Today, there are nearly 400 promotion centers in Peru. The institutional weight and national presence of these centers has few parallels in Latin America. Only in Chile, Bolivia and Brazil do grassroots supper organization play such a prominent role.
Centers may vary over a wide range of organization and permanency. Some are small, ephemeral entities which an individual or group put together for a specific program and ends when financing runs out. Other are permanent institutions with long-term goals and the means of generating resources. Centers may also have institutional links to ecclesiastic entities, international private development agencies or independent, seeking their own funding.
Activities can span from pure academic research centers to installation of community infrastructure. Grassroots support organizations concentrate on providing programs and services in working class neighborhoods (barriadas), rural communities or specific sectors of the urban population (women, street venders, cottage industries, district and provincial municipal governments). GSOs usually work within limited geographic territory -- a shantytown, a campesino community or a valley -- identifying underprivileged groups and helping to elaborate survival strategies. Some GSOs have centered their work on aiding broader organizations (union federations, campesino organizations and the like, known in Peru as gremios) to strengthen their positions before a State with strong authoritarian traits. Others centers concentrate on specific activities, like human rights, communication, education or health. Several of the larger centers combine all these aspects in their programs.
In general, GSOs try to reach low-income, underprivileged groups with varying degrees of organization. However, these target groups do not represent the "poorest of the poor" in Peru. They have acquired resources and organization for improving their own conditions. The GSOs try to help them in using these advantages better. These target groups are often called beneficiaries, an unfortunate term. They make contributions in time and effort which surpass the monetary investment of donor agencies and centers. In this report, we will refer to them as local partners.
The strongest GSOs can influence regional or national politics through dialogue with government officials, institutions and local constituencies. The Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado (CIPCA) in Piura and the Centro de Estudios Rurales Andinos Bartolomé de las Casas in Cusco are examples of regional influence. DESCO-Centro de Estudios y Promoción del Desarrollo, the Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Participacion (CEDEP), the Centro de Investigación, Educacion y Desarrollo (CIED), the Centro de Información y Desarrollo Integral de Autogestión (CIDIAG) and the Fundación para el Desarrollo Nacional (FDN) are examples of Lima-based institutions that have acquired a national weight and influence. (Carroll and others 1989)
Financing for GSO activities comes from international sources, mainly European and North American donor agencies. Most funding is for one to three years. A few sources provide long-term funding. There are about 50 international donating agencies which provide between $6-8 million a year in funding for 1984 (Padron 1988, 30). By 1987, this total rose to $24.4 million, according to the Instituto de Planificación Nacional. This represented 15 percent of international technical cooperation to Peru that year. (Boutrou 1989, 14)
The growth of GSOs into a national institutional force with its own interests and goals has been due to Peru's peculiar development over the past three decades. In 1968, the armed forces under General Juan Velasco Alvarado overthrew the government of President Fernando Belaúnde. For the next 12 years, military rule shaped the early experience of GSOs, their staff and constituencies. The Velasco regime broke many stereotypes about Latin American military regimes. It carried out a series of major reforms, the most important being a far-reaching agrarian reform. In 1975, the military regime, then, under General Francisco Morales Bermúdez began to pull back from the regime's most radical positions. It also dismantled or reduced public entities aimed at social and economic reform. After a massive protest strike in July, 1977, protesting prices increases and other economic measures, the military began a political process to hand over power to a civilian government.
There were probably no more than 30-40 centers before 1977 (Padrón 1988, 46). Three years later, a group of centers founded the Asociación Nacional de Centros (ANC) as a coordinating body.
