“Everything Was Division”: Political Marginalization, 1968–1980
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Published:November 2016
Chapter 5 recounts Llamojha’s participation in a battle for control over the Peruvian Peasant Confederation, a struggle he ultimately lost. His former allies ostracized and attacked him, and the Peruvian Peasant Confederation split into three competing factions. These battles in the 1970s took place during the rule of General Juan Velasco’s Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces, which pursued progressive reform, including a sweeping agrarian reform. This chapter explores how that reform impacted Llamojha’s work as a rural activist, his pointed opposition to the legislation, and how the reform contributed to his political isolation. This chapter also offers new insights into the Peruvian Communist Party-Shining Path, as its members briefly allied with Llamojha’s faction of the Peruvian Peasant Confederation but soon broke from him, rejecting his commitment to peasant unions and criticizing his indigenist ideas.