighting the major episodes of the war and the violence of both Shining Path and the state counterinsurgency, this chapter offers a rare look at the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), a rival guerrilla group that began in the cities in 1984 and later spread to the Amazonian jungle. After chronicling the rise and fall of both guerrilla groups, the chapter culminates in a discussion of the events that led to the fall of Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori and Peru’s postconflict transition. The war, which involved Shining Path and MRTA guerrillas, police, military, and paramilitary forces, peasant militias and countless civilians would claim over 69,000 lives.
