Peru: Politics Between Discourse and the Burst of Fire

SL has become a principal factor in the national political landscape in just three years. Few have a clear understanding of the ends and objectives it pursues, hence its multiple characterizations: terrorists, Maoists, Pol Potists, revolutionaries, etc. The truth is that in 1980 they were no more than a group of firebombing adventurers, and today they have come to constitute the law in a rural area that is centuries behind our underdeveloped cities. A law that speaks of social justice with magical contours, dispensing with the working class as the central axis of the revolutionary process and even with the educational propaganda of the population. Beyond the peculiar Ayacuchan Middle Ages, people are left between astonished and fearful at the massacre of 14 community members, poor peasants of Lucanamarca, or of various humble authorities of that region, or of ordinary people killed as alleged police informants, or of children who happened to be at the site of an assault, or as happened on July 11th, of simple AP militants who were in their party headquarters.