In this week’s readings and lecture, we see how poor relationships between the state and rural peasants across Latin America manifested themselves in violent conflict and guerilla warfare. These organization rose out of a political climate of inequality, where it seemed to many as though the governments in place only served to maintain these differences through corruption. Many of these left-wing groups, such as Sendero Luminoso in Peru, were seen as threats to the state in rural areas, where government legitimacy had never been completely accepted. In Peru, violence erupted and the country became engulfed in a civil war. Both groups had steady support bases and sources of income (Sendero Luminoso controlled a large portion of the cocaine trade out of Peru), which allowed the war to last decades, becoming a stable part of life in highland Peru.

From these readings we can also see the stratification that existed in Peru at the time. In Mario Vargas Llosa’s short piece, he notes how alien and shocking the violence among indigenous people seems to him. He notes how peaceful his life in the city is compared to the ongoing war in the Andes. This is indicative of the problem of inequality, where the urban and rural communities were so separated from one another despite their close proximity. Even as the elites of Lima go about their lives, they were sheltered from the despair experienced in the highlands. On the flip side, rural people, as Cameron notes, were not interested in events in Lima and were only concerned by their locality. This is a phenomenon that Fujimori saw as a willful disregard for the authority of the state. This separation is what gave rise to violent conflict. Sendero Luminoso’s attacks on Lima itself sent a message to close that gap, showing that both groups exist in the same country.

This scenario played out across the region, not just in Peru. Similar resistance movements engaged violently with states in Colombia and Central America. Seen through the lens of the cold war, many governments were supported by the United States because they had no tolerance for these left-wing groups, who were viewed by the Pentagon as potential sources of Soviet influence in the Americas. The US supported the efforts of military governments, such as in Chile and Argentina, as well as Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, which greatly aided right-wing states to impose themselves on their countries. Even in Peru, Alberto Fujimori, who on the one hand is often praised for crippling Sendero Luminoso’s violent, drug-funded hold on the countryside, but in the process turned the country into an authoritarian state with no room for any political dissidence.