From militant to victim: the memory of the PCP-Shining Path and its approach to politics (2002-2019)

Encarnación-Pinedo M. · Paginas (2024) · DOI: 10.35305/rp.v16i41.884

Resumen

In 1992, the leadership of the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path (CPP-SP) was arrested. A year later, the leader of the subversive organization announced its renunciation of violence and sent delegates to the prisons to convince their main cadres to accept this decision. From then on, the management of the CPP-SP in prison articulated a new discourse with the aim of promoting a memory that disseminates their side of the story and that promotes their participation in legal politics. Throughout this article we will demonstrate that the rhetoric of the CPP-SP former members conforms to the guidelines of the IV Stage (political struggle without weapons), and is propelled from the category of victim, which shows the change in the self-definition of the subversive, who goes from being a «militant» to being a «victim» whose human rights are violated. With this objective, we will use discourse analysis and the qualitative method to analyze the semi-structured interviews conducted with four CPP-SP ex-prisoners, as well as the testimonies collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in prisons.

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos