XV. Rebelling in Other Ways

At the core of this lies an analytical vacuum. He does not see that there are people rebelling in other ways. (Degregori 85)

I found Carlos Iván Degregori’s claim that Abimael Guzmán, in his eventual pursuit of the Marxist Idea instead of Marxist analysis, crucially missed other forms of social mobilization quite significant. Degregori argues that Guzmán came to see himself as the prophet and embodiment of the Sendero movement and began to argue in pursuit of a Marxist ideal, replacing materialist analysis. In his division of the country into simply the revolution and the counterrevolution that prepare themselves for violence, he neglected the fact that during the Sendero movement was the years of Peru’s greatest social mobilization of the twentieth century, probably for similar reasons to Sendero’s emergence—widespread modern and critical education and hugely increased campesino ownership of property following Velasco’s agrarian reform. These were years of many labour, peasant, regional and women’s movements. However, Sendero did not align with these other forms of struggle but denied and denigrated them. Even worse, those who took part in them were accused of betrayal. For the act of supporting the other struggles to connote “betrayal” for Sendero implies for me a rigid discourse, fearful and policing of what might escape it. I wonder if Sendero’s denial of other struggles was necessarily linked to what Degregori claims was its swap of material analysis for the pursuit of the ideal. Before this apparent shift in Guzmán, would these other struggles be recognized as antagonistic, or would they be welcomed in solidarity?