Abstract
Political violence has been considered throughout history as a type of radical collective action organized, directed, and carried out primarily by men. Plato’s recognition of women as political animals who are no different from men in kind except in their ability to bear children—what is virtuous for a man is virtuous for a woman and vice versa—has not been seriously taken into account by social scientists.1 In the best case, the participation of women in peasant uprisings, in struggles for liberation from foreign domination, in the organization of cultural resistance, in the post-conquest period, against Christian doctrine in Latin America,2 and in the overthrow of dictatorial regimes, has been perceived not from the perspective of an integrated society in which all people may work together, but in terms of sexual, and thereby social, differentiation between men and women. Hence, although the role of women has been recognized in a number of cases (Jeanne d’Arc in France, Mama Ocllo, Doña Ana, Micaela Bastidas in Peru and many others), their actions have been explored and regarded as isolated and exceptional historical events. Under these conditions, women have been practically excluded from the traditional models of historical socioeconomic and political research, and their role in history has been recognized as inferior and subordinate to that of men.
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Notes
Plato, translated with introduction and notes by Francis Macdonald, The Republic of Plato (Cornford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964), p. 52.
Irene Silverblat, Moon, Sun, and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987), p. 207.
Samir Amin explains in his article, “Accumulation and Development: a theoretical model,” Review of African Political Economy (August-November, 1974), pp. 9–26, that peripheral systems are dominated by the production of luxury goods and exports and thus lack important internal mass markets. This leads to a growing inequality, technological dependence, and political weakness among the oppressed—in sum, marginalization.
Andrey Bronstein, The Triple Struggle, Latin American Peasant Women (Boston: South End Press, 1982), p. 11.
Hermione Harris, “Nicaragua,” in an overview “Women and Struggle,” Third World Quarterly (October 1983), p. 901.
Linda L. Reif, “Women in Latin American Guerrilla Movements,” Comparative Politics (January 1986), p. 16.
See Juan Lázaro, M.A. Thesis “Theoretical Interpretation of Violence in Contemporary Peru,” (New School for Social Research, 1987), p. 65.
Peruvian newspaper, La República (November 25, 1985), p. 13.
See Anónimo, “Discursos de la Sucesión y Gobierno de las Yungas,” in Victor Maurtua ed., Juicio de los Límites entre Perú y Bolivia, (Barcelona: Henrich y Companía, 1906), vol. 8.
Lois Yalcárcel, La Economía y la Política en el Imperio Incaico (Lima: La Universidad Nacional Agraria, La Molina, 1971), p. 11.
See Bernabé Cobo, Historia del Mundo Nuevo (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1964), vol. 2, p. 54; and John Murra, Ph.D. Dissertation “The Economic Organization of the Inca State” (University of Chicago, 1956), p. 13.
John Murra, (1956), p. 123.
Bernabé Cobo, (1964), p. 247.
I mean an internal interchange of products among agricultural communities of different ecological floors in the Andes of a concrete economic zone—an economic microregion. This issue was explored extensively by John Murra in his book, Formaciones Económicas y Políticas del Mundo Andino (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1975).
Irene Silverblat, (1987), p. 119.
Guarnan Poma, La nueva Crónica y buen Gobierno (Lima: Editorial Cultura, 1956), Vol. 2, p. 152. According to Poma, “the parish priests force women to spin and weave, particularly widows and single women. Under the pretext that they are living in sin, the priests force them to work without paying them for their labor.”
Virgilio Roel, Historia Social y Económica de Ia Colonia (Lima: Editorial Gráfica Labor, 1970, p. 11.
Silverblat (1987), p. 209, points out that this male infanticide “expressed in part the deep disillusion which Andean women felt toward the men who had betrayed them.”
Steve J. Stern, “The Age of Andean Insurrection in 1742–1782: A Reappraisal,” in Resistance, Rebellion, Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (The University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), p. 46.
Guillermo Durand Flores, “La Mujer en La Independencia,” in Juan Solano Sáez ed., Levantamientos Campesinos Siglos XVIII–XX, (Lima: Universidad Nacional del Centro del Peru, 1981), p. 99.
José Carlos Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (University of Texas Press, 1974), pp. 15–16.
Rodrigo Montoya, La Cultura Quechua Hoy (Lima: Hueso Humero Ediciones, 1987), p. 50.