There were several factors which influenced the growth of GSOs during this initial period. First, the Catholic Church hierarchy began acting on the doctrinal innovations set down in the Vatican Council II in 1962-5 and the Medellín (Colombia) conference in 1968 to bring church rites and practices into step with the times. This also meant that the Church was no longer a secure pillar of the status quo. In fact, the Catholic Church played a leading role in setting up a tradition of independent development programs even in the 1950s (Padron 1988, 46). Theology of Liberation and the teachings of Paolo Freire increased popular education efforts. Second, the national universities set up "social projection" programs to give practical application of their learning experience. These contacts gradually changed from efforts to make the university present in the community to more permanent goal of promotion. As the universities lost public funding, many of groups or individuals found ways of continuing their work. Third, Cooperación Popular under the Belaúnde government and the Sistema Nacional de la Movilización Social (SINAMOS) under Velasco gave practical experience with development work. The Velasco regime's reforms created or coalesced new grassroots organizations, like neighborhood development groups, peasant communities, cooperatives, agrarian leagues and the labor community (a profit-sharing and co-management scheme for industry, mining and other companies). These three factors gave centers a generational characteristic, as well as a common political, ideological and social experience.(Carroll and others, 1990) They also marked the general left wing character to GSOs and centers. This sentiment would eventually mature into a tacit or explicit support for Izquierda Unida (IU), the left wing coalition founded in September, 1980.
The GSOs and other centers have, in turn, influenced the formation of the nationalist Marxist left. Many of their staff played a key role in overcoming the left's initial reticence to accept small-scale development programs as more than reformist patches to the capitalist system. They led the way to providing concrete, pragmatic solutions to local problems, generating more respect for grassroots organizations and providing employment to left wing militants.
During this same period, these generation of politically and socially motivated groups and individuals met up with another social phenomenon. During the 1960s and 1970s, grassroots organizations of many kinds bloomed in Peru. Although some organizations, like campesino communities, had existed for centuries, others emerged in the new marginal urban areas, many as concrete responses to the needs of the inhabitants. In the late 1970s, the category of barriada -- low-income neighborhood starting as a land seizure by homeless squatters, frequently migrants -- came to take its place alongside more traditional social groups, like peasants, students and workers. For instance, soup kitchens, mothers' clubs and street vendor guilds did not exist before 1975. It was an opportunity that opened virgin ground for urban and rural development work. Grassroots organizations and their grew faster and broader than the GSOs' capacity to meet them (Velarde 1988, 194).
GSOs became a new way of linking up political and methodological preoccupations with local communities, organizations and the popular movement in Peru. Political activists came out of their clandestine hidings and took public roles in the centers, linking up with the progressive wing of the Catholic Church, the new superior levels of organization, political parties or the emerging social groups. It would eventually lead to an effort to rethink the country and its future.
In 1980, Peru returned to civilian rule. President Fernando Belaúnde and Acción Popular (AP), with junior partner the Partido Popular Cristiano (PPC), shifted government policy towards a more market-oriented, liberal economic policy. The government, however, still maintained a populist approach on many issues. Three major social and political changes marked this period. First, subversive violence began in Ayacucho, disconcerting the Belaúnde administration. Second, in 1982, agrarian federations staged a national protest strike against the Belaúnde administration's policies on land ownership, foodstuff pricing and agricultural credit for the first time in Peru's history. In 1983, the Latin American debt crisis rocked Peru, throwing the government's economic policy into inconsistency. These three factors led to a dramatic decline in economic growth and living standards. Within this context, GSOs were likely to be sucked into increasingly contentious situations, specially given the implicit and explicit commitments in their programs.
The first attack against a GSO took place in Puno. In August, 1981, a group of 40 masked men attacked the headquarters of the Instituto de Educación Rural (IER) Palermo located at an experimental farm outside the town of Juli. After terrorizing five women religious and a priest present, the group broke windows, threw a homemade bomb into the residence, and ransacked the Institute's offices. A month later, a bomb exploded at the Juli Prelature headquarters and home of the Maryknoll prelate Albert Koenigsknecht. Near the door of the Prelature offices, police found a letter threatening to assassinate all missionary personnel of the Prelature, if they didn't abandon their work and leave the area immediately. Campesino communities and organizations from throughout the area again expressed their outrage through communiques and radio announcements.
