Grassroots support organizations are a new phenomenon in the Andean landscape and in Peru. The closest parallel is the equally recent presence of the state presence in a promotional role. Facing off against these suppliers of development services are hundreds and thousands of underprivileged and undereducated Peruvians demanding assistance in improving their plight.
The rural sociologist Telmo Rojas (1986, 385-93) gives a useful summary of the social structure in rural settings drawn working with microregional development agencies in Southern Peru and Cajamarca. There are parallel social strata in the urban and rural sectors, each differentiated between dominant and subordinated groups. Peasants are on the bottom rung of this power structure. The power networks which connect the urban sector with the countryside run through the systems of landholdings, commerce and the state apparatus. These networks are also tainted with rural-urban, racial and ethnic discrimination. For the sake of simplification, we call this zone of conflict and tension the rural-urban interface.
The entrance of a GSO causes a realignment of the local balance of power. GSO programs, projects and ties with local partners do not fit neatly into the local structure. Their mandate and alliances lie outside the local context, with donor agencies, their headquarters offices, the national intelligentsia and other institutions. Centers provide new contact points in the rural-urban interface. GSOs are suppliers of scarce services and goods in environments of chronic poverty and shortage. As intruders aligned with grassroots organizations, they menace the local power networks in and of themselves. Some centers have even stated explicitly that one of their program objectives is to break the stranglehold that local power groups hold over their zones.
Centers' programs act on key pressure points, especially the market and state service, to improve the leverage of their local partners. For instance, marketing schemes for produce bite into the profit margins of traders or eliminate them completely. Efforts to organize communal stores hurt local merchants. Programs to strengthen grassroots organizations and improve education standards increase pressure on the government and other groups to take into account peasant demands.
Even though GSOs come to the aid of the generic poor, the objectives of their programs are specific communities and groups, which are, therefore, favored over other communities and groups. Therefore, opposition, resistance or resentment may not only come from entrenched local interests, but also those communities or underprivileged groups who do not have access to their services.
Local interest groups regularly accuse GSOs of being "agents of communism." They can also invent Senderista attacks to make authorities crack down on unruly peasant groups. There is a predisposition in the provincial news media to report acts of violence as a result of Senderista action. Over the past decade, most centers have learned that there is an advantage in working with more transparency, explaining their objectives and methods to local authorities and security forces. This has partially reduced some of the inherent suspicions and conflict.
Campesino communities spend an enormous amount of resources and time trying to get work and programs out of the government. If one summed all the expenses (trips to provincial or departmental capital -- or even Lima -- to petition authorities, fiestas and honors, slaughtering of livestock for fiestas, etc.), the community could easily finance most of public works themselves. One calculation for Cusco campesino community put the figure of time spent getting agrarian credits and other assistance from the State at 8,000 man-days a year (Paz-Tarea de Todos, No 7, 45-47)
Centers may aim to help the communities to maintain a dynamic equilibrium between the state, dependence, struggle and organizations, that there were means and mechanisms of getting what the community needed. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons that a fast growing sideline for GSOs is human rights work. Providing advice, lawyers and other assistance to grassroots organizations improves grassroots organizations' bargaining position in the rural-urban interface. The presence of a trained professional alongside a peasant leader in dealing with state functionaries can change the terms of interaction.
This may also lead to a dependency on centers as intermediaries, just as peasants used to depend on their urban padrinos to intercede before judges and functionaries. "It would seem that centers organize the population to accept the project and participate more efficiently in its execution." (Gianotten and DeWit 1990, 249) Only by concentrating on organization and leadership development can centers expect to move beyond these paternalistic relationships.
Campesinos rarely discriminate between centers and state agencies. They make the same kind of requests to both in an attempt to get something out of these new intermediaries. The tendency towards integral development projects, combining agricultural promotion, marketing schemes, organization, health and education services and other aspects, show that the centers are aware that their local partners have a wide range of needs, demands and expectations. "We all wear the mask of public functionary," says an international development advisor.
Centers may distinguish themselves with a more horizontal, egalitarian treatment of campesinos and other "beneficiaries." They may reduce the paperwork and kowtowing to obtain benefits. Centers, however, are still firmly anchored within the rural-urban interface. They come with ready-made menus of programs, lines of actions and technological packages, as well as a hidden agenda. A grassroots leader once told Ton de Wit that the government, the parties, the centers and Sendero were all the same thing: they wanted to impose their priorities on the grassroots organizations.
Sendero has positioned itself strategically at the hub of fault lines in the bedrock of Peruvian society. It plays off the failed feedback between the center and the periphery, the intricacies of local politics and the experience and expectations of segments of the populace. Each setting has its own set of traditions, codes and dynamics, which also interplays with national trends and factors.
Like a shark scenting blood, Shining Path is almost in instinctively drawn to strife. "Shining Path has successfully in inserted into existing conflicts," says Andean historian Nelson Manrique. In a society like Peru, fragmented ethnically, socially and economically, these conflicts abound though they may appear to be personal vendettas or blood feuds. Disputes involving water rights or scarce grazing land can turn into one peasant community against another.
Sendero concentrates on a territorial turf to impose an "axis of war" on the local communities, the State, security forces and other actors in the zone. Priority areas are those which have the most dynamic impact on local settings -- education, land problems, the market and the state. Although Sendero feeds and works off local disputes, its general framework and strategies involve a global evaluation of national and regional tendencies. This gives Sendero strategic advantages and tactical initiative over their civilian adversaries and even the Armed Forces.
This subversive strategy contrasts with the GSOs work. "The impact of the programs is restricted; it works in an isolated world and the interpretation is rather localist... The critique and analysis are planted on a regional and national plain, but a revisions of the proposals reveal a lacking of operative instruments to relate local actions with broader spheres." (Gianotten and De Wit 1990, 244, 247)
One of the complaints of the centers once they woke up was that they could grasp the issues of violence and its repercussions, but it was impossible to bring their local partners (associates or beneficiaries) around to understanding them in the same way. The campesinos have been living with violence and SL for a decade now and have developed their own defenses and responses to the problem. For instance, some native communities in the Amazon prefer to confront insurgent groups alone because the presence of outsiders only complicate the situation. In extreme cases, we have the Ashaninkas of Junín department who have practically declared a war against MRTA and Sendero in the zone, but also sweeping up neighboring native communities into the unrest.
"Each community has its different behavior in the face of violence," says an Ayacucho center director. "It acts to protect its members. Sometimes, it just vanishes when strangers approach."
During the 1970s and 1980s, centers gave a premium to working with campesino communities, especially those in Southern Peru that maintained their traditional structures. Because of the spiral of violence in the Central and Southern Andes and the increased awareness of the importance of rondas campesinas, there has been a marked increase in interest working in the Northern Andes. Today, there are about 40 centers working in Cajamarca, compared to less than a dozen two years.
The rondas campesinas of Cajamarca and Piura are not a guarantee that Sendero will be turned back in the northern Sierra. Although they are one of the most impressive social groups to emerge in this century, they have their weaknesses. Rondas are a means of maintaining the viability of small-property owners in rural areas. By organizing on caserio basis and joining rondas into broader organizations on a valley, district or provincial level, they can combat cattle thievery and other threats more effective without police protection. They quickly evolved into a parallel justice system and communal governments. Their broader mandate is to maintain communal equilibrium through consensual agreements within the ronda and with neighboring rondas on district and provincial levels. However, the function of campesino justice, which takes place in the communal assemblies, also works to maintain internal equilibrium. Analysts have frequently cited the ronda as a buttress against Senderista encroachment, implying that its law enforcement functions combat guerrillas. My findings, however, point in another direction.
The ronda's premium on internal cohesion keep internal dissidents from recurring to outside arbiters to achieve benefits. Sendero does not find the raw material and local breaches to make its initial inroads. However, in areas where the government or parties interfere with rondas and take away their legitimacy as autonomous organizations (Cajabamba province in Cajamarca), then Sendero has a chance to exploit factional differences. This analysis is also important to compare with the armed forces's spotty performance with the use of "civil defense committees," modeled after those in Guatemala.
A case in point is the experience of a GSO in the Cajamarca area. It set up a program for distributing farm animals, seeds and other goods among peasants to increase the income options of peasant households. The center left it to the criteria of each locality's ronda to decide which family would receive each item. The rondas incorporated a non-technical criteria: how to maintain communal equilibrium.
A center operating in the Ayacucho countryside found a similar situation. "We could probably irrigation canals quicker and better if we had a cement mixer, but the machine is a symbol of power in Ayacucho," said the program director. A cement mixer is associated with government projects.
"With the highest technology using fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, we could probably get potato yields of 18-20 tons per hectare, instead of the average of 2-2.5 tons in Ayacucho. But by using more modest technological levels, we get 8-10 tons." The campesinos are content with the higher yields and the program does not create a problem when the center leaves and subsidized fertilizers are no longer available.
We may draw the conclusion that rural development programs must pay attention to the local dynamics of conflict and tension and cede more initiative to local organizations in the allocation of resources. In addition, centers should find the means of allowing broad-based organizations intercede in the setting of goals and methods to avoid conflicts with communities which will not receive immediate benefits. For instance, if a district peasant federation is a co-sponsor of a marketing or production scheme for a specific project, it can explain to other communities that the project will eventually yield dividends for them, even though they are not participants. Marketing networks could be expanded or a pilot project in innovative farm techniques could be tested and made available.
"Sendero is the external auditor of centers' programs," says economist Javier Igüínez. "Only those with top quality will persist, and it doesn't matter if you carry a couple of pistols,"
Several supervisors of development programs ask how much of the GSO funding actually gets down to the grassroots. As little as 20 percent of the funding goes to the local partners, say the most severe critiques. Although programs usually start out with modest budgets, the costs of maintaining a team in the field and making it functional become more expensive as time goes on. This is covered up by the fact that program targets do go up, but not as fast as costs.
This is a point that is harshly criticized by Sendero for the past decade. It says that centers, their staffs and other exploit the plight of the poor for their personal or institutional benefit. Center staff rent the best housing in urban centers, ride in four-wheel-drive vehicles, earn a salary (perhaps, pegged to the U.S. dollar or indexed to inflation) above the average of the region. Working conditions and salaries may actually be better than most university-levels in Lima. They are certainly better than the local partners'. Under normal conditions, these disparities would be rationalized by the center's rhetoric of serving grassroots organizations and the benefits from the programs. Under Peru's current conditions, centers look like enclaves of privilege.
On the hand, center directors say that there is a distinction between programs in rural and urban areas. Rural programs tend to fit into the more austere methods required by working with peasant communities and organizations. Also centers with their operational roots in Lima or provincial capitals are naturally drawn towards research, investigation and institutional consolidation.
In the most extreme manifestation of this elitist approach, some center leaders go as far as to say, privately though not publicly, that the centers are ends unto themselves; the donors should continue to support them because they are backing the national intelligentsia. The grassroots organizations are merely props for an institution building of more importance. This attitude contains a high degree of hubris and arrogance.
When GSOs first appeared in rural areas in the 1960s and 1970s, the political landscape was clear. Peasants, left wing parties and the GSOs on one side and the government, ruling parties and entrenched interests on the other. With the return to democracy, that situation has become more confusing. With the diversification of government through municipal and regional governments and para-state institutions, GSOs and grassroots organizations find that colleagues and associates have gained positions of administrative and political power.
Since the mid-1980s, there has also been an effort to make a more efficient use of scarce resources by coordinating development work between GSOs and government or international agencies. This orientation was strong in the microregional approach in 1984-86. After the Fujimori shock package of August, 1990, the government, donor agencies and the Catholic Church called on the centers to assist in the social emergency program to provide relief aid to the underprivileged.
By cooperating too closely with the government, however, centers may come to be regarded as extensions of state services, or replacements for them. They may also lose their independence and capacity of criticism. The more connected to the State, the more exposed centers are to attack. Precisely, bilateral and multilateral programs have been high-risk targets for guerrillas because of their institutional contacts with the government and the high profile of big-scale projects.
In the regional and local setting, the gossip mill gives centers a reputation of using their resources for electoral purposes, instead of spending the last cent on helping campesinos. In comparison to the well-oiled campaigns of the major parties, these political uses of resources may be insignificant. Typewriters and mimeographs may be used for election propaganda and communiques. Vehicles and gasoline may support election campaigns. Center programs are used for party patronage: appointment of grassroots leaders to GSO staff positions to lock in their organizations, conditioning of participation on party allegiance, etc. The use of prestige of directing a center as a springboard to elected office is also cited. GSO directors can become local leading lights because they can become part of the local system, requiring frequent coordination meetings with prefects, subprefects and other state functionaries. This kind of prestige can easily be translated in a political trampoline to elected political positions.
