How Difficult It Is to Be God: Shining Path’s Politics of by Degregori

By Degregori

The progressive struggle introduced through Shining direction, a Maoist insurgency, used to be the main violent upheaval in smooth Peru’s historical past, claiming a few 70,000 lives within the 1980s–1990s and drawing common overseas realization. but for lots of observers, Shining Path’s preliminary successes have been a secret. What defined its cult-like allure, and what truly occurred contained in the Andean groups at war?
    In How tricky it truly is to Be God, Carlos Iván Degregori—the world’s major professional on Shining direction and the highbrow architect for Peru’s extremely popular fact and Reconciliation Commission—elucidates the movement’s dynamics. An anthropologist who witnessed Shining Path’s recruitment of militants within the Nineteen Seventies, Degregori grounds his findings in deep examine and fieldwork. He explains not just the ideology and tradition of revolution one of the insurgents, but additionally their capability to increase their impression to college youths, Indian groups, and competing social and political movements.
    Making Degregori’s most crucial paintings to be had to English-language readers for the 1st time, this translation encompasses a new advent through historian Steve J. Stern, who analyzes the author’s fulfillment, why it concerns, and the debates it sparked. For somebody attracted to Peru and Latin America’s age of “dirty war,” or within the comparative examine of revolutions, Maoism, and human rights, this ebook will offer arresting new insights.

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Additional resources for How Difficult It Is to Be God: Shining Path’s Politics of War in Peru, 1980–1999

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18 Shin­ing ­Path’s re­sponse was as fast as its bat­tered lo­gis­ti­cal ma­chine would allow.  .  . has ­brought us here and leads us to the ­golden and re­splen­dent com­mu­nism with a firm and se­cure hand” (PCP-SL 1992b). By then, how­ever, a sec­ond let­ter had ap­peared, in which ­Guzmán not only re­af­firmed his re­quest to es­tab­lish peace talks but also rec­og­nized the mer­its of the ­self-coup of 5 April 1992. ” Next, the great­est of sur­prises: And then you come to power. And the facts show that your man­age­ment has ­achieved ob­jec­tive ad­vances, es­pe­cially after the ­events of 5 April 1992, a sit­u­a­tion that was ­clearly ar­riv­ing as nec­es­sary for the Pe­ru­vian state, to which end the foun­da­tions for the eco­nomic pro­cess and for ad­vanc­ing the read­just­ment of the state have been es­tab­lished; and as far as what con­cerns us di­rectly, from that date and under your po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tion, it has de­vel­oped a co­her­ent and system­atic strat­egy im­ple­mented at var­i­ous lev­els, es­pe­cially in the field of in­tel­li­gence, achiev­ing real suc­cesses, es­pe­ cially in the cap­ture of ca­dres and lead­ers, in­clud­ing the sig­na­to­ries of this T h e Ye a r s W e L i v e d i n D a n g e r 29 let­ter, which is ev­i­dently the most im­por­tant suc­cess of the Pe­ru­vian state under your lead­er­ship dur­ing these thir­teen years of war.

14 In the fol­low­ing ­months, the cap­tures pro­ceeded in rapid suc­ces­sion. At the end of 1992, nine­teen of a total of ­twenty-two mem­bers of Shin­ing ­Path’s Cen­tral Com­mit­tee were in ­prison. ” After the ­speech he was taken to a high se­cur­ity ­prison to spend the re­main­der of his life. De­fend­ing the Life and ­Well-Being of Pres­i­d ent Gon­z alo As proof of their stub­born po­lit­i­cal will, by early 1993 the na­tional lead­er­ship of Shin­ing Path had been re­built to some de­gree.

But, I re­it­er­ate, the prin­ci­pal thing was to make them under­ stand that we were a hard bone to chew, and that we were ready to do any­thing, any­thing. 7 How­ever, while Shin­ing Path was boast­ing that “the party has a thou­sand eyes and a thou­sand ears” and knew where and who to hit, the mil­i­tary en­gaged in blind re­pres­sion. As a re­sult, in many parts of Ay­a­cu­cho, the contra­dic­tions ­between Shin­ing Path and the pea­santry that had ­started to sur­face at the end of 1982 were de­ferred.

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