The local church leaders had a hard time convincing outsiders that the attacks came from a group called Sendero Luminoso. Apparently, Sendero had enlisted the support of a local Maoist splinter group in setting up its first cells. However, an alternative explanation was that local power groups, deeply hostile to the progressive Puno church, were behind some of the harassing action. Sur-Andino bishops said that these rural power elite frequently used the excuse of subversive violence to take reprisals against reform-oriented groups in the region. Church authorities now lean towards the Sendero option. Either way, proactive development work had stirred up a violent response (Judd 1987, 167-9).
However, during the Belaúnde period, most subversive activity was concentrated in Ayacucho, Huancavelica and Apurímac departments, a region of secular poverty and relative isolation.
In mid-1982, the agricultural extension center of Allpachaka, run by the University of Huamanga, suffered an attack by Sendero. The incident provoked the first retreat of GSOs from the most distant part of the Ayacucho countryside. (See Section Three: Case Studies for a more detailed account of this incident).
In January, 1983, President Belaúnde authorized the armed forces to take over control of Ayacucho. This escalation in the counterinsurgency effort introduced a semi-autonomous element into the complex constellation of forces vying for the upper hand in the Central Sierra conflict zone. However, the Belaúnde administration never gave the armed forces a clear mandate to carry out its duties, a precise draft of counterinsurgency policy or the resources to attain its objectives.
This period also opened up a common experience among centers operating in areas of conflict: security forces frequently see them and their staff as outsiders, political provocateurs and, worst, likely ringleaders of subversive activities.
In May, 1983, hooded army troops broke into the house of Jaime Urrutia, a university professor and the director of the Instituto de Estudios Rurales José Maria Arguedas in Ayacucho, and detained him for 14 days. They held him in the military garrison (Los Cabitos) and later transferred him to the investigative police station. The military worked under the assumption that the Senderista insurrection was too well done to be the inspiration of the local population. There had to be foreign involvement. Urrutia had raised suspicions because foreigners, mainly journalists, frequently visited his house at odd hours. The military tortured him as part of their interrogation. Because of the immediate response of foreign journalists, the University of Huamanga and human rights organizations in Lima, security forces released Urrutia with no further explanation for the detention.
A similar incident took place in Andahuaylas province, Apurímac. The Centro de Investigación y Capacitación Campesina (CICCA) had four employees detained and tortured for three days. The military and police in the zone were convinced that CICCA was aiding and abetting Sendero in the zone, especially through its legal aid and training activities with campesinos. After the release of the workers, CICCA withdrew from the province after the incident.
In June and July, 1983, Belaunde accused "scientific or humanitarian institutions with pompous names" of serving as conduits for funds to Sendero and other subversive groups. They were also responsible for spreading foreign ideologies. (DESCO 1989, 401-3) Several research centers had their books examined by the fiscal police. The government never produced proof to back up these accusations. The Ministry of Interior also frequently asked GSO directors to clarify their activities.
Towards the end of the Belaúnde term, a serious incident involving the Centro de Investigación y Promoción Amazónica (CIPA) took place in Lagunas, Yurimaguas (Loreto). In June, 1985, a Senderista cell started up guerrilla operations. The police wiped out the column quickly. Authorities accused three CIPA staff members of being the masterminds behind the guerrillas. The CIPA had recently relocated the work group from the Tambo river region in Junín, where they had felt pressured by increasing presence of Sendero and security forces. One CIPA staff member was Daniel Rodríguez, son of Army General Leonidas Rodríguez who had ordered in troops to crush a Lima police mutiny in February, 1974. The police held a special grudge against him. All three staffers were subjected to physical and psychological abuse and torture. CIPA mustered a campaign to save its workers from extended court proceedings. Finally, charges were dismissed. No charges were brought against the police officers who had committed abuses and torture.
Towards the end of the Belaúnde administration, Sendero began to spread its guerrilla activities outside of the Ayacucho region. Parts of Cerro de Pasco and Huanuco came under emergency military control.
Perhaps, the most important development for GSOs during the Belaunde period was the opening to new democratic institutions. Freely elected district and provincial municipal governments created new arenas for cooperation between emerging political forces and centers. In 1980 and more so in 1983, GSOs established agreements with local governments, mainly headed by Izquierda Unida mayors, to provide advice and programs for grassroots survival groups, like mothers' clubs, soup kitchens and street venders. GSO staff members were elected as councilmen and served as advisors to IU municipal governments.
In 1985, President Alan García and the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) won the general elections. The general political panorama lurched to the left. The Peruvian electorate gave 70 percent of their votes to APRA and the IU. Garcia made overtures to the Peruvian intelligentsia, receiving the tacit support of several centers and explicit cooperation from individual members. Public administration also attracted GSO professionals to help draft and put into action a new set of policies and programs.
García's aggressive, populist approach during his first three years posed serious problems for many centers because the president launched proposals that came right out of the GSOs' script. It threw many centers and Izquierda Unida itself off balance. Microregional development schemes, agrarian credit and programs for cheap inputs and farming equipment, temporary employment programs for communal works were among the ideas incorporated into the government repertoire. Other proposals, like public health, never got past the planning stage. In a sense, many GSOs were basing their small-scale development programs on a perennial deficiency of the Peruvian state, assuming responsibilities that, under normal conditions, corresponded to normal government activities. If the State regained viability (as seemed initially possible in 1986-87), then the GSOs would be superfluous.
However, the García administration suffered from a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality. While García and his closest collaborators fell within the political spectrum shared by GSOs, APRA's party and local leadership was more conservative, leading to continued brushes with centers. APRA wanted the undisputed allegiance of grassroots organizations. Their corporativist intentions and appetites required a realignment of grassroots organizations with the State in its local manifestation, condensed in the role of the party. Local authorities and party officials frequently conditioned assistance programs on political subservience. In May, 1986, Aprista Deputy Rómulo León Alegría accused 75 research and promotion centers of being fronts for instigating armed struggle, though he directed most attacks against the Partido Unificado Mariateguista (PUM), in IU's radical wing. (DESCO 1989, 460-1) A congressional investigation started, but never drafted findings. These accusations came at a highly troubled period in Puno when peasants, with the backing of the Sur-Andino Catholic Church, IU parties and several centers, were seizing land from inefficient agrarian cooperatives.
In 1988, the ANC counted 360 centers in the country, of which 103 were members of the organization. There were six regional assemblies, but few of them met regularly. (ANC 1988, 4)
In September, 1988, the García administration was no longer able to sustain its risky economic policy of indiscriminate subsidy, patronage and deficit spending. A new economic policy led to a recession and hyperinflation. Inflation went from 63 percent in 1986 and 114 percent in 1987 to 1,722 percent in 1988 and 2,775 percent in 1989. This introduced huge price distortions into the economy, especially in the exchange between urban and rural producers and consumers.
Regional protest strikes mainly organized by farmers and peasants showed an increased disconformity in the countryside. Agrarian strikes lasting up to a month shook Puno, Cusco, Pucallpa, Huaraz and San Martin. GSOs often found themselves involved in their protests, as advisors to peasant federations, as intermediaries to the government and as communication channels since several centers had radio programs. The government frequently regarded the most outspoken, action-oriented centers as instigators of the conflicts.
In February, 1989, police raided the offices of the Instituto de Investigación y Apoyo al Desarrollo de Ucayalí (IIADO), causing damages. The striking agrarian federation and Lima politicians had used its offices as a strike headquarters. The center overstepped its commitment to peasants because it lost control of its intervention in the strike and did not draw a clear line between support and activism, development experts say.
Among other problems, the State had minimal funds for investment. In some areas, like Cusco, the centers probably handled more funds than the government.(Haudry 1990, 253) The political instability of the Aprista government added another perturbing factor for GSOs trying to work in coordination with the State. Constant changes in functionaries, declining resources, policy voids, and political rivalries made the government close to inert. There were also widespread signs of corruption from the top to the bottom of the government. By raising awareness and strengthening grassroots organizations, the GSOs seemed to be rallying the opposition against the government and making them more critical. GSOs programs were also a point of comparison with the deficiencies of the state programs (Carroll and others 1989).
