Attacks on Survival Organizations
In urban areas, most grassroots organizations are run by poor women. When Peru's economy floundered in the 1980s, the number of these "survivalorganizations," such as soup kitchens, expanded dramatically, keeping hundreds of thousands from starvation. Many feminists work with survival groups to press for legal reforms to benefit women, education and family planning.
The Shining Path criticized these groups as hiding a sinister plan "to maintain an enormous, extremely impoverished mass of people as beggars without a critical spirit, without the will to fight, who think of nothing more than the next plate of food to be given.168 For senderistas, survival groups were the seeds of what they call battle committees, to be indoctrinated in the "people's war" and used to feed, house and protect armed militants.
Certain areas of Lima were of vital importance to this strategy, shantytowns on the central highway and shantytowns closely allied with the left or with a strong NGO presence. In those areas, survival group leaders had only two options: pledge to the guerrilla cause or become enemies. From 1985 until 1992, at least ten female leaders of survival groups were assassinated. Hundreds more were threatened with death or harm to their families and forced to collaborate or flee. The threats continue, but the reduction in the Shining Path's size and power has significantly diminished the likelihood of harm.
For example, Ceferina was a community activist in Ate-Vitarte in 1992. Like many others, she was forced to flee her Ayacucho home because of threats from the army. Then, in Lima, the Shining Path began giving her nightmares.169 In her settlement, guerrillas threatened the soup kitchens and community-run pharmacies until they shut down. She told us that out of a total of thirty soup kitchens, only two remained in the summer of 1992. The army, which established a base near her home, only patrolled during the day, leaving guerrillas free to hold mandatory public meetings at night. Once, she says, thirty people, some masked, forced their way into her small house after midnight to intimidate her into taking part.
It was midnight, just after a municipal meeting had ended. If I didn't open the door, they shouted, they promised to kick it in. If I didn't agree, they said I would have to leave the settlement. None of my neighbors came out to help me, even though I used my whistle when they first beat at the door. It was as if the whole thing had been planned. They knowperfectly well who organizes things in each settlement, and these are the people they pressure to join or resign.170
168 "Mother Courage," El Diario Internacional.
169 Interview, Lima, July 8, 1992.
170 For other cases, see Human Rights Watch, Untold Terror, pp. 51-54.
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