This talk examines the lead-up to the 1992 Huamanquiquia massacre—where eighteen men were killed and women punished through hair-cutting—by situating it within Indigenous peasants’ shifting resistance to the Shining Path. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, oral histories, and archival documents like the Libro de Actas, I trace how insurgent and counterinsurgent violence, as well as everyday interactions with guerrillas and state forces, shaped local responses. The Shining Path’s authoritarianism and targeting of community leaders threatened peasant autonomy, prompting the rise of self-defense initiatives and the Pacto de Alianza entre Pueblos, a multi-community anti-Sendero coalition active in 1983–1986 and reactivated in 1992.
This microhistorical approach centers Indigenous agency, challenging simplified victim narratives and revealing the complex local dynamics that contributed to Sendero’s defeat in its birthplace, Ayacucho.