The State pulled back on its presence because it practically had no operating or investment funds, as well as the threat from subversive violence. Bilateral and multinational programs beat a retreat from many areas. For instance, in the Pucallpa area of the Amazon jungle, five bilateral programs suspended or withdrew their programs in 1989. This retreat meant that Peruvian GSOs were left alone to face the threat.
The economic upheaval also kicked off a major escalation of political violence. It began to force GSOs and other development programs to withdraw from the countryside. Sendero's presence bore down on the spine of the Andes, from the northern pivot of Huamachuco-Cajabamba (La Libertad and Cajamarca departments) to the highland provinces of Cusco. In Puno, Sendero already had played off a conflict between peasants and cooperatives. (See Section Three for a more detailed account of Puno) Sendero also moved into the Amazon region, mainly in the Upper Huallaga valley. It linked up with the social dynamics set off by the cocaine drug trade. Another subversive group, the Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru, also set up its guerrilla actions.
Perhaps, the most striking retreat of state authority, security forces and centers took place in Junín in early 1989. The regional centers thought there was no need to worry. They argued that the zone was different from the subsistence campesinos of the Ayacucho emergency zone. It was a "point economy." They cited the market-wise campesinos as examples of the healthy confluence of Indian, mestizo and Creole racial currents. Campesinos had a long history of cultural resistance and struggle to recover their land, requiring strong communal and intra-communal organization. The associative enterprises of the zone were prosperous, frequently cited as examples of how the military's agrarian reform had succeeded if the right conditions were present. (Manrique 1989, Sánchez 1989)
Because Junín is located next to Huancavelica and Ayacucho, Sendero had a presence in the zone, but most locals explained this as a spillover from the emergency zone and the need to pass through the zone to move farther north. Many staff members thought that Sendero would not attack their projects and programs because they were on the "right side," working to improve living conditions and crop yields of the peasants.
There were already signs that Sendero was escalating its presence. Centers also began receiving warnings and threats to stay out of specific areas of the highlands. In June, 1988, Sendero killed two staff members of a subcontractor of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID). One was an American citizen. (Caretas, June 20, 1988). The centers rationalized this attack because of the U.S. association and specific practices of the work team. In August, 1988, Sendero raided and destroyed a program at Jarpa, in the highlands above Huancayo, run by Jesuits priests. The centers shrugged off the incident because the Jarpa program was located in a strategical point of the high plateau. Another center lost a vehicle because Sendero stole it to use it as a carbomb. An additional complication was that most of the Junín centers had split off from a larger center, leaving a latent pool of distrust among the centers, an unwillingness to share information and resistance to ceding terrain to rival centers.
In late November, 1988, Sendero's escalation in activities and tactics forced the government to place the zone under state of emergency and send in army troops. Even that did not press centers into action. However, when Sendero abducted and assassinated Manuel Soto of the Centro de Investigación Campesina y Educación Popular (CICEP) and Victor Lozano, a campesino leader of Canicapo, in January, 1989, the perception changed immediately. Soto was on the ANC board. Soto and the local campesino federation had been spearheading a political proposal to redistribute the land monopolized by associative enterprises of the zone. The restructuring initiative had the backing of PUM, trying to apply a strategy that had proved successful in Puno. By mid-year, of the fourteen centers in the zone, four remained.
A Lima research center leveled the following criticism against Junín GSOs during this period: "The GSOs that play an important role of popular support and promotion showed discoordination, inter-institutional jealousy and lack of new, clear perspectives in their work in the emergency or political violence zones, where they necessarily should change their roles of behavior and action." (Democracia y Socialismo 1989, 24)
Sendero was not only attacking military and political targets. It was disputing control of the region with MRTA. There were several armed clashes between columns, as well as fights in the university. The confrontation was present in other areas (the Upper Huallaga and Lima).
