Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 155–169, 2010
Family Ties: The Political Genealogy of Shining Path’s Comrade Norah
JAYMIE PATRICIA HEILMAN
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Family was central to the political life of Augusta La Torre (or Comrade Norah), the second-in-command of the Peruvian Communist PartyShining Path (PCP-SL). La Torre was the daughter of a Communist Party militant and the granddaughter of a prominent provincial political ´ figure. She was also the wife of Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman. La Torre’s familial history demonstrates the importance of parental and grandparental contributions to Senderistas’ political formation, and suggests that parents and children were sometimes united in their support for the Shining Path. La Torre’s family ties, however, have also led numerous observers to question her revolutionary credentials. Keywords: Augusta La Torre, Comrade Norah, family, marriage, Shining Path.
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makes the compelling argument that familial needs undermined the PCP-SL, serving as a major impetus for resistance to the party. Recently, historian Lewis Taylor noted that Senderistas prioritised recruitment along familial lines. In Taylor’s words, ‘brothers or sisters would enrol their siblings and cousins, children their fathers and mothers and vice versa’ (Taylor, 2006: 180). This article takes the consideration of family in a new direction, demonstrating the importance of parental and grandparental contributions to Senderistas’ political formation and life. Augusta La Torre was the daughter of a Communist Party militant, the granddaughter of a leading provincial political figure, and the great niece of an early Peruvian Communist Party member. She was also the wife of the Shining Path’s founder, Abimael ´ Following the political trajectories of each successive generation in the La Guzman. Torre family–a process I label political genealogy–we can root Shining Path militants, and not just their party, in their deep historical context. While scholars such as Colin Harding (1988), Orin Starn (1995), and journalist Gustavo Gorriti (1999) have worked to understand the PCP-SL’s leaders through their political writings, offering insightful interpretations of Senderista ideology, attempts to analyse leading Senderistas on a personal level have been less successful. Author Santiago Roncagliolio (2007), ´ for example, stumbled in his recent effort to write a biography of Abimael Guzman. ´ Roncagliolio discovered that Guzman’s reluctance to discuss his personal history, ´ combined with the unwillingness of Guzman’s relatives and comrades to speak at length ´ of Guzman’s life, rendered a biography nearly impossible. While I, too, encountered hesitations and silences from interviewees disinclined to discuss Augusta La Torre, the Ayacucho archives were rich with information about her family. Assertions about the importance of family in the genesis and continuing support of a revolutionary are almost certain to be controversial. Without question, tracing political genealogies across family lines is a problematic task. Many are the right-wing children of decidedly leftist parents, many are the spouses who hold opposing political views and many are the siblings who make dramatically different political choices. Just as crucially, a given person’s political choices are heavily influenced by peers, teachers and the times in which he or she lives. Yet we still must take seriously the political influence of family. Few would argue that a person’s morals, values, and religious beliefs are shaped by his or her family. Why not political convictions, too? To speak of familial influence on political trajectories is not to engage in determinism; it is instead to recognise the importance of family as one factor among many in a given militant’s political evolution. Claims of familial political influence will also not sit well with those who believe that a revolutionary comes to his or her cause solely because of her passion for social justice and the inherent rightness of the people’s struggle. Shining Path founder Abimael ´ himself voiced such sentiments. When asked by an interviewer from the proGuzman Shining Path newspaper El Diario if any of his relatives or friends guided him toward ´ demurred. He replied, ‘I would say that what has most influenced me politics, Guzman ´ 1988). The continuing to take up politics has been the struggle of the people’ (Guzman, importance of family in a militant’s life also runs against many dearly held beliefs about a revolutionary’s necessary independence from the constraints of friendship and familial ´ asserted as much when he claimed that he had no love (Pomper, 1979: 90). Guzman ´ 1988). Yet however controversial a consideration of friends, only comrades (Guzman, political genealogy may be, the centrality of family in Augusta La Torre’s political formation, life and legacy makes such an investigation worthwhile. A focus on parental and grandparental influence upon Shining Path militants also raises a counterpoint to arguments about the importance of generational conflict to
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´ Degregori (1998) and the emergence of the Shining Path. Scholars such as Carlos Ivan Miguel La Serna (2008) have demonstrated how tensions between rural youth and older community members factored into the rise of the PCP-SL in the countryside. These arguments about generational conflict are insightful, but there is another story to be told about relations between parents and children with regard to the Shining Path: one of generational concurrence. The case of Augusta La Torre demonstrates that, on occasion, parents and children could be united in their support for the PCP-SL and its violent struggle. While Augusta La Torre was herself exceptional, her situation was not unique. In the Huanta, Ayacucho district of Luricocha, for example, peasants testified that the entire Yauri* family ‘walked with Sendero Luminoso’ while another witness asserted that Eduardo Guti´ errez,* his wife, and their two daughters were all involved with the PCP-SL (Interview 200649, 2002; Interview 200615, 2002).1 The relevance of familial political influence also stretches back in time and across to other Peruvian political organisations. In my closing reflections, I use the lines of family to draw connections between the PCP-SL and the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA). Lastly, this article argues for a cautionary approach to matters of the family, showing that too heavy a focus on familial relations can overshadow the political ideas, efforts ´ has led numerous and legacy of a given militant. La Torre’s marriage to Abimael Guzman observers to call her revolutionary credentials into question. Because the denials of La Torre’s political capacity and relevance have been so frequent and so vehement, this article begins with an extended discussion of Augusta La Torre’s political work.
