Since the early 1980s, Sendero and observers have eyed the department of Puno, on the southern plateau near Lake Titicaca, as the likely scene of a "second Ayacucho." The region is poor, rural, backward and economically depressed. Cyclical draughts and flooding measurable over decades and centuries have knocked the steam out of economic improvement. Exploitation on the basis of race, culture and class was part of the land-owning system. The Agrarian Reform concentrated land into even fewer holders than under the hacienda system. Both mining and jungle colonization, two alternatives for regional development, failed to materialize viable options, being sources of exploitation. The potential for polarization was high. (IDL 1989d)
In Puno, the presence of more than 100 development and assistance projects, including non-government agencies, bilateral and multilateral projects, and state programs made a special impact. This funding reached everyone from the upper classes down to the campesino community. Far more resources, however, were funneled into the inefficient cooperatives than land-poor peasants. Some of these programs stemmed from relief work, both state and private, due to natural disasters and tainted the relationships between many programs and their recipients. In addition, the increased awareness that subversive violence was spreading through the Andes and the consequences of the Latin American debt crisis increased the presence of rural and urban development programs in the zone.
To better understand the unique dynamics of Puno and its lessons in survival under duress, we have to take a look at the presence of the Catholic Church. The Sur-Andino Catholic Church has a regional focus, encompassing the dioceses of Juli (Aymara-speaking zone around Lake Titicaca), Puno, Ayaviri and Secuani (Cusco). Originally, the dioceses of Cusco and Chuquibambilla (Abancay) belonged to the regional coordination, but they separated from the coordinating body for practical and ecclesiastic reasons.
Theology of Liberation and the group of clergy and lay people rallied around Father Gustavo Gutierrez strongly influenced the regional church. An openness to new theological, pastoral and political approaches stemmed in part from the presence of foreign clergy and Peruvian clergy trained abroad. The Sur-Andino church became a regional laboratory for the social ministry of Peru's progressive church.
The church hierarchy's endorsement of a preferential option for the poor led to a pro-campesino approach and had several effects on political and rural development in the region. It meant that one of the traditional pillars of the Peruvian status quo swung its support around to grassroots organizations, policies and outlooks. Bishops and prelates, with all the trappings of authority, shifted the balance of power in the countryside. This strategy threw the Church, its associated groups -- the campesino federation and political allies -- into direct conflict with entrenched regional interests (the agrarian cooperatives, trading companies -- with interests in contraband and even narcotrafficking -- and power cliques) and national forces (the Lima government, the ruling party and security forces).
However, this change and its implementation did not come by ecclesiastical edict. Over two decades, the Sur-Andino Church showed a capacity for criticism and analysis, both of its own performance and other social actors, with a strong emphasis on moral, ethical and cultural aspects. These princes of the Church and their lay workers had more moral authority than any civilian government in the zone. It created a space where foreign and Peruvian participants, lay and clergy, political and non-political outlooks, pastoral and temporal approaches could interact. This "thinking room" included permanent institutions and periodic meetings. This approach also required short-, medium and long-term planning, with regular coordination and strategic planning. It has given the region a shared language, a code to communicate among itself. The Church's method of working affected its pastoral mission and its social action programs, which were, for all purposes, indistinguishable from non-Church GSOs in the region. The approach also touched the latter because they learned from the Church's experience and interaction.
Another outgrowth of this strategy was a willingness to incorporate a cultural dimension into reflection and praxis. The presence of three (or more) cultures -- Aymara, Quechua and Creole-Spanish, plus foreigners from North America and Europe -- coexisting within the same region made participant groups examine their participation for biases and prejudices. The Sur-Andino Church also tried to incorporate peasants into the church structure as baptizers, catechists and pastoral animators. The Church took this step to fill the shortage of clergy to do all the church rites, but it also stemmed from a stated objective to incorporating the peasants as equal participants in dialogue. It had the secondary effect of developing generations of local leaders. This becomes evident when examining the lists of collaborators with centers, peasant federation leaders and elected authorities (municipal and regional).