Elsewhere, the alarm had sounded for other GSOs. In December, 1988, Sendero killed two foreign staff members and a Peruvian worker of the Centro Internacional de Cooperación para el Desarrollo Agrícola (CICDA), a French development promotion center which operates in Peru under the norms of international technical cooperation. The incident took place in Haquira, Apurímac department. In addition to the three CICDA workers plus two other civilians killed in the incident, another 50 people were killed in the zone within a month. These were lieutenant governors, campesino leaders and cattle thieves. Sendero slit their throats.
The Senderista column leaders spoke against the centers, as "lackeys of Yankee and social imperialism." The reason for the killings was that Sendero had entered into the Third Stage, which meant that outside assistance would be forced out of the countryside. CICDA had never received threats to leave the community or other warnings. The three staff members were not even offered the sham of a "people's trial." The Senderistas said that campesino organizations not aligned with SL would also be targets of reprisals. The language was not ideological and the leader tried to speak down to the campesino mentality.
A CICDA official says there were three main reasons for the attack against CICDA staffers. The institution was highly visible, but isolated in a zone that had strategic value for Sendero. Second, two of the field staff were French. Third, it associated itself with the proposal to organize rondas campesinas. This last point was the "straw which broke the camel's back." "It was an alternative which clashed directly with Sendero's own proposal for the zone."
CICDA decided to close down its operations in the southern Andes, including well-established programs in La Union and Condesuyo provinces (Arequipa), Chumbivilcas province (Cusco) and a new program in Espinar (Cusco), as well as Haquira. It transferred as many programs as possible to the local partners and other centers in the region. Its staff dropped from 40-50 to five, all based in Lima.
In response to this increased menace against multilateral, bilateral and grassroots development efforts in the conflict zones, the García administration failed to show even the minimum of courtesy, much less the wish to draft guidelines or strategies. It signaled foreign missions and their governments that it did not care about the risk of foreign field staffs or the viability of development programs.
In May, 1989, Sendero attacked the installations of Instituto de Educación Rural Waqrani, a Catholic Church-run center in Puno (See Section Three: Case Studies for a more detailed account). Two months later, another Senderista column attacked and looted the installations of the Instituto de Desarrollo del Medio Ambiente (IDMA) in Ambo, Huanuco, burning its tractors and installations and left a message that heavy machinery could not be used in the future. Within two months, the IDMA redrafted its program, pulling back its programs from the high reaches of the mountains, housing its staff in a nearby town but continued its presence in the zone.
In Lima and other major cities, centers working with urban programs found themselves confronted with the same issue. In mid-1989, El Diario published a series of articles attacking centers, staff members and local partners by name.
During late 1989 and early 1990, the election campaigns for municipal, regional, legislative and presidential races led most GSOs to cut back their activities and keep a low profile. In June, 1990, however, the Centro de Desarrollo y Participacion (CEDEP) had two staff members, a consultant and a local livestock owner killed in Puno. They had gone to Melgar province to purchase alpaca herds for their program in Ancash department. The incident seems to be a case of "the wrong place at the wrong time," crossing with a Senderista column near the town of Ñuñoa. CEDEP does not have any operations in Puno so it is unlikely that Sendero would have targeted the CEDEP staff members.
For three years running (1987, 1988 and 1989), Peru had the privilege of topping the list of countries where forced disappearances have been denounced internationally. In 1990, 300 people disappeared. In March, 1990, human rights organizations were attacked by right wing paramilitary squads. Amnesty International and the Andean Commission of Jurists were both hit. The International Red Cross, which provides relief assistance in emergency zones, for forced migrants due to internal conflicts and in prisons, was also bombed. The International Red Cross has been refused permission to work in Ayacucho on several occasions.
These trends shook Peruvian centers to their core. Efforts to join forces had been sporadic. The ANC grew substantially, in part as a mediator with the government to defuse misunderstandings and disputes over the role of GSOs. In August, 1989, a group of 21 organizations plus the ANC set up InterCentros to pool their resources and talents in dealing with specific themes, among them, political violence. One of the ANC's handicaps is that it is hard for it to draft a shared policy to confront the crisis because of its democratic nature. Each center, no matters its size, importance, type of programs, locations and political leanings, has one vote and an equal say in the running of the ANC. Its strength is in its representativity of a broad cross-section of centers. InterCentros is based on the stature of its associates, among the elite of the independent research centers, university centers and grassroots support organizations. Its objective is to make an impact on state policy.