From Augusta La Torre to Comrade Norah
Augusta La Torre’s political career began in 1962, when she joined the Peruvian Communist Party (Iparraguirre, 2003: 8). Upon the PCP’s 1964 fracture into pro-China and pro-Soviet lines, La Torre chose the Maoist PCP-Bandera Roja (Romero,* 2005). Bandera Roja soon called upon La Torre to further her political education; she and ´ travelled to China in March 1965 and spent five months training in Abimael Guzman an officers’ school. While in China, La Torre undertook both intellectual and practical training, receiving lessons in Marxist and Maoist philosophy as well as instruction in ´ 2002: 15; Iparraguirre, 2003: 8). military tactics and strategies (Guzman, Augusta La Torre played a significant role in the factional divides and permanent ruptures that riddled Peru’s Left after the Sino-Soviet split. While La Torre joined the ´ also immediately Maoist PCP-Bandera Roja upon the 1964 split, she and Guzman founded the splinter ‘Red Fraction’ that challenged, but did not fully break from, the lawyer Saturnino Paredes’s leadership of Bandera Roja. At the regional level, La Torre regularly attended the meetings and demonstrations of other leftist parties, taking careful note of those rival parties’ ideas, opinions and plans, and then reporting her findings to her own Maoist comrades (Silva, 2005). La Torre also contributed to the definitive split between Bandera Roja and the Red Fraction, a break that culminated in the 1970 formation of the PCP-SL. Elena Iparraguirre–the PCP-SL militant who ranked third inside the party’s Central Committee during the 1980s and who married ´ after La Torre’s death–recalled that Augusta La Torre ‘worked in the ferocious Guzman
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struggle that those of Bandera Roja, those of Paredes, made against her’ (Iparraguirre, 2003: 13). Augusta La Torre’s work was significant enough to catch the attention of government officials. A 1969 government report noted La Torre’s political activities, and regional authorities did not let her radicalism go unpunished. La Torre’s highly visible participation in the education protests that rocked Ayacucho and Huanta in June 1969 led to her arrest and brief imprisonment that same month (Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection, 2005e).2 Jail did not temper La Torre’s politics. She forcefully promoted the PCP-SL at a 1973 miners’ congress in La Oroya and she staunchly defended Marxism in a 1975 debate with Peruvian intellectual Carlos Franco (Hume, 1998: 45; Iparraguirre, 2003: 10). In 1976, La Torre became Secretary of the PCP-SL’s Northern Regional Committee; that same year, La Torre was named to the PCP-SL’s Political Bureau (Iparraguirre, 2003: 11, 14). Much of Augusta La Torre’s political work in the 1960s and 1970s involved efforts ´ established the Women’s Popular Centre upon to mobilise women. She and Guzman their return from China in 1965, and La Torre soon assumed the leadership of this organisation (Iparraguirre, 2003: 8; Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection, 2005a). The Women’s Popular Centre was less an institution than a movement, with members sponsoring talks and raising political awareness through the production and distribution of written propaganda (Movimiento Femenino Popular, 1975: 64; Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection, 2005c). Augusta La Torre, Elena Iparraguirre and a third PCP-SL ´ militant also authored the 67-page book El marxismo, Mariategui, y el movimiento femenino (Movimiento Femenino Popular, 1975; Iparraguirre, 2003: 8). La Torre’s efforts to channel women into the PCP-SL continued via the Women’s Popular Movement. Founded in late 1974 as one of the PCP-SL’s so-called ‘generated organisms’, the Women’s Popular Movement formed from the fusion of the Women’s Popular Centre and the Women’s University Front at the Universidad Nacional San ´ Cristobal de Huamanga (UNSCH). Augusta La Torre was that movement’s unequivocal founder and leader (Iparraguirre, 2003: 8–10; Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection, 2005c). While the Women’s Popular Movement first emerged in Ayacucho, Augusta La Torre and other members of the movement worked to nationalise the organisation. Government sources noted the presence of the Women’s Popular Movement in Arequipa and in Lima shantytowns, while Iparraguirre recalled that ‘we travelled to all parts of ´ similarly remembered that the our country’ (Iparraguirre, 2003: 10). Abimael Guzman Women’s Popular Movement ‘did work throughout the country, we went to all the little towns, we held meetings and women shared their problems there, the same with ´ 2002: 71). university students’ (Guzman, Through her work with the Women’s Popular Movement, Augusta La Torre regularly denounced Peru’s military government. In a 1975 speech in Arequipa, La Torre railed against the military government, telling the assembled crowd that the regime was ‘utilising women for capitalist, pro-imperialist and feudal interests’ (Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection, 2005a: 12). Similarly, during the First Convention of Women Workers in Lima, La Torre described the military government as bloodthirsty and inhumane, and she stated that the goal of that Women Workers’ Convention was
2 A guide to this microfilm collection is available on the internet; see Guide to the Microfilm Edition of Documenting thePeruvian Insurrection (n.d.).
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to ‘unite the people against the regime’ (Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection, 2005a: 12). Having proven herself a dedicated and militant activist, La Torre won a key position inside the PCP-SL: in 1980, PCP-SL militants voted her into the Shining Path’s Permanent Central Committee, allotting her the second highest position of leadership in the party (Iparraguirre, 2003: 11, 14). That same year, La Torre assumed leadership of the PCP-SL’s Andahuaylas-Cangallo Zonal Committee. This committee was at that time the most important of all the PCP-SL’s regional committees, as it was the zone where the PCP-SL initiated its war and where it won significant popular support (Iparraguirre, 2003: 15; Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection, 2005b). La Torre also led the PCPSL’s first major guerrilla action. While the People’s War had its official start with the 17 May 1980 burning of ballot boxes in Chuschi, the first bloodletting did not occur until the 24 December 1980 attack on the Hacienda San Agust´ ın de Ayzarca in Pujas. It was Augusta La Torre who led this attack. As Elena Iparraguirre explained it, ‘this is extremely important, because under her direction, the first guerrilla action came to be carried out’ (Iparraguirre, 2003: 14). Augusta La Torre retreated from the countryside in 1982 to focus on strategising, ´ and Elena Iparraguirre, the two planning the PCP-SL’s actions with Abimael Guzman other members of the three-person Central Committee. La Torre’s work in the PCP-SL’s Central Committee continued up until her November 1988 death from still-unknown causes (Roncagliolio, 2007: 131–132). Discussion of the final years of La Torre’s life cannot go beyond the stuff of rumour. From her 1979 entrance into ‘profound ´ until her 1988 death, La Torre lived in hiding and clandestinity’ alongside Guzman the details of her political actions and everyday life are known only to those PCP-SL militants who lived alongside her.
