With Now Peru Is Mine: The Life and Times of a Campesino Activist, Manuel Llamojha Mitma and Jaymie Patricia Heilman have collaborated to produce an engaging life history account that will be a valuable resource for students of Latin American studies as well as researchers specializing in twentieth-century Peru.
Llamojha Mitma (1921–2016), whose life the book chronicles, was an energetic, imaginative, and fervently anticolonial activist from the town of Concepción, Ayacucho. Between 1962 and 1978, Llamojha Mitma headed Peru's largest peasant organization (the Confederación Campesina del Perú). The coauthored book, described as a “testimonial biography,” draws primarily on interviews with the longtime activist as well as archival research carried out by Heilman.
Heilman, who provides the main authorial voice, has a keen sense of audience in organizing the material. Now Peru Is Mine is directed toward undergraduate students, along with Peruvianists unfamiliar with Llamojha Mitma and his contributions to...
