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The Peruvian internal armed conflict was a major conflict that occurred in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s. It was fought between the established government of Peru and a Maoist revolutionary group Sendero Luminoso, meaning ‘Shining Path’. The conflict commenced in the context of the Cold War and a generalized environment in South America in which right-wing military juntas prevailed in the 1970s and 1980s and went through different stages. However, the Peruvian conflict outlasted the Cold War, fuelled by opposition to the civilian-military dictatorship of President Alberto Kenya Fujimoro Inomoto between 1990 and 2000. Inomoto’s government was responsible for a range of atrocities in the 1990s, including the forced sterilization of native group. The more intense phase of the conflict ended with his fall from power in 2000, but Peru continues to experience rural guerrilla warfare down to the present day. The conflict between 1980 and 2000 is believed to have led to the deaths of some 70,000 people. Millions of people were displaced, a situation compounded by an economic crisis in the 1980s to produce a 'Lost Decade' in Peru's history. Hundreds of thousands of Peruvians migrated abroad to the United States, Argentina, Chile, Spain, Italy and other countries.[1]
Peruvian internal armed conflict chronology of eventsPeruvian internal armed conflict chronology of events
Revolutionary left-wing groups began to emerge in Peru in the early 1960s in response to developments elsewhere in Latin America, notably the Cuban Revolution. It was bolstered by the brief ascendancy of the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile in the early 1970s. There were several such revolutionary groups, many of which were driven into opposition to the government during a twelve-year period between 1968 and 1980 when Peru was ruled by a military junta, the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces of Peru, after a coup d'état in 1968. A peculiar element of the armed conflict in Peru is that it broke out in 1980 just as the junta came to an end and there were moves to restore a functioning liberal democracy.[2]
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The conflict was led by the Shining Path group, a radical left-wing Maoist group led by Manuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reynoso. It was launched for a multitude of reasons, including resentment at twelve years of military rule, disillusionment with US imperialism in Latin America and the economic crises which had beset South America since the 1930s and opposition to Peruvian state policies towards indigenous and minority groups, which constitute upwards of 40% of the population when mestizo (mixed race) people and the substantial Asian Peruvian community are taken into account.[3]
The war would last for twenty years officially. It started as a guerrilla war in the provinces of Ayacucho and Apurimac south of Lima and later became a more widespread conflict throughout much of southern and eastern Peru, particularly in rural and less densely populated regions.[4] As the 1980s progressed, Shining Path began to resort more to terrorist attacks in Lima and other large urban areas. From 1990 onwards, in response to the crisis, the new president of Peru, Alberto Fujimoro, began centralizing extensive powers in his own hands and created what has been termed a civilian-military dictatorship, whereby a figure who was elected legitimately as a civilian head of state gradually morphed into a military dictator over time. Despite the capture of Manuel Guzmán in 1992, the war went on for many years, with atrocities on both sides. An estimated 70,000 people lost their lives before Shining Path were reduced to being a more minor threat in the late 1990s via a sharp escalation of the military crackdown. This, combined with the fall from power of Fujimoro in 2000, is viewed as bringing about a virtual end to the conflict in its most intense phase by the start of the twenty-first century, though Shining Path and several other insurgency groups remain active to a limited extent in the remote parts of Peru.[5]
Extent of migration caused by the Peruvian conflictExtent of migration caused by the Peruvian conflict
Two decades of intense fighting led to extensive displacement in parts of Peru, one of the most densely populated countries in Latin America, as people attempted to flee from the regions where fighting was most intense. Many headed for the comparative safety of cities like Lima and Arequipa. But not all remained. It was not simply that the violence of the conflict spurred emigration from Peru. There was also an economic crisis, one which was partially caused by the armed conflict between the government and Shining Path. Foreign debt accumulated, economic activity declined steeply, GDP fell by 20%, overall poverty levels rose and hyperinflation set in, leading to the 1980s becoming known as the ‘Lost Decade’ in modern Peruvian economic history. As a consequence, tens of thousands of Peruvians began leaving their country altogether for places like the US, Chile, Spain and Italy in the 1980s, a rare period of Peruvian history in which net emigration rather than immigration was occurring.[6]
Demographic impact of the Peruvian conflictDemographic impact of the Peruvian conflict
The demographic impact of the armed conflict and the economic crisis that was attendant on it in the 1980s was multi-faceted. It led to the deaths of upwards of 70,000 people in Peru, but even when combined with the net outward migration this had little tangible impact on Peru’s overall population, which continued to increase in the 1980s and 1990s. More significant was the emergence of further growth of Peruvian diaspora communities abroad. Many left for neighboring Chile, a country which was experiencing a temporary economic boom under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, one which proved illusory in the long term. This has contributed to the emergence of the large Peruvian community in Chile, though it was not the only time period in which such migration between the two adjoining countries occurred.[7] Similarly, while the 1980s was a key period in the development of the 700,000 strong Peruvian American community, there were pre-existing Peruvian émigré communities in America, notably groups who had settled in places like Detroit and New York in the 1950s. Many people in different countries will have a family member or relative who moved there in the 1980s or 1990s owing to circumstances related to the armed conflict in Peru.[8]
Research Peruvian ancestors on MyHeritageResearch Peruvian ancestors on MyHeritage
See alsoSee also
Explore more about the Peruvian internal armed conflictExplore more about the Peruvian internal armed conflict
- Peru, Baptisms, 1556-1930 records collection on MyHeritage
- Peru, Marriages, 1600-1940 records collection on MyHeritage
- Peru, Deaths, 1750-1930 records collection on MyHeritage
- Peru, Lima, Civil Registration, 1874-1996 records collection on MyHeritage
- Peru, Callao, Civil Registration of Births records collection on MyHeritage
- Spanish & Latin American Record on MyHeritage at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Research Latin America Genealogical Resources on the Internet at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ Livia Isabella Schubiger and David Sulmont, ‘Civil Wars and their Consequences: The Peruvian Armed Conflict in Comparative Perspective’, in Hillel Soifer and Alberto Vergara (eds.), Politics after Violence: Legacies of the Shining Path Conflict in Peru (Austin, Texas, 2019), pp. 51–78.
- ↑ Carlos Aguirre and Paulo Drinot (eds.), The Peculiar Revolution: Rethinking the Peruvian Experiment Under Military Rule (Austin, Texas, 2017).
- ↑ https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/files/case-study-competition/20130322-Natural-Resources-and-Recurrent-Conflict.pdf
- ↑ Robert B. Kent, ‘Geographical Dimensions of the Shining Path Insurgency in Peru’, in Geographical Review, Vol. 83, No. 4 (October, 1993), pp. 441–454.
- ↑ Schubiger and Sulmont, ‘Civil Wars and their Consequences’.
- ↑ https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/peru-asian-immigration-history
- ↑ Lorena Núñez Carrasco, ‘Transnational Family Life among Peruvian Migrants in Chile’, in Journal of Comparative Family Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2, Introduction: Transnational Families in the South (Spring, 2010), pp. 187–204.
- ↑ https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1026&context=clacls_pubs
