This is the first work exploring the colonial roots, modern context, trajectory and legacy of the Shining Path insurgency in the region of Huancavelica, Peru, one of Peru’s most impoverished and Quechua-speaking regions. The use of terroristic violence to implement a revolutionary and exclusivist ideology was without precedent in Latin America, presaging later movements such as ISIS. Integrating interviews, testimonials, survey data and the vast primary and secondary literature on the insurgency, this work examines how Huancavelican communities experienced and continue to shoulder the consequences of an exterminatory conflict thirty years after the insurgency was largely, although not entirely, defeated.
Nicholas A. Robins holds a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies from Tulane University and is a Teaching Professor in the Department of History at North Carolina State University. The author or editor of fifteen books and numerous articles, his research focuses on indigenous insurgencies and Andean social and environmental history. The founding president of the Bolivian Studies Association, he is the recipient of three Fulbright awards and in 2016 was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa degree from National University of Huancavelica.
The work’s interdisciplinary approach and accessible style will enable it to appeal to academics, graduate and undergraduate students and lay readers interested in the conflict, its ongoing legacy, and modern Peruvian history. It is suitable for courses on Latin American history and social history, Latin American and comparative politics, military history, indigenous studies, and peace and conflict studies.