Carol Andreas, When Women Rebel: The Rise of Popular Feminism in Peru (Connecticut: Lawrence Hill and Co., 1985), p. 10.
K. Marx and F. Engels, “Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialist and Idealistic Outlook,” in Selected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977), vol. 1, p. 33.
Projections of the Central Bank of Peru and of the Peruvian economic journal, 1/2 De Cambio (January–April, 1985). See also Aldo Panfichi, Población y el Empleo en el Perú. (Lima: DESCO, 1985).
Joni Seager and Ann Olson, An International Atlas: Women in the World (New York: Simon and Schuster Inc., 1986), p. 40.
Hernando de Soto, El Otro Sendero (Bogotá: Editorial Oveja Negra, 1987), p. 13.
Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labor (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1987), p. 119.
I use the term “producers-non-producers” with the purpose of stressing that the concept of labor in capitalism is generally reserved for men, while women are considered as non-workers, in spite of their active participation in the organization of the social reproduction of the labor force.
Maxine Molyneux, “Women’s Interests, State and Revolution,” in Richard F. Fagen, Carmen Diana Deere, and Jose Lois Caraggio eds., Transition and Development: Problems of Third World Socialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986), p. 300.
Peter Blanchard, The Origins of the Peruvian Labor Movement, 1883–1919 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982), p. 114.
Hernando de Soto, (1987), p. 64.
Peruvian newspaper, El Comercio (November 6, 1985).
Rodrigo Montoya, (1987), p. 21.
Peruvian economic journal, 1/2 De Cambio (July 1985).
See the feminist paper, Off Our Backs (March 1988), vol. XVIII, no. 3, p. 11.
My estimations, using the data published by Fernando Tuesta Soldevilla, Peru Politico en Citras (Lima: Fundación Friedrich Ebert, 1987), pp. 53–55; pp. 189–196.
See Perú: Compendio Estadíco 1986 (Lima: Instituto Nacional de Estadíca, Julio 1987), pp. 39–52.
This population occupies almost 55 percent of the Sierra’s land. National Survey (1972); and the economic journal, Actualidad (February 28, 1987).
Rodrigo Montoya, “Class Relations in the Andean Countryside,” in Latin American Perspectives (Summer 1982), p. 75.
Abimael Guzmán, a professor of philosophy in the 1960s at the University of San Cristobel de Huamanga, was one of the leaders of the PCP-Red Flag in the Department of Aycucho, which was responsible for carrying out agitation and propaganda tasks at the national level. After an internal split within the PCP-BR, he founded the PCP-SL in 1970. A man of broad culture, an admirer of a pre-Socratic Greek philosophy with its emphasis on attaining rational understanding of the world through the relationship between sense-experience and reason, and a former scholar of Kant (his university thesis was devoted to the analysis of Kant’s premises on space and time using Marxist methodology), Guzmán formulated the Sendero Laminoso’s theoretical framework using the concepts of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, and Mariátegui. He devoted particular attention to Lenin’s theory of revolution and Mao’s strategic concepts of political violence when peasants are the motor of revolution. (He studied at the University of Peking in 1964 and 1967. In 1975, he traveled again to China).
Vladimir Lenin, “Report to the Commission of the National and Colonial Question,” in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966). vol. 31, pp. 159–163.
Mariátegui (1884–1930) applied Marxist methodology to the comprehension of Peruvian history and society. Influenced by Gramsci’s interpretation of Marxism, Mariátegui pointed out the necessity of developing a non-deterministic, dynamic, and voluntaristic application of Leninism to the analysis of socioeconomic and political reality within a country. He advocated an indigenous, socialist, national revolution in Peru, instead of a classical bourgeois-democratic revolution.
Mao Zedong, “Speech of the Central Committee Conference” on August 7, 1927, in Current History (1964), no. 27, p. 2.
Lenin, “Speech at the First All-Russia Congress of Working Women” on November 19, 1918, in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), vol. 28, p. 181.
See Han Suyin, The Morning Deluge: Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Revolution 1893–1954 (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1972), p. 55.
J. C. Mariátegui, “Temas de Educacíon,” in Obras Completas de J. C. Mariátegui (Lima: Biblioteca Amauta, 1972), vol. 14, pp. 129–133.
