The Congress That Broke the Left: Violent Debates at Huampani, Peru, 1989

1980s Peru offers a unique window into the volatile intersection between revolution and reform. At the same moment when radical movements on the Left were integrating to participate in the 1980s return to democracy, a Maoist splinter group called the Shining Path staged its first public acts of violence in the name of communist revolution. This paper uncovers how the violence of the Shining Path war contributed to the undermining and disintegration of the legal Left, specifically by looking at the final moment of institutional rupture within the leftist electoral front of Izquierda Unida (United Left-IU) at their 1989 national congress in Huampani. In late 1980, a wide spectrum of leftist parties founded IU after the abysmal performance of a fractured left in the earlier 1980 presidential elections. The united front performed strongly in subsequent municipal and national elections, yet only belatedly organized its first national congress a decade after its formation. It was both the first and last congress of IU, held at a point of internal crisis for the front, external crisis for the international left in general (during the fall of the so called “real” socialist states in eastern Europe) and general national chaos under the failing Garcia administration. After heated, unresolved debates over the war at the 1989 congress, the front split in two, with both separate blocs failing miserably in the 1990 elections. Analyzing this moment of rupture reveals the grave importance of the political violence on the disintegration of the Left. Using a combination of internal IU documents, press coverage at the time, and oral histories from participants, this paper shows how the Shining Path’s “revolutionary” violence provoked an institutional crisis within the legal Left, while simultaneously closing political space to hinder legal Left attempts at social change via electoral and democratic pathways.