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Definition

Ronda Campesina (English: Peasant Rounds) is the name given to autonomous peasant patrols in rural Peru. The rondas were especially active during the early 1980s in northern Peru and during the insurgency by the Maoist group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and by the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.

Origins

The rondas were originally formed as a local protection force against theft, especially cattle rustling. They developed further as a counter-revolutionary response to the Shining Path's violence against their local leaders. When Shining Path leader Abimael Guzmán launched his insurgency against the government in 1980, the Peruvian armed forces by and large ignored the threat at the very outset. Because the very core of the movement was land redistribution, the insurgency was confined to rural areas in the Andean regions inhabited by indigenous and Amerindian groups, and largely off the radar of the government. Peasants who did not support the revolutionary movement, therefore, created "rondas campesinas".

The Shining Path developed as a revolutionary movement against the previous Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces. That government had instituted nationalistic social and economic reforms, which unfortunately failed to solve the economic issues and poverty these reforms were aimed at assisting. In 1980, the Shining Path began to take advantage of people's unhappiness with the government in place to gain followers and support. The Shining Path revolted mostly through causing scenes: "dynamiting buildings and sabotaging national infrastructure". The idea was that if they caused a big enough scene, the government would pay attention. The government in place did not take them seriously in the first year, considering these people to be "terrorists, petty cattle rustlers, and bandits", and left it to the police to deal with the group. The president at the time, Belaunde, did not see the need for military intervention until there was a state of emergency declared over the Ayacucho region in 1982. The Shining Path had a very successful beginning because of support and sympathy from the rural population. The movement's leaders had promised rural populations equality, that they would make sure everyone had food and work and what they needed, and thus were generally unopposed for their first three years. The movement's undoing was in the practice of executing "enemies of the people", which at first were known criminals ("robbery, petty thievery, and cattle rustling"), which had been targeted anyway by the earliest rondas campesinas. The problem came when this practice led to executing people for less clear crimes concerning morality more than actual physical damage to livelihoods. This moralistic execution campaign led to fears that anyone could be killed for any accusation, leading people to distrust their neighbors who might report them to the "Senderos" as a way of ending fights. The Shining Path didn't have to keep killing people, communities were tearing themselves apart out of fear and suspicion of each other's communications with the group. The peasants finally, in 1982, began to dislike the Senderos as the group began to isolate them from other communities, especially urban communities; and attempting to end the markets that everyone needed to make a living with the crops they grew.

In 1983, one of the first peasant uprisings occurred in Huaycho (a small village in the Ayacucho Region) took the rest of the Peruvian nation by surprise, as it had previously been thought that the Shining Path was a well-received movement everywhere. This resistance to the Shining Path was met with praise and respect from national media and the Peruvian president as a "brave and resolute" response to a generally unpopular group. This respect was lost within a week though, as eight journalists that had been seeking to cover the story of Huaycho were killed in another community, known as Uchuraccay, which had considered the journalists to be more guerrillas.

Development

 Before 1990, there were few legally recognized rondas, and most of those were in locations legally under a state of emergency, and differed in structure to those developed for theft protection.  The rondas that legally existed before 1990 were recognized (and sometimes created) by the government to protect areas that were legally declared to be under a state of emergency. A few were locally created, but were still required to obtain legal recognition to function.  Later, they evolved into a full-blown private justice system, complete with courts. They often provoked the ire of the Peruvian state.

The reason the rondas were supported by peasants was that the Shining Path, while claiming to work in the best interests of the common people in theory, in practice were forcing unworkable economic strategies and terroristic behaviors on an already downtrodden peasant class. These peasants, who didn't support the government in place but also didn't support the Shining Path's destruction, turned to the rondas for protection and order locally.

Legalization and Government Coordination

It was the only in 1982 that the Peruvian government has begun to take action in earnest. Military rule was established in nine provinces after a state of emergency was declared in December of that year, and the Rondas Campesinas were employed by the military. The Peruvian military, their auxiliaries the Rondas Campesinas, and the Sendero Luminoso guerrillas all committed human rights atrocities during the course of the conflict. In 1990, President Alberto Fujimori came to power. He, along with Peru’s armed forces, armed the rondas campesinas. From 1991 to 1992, the president and the government issued several decrees legalizing and regulating the existing rondas. Specifically, the “Comites de Autodefensia” (Committees of Self-Defense) were to work in tandem with the military and/or the police to provide local defense of their villages. These committees were armed by the government, mostly with 12-gauge shotguns, and trained by the official Peruvian military. A later decree specified that all legally recognized rondas needed to work with and under the guidelines of the Comites de Autodefensia.

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