The pastoral strategy gave the Sur-Andino Church vitality, commitment and resilience in the face of adverse situations. During the 1983-86 string of natural disasters (drought and flooding), it critically examined relief work. By using food and other donations to set up communal stores and seedbanks, it strengthened local organizations, rather than creating a dependence on handouts and charity. When Puno seemed to be a powder-keg in 1986, its bishops and prelates intervened directly with President García to convince him that a restructuring of land distribution in Puno was a prerequisite for pacifying the area. A conference, called "Puno Wants Peace" in August, 1986, focused national attention on the region when the threat of a militarization of the region, rising para-military activity against the Church and centers and the land issue were close to pushing Puno over the brink (mid-1986).
We have described at length the Sur-Andino Church's role because it differentiates Puno from Ayacucho, both as a religious manifestation and as a response to the political and social conditions of the region. The Ayacucho dioceses was conservative, traditionalist in its pastoral and liturgical practices, had few social action programs (pointedly in the charity mode) and was distant from the peasant majority of the region. There were individual exceptions to the Ayacucho Church's conduct. After 1988, a Jesuit group began a more sensitive ministry in the region.
Another issue that distinguished Ayacucho from Puno is land. Under the Agrarian Reform affecting nearly 2 million hectares in Puno, 53 cooperatives received more than 90% of the land while campesino communities got 2.5% and individual holders 7.5%. Despite holding most of the arable land, the cooperatives were inefficient and corrupt. By 1983, campesino federations were demanding a restructuring of the cooperatives to give land-hungry peasants another chance at productive endeavors. (Renique 1987 and Lopes 1988)
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In late 1985, the issue came to a head. The first land seizures occurred on November 4. The communities of Macari and Santa Rosa took 10,500 hectares from the ERPS Kunaruna in the province of Melgar. During the next four years, other campesino communities and smallholders seized, perhaps, as much as 400,000 hectares. The García administration pushed forward a restructuring of land held by the cooperatives. It claimed that it had handed over more than 800,000 hectares to peasants, but the campesino federation countered that much of the land was given to the associative enterprises under another guise.
During the hottest period of seizures, 1986-1989, only one person, a campesino, was killed in confrontations with police, army or armed cooperative employees. Considering the scope and stakes of the movement, this is an amazing accomplishment and an indication that Sendero failed to make inroads in the Puno peasant movement. The land issue will continue to be conflict-prone for years to come.
Puno is far removed from Sendero's traditional stomping ground in the central Sierra. Due to its strategic value within Sendero's Andean scheme, the party has maintained presence in the zone since the mid-1970s. The Puno region is culturally distinct from the Andes on the other side of La Raya pass on the frontier with Cusco. Sendero was an outsider and an intruder on local politics. However, Puno offered several advantages for Sendero. It came as close as possible in conforming to Sendero's analysis of a comprador-bureaucratic alliance in the State (PCP 1988, II, 4-5). The partnership between cooperative managements, Arequipa wool interests and the regional state bureaucracy, especially the Agrarian Bank and the Ministry of Agriculture, reaped the benefits from the wool and livestock business while cooperative members and campesinos got the short end of the stick. The countryside is relatively empty, with a few urban centers of size and campesinos communities scattered in disperse areas, usually on the worst land. It had strategic value due to its proximity to Bolivia, Cusco and Arequipa.
In 1981, Sendero's first actions included the attack on the IER Palermo, but the emphasis was on enacting crude justice against local powers and cattle thieves. It started working the Puno university, the technological and teachers' colleges.
By 1986, SL moved into the region in a big offensive, mobilizing two or three columns with up to 50 armed combatants and calling on another 200 activists as advance men, logistical support and intelligence gatherers. The guerrilla column's main field of operation was Azángaro province and, later, Melgar. Most (60%) associate enterprises were concentrated in those two provinces. It haunted the badlands of the province, living in abandoned mine shafts or shepherds' huts. The columns frequently slipped into the Cusco highlands, Arequipa or Bolivia.(IPA 1990, 281).