In Peru, with hundreds of programs of the past three decades, there have been incidents of this nature. On the other hand, many of these charges are ungrounded and are part of the suspicions of the real motives for working in rural areas. It is only natural that GSO staff be drawn to political roles in the current situation. Working in rural Peru requires a high degree of motivation and dedication. The personal drive may come from religious or political convictions or from social awareness. Frequently, this political motivation can lead to seeking elected office.
A veteran GSO director says that the centers have three kinds of workers: the political virgins who do not want to accept the political price of accepting a government job and compromising the work with campesinos; the political party activists who milk the funding to support their outreach; and those accepting the explicit goals of the GSOs (campesinos, rural development, grassroots organization). "The yields of the third group outweigh the price of the first two," he adds.
Over the past decade, most centers have made a concerted effort to depoliticize themselves by freeing themselves of party influence, as stated in Section One. However, many have gone to the other extreme, turning into technical islands, concerned with the minutiae and means of development, but losing sight of the broader political issues and the need to forge political organization (not necessarily party cells) to attain long-term goals.
Centers must also be careful to have clear guidelines about how and when staff may participate in politics. During the 1989-1990 elections season, several center staff members ran for elective office, but they usually resigned or took leaves of absence from their centers.
A preoccupation of many GSOs and economists is the centers' dependency on foreign financing. No project, except a few tied to alpaca wool marketing for communities, could get by on its own resources. Most are going to be eternally begging resources. Removing international funding leaves two options, getting resources from local, regional and national governments or self-financing through profit-making schemes.
The former means building up political alliances, in the broadest sense of the word, to press for programs to continue. It means politicizing the projects so that broad sectors of the populace see their value. Some reforms of municipal and regional governments would have to take place. It also poses the possibility that these programs could be seen as another state program.
Self-sufficiency requiring a greater involvement in profit-making activities may also hold dangers. One of the buzzwords of the past decade has been to help grassroots organizations insert themselves into the market more advantageously. Sendero has made clear that it will not tolerate capital accumulation in peasant communities. In Puno and Junín, it has opposed communal enterprises, an attempt to use peasant community resources and ways to increase economic viability. Another problem is that Peruvian economic policy has been so unstable that the effective planning is impossible. Embarking peasants on profit-making schemes can be a frustrating experience.
Working with profit-making schemes means careful systems of checks and balance and a crystalline transparency and must go hand in hand with organization building. Those responsible for management of funds must be fully accountable to local partners and prepared to spend long hours putting down the most flagrant abuses of the local rumor mill.
By late 1988, most GSOs in rural areas had put into effect a series of precautionary measures. Centers should concentrate their staffs, offices and living quarters in province or department capitals. Staff should not stay overnight in the field or travel alone. Centers should give advance notice to local partners before going into the field for meetings, training sessions or other events to make sure that there is no unusual activity in the area.
Most centers have also lowered their institutional profile. The GSOs have to reduce the institutional showing off of parading their four-wheel drive vehicles, the surplus of engineers and agronomists and the ostentation of well-financed projects. The GSOs are now thinking in terms of cultural and rescue/recovery programs of Andean technologies, instead of selling technological packages imported from abroad. There still is a tendency of organizing for paternalistic assistentialism, but this also is used for demands closer to the hearts of the campesinos.
Additional measures include prohibiting liquor on field trips and standing guard at night. All centers have ruled out the possibility of having police escorts (the government offered this option to several bilateral programs).
Meetings with local partners are more restricted. Promoters make sure they have detailed information about participants. The old idea of the more, the merrier has ended.
In addition, centers have also acquire new buzzwords for orienting their policies. They call for the transfer of resources and programs to local partners and indirect management. This follows naturally from the reduced presence of the centers in the countryside. However, center staffs admit that efforts have been too brief and isolated to make a more systematic evaluation of progress in this direction.
Why does Sendero attack centers? They constitute platforms for development and organization. They are vulnerable, unarmed and frequently unprepared for attacks. They may serve, in Sendero's mind, as potential sources of intelligence to security forces. GSOs frequently occupy strategic zones where Senderista columns pass through or are setting up support bases. GSOs are normally not part of the local communities and more tolerable targets than residents. They are also are potential booties for sharing among the local residents, through organized looting. GSO staff members frequently have political party affiliation and are therefore part of the system. Both GSOs and Sendero are competing for the same terrain -- the fragile middle ground of institutions and organizations that have emerged over the past three decades or more. These organizations are possible rallying points for opposition to Sendero as well as catalysts for new means of inserting underprivileged groups into modern Peruvian society.
