ABSTRACT
The Shining Path, or Sendero Luminoso, is the popular name of the Peruvian Communist Party. Until the capture of its head, Abimael Guzmán, in the early 1990s, it fought a brutal war against the central government in Lima that at times seriously threatened the government’s sovereignty in rural areas. Mitchell shows that the Shining Path’s brutality was matched by that of the military. He further argues that such violence results from what he calls a social revolution; a “revolution” that has taken Peru down the path of a not especially competitive industrial capitalism. This path has led to a protracted economic crisis that is the breeding ground of brutal institutions that have impoverished many Peruvians. He contends that a scholarly focus on the Shining Path has directed our attention away from the fundamental social changes and has contributed to a social climate in which force rather than amelioration is seen as the solution to social distress. Mitchell’s article poses a grim possibility: is it the case that Peru is the shining path of other late blooming capitalisms?