In 1986, Sendero tried to preempt the land issue by beginning a series of "armed expropriations," forcing campesinos to accompany them in their raids and looting. During the period of February, 1986 and April, 1987, more than 100 people died in the battles and skirmishes, including police, SL activists, cooperative workers and staff, and campesinos. In Asangaro, Sendero managed to eliminate the associative enterprises even before the government land redistribution came. It blew up most rolling stock and stole much of the herds, distributing them among the poor campesinos.
In other words, there were simultaneously three proposals for land restructuring in Puno: Sendero's at the point of a gun, the Aprista government's with the endorsement of the cooperatives and, finally, the one backed by the Sur-Andino Church, the campesino federation and Izquierda Unida.
Sendero's aim was to provoke a militarization of the department, forcing the government to send in the armed forces and a polarization of regional politics. This would cut out the middle ground where it was numerically and conceptually at a disadvantage.
Although Sendero suffered several defeats in the region between 1987 and 1990, it recovered from these losses and kept the pressure on the Sur-Andino Church, the campesino federation and the political parties, as well as the government and the cooperatives. This was a sign of the strategic importance of the region for Sendero's plans.
Founded in 1964 as part of the new social doctrine of the post-Vatican II Church, the Instituto de Educación Rural Waqrani was a part of the Prelature of Ayaviri's pastoral plan. Its headquarters, located 11 kilometers outside Ayaviri, has 962 hectares of land, used for agricultural experimentation and demonstration. It had living quarters for staff and workers, administrative offices, classrooms, a library, a dormitory for visiting campesinos. In the early days, there were workshops for carpentry, mechanics and training programs. However, by concentrating its activities on young campesinos it pulled out of their communities, training them in skills which would allow them to migrate more easily.
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From 1976 to 1979, Dominican brothers managed the IER, specializing in agricultural work, and closed the vocational workshops. They started a stable of Swiss Brown dairy cattle, which still sells milk three times a week, all year round, in Ayaviri. However, the IER staff in the mid-1980s considered this activity a poor example to show to the peasants because they would probably never be able to obtain the capital or cover the operating costs. The stable required permanent attention and was one of the reasons for keeping staff on the site.
In 1979, the IER Waqrani started to go out into the countryside, always talking about land as the central problem of Puno agriculture. It concentrated its work on three communities, Macari, Santa Rosa and Orurrillo, in the province of Melgar. It provided technical support for crops and livestock, better methods and advice on marketing, and collateral services. In addition, it helped analyze the political, economic and social situation, providing information that was not available to peasants. Parallel to technical assistance, the teams prepared community leaders and strengthened local organizations. Its educational and training programs took place at its headquarters or in the communities' campesino schools. The team differentiated its methods between axis communities and pilot communities. The former (Macarí) had its traditional Andean communal organization fully functional while the latter (Orurrillo) were mainly small landholders whose communal ties were weak or non-existent. Santa Rosa fell between the two.
This methodology became known as the "Waqrani strategy" in the region. It put emphasis on teamwork, six technicians, four social workers, six workers and five part-time staff, plus the director, administrator and secretary. The IER also maintained links with nine other research and development centers in Puno, participating in the drafting of a proposal for regional development.
However, in its work with local communities, it soon became clear that no improvement in farming or grazing methods could make these communities viable. The small size of their landholdings kept them from reaching reasonable levels of productivity and volume and population pressure would continue to peer down on living standards. The IER team began an analytical work which showed that, despite the communities' limitations, they still made better use of land and other resources than the associative enterprises which monopolized the best land. The only way to break out of this bottleneck was a redistribution of landholdings in the province and the department. (Vega 1985)
This analysis had enormous implications for the region because the associative enterprises were the most powerful entrenched interest in Puno. The land issue became part of the Sur-Andino Church's social ministry. Indeed, the land issue would not have received as much political attention if the Church had not supported it. The IER team also brought the land issue to the attention of the United Left (more precisely the Partido Unificado Mariateguista which is the only party with effective work in the Puno countryside). The land issue also put the IER staff into contact with peasant federations, other political forces and centers. The Federación Unificada de Campesinos del Melgar (FUCAM) asked for technical assistance in drafting a proposal to redistribute land held by associative enterprises. Later, the IER Waqrani team moved into an advisory functions with the Federación Departamental de Campesinos del Peru. This was a highly visible function, staffers being present at most assemblies and events over the next five years.