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´ Vial] Law, wish to see the Indians rise up and demand the repeal of this [Conscripcion the Coca Tax, and the State Alcohol Monopoly’ (ARA, 1924). La Torre Cortez and his allies also made heated calls for the Legu´ ıa government’s downfall, promoting the candidacy of Legu´ ıa’s rival in the 1924 presidential elections and even inciting Huanta’s population to violence against the Legu´ ıa government (ARA, 1924). Carlos La Torre Cortez and his supporters were protesting policies that ran counter to their economic interests; the taxes, like highway conscription, threatened their profits as well as the availability of peasant labour to generate those profits. But La Torre Cortez’s interests were not limited to economics. He was also drawn to politics for the sake of politics, seeking election to Peru’s Chamber of Deputies in the 1924 congressional elections. Between October 1923 and January 1924, members of the Rights of Man Defence League made repeated visits to the district of Luricocha, publicising La Torre’s candidacy. The district’s mayor recounted that, ‘they went all over the town, pressing people to join their protest against the coca tax and promoting La Torre’s candidacy by casting him as the people’s anti-tax Savior’ (ARA, 1924). La Torre Cortez’s political activities continued in subsequent years. He briefly supported APRA in the early 1930s, and by the 1940s, La Torre Cortez was firmly established inside the ranks of Huanta’s officialdom. He served as president of the Provincial Electoral Jury in 1939, and he was named Huanta’s mayor in 1941 (ARA, 1939: 1; ARA, 1941–1942, 6 January 1941, 12 January 1942). In 1945, La Torre Cortez added his name to the long list of Huanta candidates seeking election to Peru’s Chamber of Deputies. As in 1924, he lost his electoral bid (Sierra, 1945: 4). Politics evidently ran in the La Torre family. La Torre Cortez’s son, Carlos La ´ Torre Cardenas, proved just as politically engaged as his father. Like his father, Carlos ´ La Torre Cardenas took an active role in regional politics, participating in Huanta’s Public Aid Society during the 1940s and serving on Huanta’s provincial council in the early 1950s (ARA, 1942, 17 January; Sierra, 1951: 8). But unlike his father, Carlos La ´ Torre Cardenas joined the Ayacucho branch of the Peruvian Communist Party (PCP). ´ As a PCP member, La Torre Cardenas enjoyed a moment of particular paternal pride in 1960, when his son Alejandro won a scholarship to the Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University in Moscow, a school that trained third-world students in technical fields and Marxist philosophy (Silva, 2005). ´ Crucially, my interview questions about why Carlos La Torre Cardenas joined the PCP routinely received the same answer: his family. Edgar Romero, a pro-Soviet Huanta ´ Communist in his late 1960s, cited La Torre Cardenas’s mother and maternal uncle as ´ the main factor behind La Torre Cardenas’s attraction to the PCP, explaining that these relatives were all Communist Party members (Romero, 2005). Franco Silva similarly ´ referenced family when explaining Carlos La Torre Cardenas’s political development. ´ According to Silva, La Torre Cardenas joined the Communist Party primarily because of the example set by his maternal uncle, a Huanta landlord who belonged to the PCP and had extensive experience in Argentina’s Communist Party (Silva, 2005). Now, the phrase ‘Communist hacendado’ does not roll easily off the tongue; it sounds awkward at best, oxymoronic at worst. According to the logic of the Peruvian Left–and of Marxists worldwide–landlords perpetrated and profited from the very socio-economic injustices against which the Communist Party railed. Certainly, Carlos ´ La Torre Cardenas made no significant efforts to bring social justice or equality to his hacienda, the Iribamba estate. Silvio Medina* worked on that hacienda as a child, and he remembered the family’s insistence on aristocratic formality. Medina recalled that, ‘I attended to visitors when they came to eat lunch . . . I had my coat, very white, with a
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about familial impact upon La Torre’s political trajectory, placing La Torre inside her family’s long political lineage helps us ground her participation in what can otherwise seem an enigmatic political party. La Torre grew up in a family where political activity, party membership and protest against the Peruvian state were routine, making it unsurprising that she too entered into radical politics. The fact that Augusta La Torre’s siblings likewise joined the PCP-SL only bolsters this assertion. Augusta’s sister Gisela entered the PCP-SL and married Javier Esparza, one of the PCP-SL’s earliest militants (La Republica , 2003a). Augusta’s brothers Pablo and Juan were also accused ´ of collaboration with the PCP-SL (La Republica , 2003b). While such broad familial ´ participation speaks to the fact that the Shining Path emphasised familial recruitment, as Lewis Taylor argues, this participation also reflects the importance of parental and grandparental influence on youth’s political trajectory.
