Politics Conflict in Peru, South America

By: Johnathan Wiggins

The internal conflict in Peru is an ongoing armed conflict between the government of Peru, the Communist Party of Peru, and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement. This conflict started in 1980.

Peru has been a country violently at war. They have separate armies clashing against the official government in a fight for control of the country. Though violence has diminished considerably, protest groups continuously clash with the Peruvian government due to discrimination and various human rights violations. Nearly 70,000 people died in the Peruvian Civil War, which also makes it the bloodiest war in Peruvian history, since the European colonization of the country. Some consider it to be ongoing. Government backed security forces have committed numerous human rights violations against civilians in Peru. Most recently, protest groups have clashed with the government over mining practices in the country. Continued violent protests, repeated human rights violations and poor treatment of women have kept the flames of Peru’s ongoing conflict alive.

Prior to the conflict, Peru had undergone a series of coups with frequent switches between political parties and ideologies. On October 2nd, 1968, General Juan Velasco Alvarado stages a military coup and became Peru’s 56th president under the administration of the Revolutionary Government of the armed forces, left-leaning military dictatorship. 

During the governments of Velasco and Morales, Shining Path had been organized as a Maoist political group formed in 1970 by Abimael Guzman, a communist professor of philosophy at the San Cristobal de Huamanga University. In June 1979, demonstrations for free education were severely repressed by the army. 18 people were killed, but non-governmental estimates suggest several dozen deaths. This event led to a radicalization of political protests in the countryside and the outbreak of Shining Path’s terrorists actions, but also led to the Conflict.