By mid-1988, the IER began an experimental program in three districts with eight communities, each with an average 100 families, in Melgar province. The idea was to pull up the productivity of the empresas comunales without assistencialism. Other zonal, district and provincial agrarian federations were to use these examples to fortify their own communal units. The team wanted to provide technology and management skills which would permit the empresas comunales to make productive use of the land which they had seized or received from the government. This effort was political a challenge of Sendero's guerrilla tactics in the zone since Sendero had already staked its claim on campesino demands.
However, this mutual commitment to land redistribution carried its problems. There was an implicit tension between the sponsoring institution (the Prelature), the IER staff and the other organizations concerned, despite sharing criteria, methods and goals. The Prelature (and the Sur-Andino Church) was willing to be an instigator of social change, but it could not exceed its own mission as an ecclesiastical organization. The other components headed in a more political direction, sometimes radicalizing their demands for extemporaneous reasons. The Waqrani director, Ricardo Vega, served on the pastoral council, an elected position, so there was direct input from the Prelature in designing this strategy.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the "Waqrani strategy" was its regional perspective and outreach. In many ways, it was the operative center and flagship of the Sur-Andino strategy. It had the political wiles and campesino trust to lead the way.
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This approach logically ran into the opposition of the cooperatives, the ruling party and security forces. During the heated period preceding and during the land seizure movement, police repeatedly stopped and searched Waqrani vehicles. IER staff had their tires deflated when parked in town. Vega and other staffers were arrested for short periods of time. The Puno anti-terrorist police chief called him in for a blunt conversation about his activities. The Puno cooperative association enterprises accused Waqrani, its staff and PUM of being the legal arm of Sendero.
The Waqrani team had to take precautionary measures both against security forces and cooperative workers and Sendero. These started with intelligence work to know where guerrilla columns and anti-terrorist police units were active. By early 1989, the Waqrani staff had removed some non-essential equipment, archives and other items from the experimental farm. The senior staff members no longer slept at the farm, but in town. In addition, local peasants or ronderos stood watchout around the experimental farm to alert the workers about strangers approaching.
On May 21, at 7:00 pm, a truck pulled into the Waqrani experimental station. Some 20 guerrillas jumped out and overpowered the workers. The column leaders asked for the three staff leaders by name, but they had already gone into the town. The guerrillas made quick work of the installations, destroying the teaching and administrative facilities and equipment like tractors, vehicles and generator. However, it did not touch the stables, livestock or living quarters of the workers. It was a blow at the brains and mobilizing forces of the Waqrani team.
The guerrillas had started on its rampage on May 13 in Muñani in the eastern reaches of Azangaro province. On May 19, it assassinated the mayor of Azángaro, Marcelino Pachirri. He had emerged as a new kind of popular leader, playing a prominent role in the agrarian strikes in September, 1988, and March, 1989. He also extended municipal services to the rural population. The Waqrani team and the Church-campesino intelligence network thought that this was the objective of the column's activities, and lowered its defenses. Sendero also staged a diversionary tactic by commandeering a truck and sending it through to Cusco, thus making it seem as if the column had made its escape out of the region.