All in the Family
Testifying before Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Elena Iparraguirre asserted that upon joining the PCP-SL, she had to abandon familial connections outside the party. In her words, ‘I couldn’t go to school, work, nor attend to my family, none of that, so I quit school and broke ties with my family. It is a process that one has to follow’ (Iparraguirre, 2003: 16). Iparraguirre was not the only Senderista to take such action. ´ Morote and Teresa Durand left their children in the Leading PCP-SL militants Osman custody of the children’s grandparents, just as Eduardo Mata and Yeny Mar´ ıa Rodriguez abandoned their newborn daughter so as to dedicate themselves to the revolution (del ´ and Augusta La Torre themselves had no children, and Pino, 1998: 181). Guzman that childlessness was a conscious choice (cf. Roncagliolio, 2007: 58). Edgar Romero ´ telling him that La Torre ‘did not want to have kids, because they remembered Guzman had decided to be total revolutionaries and their kids would suffer’ (Romero, 2005). Yet while Shining Path’s top-ranking members spoke of the need to abandon familial connections with relatives who remained outside the party’s ranks, those members sometimes remained heavily dependent on such extra-party familial support. ´ relied From the first days of their marriage, Augusta La Torre and Abimael Guzman upon her parents’ aid to make their political actions possible. Much of this support was ´ moved in with her parents financial. Immediately after they wed, La Torre and Guzman in Ayacucho, and they made repeated use of her parents’ second home in Lima. Augusta La Torre and Abimael needed this parental support because they struggled with that most common of familial problems: money. Augusta La Torre’s uncle Luis La Torre recalled that the couple ‘lived in an extremely austere way’, and that they had ‘problems balancing their monthly budget’ (Gorriti, 1983: 13). The pair’s money troubles became so desperate that Augusta La Torre had to seek money from her greatest enemy: the state. She and her father took out a loan of around 10,000 soles in January 1970 from the Agricultural Development Bank. When Augusta La Torre was unable to repay that loan on time, the bank initiated a lawsuit against her (ARA, 1972: 1). The couple’s ´ financial situation grew even more precarious after April 1975, when Guzman’s political activities and ill health cost him his job at the UNSCH (Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection, 2005b). Carlos La Torre and Delia Carrasco were far from unaware of the young couple’s ´ with fondness, political ideas and efforts. Years later, Delia Carrasco recalled Guzman remembering that ‘talking to him was like being awakened to a new reality. It was
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and happy to know him, but at the same time I feel saddened by the arrest’ (Everest, ´ 1993: 9). The elderly couple were especially active in the campaign to spare Guzman the death penalty. The pair attended the February 1993 Founding Conference of the ´ At that International Emergency Committee to Defend the Life of Abimael Guzman. conference, Carlos La Torre stated, ‘We will defend his life, as long as our lives remain’ (International Emergency Committee, 1993: 31). Certainly, much of Carlos La Torre and Delia Carrasco’s support was driven by emotional and personal connections. They ´ as a son-in-law, and by defending him, they were implicitly defending loved Guzman their own reputations and that of their deceased daughter. But it is also the case that Carlos La Torre and Delia Carrasco were motivated by politics, continuing to believe–despite all the devastation wrought by the war–that the PCP-SL’s struggle was justified. Carlos La Torre in fact told a Revolutionary Worker reporter that he, ‘would like to assure the readers of the paper that the People’s War in Peru will surge forward’ (Everest, 1993: 9). Augusta La Torre’s family remained committed to her party long after her life had ended.
