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The whole ethos of latin guerrilla movements has been male," says journalist Robin Kirk, a fellow at Radcliffe's Bunting Institute. "It's a `boys only' club, forged in the Che Guevara image. Shining Path is the first to break that model."

The Peruvian Shining Path movement, or Sendero Luminoso, is a Maoist revolutionary group dedicated to the creation of a classless society. Its ideology makes violence an integral part of this goal-and the more violence, the better. A Shining Path anthem sings of crossing the river of blood, purifying blood, which will bring us to Maoist utopia. Kirk compares the group to Cambodia's genocidal Khmer Rouge. However, unlike the Khmer Rouge or most other revolutionary organizations, many senderistas are female. Peru-vian police intelligence documents "list eight women among the 19 members of [Shining Path's] Central Committee," says Kirk. "The first guerrilla martyr was a woman, and women lead military columns and run the propaganda wing."

Formed by Abimael Guzmán in 1970, Shining Path appealed to peasants and college students angered by Peru's racial and class divisions. By 1980 the organization had garnered the support needed for war. Over the next decade, guerrilla cadres carried out a campaign of sabotage, bombings, and murders that damaged $22 billion worth of property and left 25,000 dead. Often a female senderista delivered the signature coup de grâce to the base of a victim's skull. In response, the Peruvian government imposed military rule and suspended civil liberties. Although the terrorism abated substantially with Guzmán's capture in September 1992, Shining Path loyalists remain active, setting off car bombs in Lima as recently as last July.

Kirk examines Shining Path women, and related topics like class and race divisions in Lima and alternative justice systems devised by peasants, in a book of essays she is writing about her experiences in Peru. She has been an observer of Peru (and currently monitors Colombia) for Human Rights Watch. These assignments carry certain risks: Colombia's government has called Kirk a "professional slanderer"; the Peruvian government claimed that she was a spy for Shining Path; and Shining Path itself accused her of being a government agent.

"I started interviewing women in Shining Path because I wanted to know what would cause a woman to join such a violent group," Kirk says. "As a feminist, I've always had this idea of woman as a nurturer, a natural pacifist. I thought that women revolutionaries fought in different ways, defending their homes and their families if necessary. I didn't automatically think of them as part of the most violent insurgency in Latin America."

From the time Kirk first visited Peru as a tourist in 1983, these women have "fascinated and repelled" her. Living in Peru as a journalist from 1989 to 1992, she managed to speak with female senderistas extensively. "Basically I just talked my way in," Kirk laughs. One conversation was with "Betty," a former senderista who joined Shining Path at the age of 17. Forced out of the movement after a personal conflict with another cadre, Betty now lives in constant fear. Kirk interviewed her inside a rented car with the windows rolled up, an arrangement Betty requested as a condition for the meeting. An orphan with a history of abuse, Betty joined Shining Path looking for love as well as a sense of purpose. According to Kirk, she found both.

"For Betty, love was not for an individual, but rather the work of revolution," Kirk says. "In her dedication, I found echoes of the writings of medieval women who joined religious orders rather than marry and bear children. The Shining Path movement is more a religion than a political party. All the women I talked to had that dedication."

As Kirk learned more about the personal histories of Shining Path women, she became curious about popular conceptions of female senderistas. "I found out that the women weren't so different from me," she says. "They wanted the same things I want-a sense of purpose, a better life for themselves and their children. But the popular image of them in Peru is that of either a sexless automaton or an alluring bitch-goddess. A 1990 police training manual on `subversive women' says that `they are impulsive and take risks. They have an aura of unnatural witchy power about them.'"

Kirk speculates that these images of revolutionary women contributed to the harsh treatment of Lori Berenson, an American who was recently convicted of treason in Peru. According to Kirk, Peruvian law stipulates that anyone can be detained for up to 30 days incommunicado. "They don't physically torture foreigners, but there's a great deal of psychological torture in hearing others being tortured, in being told that you're never going to get out," she explains. "When they let you out and put you in front of the white lights, you get about 20 seconds to present your side. After all you've been through, it's hard not to look guilty or crazy. They design it that way. When Berenson came out and started yelling, she looked hysterical. It reminded Peruvians of all the images of Shining Path women, so the judge increased Berenson's sentence from 30 years to life."

While Kirk remains strongly opposed to the actions of Shining Path, she admits that the conversations with women senderistas have helped her develop a more multifaceted view of feminism. She also points out a basic contradiction in Shining Path's structure. "Guzmán had a special relationship with women," she explains, "because he was director of student teaching at Ayacucho University. He spent a lot of time with the predominantly female education department. He formed the Popular Women's Movement, which later became a key part of Shining Path. But his relationship with women was never one of equals. He directed them. He let them worship him. It's a special relationship that is not so much sexual as paternal."

Prominent participation by women, then, may make Shining Path a different kind of revolutionary group, but "does not mean that it is feminist," Kirk emphasizes. "It has a highly patriarchical structure, with the founder, Guzman, at the pinnacle."

~ M. Elaine Mar

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