United Left and Shining Path: Potential and Limits

Between 1980 and 1982 the political scene in Peru was marked by three principal events: the return to a civilian constitutional government with the Acción Popular — Partido Popular Cristiano alliance — after twelve years of military dictatorship; the significant presence of the worker-popular movement; and the beginning of the armed struggle by Sendero Luminoso. The first closed a brief electoral period that had begun in 1978 with the elections for the Constituent Assembly. The second was regaining importance after an evident ebb that followed the national strike of July 1977. The third culminated a preparation phase that had probably lasted three years. In the electoral processes of 1978 and 1980 there was a very important novelty: unlike previous processes, the left emerged as a new force. In no other country in Latin America — and probably in the entire world — does the Maoist left play an electoral role comparable to what it plays here in Peru. Its forces, together with those of the pro-Soviet Communist Party, Trotskyist groups and other social democratic groups, constitute close to a third of the electorate. This proportion is sufficient to demonstrate the importance attributed by a large part of the Peruvian left to electoral competition. The option of "defending democracy" as a new terrain of legal political action commits numerous parties and electoral fronts. (Excerpt from the introduction).