Wedded to the Cause
Just as family contributed to Augusta La Torre’s formation as a political militant and sustained her political career, family has also had a detrimental impact upon her historical legacy. Within the ranks of the PCP-SL, La Torre’s reputation is solid; she is ´ eulogised La Torre as a, ‘Daughter celebrated as the party’s ‘Greatest Heroine’. Guzman of the people and the international proletariat. Bright red flag, defiant in the face of the storm. The greatest heroine of the Party and the revolution!’ (Everest, 1993: 8). Elena Iparraguirre, in turn, stressed that La Torre ‘was a very kind woman, she had an absolute generosity, that is why she is the Party’s greatest heroine. Completely generous, she gave everything from her person, absolute’ (Iparraguirre, 2003: 22). One imprisoned Shining Path militant similarly described La Torre as ‘the greatest heroine of the party and the Revolution’. This same man spoke of La Torre’s ‘indelible and shining example of giving her life to the Party, the Revolution, and communism’ (Interview SCO 309 07, 2002: 53). The PCP-SL’s official line on Augusta La Torre–a line enforced through the party’s policy of democratic centralism–differs dramatically from numerous popular castings of the woman. Observers have often mobilised Augusta La Torre’s marriage to Abimael ´ to deny her capacity and relevance as a PCP-SL militant. Sometimes, that denial Guzman is sympathetic, seeking to excuse La Torre from the atrocities her party committed. One ˜ Huanta campesino, for example, insisted that the only reason ‘Senora Augusta’ joined Shining Path was because of her love for her husband, not because she supported the party’s ideals or its plans (Vargas,* 2005). Many of the individuals with whom writer Robin Kirk spoke offered a similar explanation for La Torre’s politics, claiming that La Torre’s devotion to her husband translated into devotion to his party. As Kirk herself ´ had been a doctor, she would have run his office. An architect, phrased it: ‘If Guzman and she would have schooled herself in design’ (Kirk, 1997: 90). In other cases, the denial of La Torre’s political radicalism is anything but friendly. Leading Senderista Oscar Ram´ ırez Durand (Comrade Feliciano) repeatedly asserted that La Torre’s position in the PCP-SL owed to her sexual relationship ´ and Guzman’s ´ with Guzman own megalomania. Ram´ ırez insisted that La Torre–and Elena Iparraguirre–held their prestigious positions in Shining Path’s Central Committee
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reason it is speculated that within Sendero’s lines, as she was more radical, maybe they killed her internally’(Romero, 2005). Others speak of the influence La Torre had upon ´ A Huamanga schoolteacher described La Torre as a ‘woman of passionate Guzman. ´ had initially considered convictions and definitive decisions’, asserting that Guzman abandoning politics in favour of a strictly academic life but that ‘Augusta would not permit it’ (Gorriti, 1983: 13). Gilberto Hume remembered seeing Augusta La Torre at a 1973 miners’ congress, thinking her indefatigable because she attended every session she could and because she repeatedly stressed her party’s line. As Hume recalled, ‘we started to call her The Evangelist’ (Hume, 1998: 45). Yet even these comments subtly downplay Augusta La Torre’s political significance, evaluating her only in relation to her husband and failing to treat her as a militant in her own right. Family–in the form of her husband–has effectively overshadowed Augusta La Torre’s political legacy.
Conclusions
Behind every great man, there stands a woman. Or so the tired old adage tells us. Augusta La Torre’s case offers a new spin on that dictum: behind (many) a leader, there stands a family. For Augusta La Torre and her relatives, political ideology and actions were family affairs; La Torre’s relatives actively participated in politics before, during, and after her short life. Moreover, issues of family have shaped her historical legacy. Without understating all that was unique about Augusta La Torre’s personal and political life, we can nonetheless say that her political genealogy has many echoes in contemporary Peruvian history. Keiko Fujimori provides one obvious example. The daughter of ex-President Alberto Fujimori, Keiko Fujimori is presently a Congresswoman and there is widespread speculation that she will run for Peru’s presidency in 2011 should her father’s recent conviction for human rights abuses block his own