Processes of political formation played a central role in shaping the personal and collective identities of New Left supporters (militantes) in Peru during the 1960s and 1970s. For many militantes, including women, these processes underpinned their commitment to revolutionary transformation. In a country that had historically excluded women, particularly rural and indigenous women, from formal education and politics, political formation initiatives facilitated their access to education and to politics. Still, class, race, and place of residence shaped this access. Through initiatives such as study circles, base communities and political party cells, women militantes of the New Left politicised themselves and others. Why and where did militante women acquire this political learning? How did they put it into practice? How did they use their politicisation to challenge projects that undermined their quest for radical change? How did they continue to engage in transformative politics?
Learning and debating political ideas, aims, and plans were part of the everyday practices of many New Left supporters during the 1960s and 1970s. Broadly speaking, the Peruvian New Left, like the Latin American New Left, emerged in the 1960s through splits from, and challenges to, communist and socialist parties founded in the 1920s and 1930s. The Revolutionary Left was one of many currents within this New Left. In Latin America, revolutionary leftists were committed to anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, and national liberation. In the 1960s and 1970s, the term revolution acquired different meanings for left-wing militantes. For some, revolution meant seizing state power, for others, it meant overcoming poverty, ending the historical subordination of indigenous peoples, and pursuing broader social transformations. In pursuing these aims, militante women and their parties embedded themselves in a process of political formation that shaped the New Left not only as a political but also as an intellectual and cultural movement.
Their politicisation was facilitated through knowledge, practices, and organisational spaces. In study circles and political cells, militante women from urban and rural backgrounds taught, read, and discussed works by Marta Harnecker, Mao Zedong, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and José Carlos Mariátegui. They learned not only about Communism, Marxism, Maoism, and Liberation Theology but also Peruvian and Latin American history, and national and international politics. Through this diverse literature, they deepened and broadened their understanding of revolution, society, the nation and the state. They read party documents, debated how to characterise the country, and engaged with (and sometimes also became confused by) the competing positions and factions within their parties. In these circles and political cells, militante women also identified their political opponents: supporters of other revolutionary parties, oppressive landowners, abusive authorities, and political and economic elites that had historically subordinated indigenous populations and had shaped a racialised nation-state that excluded the majority. In some cases, their parties used political formation to enforce ideological discipline and consolidate leadership hierarchies. Its effects therefore differed between individuals and organisations.
During the 1960s and 1970s, decades deeply marked by communist and anti-communist currents, conflict, crises, and authoritarianism, militante women put their political learning into practice in their everyday lives. Many were active in peasant unions, workers’ organisations, and university student groups. In these spaces, they persuaded other women to join their parties and revolutionary endeavours, challenged political opponents, and explained political debates in accessible terms. Many militante women also supported rural communities by organising literacy and educational activities, assisting with agricultural work, and helping communities address local needs. In an interview, Estela Fonseca (pseudonym), an indigenous peasant leader, recalled one political teaching method:
‘A comrade used to read the book, for example, about Domitila Barrios Chúngara [a Bolivian unionist leader] aloud, then they explained it in Quechua, and then asked us to explain the book’s message’.
Similarly, Grimanesa Castillo and Verenice Robles (pseudonyms) evoked memories of carrying video projector equipment on their backs ‘at night and under the rain’ as part of their everyday militancia. Since there were no paved roads in their assigned town, the rain quickly turned the land into mud, and on more than one occasion, they fell and spoiled their ponchos and educational booklets. Their efforts, though, were worthwhile. The movies and image projections were educational strategies that peasant women I interviewed recalled with emotion. Through these activities and encounters, militante women deepened their understanding of the people’s needs, aspirations, and everyday struggles.
This engagement with people’s everyday struggles led politicised militante women to critically question and challenge their own leaders and their parties’ internal ideological and power struggles. These conflicts intensified in the late 1970s, as Peruvian revolutionary parties debated whether to support the democratic transition by participating in electoral alliances or launch an armed struggle. The more politicised militante women became, the more they developed critical perspectives on the political system, political and economic elites, and their political opponents, too. They began to doubt the idea that conditions were in place for a revolution, an insurrection or an armed struggle, held by some on the Left. Thus, they challenged and rejected the growing radicalisation of one organisation within the Peruvian Revolutionary Left: the Shining Path.
