On August 28, 2003 the Commissioners of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) submitted their Final Report examining the causes and consequences of the twenty-year internal armed conflict (1980-2000). The Peruvian TRC did not occur within the context of a negotiated peace settlement because the insurgent group Sendero Luminoso (SL) had been largely defeated. In the TRC’s Final Report, SL was held responsible for 54% of the violations reported to the TRC. In contrast to other Latin American countries in which “insurgent” or “guerrilla” movements were perceived by many people to be fighting for social justice, Sendero Luminoso remains monolithically demonized in Peru as a fanatic terrorist organization. However, we argue for disaggregating the category “terrorist” to reveal the vast variation in motivations, actions and intent that prompted many of Peru’s poorest, ethnic Others to participate in SL and remain sympathetic to the movement even under military repression. Given the lack of academics conducting ethnographic studies on the interaction of “terrorist organizations” with the TRC, we thus propose a study that will trace the history of SL’s engagement in the truth commission process, with the goal of capturing the eclipsed voices of SL participants to learn about their motives for violent action and their perceptions of transitional justice concepts such as truth, justice, reparations and reconciliation. Who participated in terrorism? Who was Sendero Luminoso? Where are those thousands of people now? Truth commissions — and other technologies of truth — must recognize political protagonism even while condemning the forms it may take. That recognition may be crucial to serving both the needs of history as well as those of justice: understanding the motivations of the vanquished may contribute to the structural reforms that prevent future violence.

This study examines one of Latin America’s most violent terrorist groups, Shining Path. It involves speaking directly with its members to understand why they were motivated to participate in this violent movement even while under violent military repression. Thus, it attempts to define the causes of violence by deconstructing the human agency behind it. We also examine the impact of controlling violence with violence, looking at Peru’s repressive anti-terrorism campaigns. Here human dominance entailed stripping the opponent of their humanness — and thus their rights — to eradicate their aggression. The researchers attempt to increase understanding of and ameliorate urgent problems of violence, aggression and dominance in the modern world in threes ways: First by offering insight into who is motivated to join terrorist movements and why, thus offering policy guidelines for preventive approaches as opposed to violent and repressive postures which isolate and demonize the movement’s adherents. Second, it will explore how and why a transitional justice movement failed to incorporate effective reconciliation strategies with these violent factions in order to illuminate how this might have been done differently. Third, it will provide insight into how anti-terrorist legislation and strategies should be designed so as to minimize indiscriminate violence and harm when applied. With the global “war on terror”, these contributions have particular relevance in Latin America and beyond.