Shining Path and their unique form of violence

I think while everyone – or rather most of us – were reading Indigenous Mestizos, I got drawn into How Difficult it is to be God, a translated analysis of ‘the people’s war’ in Peru waged primarily by Shining Path and the Peruvian military. Since our visit to the LUM in Lima and Jon’s fiery yet somewhat cryptic response (I still haven’t gotten his specific critique), I’ve been fascinated by the conflict and, more importantly, how it ties into our discussions on Indigeneity in the Andes. Much of my reading was concentrated on the preface by the translator Steve Stern, so I’m quite excited to get into the meat of the text created by the anthropologist (heart eyes) Carlos Degregori. However, the preface itself contained some information that caught my eye; more specifically, this morbid fact about the unique aspect of the violent toll on Peru’s citizens during the conflict. “Unlike the overwhelming responsibility (well over 90 percent) by state agents and aligned paramilitary agents in dictatorships and wars elsewhere in Latin America in the 1980s, the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission would find that Shining Path had inflicted about 54 percent of deaths suffered in the conflict” (Stern 2012). This is a tragic statistic that is quite ironic when we consider that most of the deaths in this conflict were suffered by Indigenous peasant communities living in rural areas. The Shining Path’s Marxist-Leninist-Maoist roots would lead one to believe that they’re fighting on behalf of the proletariat, the economically abused, and the most oppressed; much of our discussions, especially around Mariategui, have framed the rural, primarily Indigenous groups of Peru as embodying a large part of its exploited proletariat. So, what the fuck? Ok, to be honest, it’s not that much of a ‘what the fuck’ moment. In any sort of violent conflict, the most vulnerable groups generally suffer the most. With Peru’s colonial past and present, Indigenous Andeans were and remain an oppressed group that renders them more vulnerable to many forms of violence. So it’s more of a ‘what the fuck’ of disgust than anything else. I’m sure I’ll find this out later in the reading, but I am wondering about what made Shining Path’s contribution to the overall violence so much greater when compared to other contemporary violent conflicts in Latin America. Was it simply ideology, such as being quicker to violence? Perhaps the answer to this will tie into Andean Indigeneity as well.