After hitting IER Waqrani, the column struck at the Universidad Nacional del Altiplano's experimental station at San Juan de Chuquibambilla that same night. It blew up five tractors and other installations. It then went to Macarí, the flagship community of the Waqrani program. It killed the lieutenant governor and a justice of the peace. After rounding Lake Langui-Layo in Canas province (Cusco), it headed back. It hit the two high-altitude experimental stations at La Raya on May 25. The one run by San Marcos University's IVITA program suffered serious damage. The Universidad Nacional de Cusco farm got off more lightly. It then swung through the eastern part of Melgar provinces and ended its sortie in Azángaro.
The guerrilla unit covered 700 kilometers in 16 days, averaging an attack a day and killing seven people. A second unit kept up pressure in Azangaro during the period. "Sendero has shown a logistical support which we never suspected," said a veteran GSO director. It was active but dissimulated, doing the necessary groundwork before launching into superior phases.
During this whole period, security forces did not make a single attempt to intercept the column. Eight truckloads of army troops arrived in Azangaro and committed abuses against the local population. Another unit took up position in Ayaviri.
Sendero's message at Waqrani was that the Church should not stick its nose into politics, development and popular organization or lend itself to other forces, like PUM. Waqrani was attacked because of its educational and thinking capacity because it was able to generate responses to the changing conditions in Melgar province and Puno department.
The 25th anniversary of the IER Waqrani took place on June 15, 1989. Plans had originally aimed for a major celebration, renewing the commitment between campesino communities, the Prelature, the Sur-Andino church and regional groups. After the attack, there were serious doubts whether to hold it at all. The guerrilla column was still in the zone. It was clear that Sendero's mobility should not be underestimated. The prelature and the IER staff decided to scale the celebration back to a one-day affair so that visiting delegations would not have to travel at night.
The first rally point was the IER Waqrani station itself where visitors could inspect the damages. A photography exhibit showed a dramatic before-and-after account of the attack and its role in forging a "way of the campesino community." The ceremony was brief. Despite the music and the reunion of Sur-Andino allies, the atmosphere was tense. As the visitors climbed into their bicycles, motorbikes, cars, trucks and buses to return to Ayaviri, the most threatening moment for a Senderista attack, the veil of fear lifted. The ride back, shrouded in plumes of road dust from dozens of vehicles, was festive. Back in Ayaviri, the mobilized visitors met up with late comers and townspeople to march to the main square. On the footsteps of church, Monsignor Francisco d'Alteroche said mass, accompanied by his fellow bishops and clergy of the Sur-Andino. Most of the delegations headed home by 4:00 pm. The campesinos continued celebrating well into the night.
There is an obvious comparison with the university caravan after the Allpachaka attack and the sense of defeat in Ayacucho, there are other points worth mentioning. The Waqrani attack generated a political response in terms of masses. It was not just a problem of methodology or appearances. This played an important role in defeating the fear that Sendero tried to create to annul opposition. The attack generated a regional response that stretched from Cusco to Juli, with national components. From Lima came the Peruvian Episcopal Conference and its Church's progressive wing, Izquierda Unida legislators, human rights advocates, representatives of the ANC and journalists from print and electronic media. The anniversary celebration was a symbolic gesture that drew on the significance of the Church and the popular movement in the region. The slogan launched for the event was "IER Waqrani will rise from the ashes."
However, the climatic celebration marked a watershed in the grueling, tense period of 1985-90 for the Ayaviri prelature, its secular wing and the other organizations which revolved around them. In the following days, the Prelature told the IER staff that the program was to be discontinued. The church was fighting a multi-front battle, in Lima, in Puno, inside the church and among other interests for and against the option chosen by the Sur-Andino church. Pressure came from several directions. The Lima church, several religious orders committed to work in the Altiplano and factions within the prelature were initially successful in forcing a retreat. On the other hand, the progressive wing of the Church tried to keep open the perspective of an active, fully implemented campaign in the prelature.
A primary criticism against the IER Waqrani strategy was the leadership team close association to PUM. The adversary tactics favored by this party, like land seizures and agrarian strikes, seemed to go against the Church's interests. This connection was played up in the Lima media, especially by a nationally broadcast news program. Monseignor D'Alteroche felt that he was being pulled into PUM's game. However, as several priests pointed out, the Sur-Andino Church had first laid out its campesino option and sent out calls for allies. IU had been the only political force to respond.
