How Difficult It Is to Be God: Shining Path’s Politics of War in Peru, 1980–1999 (Critical Human Rights) - Softcover

Degregori, Carlos Iván

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0299289249 ISBN 13: 9780299289249

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012

Synopsis

The revolutionary war launched by Shining Path, a Maoist insurgency, was the most violent upheaval in modern Peru’s history, claiming some 70,000 lives in the 1980s–1990s and drawing widespread international attention. Yet for many observers, Shining Path’s initial successes were a mystery. What explained its cult-like appeal, and what actually happened inside the Andean communities at war?
    In How Difficult It Is to Be God, Carlos Iván Degregori—the world’s leading expert on Shining Path and the intellectual architect for Peru’s highly regarded Truth and Reconciliation Commission—elucidates the movement’s dynamics. An anthropologist who witnessed Shining Path’s recruitment of militants in the 1970s, Degregori grounds his findings in deep research and fieldwork. He explains not only the ideology and culture of revolution among the insurgents, but also their capacity to extend their influence to university youths, Indian communities, and competing social and political movements.
    Making Degregori’s most important work available to English-language readers for the first time, this translation includes a new introduction by historian Steve J. Stern, who analyzes the author’s achievement, why it matters, and the debates it sparked. For anyone interested in Peru and Latin America’s age of “dirty war,” or in the comparative study of revolutions, Maoism, and human rights, this book will provide arresting new insights.

About this title

About the Author:

Carlos Iván Degregori (1945–2011) was a distinguished Peruvian anthropologist at the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos and the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos as well as a major public intellectual. Steve J. Stern is the Alberto Flores Galindo and Hilldale Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Review:

“A towering achievement, the result of more than three decades of research and reflection on the interrelated phenomena of violence, war, culture, politics, and human rights in Peru.”—Carlos Aguirre, University of Oregon

“Without a doubt, Degregori is the key interpreter of the Shining Path movement. This book is his masterpiece.”—Charles Walker, University of California, Davis

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0299289249
• ISBN 13: 9780299289249
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250
• Editor: Stern Steve J.