Despite the fact that the Shining Path guerrilla movement in Peru enjoyed initial peasant support, the emergence and spread of rondas campesinas or self-defence committees in the Andean highlands of Ayacucho was principally a response against coercion and violence exerted by Shining Path against the very same peasantry. This article seeks to demonstrate that the ronda phenomenon must be understood as part of the complex changes brought about by the proliferation of violence in the Peruvian Andes. The spread of rondas campesinas cannot be reduced to a mere counterinsurgent strategy imposed by the security forces on the rural communities; communal initiative and peasant`agency' were, at certain stages, at least as important. Only with the rise to power of Fujimori were the self-defence committees formally incorporated in the state's anti-guerrilla strategy. Subsequently, with the reduction in the level of violence, self-defence committees have been seeking new roles in relation to the challenges of re-civilianisation and reconstruction.

No abstract

In much of the academic literature on contemporary militias, the focus is typically on their destructive anti-rebel character. By contrast, the perspective of militias as agents of local governance, social reconstruction, and positive transformations is one that to date has been under-researched. Taking a "relational" perspective, this article examines how peasant militias in Ayacucho Department, although initially formed for the purpose of violently opposing Shining Path rebels, became engaged in governing their own "wartime social order" in which they organised, coordinated, regulated, and signified activities and behaviour for the collective good of their local communities. From it we might gain insight into how these peasant militias were able to avoid permanently becoming the predatory sort of militia that much of the academic literature warns about.

No abstract