GSO leaders say that there were increasing reports in 1989 that donor agencies began to cut back or stop their support of Peruvian GSOs due to the political upheaval and the difficulty in monitoring programs.
By the end of the García period, the political climate had changed dramatically. Novelist Mario Vargas Llosa emerged as the right-center presidential candidate. An alliance forged between his Libertad Movement, AP and PPC seemed sure to win in general elections. Vargas Llosa promised a "revolution of modernization" based on market-oriented economic policies, a drastic cutback of bureaucracy and state intervention in the economy and a more receptive approach to foreign investment and the international financial community.
However, the aggressive -- and, at times, arrogant -- campaign by Vargas Llosa and his allies led to a voter backlash, combined with a sanction of all political parties. APRA had shrunk to its die-hard supporters, still about 20 percent of the electorate. IU had divided into two blocks, a radical faction with the old name and a more moderate alliance rallied around the presidential candidacy of Alfonso Barrantes (Movimiento de Izquierda Socialista). This split had a impact on promotion centers because GSOs had worked with an IU mystique. The beneficiary of this political shift was a wildcard presidential candidate, Alberto Fujimori and his Cambio 90 movement. In a presidential runoff with Vargas Llosa in early June, Fujimori won.
This political surprise was the most visible sign of a breakdown of predictable formulas for Peru. The existence of five regional governments (as of January, 1990) and the setting up of seven more following April, 1990 regional elections opened possibilities for new types of cooperative between centers and local governments, as well as a potential for administrative chaos and bankrupt services.
We should keep in mind several trends among GSOs over the past two decades. Generally, the centers' staff supports the left, but not a particular party. Because excessive party lines could create internal conflicts, centers created an ethos in which the common cause was the left and Izquierda Unida, but not a party. However, this ethos was hurt by the buildup to the 1990 general elections campaign and the temptation to use resources to favor one side or another in the power struggle within IU. The split between IU and Izquierda Socialista left centers in the lurch because they found the political split latent within them.
However, it should also be noted that the rise in political violence has erased much of the petty rivalries among centers and their staffs. The external threat from Sendero Luminoso has made it possible for coordination, pooling of information and joint analysis which would have been inconceivable 10 years ago.
The apparent left wing monopoly of GSOs and other centers was not as complete as sometimes appeared. Grassroots organizations did not care about the ideological or program differences between the two left wing groups and sought another political option, voting for Alberto Fujimori and Cambio 90. Aside from programs backed by Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical churches, there was a small, growing group of centers associated with the center-right. The Instituto Libertad y Democracia, Habitat Peru Siglo XXI, Fundación Ulloa, Acción Comunitaria del Peru and ADIM came into existence in the 1980s. They are generally linked to American financing, like Agency for International Development, PACT, Acción-AITEC and the Inter-American Foundation (Carroll and others, 1990). This trend emerged out of the recognition that the right-center needed to recapture an intellectual space which had been a virtual monopoly of the left wing intelligentsia. The effort was a success. Where the right-center groups have lagged is working with grassroots organizations. During the runoff election between Vargas Llosa and Fujimori, FREDEMO's attempt to project a social program in marginal areas came off as lame and opportunistic. An exception is Violeta Correa, the wife of former president Fernando Belaúnde, who works with shantytown communal kitchens, continuing a program that began as an outgrowth of her role as First Lady. Another interesting ramification is that several of these centers have started working with Peruvian funding from Peruvian corporations, foundations and private donations, thus opening the prospect of reducing the dependency on foreign financing for some centers.