A major concern for the Prelature and the rest of the Sur-Andino church was that, during the whole period of commotion, the local representatives of the Lima government and security forces seemed to have decided to remain inert before the Senderista threat. It looked as if the government was satisfied to let the Sur-Andino campesino-church block and the Sendero war machine fight over political control of the region and then move in to pick up the pieces. There is a sense of resignation in the forces squared off against Sendero, as if it is inevitable that the fight degenerates into a shootout between the military and the guerrillas. The land seizures, police repression, Senderista harassment and the deepening economic crisis bore down on the grassroots organizations, especially the peasants.
This uncertainty combined with the lack of a political horizon which would permit regional leaders to make rational decisions about the future. This atmosphere of pessimism and fatigue strongly affected the attitudes of the Prelature. At one point, priests were talking about the need to prepare for a "Church of the Catacombs," harking back to the persecution of early Christians in Roman times. There was a strong inclination to "play safe," pulling back on risky initiatives to consolidate the achievements of the previous three years. The campesino communities needed time and resources to put their new landholdings into production, strengthen their organizations and take stock of what options were available in the future.
There was also an ethical question which haunted the Church program sponsors. "I am not going to be responsible for the loss of seven lives," said Monseignor D'Alteroche. "Waqrani puts at risk the lives of the people with whom they work. We should not be multiplying the risks at this point." Keeping Waqrani in the field would provoke Sendero to strike against other institutions and the peasants themselves.
Monseignor D'Alteroche also mentioned that IER Waqrani was an expensive program to be maintained with high salaries paid to technicians, mainly of them outsiders to Ayaviri, with the constant need for administrative support, from keeping the cows fed to keeping the staff alive. The prelature could spent this same money on other pastoral missions, in the jungle with the miners, in urban centers to provide for education to children or better care for the elderly. These criticisms of the Waqrani formula came to the forefront after the attack. Other pastoral agents felt as if they have been left behind by the attention being given to the Waqrani team. The Monsignor said several times that Waqrani was not the flagship of the Ayaviri church, it was not its exclusive and most characteristic expression. "Why burn down the whole structure to preserve the barn?" he asked.
The counter-arguments of the Waqrani staff were that scaling back or stopping the church's presence in the countryside would mean huge losses. At a crucial juncture, the church was retreating. The campesinos needed to feel shelter and support. The relationship with the campesinos had been built up through face-to-face contact and years of work. When there were reports from the "front-line" organizations that Sendero was demanding that the presidents of the communities, communal enterprises and zonal federations resign, the Ayaviri prelature should not be sending signals that it was backing off.
The outlook for the coming 12 months was not good. Municipal, regional, general and presidential runoff elections were to take place between November, 1989 and June, 1990, providing a situation in which Sendero would be actively harassing its political adversaries. The Prelature decided to continue with a scaled-back IER Waqrani program and dismissed the rest of the IER team. Despite this tactical retreat, Sendero kept up a constant pressure on pastoral work. It even regain headhunting for prospective recruits in the Church's own youth work. Young lay leaders were snapped up and taken off to people's schools and given weekend briefings with cadres.
One of the most interesting reactions was the campesinos themselves. The FUCAM came to issue an ultimatum: if the Church decided that it would not continue with the Waqrani efforts, the federation would demand that all property and assets, including land and vehicles, be handed over to the federation. The donor agencies had allocated the funds for the benefit of the campesinos so they should be the final recipient if the program was not continued. The FCDP also demanded that the Church's commitment continue though their leaders were aware that changes would have to be introduced to adjust to the new conditions. FUCAM also offered to set aside land for Waqrani at its headquarters inside the town limits of Ayaviri. This move would have sharply reduced the risk of Senderista harassment. Leaders offered to provide manual labor in the reconstruction of the experimental station.
