Rondas Campesinas in the Peruvian Civil War: Peasant Self‐defence Organisations in Ayacucho

Abstract

Despite the fact that the Shining Path guerrilla movement in Peru enjoyed initial peasant support, the emergence and spread of rondas campesinas or self‐defence committees in the Andean highlands of Ayacucho was principally a response against coercion and violence exerted by Shining Path against the very same peasantry. This article seeks to demonstrate that the ronda phenomenon must be understood as part of the complex changes brought about by the proliferation of violence in the Peruvian Andes. The spread of rondas campesinas cannot be reduced to a mere counterinsurgent strategy imposed by the security forces on the rural communities; communal initiative and peasant ‘agency’ were, at certain stages, at least as important. Only with the rise to power of Fujimori were the self‐defence committees formally incorporated in the state’s anti‐guerrilla strategy. Subsequently, with the reduction in the level of violence, self‐defence committees have been seeking new roles in relation to the challenges of re‐civilianisation and reconstruction.