Perhaps more important than the political ramifications of the centers has been their evolution into institutions in their own right, independent of their local partners, donor agencies and parties. The original proposals for a radical change in Peruvian society (with evident political connotations and implicit party options) have given way to positions more knowledgeable of the complexities of government and program execution. This is a sign of maturity, but also holds the risk of missing the real objectives of their programs. Self-perpetuation of the institutions may take precedent over effective development of grassroots organizations.
During the transition period leading up to the handover of power to Fujimori, the staff of many centers contributed to rounding out Fujimori's policies and programs. For the first time, perhaps, the government-elect saw that centers had experience, proposals and thinking to be used. Because Fujimori designated technology as one of his campaign planks, there is a natural opening for more collaboration, especially since centers with specialized programs have created networks and coordinating committees which may become active participants in the dialogue between government and sectorial interests (micro- and small businesses, farmers and peasants). In his first cabinet, Fujimori appointed four ministers (Guido Pennano in Industry, Carlos Amat y Leon in Agriculture, Fernando Sánchez Albavera in Energy and Mines and Gloria Helfer in Education) with ample experience working in centers. With the drastic economic adjustment program executed by the Fujimori administration, the government called on GSOs to aid in putting together a social emergency program to get relief assistance to the most impoverished sectors to guarantee their survival.
Centers have also paid innovative roles in modernizing thinking about development. They have played a significant role in devising, testing and reformulating new strategies in the countryside and in urban areas. For instance, the reassessing of Andean agricultural techniques have, in part, been due to centers' critique of modern agricultural processes in the Andes and a rescuing and revaluation of the campesinos' traditional methods. They have also inserted a series of new criteria, such as ecology, into rural development.
Another contribution that has not received attention is as a training ground for a new talent pool. In the past year, in which some foreign donor agencies have shifted their rural development emphasis from Peru to Ecuador and Bolivia where explicit political violence is not a variable, donor agencies have recruited experienced Peruvian staff to man and direct their programs. Peru has been a manpower resource for alternative rural and urban development in marginal areas.
Over this past decade, the centers have generally struggled to maintain their work in the conflict zones, as long as possible. They have found the means of carrying on with their work. Yet this resistance has frequently meant stubbornly digging in their heals and not carrying out an in-depth criticism of their work and roles.
The response of grassroots support organizations has been varied. Some of the more introverted GSOs have withdrawn into shock and confusion. The main reaction has been to take precautionary measures and shift into a defensive position to weather out the storm. This fits more neatly into the general situation of uncertainty and lack of horizons. A third group of centers takes a more aggressive stand. It says that centers and the rest of civilian society cannot remain passive in this dispute. The centers have to convince their local partners that their lives, communities, accomplishments and projects are at stake, and they have to launch into more affirmative action.
Each of these approaches has its handicaps and faults, though it may be an honest appraisal of the center's resources, commitment and circumstances. The cautious middle ground may be more apt to question their framework for rural development and the role of local partners. This may be full of hesitation and vacillation. The more aggressive line is more prepared to stand its ground, based on political commitment, but less prone to ask questions about its methods.
As pointed out by Haudry (1990, 254-272), grassroots support organizations are not really dealing in "development." Development in its broadest sense requires long-term government policy stability, public investment and other factors. GSOs and even most government programs are small-scale investment programs. They are laboratories or pilot projects to open new horizons for grassroots development. These experiments are free for any institution, public or private, Peruvian or foreign, to draw on for more ambitious endeavors. For that reason, it is extremely important for GSOs to leave footprints where they have tread. The avalanche of violence threatens to whip out their marks across wide expanses of Peru.
The issues of development in Peru are not a technological-productive knot. Rather, they are political and social. The question is how to make vast sectors of the population active participants in their destiny. The spiral of violence set off by Sendero Luminoso and accelerated by the blind response of Peruvian security forces and other forces has realigned the country. A veteran advisor calls it an "axis of war." Until GSOs and Peruvian society as a whole understand that this axis of war requires a critical reassessment of development programs, democracy, popular participation and government representation , the efforts to alleviate the vast stocks of poverty and marginalization will yield meager fruit.