Che Guevara, for example, in his book on guerrilla warfare, underlined that at this stage of struggle, the woman as cook “can greatly improve the diet of guerrillas, and it is easier to keep her in these domestic tasks.” Guerrilla Warfare (New York: Vintage Press, 1967), p. 87. Uruguayan urban guerrillas, Tupamaras, also considered feminine contributions to guerrilla warfare in terms of “a carefully and competently prepared meal, ... the fraternal gesture that alleviates the tensions produced by the struggle and her continually human approach to those who surround her.” in Actas Tupamaras (Lima: Ediciones Populares, 1981), p. 26.
Clara Zetkin, Zur Geschichte der Proletarischen Frauenbewegung Deutschlands (Frankfurt: Verlag Roter Stern, 1971), p. 3.
Peruvian magazine, Sí (April 6, 1987), pp. 82–83. See also the pamphlet of the Feminist Peruvian Movement, “Bajo las Banderas de Mariátegui Desarrollemos el Moviemiento Femenino Popular” (Ayacucho, 1975).
J. C. Mariátegui, Ideología y Política (Lima: Empress Editora Amauta, 1981), pp. 244–246.
Suyin, The Morning Deluge, p. 72.
The women question was discussed on the pages of Voz Popular, published by the Center of Popular Information of the University of Huamanga in 1970–1975. It is important to underline that there is a continuous discussion on the role of women in the contemporary revolution carried out by the Peruvian newspaper El Diario. See, for example, the interview with the actress Aurora Colina, where she points out that the revolutionary feminism of Clara Zetkin shows a way for women in emancipation (February 22, 1988), pp. 8–9.
Alexandra Kollontaï, Selected Writings (New York: W. Norton and Company, 1977), p. 242.
Lenin’s “Dialogue with Clara Zetkin,” in The Lenin Anthology, selected by Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1975), pp. 685–699.
See the document of the PCP-SL: “Bases de Discusión del PCP,” particularly its first chapter, “La Nueva Era” (Ayacucho, January 1988). In this document, the SL Stresses the necessity of intensifying of the ideological work among peasants, workers, women, intellectuals, shantytown inhabitants, young people and children.
Mao Zedong, introductory note to “Women have gone to the Labour Front,” in The Socialist Upsurge in China’s Countryside (Peking, 1955), vol. 1.
Peruvian newspaper La República (November 25, 1985), p. 13. See, also, the case of Second Lieutenant Hurtado, accused of genocide of the entire population of the village Accomarca, including recently born children, women and old people (75 total). During his trial, Hurtado pointed out that he ordered the execution of more than 20 children, together with some 30 women and old people, “motivated by the necessity of protecting democracy from future subversives.” (During the trial he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant and was sent to Israel and later to the U.S. to learn new counter-insurgency techniques).
Their arrest was broadly commented on by the Peruvian press in 1986–1987.
This concept is underlined in the PCP-SL pamphlet: “El Marxismo, Mariátegui y el Movimiento Femenino” (Ayacucho, 1970); “Gloria a las Madres del Pueblo” (Ayacucho, 1977); Guzmán’s address to the first promotion of students at the Popular School of Guerrilla Warfare in April, 1980; “Bases de Diseusión” (1988), and other documents.
The code of behavior of the Senderistas establishes that the militants must speak politely; make a compensation for every damaged object; give back borrowed money or commodities; avoid sexual molestation; avoid damaging cultivated land. Magazine Caretas (September 7, 1987): p. 35.
Eugenio Chan Rodríguez, Opciones Políticas Peruanas (Trujillo: Editorial Normas legales, 1987), p. 400.
Dorothea Wender, “Plato: Misogynist, Paedophile, and Feminist,” in . Peradotto and J. P. Sullivan eds., Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers (Albany: State University of New York, 1976), p. 213.
“Women who constitute a half of the world population must develop the movement for female emancipation; this task should be carried out by women themselves under the guidance of the PCP,” Bases de Discusión del PCP (September 8, 1988), ch. Y. This thesis originally belongs to Lenin, who said on September 23, 1919 at the Fourth Moscow City Conference of Non-Party Working Women, that “the emancipation of the workers must be effected by the workers themselves, and in exactly the same way the emancipation of working women is a matter for the working women themselves.” Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), Vol. 39, p. 44.
Weekly magazine, El Especial (New Jersey, January 27-February 22, 1988), pp. 2–3.
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Lazaro, J. (1998). Women and Political Violence in Contemporary Peru. In: Diamond, M.J. (eds) Women and Revolution: Global Expressions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9072-3_14
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