The centers have to differentiate between areas of risk and the types of programs and policies that they may carry out in each. Vicente Otta (1989, 29-32) makes three regional distinctions:
Emergency zones
Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Apurímac, Junín, Cerro de Pasco and Huanuco. Belligerent forces set the pace and dynamics. The main objective should be to maintain the existing limited spaces and keep organizations from being demolished by fear and reprisals. Otta says that center should increase technical-agrarian programs and broaden survival programs. Even what had been viewed as merely "assistentialismo" has value in keeping alive contacts and networks. Centers should increase contact with other institutions, like the Church, universities and professional associations. Many of these regions need an independent presence, but centers should seriously think out their programs before entering.
Active violence zones
Puno, Cusco, Lima provinces (like Huacho, Paramonga, Cañete, Pisco, Chincha and the Sierra of Lima). Centers should maintain a full presence taking advantage of Sendero's failure to have a permanent presence in these zones. Centers should engage in an effort to differentiate ideologically and politically Sendero and other violence-prone groups from other options, says Otta. They should help other groups assume a clear position of rejecting Sendero.
Rearguard zones
Tumbes, Piura, Lambayeque, La Libertad, Tacna, Arequipa, Moquegua, Madre de Dios, Cajamarca and Amazonas. Otta suggested that centers should contribute to broadening democratic spaces and encourage normal reproduction of civilian society. For instance, there has an increase in donor agencies and centers feeling out the possibility of working in Cajamarca under the mantle of ronda campesinas. This strategic shoring-up of the rearguard, however, will be in vain if centers repeat the same errors as elsewhere.
Beyond these broadly defined risk zones, there is still room for more distinction. The presence of belligerent forces can vary from province to province within a department, from district to district in a province. Some previously active areas may become quiet for extended periods, in effect, becoming staging areas or reserves where subversives may rest and recover their strength. The overriding factor is the importance of a district or province within the subversives' military strategy, which have a peculiar manifestation in the Andes. Frequently, elements like concentration of population take a secondary role to other points such as geographic location as a link in communication. In the case of Sendero, its tactics seem to point to a strategy similar to the island hopping of the American armed forces in the Pacific theater during World War II.
When a guerrilla group decides to upgrade its presence in a zone, it decides who is its principal enemy. MRTA rarely picks GSOs as enemies. Sendero may ignore them (as in Huamanga province, Ayacucho) or turn them into primary targets as in Puno or Junín.
This regional evaluation can change overnight. During municipal and general elections, the presence of guerrillas and security forces increase, augmenting the potential for violence. Sendero has its own "revolutionary calendar" which punctuates cyclical campaigns with anniversaries. It has also become almost a ritual for Sendero to launch a wave of attacks whenever a minister of Interior or Defense tells the media that security forces have the guerrillas on the run. Guerrillas also take advantage of periods of government instability, like the post-economic package upheaval of September, 1988. When guerrillas are inaugurating a new theater of operations, they also tend to be more ruthless. Security force tend to be more aggressive when they are unveiling a "new counterinsurgency strategy."
Obviously, the period of 1990-1991 will be highly troubled because a new government will mean an all-out test of Peruvian resistance.
Some centers have been able to maintain programs in areas that are conflict-ridden. It has required a mental and methodological adjustment. It means taking a position which does not antagonize either sides. Because it is an all-out war, the only way to intervene is to take up arms against Sendero or the security forces because it is a question of who's the strongest. The experience of a rural development center in the old emergency zone is illustrative of the margins of actions available for development work.
"If Sendero's rules do not go against your conscience, the regulations of the institution or the law, then, you can abide by them," says one center director. Sendero has imposed rules on all outsiders working in the region.
The military rules are the following:
The same center has internal rules for working in the emergency zone.
In other areas, measures do not have to be so extreme. Indeed, the mandate is to take action which will prevent the situations from generating into the quagmire of Ayacucho emergency zone.
However, it should be obvious that no matter what precautionary measures grassroots support organizations (or centers or other civilian institutions) take, Sendero or the security forces can brush them aside.