Shining Path

[Dros]

So what do people think about the Shining Path?

[Louis Pio]

Well generally my thoughts are: "why the fuck did they throw away their masssupport by starting killing peasants who wouldn't joint them?"

In my oppinion it has something to do with the kinda culture that develops in some guerilla groups, after all most are mostly disconnected from the massfight

[Red Heretic]

It would be cool for people to check out the great article that ran in A World to Win, which analyzed the Peruvian Communist Party. Comrades can check it here:

A Sober Look at the Situation of the Peru Revolution and Its Needs (http://www.aworldtowin.org/current_issues/32Peru.htm)

[RedJacobin]

There is some good academic literature on them by Carol Andreas. Check out the article "Women at War" in the December 1990 issue of NACLA as well as her books. While there were ideological problems with them from a Maoist perspective, as analyzed by the AWTW article, which may have ultimately set back Maoism in the continent, the degree to which they mobilized women and developed women's leadership was unique in the history of the Peruvian left and may have been unprecedented in the history of guerrilla movements in all of Latin America.

[Marion]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14, 2007 07:28 am
There is some good academic literature on them by Carol Andreas. Check out the article "Women at War" in the December 1990 issue of NACLA as well as her books. While there were ideological problems with them from a Maoist perspective, as analyzed by the AWTW article, which may have ultimately set back Maoism in the continent, the degree to which they mobilized women and developed women's leadership was unique in the history of the Peruvian left and may have been unprecedented in the history of guerrilla movements in all of Latin America.
Am not sure about the extent to which there is anything special about the mobilisation of women by the Shining Path. It's actually been a fairly general trend in third world guerilla outfits for the last couple of decades or so. It's generally more a statement on how dreadful conditions are for many women in the area (that mean they see a guerilla army as an escape) rather than anything else.

[Panda Tse Tung]

http://www.revmedia.net/tpsp.html

Is a good documentary

[RedJacobin]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14, 2007 08:32 am
Am not sure about the extent to which there is anything special about the mobilisation of women by the Shining Path. It's actually been a fairly general trend in third world guerilla outfits for the last couple of decades or so. It's generally more a statement on how dreadful conditions are for many women in the area (that mean they see a guerilla army as an escape) rather than anything else.
I don't think this is correct. While it is true that other guerrilla armies have mobilized women, they have not developed women's leadership to the degree that Shining Path did. Eight of the 19 positions in the PCP's central committee were held by women. Two of 5 positions in the political bureau were held by women. From the 60s and 70s onwards, the forces that would later become the PCP devoted much of their theoretical and propaganda work to women's issues. Women's emancipation was a key part of Shining Path ideology in a way that was not true for any guerrilla movement up to that time.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

everyone interested in the Shining Path should check out No. 2's documentary that he posted. It's one of my favorite documentaries.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

On women's involvement, leadership, etc., FARC should be mentioned..


What is striking about FARC is the number of women in its ranks, currently about 30% and, according to a senior spokesman, Símon Trinidad, "increasing all the time." Some FARC units are already headed by women commandantes, and most of its road-blocks in the zone are organized by women. ...

Lucero [a female guerrilla] claims there are obvious attractions for women in FARC: they are treated equally, escape the machismo elsewhere in Colombian society and, if they come from poor families, have the chance of an education that would otherwise elude them.
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia20.htm

That's older.. this is newer:


"Nowadays 45% of Farc are women, the female role has become increasingly more important for the our organisation."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/prog...war/html/12.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/programmes/this_world/one_day_of_war/html/12.stm)

Of course it's not perfect; but I want to make it clear that Sendero isn't/wasn't the only guerrilla to take such steps..

[blackstone]

Not to mention, some guerilla groups have even given children equality by allowing them to join their ranks. Amazing.

[Marxist Napoleon]

I heard that the Shining Path ruined a wonderful revolutionary opportunity and lost the support of the masses, but I think that's what Wikipedia said. I tend to support revolutionary groups struggling for a socialist Latin American, but we shouldn't blindly trust them because they're revolutionaries. Again, though, I haven't read much into it, so the Shining Path is fine with me. I think Latin America is tired of civil war though, and they'll equate revolution to civil war. Even though the Venezuelan people are using electoral politics, their revolution is advancing splendidly.

[YSR]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14, 2007 02:47 pm
Not to mention, some guerilla groups have even given children equality by allowing them to join their ranks. Amazing.
I caught the lol there.

Shining Path are anti-peasant. End of story.

[RedJacobin]

Originally posted by Compañ[email protected] 14, 2007 08:27 pm
On women's involvement, leadership, etc., FARC should be mentioned.. [...] Of course it's not perfect; but I want to make it clear that Sendero isn't/wasn't the only guerrilla to take such steps..
No, the Peruvian movement wasn't the only one to mobilize women. Many nationalist guerrillas have also done so. But there is still a qualitative difference between mobilizing women and having a leadership core that is nearly half women. This qualitative difference was rooted in the ideology of the Peruvian movement on women's emancipation, that saw women's emancipation as key to communist revolution, which was more advanced (on this issue) compared to all other Latin American radical trends. In addition to Carol Andreas, see for example Juan Lazaro's article "Women and Political Violence in Contemporary Peru."

On the sarcastic comment about child soldiers, that is reflective of certain bourgeois-legal prejudices. If children can be exploited in sweatshops, sold into the sex trade, and killed enmass by imperialist and reactionary forces, why can't they fight for liberation? If children can be exploited and oppressed, they can also rebel against exploitation and oppression.

As for the oh-so-insightful one liner "Shining Path are anti-peasant. End of story," that is crude anti-communism at best, a conclusion that is not reached by even the reactionaries who have investigated the movement (which are most of the scholars who have studied and written on them).