ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a description of the transition from military rule in Peru, followed by an analysis of the popular and feminist strands of the women's movement and their changing strategies from the transition through the decade of the 1980s. It argues that the feminists' strategies of political autonomy and the primacy given to strategic gender issues may have unnecessarily isolated feminists from the popular women's movements, and that the grassroots women's movements also made strategic choices that weakened them in the broader political arena. The chapter then turns to the rise of urban terrorism in the 1990s as the Maoist Sendero Luminoso extended its campaign to the cities and to the impact of Sendero's strategy of threatening and assassinating popular leaders of the women's movements in Peru. It shows that positive benefits accrue to the members of these organizations because of their internal democratic organization and because they have created space for female solidarity.