The campesinos made imaginative adjustments to the situation. For instance, district municipal councils no longer met in the town halls. Council sessions took place in the fields at lunch time, where they blended with campesino customs. Rather than individualizing leadership, grassroots organizations, like communal organizations or district federation, assumed collective leadership. When Sendero ordered the campesinos in Melgar province to abandon their "communal enterprises" and distribute the livestock among their members in December, they followed the instructions. The campesinos, however, kept a parallel accounting in which communal herds and crops, supposedly distributed to individuals, remain as a "family cooperative." The district, provincial and department federations created elaborate systems of intelligence and information exchange, vital for keeping leaders out of Sendero's reach. The peasants called these methods the "tactic of the vacuum" -- Sendero cannot kill or destroy what it cannot find. There are other examples of these strategies all along the Sierra, an Andean expression of passive resistance.
The Instituto de Pastoral Andina organized a first Sur-Andino "Social Week" encounter in Puno. The Instituto also published the papers and discussion promptly. (IPA 1990)
A new coalition of forces may put forward a more ambitious program to support Puno campesino communities, federations and other programs, drawing on staff and experience from Waqrani, pastoral efforts and human rights activists. The dismissed Waqrani staff either joined other centers, the FDCP or their political parties. The core of the Waqrani team continued to make lightning trips into the countryside of Ayaviri, driving home the message that they had not abandoned peasant organizations. A proposal for a regional program was to provide a service center for the proposals, projects and programs scattered around the department. It would also set up a data base to centralize information for regional development and fighting Sendero. One key issue is to avoid fragmenting the intervention of the centers and other groups, making them add up instead of remaining as separate, isolated units. The cornerstone in the new approach was to give a leadership role to campesinos, their local organizations and the FDCP in an attempt to maintain -- and in some cases rebuild the "communal way".
Measured by the reduced Waqrani program at a crucial juncture, the Senderista attack cut an operative knot in the ties between the pastoral mission, campesino federations and PUM's political strategy. However, there are indications that the Church and social and political organizations around the Sur-Andino strategy remade their pragmatic coalition under new terms. The depth in grassroots organizations and the flexibility of supporting institutions gave the Sur-Andino region the means to continue in the countryside. In addition, the setting up of a regional government, encompassing the departments of Puno, Moquegua and Tacna, opened a new, though risky arena for political work and consensus building.
The crucial question which has underlaid this section is why, despite the factors leaning towards polarization, Puno has been able to resist the dynamics of violence while other regions have not. In other words, what has permitted rural development to be more than a mere slogan, but a motivating force in the region?
In 1988, an anthropologist said, "Rural development is a contention wall against Sendero." With the benefit of hindsight, it should be clear that the crucial element was not public or non-government rural development but how these programs inserted themselves into the regional context. The existence of strong, resilient grassroots organizations made the task easier for GSOs.
The regional context of Puno made it crucial and feasible to resist the demands to militarize the subversive conflict. It resorted to national and international resources to hold back an escalation of the conflict. The success of regional development efforts depend on reading the factors and using them to the advantage of development.
Due to the Sur-Andino Church's emphasis on culture, organization and leadership development, the target of popular education was never lost. The political sphere was never distant from the debate, leading to the preeminence of the land issue in setting concrete objectives. This emphasis also found an immediate expression in political structures, like Izquierda Unida. GSOs used opportunities, like draught and flooding, to pursue both short- and medium-term objectives in creative ways. The struggle pointed towards political initiative, not just technical-productive proposals. The Waqrani strategy was not an enclave, but had a regional impact.
A risk of the Puno experience is drawing the wrong lessons to apply on a national scale. For instance, PUM and several centers tried to apply the land restructuring issue in Junín without first making a thorough evaluation of the local conditions for sustaining the effort and the Senderista opposition. If Waqrani team and the Sur-Andino strategy sinned, it was putting too much emphasis on the political side of the formula and not giving more value to the cultural resistance and long-term patience that campesino communities carried with them.