While it shared some ideological origins with other Peruvian Maoist and Marxist organisations, the Shining Path’s dogmatism, strategy of armed struggle, and violence distinguished it from, and placed it in conflict with, much of the Peruvian Left. Founded in the 1970s, this radical Maoist group began its armed struggles against the Peruvian state and society in May 1980. Over the following years, violence by the Shining Path, the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru, the Armed Forces, and paramilitary groups produced two decades of internal armed conflict (1980-2000). Civilians were the principal victims. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2001) estimated approximately 69,000 deaths, exceeding Peru’s total casualties from all internal and external conflicts since independence from Spain in 1821. It also noted that the Shining Path was responsible for 54 per cent of the deaths and disappearances. The internal conflict affected the poorest and most historically neglected populations: rural and indigenous men and women. It also affected supporters of the revolutionary New Left. They too were attacked, disappeared, and assassinated by all the armed actors during this conflict.
In this context, militante women still continued to aspire to radical change, but now using democratic rules and institutions. Their responses to the conflict and the democratic transition – a period in which their revolutionary parties, not without conflict, moved into electoral politics – was shaped by their earlier politicisation in the New Left. Many militante women reworked their revolutionary aspirations and developed new discourses against neoliberalism and extractivism. As anti-neoliberal activists, social leaders, intellectuals, and local authorities, they opted for a ‘revolution in democratic times’, to quote the political scientist Kenneth M. Roberts. They have engaged in anti-status-quo projects grounded in values of solidarity, justice, and equality. For instance, some peasant militante women created Women’s Peasant Federations to channel indigenous women’s political participation and to promote grassroots training schools. In these schools, peasant leaders learned about Peruvian history, economics, and politics, and received training in union and political party organisation and leadership. Some urban militante women established non-governmental organisations to provide support in times of crisis. In Ayacucho, the region most affected by the armed conflict, they created human rights organisations to contribute to the ‘construction of sustainable peace’, providing humanitarian aid to victims of the conflict.
In the aftermath of Peru’s armed conflict, these militante women continue to reshape their revolutionary aspirations towards social justice. As in prior decades, educational and cultural projects offer spaces where women can channel and disseminate their criticism of capitalism and the market economy, and advocate for social justice. For instance, as in the past, some militante women use theatre to share their criticism of social inequalities. Alicia Puente (pseudonym), a former communist supporter, devoted her acting career to raising awareness about Peru’s social and political problems. She told me that her plays aspire to ‘educate society and young people and encourage women to fight against mistreatment’. She discussed her role in Abuse usted de las cholas [Abuse indigenous women], a play by the Peruvian playwright Hernando Cortez that portrays the suffering of Quechua-speaking women from the highlands who migrate to the cities to become domestic workers. She said, ‘Although this play was written in the 1950s, it represents the current situation of many underprivileged women in the country’. Alongside these projects, many militante women have resumed their participation in unions and left-wing political parties, seeking to deepen democracy across society.
Militante women’s experiences, I suggest, show that politicisation can be a transformative process when it remains open to learning and adaptation, critical and reflexive, and always oriented towards social justice. Politicisation loses its transformative potential when organisations suppress disagreement, treat ideologies as unquestionable truths, or demand obedience to their leaders. These lessons are particularly relevant today. We live in turbulent times, marked by widespread dissatisfaction with representative politics and a pervasive sense that ‘there is no alternative’. Right-wing populist and extremist projects have taken advantage of this discontent, undermining pluralism, democratic institutions, and values such as solidarity, equality, and social justice by mobilising people against minorities, migrants, and democratic principles. Their influence reminds us that politicisation does not necessarily advance emancipatory projects. Today, progressive grassroots organisations, political parties, trade unions, universities, cultural projects, and social movements can create alternative spaces for communities to develop the critical capacity needed to challenge these extremist projects. As the experiences of many militante women demonstrate, political formation rooted in critical learning and thinking, and a commitment to social justice, can nurture the collective action needed to transform our societies for the better.