Beyond Counterinsurgency: Peasant Militias and Wartime Social Order in Peru's Civil War

Abstract

In much of the academic literature on contemporary militias, the focus is typically on their destructive anti-rebel character. By contrast, the perspective of militias as agents of local governance, social reconstruction, and positive transformations is one that to date has been under-researched. Taking a "relational" perspective, this article examines how peasant militias in Ayacucho Department, although formed for the purpose of violently opposed Shining Path rebels, became engaged in governing their own "wartime social order" in which they organized, coordinated, regulated, and signified activities and behavior for the collective good of their local communities.