Between Protection and Leadership: Business People and Violence

The violence caused by Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA deeply affected the life of the country from 1980 for approximately fifteen years. Mining entrepreneurs encountered it early; they were the first to have to confront it, from the moment subversives began raiding their facilities to obtain a significant portion of their explosive materials. From the early years of the 1980s, armed incursions, robberies, and murders at mining camps were the order of the day. The mines of Ayacucho and the central region of the country were the main scene of these forays. Years later the subversive pressure, above all from Sendero, reached the rural coast and Lima. The final years of the past decade and the first of the present one witnessed a relentless growth of terrorism in these areas. Sendero Luminoso proclaimed at that time that it had achieved a strategic balance of forces with the Peruvian state. (Excerpt from presentation).