Ayacucho, Blood and Misery. Second Edition

It is hoped that this work on the department of Ayacucho will serve to understand the Sendero Luminoso phenomenon and the repression itself unleashed under the pretext of that movement's emergence — a movement which, as the author notes, is not inspired by the peasantry's own struggles but instead uses compulsion and methods contrary to a genuine revolutionary movement. This is why it failed to gain the support of the organized peasant movement; rather, it gave rise, on the one hand, to the exodus of tens of thousands of peasants, and on the other, to the rejection of those peasants who remained in the countryside — thus demonstrating the social law of every revolution: that it must arise from the process of mobilization, organization, and politicization of the popular masses, and particularly of the peasantry. Misery and oppression alone, without the guidance of proletarian politics, cannot lead to a revolution.