Ayacucho, Corner of the Dead

The last twenty years of the twentieth century constituted one of the most tragic episodes in Peru's history. The armed struggle unleashed by the Partido Comunista del Perú-Sendero Luminoso and the violent response of the State resulted in tens of thousands of dead and disappeared, victims of torture, kidnappings, and other forms of human rights violations. The hypothesis of this monograph holds that the peasant population of the department of Ayacucho suffered extreme political violence. It investigates why this sector of the population was severely punished and in what manner and to what extent the human rights of Ayacucho's peasants and indigenous people were affected by a violence that did not occur anywhere else in Peru.