Abstract

At the start of 1980, the Peruvian terrorist group, Sendero Luminoso, began its Maoist-inspired campaign based in the Southern Highlands of Perú. With the aim of overthrowing state infrastructure, they began in the most rural areas of the country, occupying highland villages while prohibiting markets and trade with the plan to starve cities in preparation for their conquest. Of the estimated 69,000 casualties, 75% were indigenous peoples of the highlands and Amazon basin. In an effort to eradicate the Sendero Luminoso’s quest for power, then president, Alberto Fujimori, carried out response tactics that subsequently violated a variety of female reproductive rights. In using Sendero Luminoso’s actions as justifications for his own atrocities, Fujimori employed government funded initiatives that thereafter led to his 2009 incarceration. This paper evaluates the need to break the systemic discrimination against peasant indigenous women in times of struggle, war and peace through the exploration of the research question, to what extent progress in times of terror lends itself to the outright oppression and destruction of culturally vulnerable female communities. The paper concludes with an investigation of the further implications on the specific rights and roles of indigenous Andean women in their unique struggle during one of Perú’s most painful and memorable eras of contemporary history.

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