From the moment it launched its armed insurgency in 1980 until the death of its former leader in September 2021, Peru’s Shining Path mesmerized observers. The Maoist group had a well-established reputation as a personality cult whose members were fanatically devoted to Abimael Guzmán, the messianic leader they revered as “Presidente Gonzalo.” According to this narrative, referred to here as the “Gonzalo mystique,” Shining Path zealots were prepared to submit to Guzmán’s authority and will—no matter how violent or suicidal—because they viewed him as a messiah-prophet who would usher in a new era of communist utopia. Drawing on newly available sources, including the minutes of Shining Path’s 1988–1989 congress, this article complicates the Gonzalo mystique narrative, tracing the unrelenting efforts by middle- and high-ranking militants to challenge, undermine, disobey, and even unseat Guzmán throughout the insurgency. Far from seeing their leader as the undisputed cosmocrat of the popular imagination, these militants recognized Guzmán for who he was: a deeply flawed man with errant ideas, including a dubious interpretation of Maoism, problematic military strategy, and a revolutionary path that was anything but shining.

Este artículo analiza las representaciones centradas en la víctima del conflicto armado interno peruano que propone el documental Tempestad en los Andes (2014), de Mikael Wiström. A partir de este objeto cultural, se examinan las limitaciones y posibilidades que presenta la memoria victimista en el posconflicto peruano. El análisis parte de los significados contrapuestos que el filme articula para Augusta La Torre (líder de Sendero Luminoso) y Claudio Gonzales (estudiante universitario desaparecido). Por un lado, se reflexiona sobre el posicionamiento reconciliador que esta película sostiene en torno a la búsqueda de una víctima neutral merecedora de compasión, la reconstitución de un supuesto mundo andino devastado por la guerra y el énfasis identificatorio con el sufrimiento padecido. Esta interpretación del pasado reciente fuerza una reconciliación (un perdón normalizante) que no permite comprender las complejidades surgidas y, por el contrario, las sutura en vías de alcanzar una cura y unificación del cuerpo social fragmentado con la guerra. Sin embargo, por otro lado, también se analizan las posibilidades de reconocimiento, esas renegociaciones y apropiaciones que suceden desde los márgenes de este proyecto audiovisual: una reivindicación, breve pero real, que intenta reparar el olvido.

Using accounts by militant schoolteachers from a province in the central sierra of Peru, this article attempts to show how and why concepts of race and political commitment among teachers changed at three critical moments in Peruvian history: agrarian reform, mass unionisation, and Maoist insurgency. The article explores how binary representations of race as mestizo or Indian, mestizo or cholo, were both formed and challenged by the everyday experience of teachers as well as their political action. Their reactions to, and negotiation of, racial ascription are framed within three fields of power: racialised social identities, processes of state formation, and opportunities and repertoire of contestatory politics.