Ayacucho 1980–1983. Youth and Peasants Facing Political Violence
In 1980 Sendero Luminoso (SL) began what it called its "people's war." Thirty months later, only one-fifth of the Ayacucho region was not under its near-permanent control. How could it have developed so much in just two and a half years of "people's war"? This paper seeks to begin to answer this question and also to analyze the peasant responses to the Shining Path presence, which largely defined the limits of that advance.