candidacy. Ms. Fujimori is also joined in the Congress by her uncle, Santiago Fujimori, brother of the former president (El Comercio, 2008: A6). Yet while the Fujimori family dominates today’s headlines, it is the family of APRA ´ Haya de la Torre that provides some of the most interesting founder V´ ıctor Raul parallels with Augusta La Torre (no relation). As was true of Augusta La Torre, Haya was nested inside a highly politicised family. Haya’s father was a Congressional Deputy for Trujillo, holding that post from 1906 to 1912 (Klar´ en, 1973: 90). Like Augusta La Torre, Haya was joined inside his party by several of his relatives. Haya’s brother Agust´ ın was an active participant in APRA’s early struggles (Klar´ en, 1973: 127, 129, 139) and Haya’s cousin Marcela Pinillos Ganoza was an Aprista (D´ ıaz, 2007: 129–132). In addition, Haya’s parents provided him with important familial support for his early political efforts. In 1931, Haya and several other Aprista militants utilised his parental home both to formalise their political plans and to hide out from police (D´ ıaz, 2007: 50). These parallels give weight to historian Jos´ e Luis R´ enique’s recent call ´ (R´ for a comparative consideration of Haya de la Torre and Abimael Guzman enique, ´ shared Augusta La Torre’s familial political 2003: 148). If we recognise that Guzman ´ and connections and dependencies through his position as her husband then Guzman Haya exhibit some significant familial similarities. The issue of familial ties also offers grounds for a broad comparison between the PCP-SL and APRA as parties. APRA was arguably as dependent upon familial participation as was the Shining Path. Within the early APRA, the brothers of Trujillo’s Speluc´ ın family proved dedicated and militant Apristas, ascending to leadership posts
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inside the nascent party (Klar´ en, 1973: 147). In addition, historian Lewis Taylor has demonstrated the prominence of ‘historic’ Aprista families in Cajamarca, where Aprista sons followed the political trajectory of their Aprista fathers. Taylor also notes the prominence of sibling participation within Cajamarca’s APRA (Taylor, 2006: 151). Similar patterns emerged inside the department of Ayacucho. Within the district of ´ Carhuanca, the brothers Vidal and Augusto Cardenas both belonged to APRA in the 1930s, and Vidal’s son stood as the district’s Aprista candidate in the 2003 municipal elections (Heilman, 2006: 189). These connections between APRA and the PCP-SL exist on more than just an academic level. Crucially, many Shining Path militants were the daughters and sons of Apristas. Augusta La Torre was herself the grand-daughter of an Aprista, even if Carlos La Torre Cortez’s affiliation with APRA was only fleeting. Elena Iparraguirre, in turn, was the daughter of an Aprista militant (Iparraguirre, 2003: 5). The familial ties between Senderistas and Apristas also existed at the level of rank-and-file party members. Inside the district of Carhuanca, many of the individuals who joined the PCP-SL were the children of once-prominent local Apristas (Heilman, 2006). These examples are telling. Not only do these cases show the importance of family political influence, they also suggest that some Senderistas had looked upon their Aprista parents’ shortcomings and disappointments as revolutionaries and decided that a new, far more violent, political path was necessary. For Augusta La Torre, and for many other Peruvians, politics bound the ties of family.
Acknowledgements
My warm thanks to G. McCormick, I. Rodr´ ıguez Silva, and participants in the Dalhousie Stokes Seminar.
Jaymie Patricia Heilman
D´ ıaz, M. (2007) Las mujeres de Haya: Ocho historias de pasion ıa. Planeta: Lima. ´ y rebeld´ Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection (2005a) Woodbridge: Primary Source Microfilm. ´ 467. Reel 9, box 1, folder 2, nota de informacion ´ Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection (2005b) Reel 9, box 1, folder 2, nota de informacion 1506. Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection (2005c) Reel 14, Movimiento femenino popular, ´ de Universitarias’. ‘I Convencion ´ Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection (2005d) Reel 12, folder 2, ‘Abimael Guzman’. ´ 504. Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection (2005e) Reel 9, nota de informacion El Comercio (2008) Keiko Fujimori niega estar en campana ˜ . [WWW Document]. URL http://www.elcomercio.com.pe/edicionimpresa/Html/2008-05-09/keiko-fujimoriniega-estar-campana-buscara-unificar-al-fujimorismo.html [accessed 17 November 2008]. Everest, L. (1993) ‘The RW Interview: Delia and Carlos La Torre’. Revolutionary Worker 25: 8–9. Gorriti, G. (1983) ‘El sobrino Abimael’. Caretas 21 February: 12–13. Gorriti, G. (1990) ‘The War of the Philosopher King’ New Republic 202(25): 15–22. Gorriti, G. (1999) The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru (trans. R. Kirk). University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill. Guide to the Microfilm Edition of Documenting the Peruvian Insurrection (n.d.) [WWW document]. URL http://www.gale.cengage.com/pdf/scguides/peruvian/peruvian.doc [accessed 2 June 2009]. ´ Guzman, A. (1988) Entrevista con El Presidente Gonzalo. [WWW Document]. URL http://www.blythe.org/perupcp/docs_sp/entrevis.htm [accessed 21 November 2007]. Harding, C. (1988) ‘Antonio D´ ıaz Mart´ ınez and the Ideology of Sendero Luminoso’. Bulletin of Latin American Research 7(1): 65–73. Heilman, J. (2006) By Other Means: Politics in Rural Ayacucho Before Peru’s Shining Path War, 1879–1980. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Henr´ ıquez Ay´ ın, N. (2006) Cuestiones de g´ enero y poder en el conflicto armado en el Peru ´. CONCYTEC: Lima. ´ participo ´ Hume, G. (1998) ‘1973: Augusta La Torre. Cuando la esposa de Abimael Guzman en un congreso minero’. Debate 45 (November–December): 45. International Emergency Committee (1993) The International Campaign to Defend the Life ´ . International Emergency Committee: London. of Dr. Abimael Guzman Kirk, R. (1997) The Monkey’s Paw: New Chronicles from Peru. University of Massachusetts Press: Amherst. Klar´ en, P. (1973) Modernization, Dislocation, and Aprismo: Origins of the Peruvian Aprista Party, 1870–1932. University of Texas Press: Austin. La Republica (2003a) ‘Mientras SL se fracciona, sus l´ ıderes se pierden ´ en pleitos’. [WWW Document]. URL http://www.larepublica.com.pe/component/ option,com_contentant/task,view/id,17113/Itemid,0/ [accessed 26 November 2007]. ˜ La Republica (2003b) ‘25 anos para embajadores del Terror’. [WWW Document] URL ´ http://www.larepublica.com.pe/component/option,com_contentant/task,view/id,18469 /Itemid,0/ [accessed 26 November 2007] La Serna, M. (2008) The Corner of the Living: Local Power Relations and Indigenous Perceptions in Ayacucho, Peru, 1940–1983. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego. ´ Movimiento Femenino Popular (1975) El marxismo, Mariategui, y el movimiento femenino. ´ Editorial Pedagogica: Lima. Palmer, D. S. (ed.) (1992) The Shining Path of Peru. St. Martin’s Press: New York. del Pino, P. (1998) ‘Family, Culture, and ‘Revolution’: Everyday Life with Sendero Luminoso’, in S. J. Stern (ed.) Shining and Other Paths, Duke University Press: Durham, 158–192.
Family Ties
Pomper, P. (1979) Sergei Nechaev. Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick. R´ enique, J. (2003) La voluntad encarcelada: las ‘luminosas trincheras de combate’ de Sendero Luminoso del Peru ´ . IEP: Lima. ´ y Sendero Roncagliolio, S. (2007) La cuarta espada: La historia de Abimael Guzman Luminoso. Debate: Barcelona. Sierra (1945) Primera Quincena, March: 4. Sierra (1951) Primera Quincena, July: 8. Starn, O. (1995) ‘Maoism in the Andes: The Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path and the Refusal of History’. Journal of Latin American Studies 27(2): 399–421. Taylor, L. (2006) Shining Path Guerrilla War in Peru’s Northern Highlands, 1980–1997. Liverpool University Press: Liverpool. ´ Vega-Centeno, I. (1994) ‘G´ enero y pol´ ıtica: A proposito de la mujer en Sendero Luminoso’. Bolet´ ın Americanista 34(44): 207–213.
´ Interviews from the Centro Concejo de la Verdad y Reconciliacion ´ para la Memoria Colectivo y Derechos Humanos de Informacion (Lima)
Interview 200649 (2002) Huanta campesino, March. Interview 200615 (2002) Huanta campesino, March. Interview SCO 309 07 (2002) Anonymous prisoner in Yanamayo prison. Iparraguirre, E. (2003) March. ´ A. (2002) May. Guzman, Ram´ ırez Durand, O. (2002a) April. Ram´ ırez Durand, O. (2002b) September. Ram´ ırez Durand, O. (2002c) October.
Interviews by Author
Carrasco, L. (pseudonym) (2005) Journalist from Huanta, May 2005, Huanta. Medina, S. (pseudonym) (2003) Former worker on Iribamba hacienda, September, Huanta. Silva, F. (pseudonym) (2005) Former Ayacucho activist, May, Ayacucho. Romero, E. (pseudonym) (2005) Former Huanta activist, May, Huanta. Vargas, E. (pseudonym) (2005) Huanta campesino, May, Huanta.