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The distance between coastal Peru and the highlands is much greater than even the difficult terrain and physical distance would suggest. The peoples, cultures, economies, and even the histories of these articulated, but distinct, regions has created a chasm of such immense proportions that even with goodwill and the desire to understand one another, it would still be difficult to span. To this point in Peruvian history, these optimal conditions have never existed. In La batalla por Puno, José Luis Rénique examines the nature of the relationship between the coastal world centered on Lima and the areas of the altiplano at the northern reaches of Lake Titicaca comprising the province of Puno. One of the most indigenous regions in Peru and largely dedicated to herding and agriculture, Puno has been an ongoing center of conflict and has witnessed continuing struggles over land. Various political and economic movements from the outside have also exerted their influence over the peoples and region. The rural peoples of Puno, in turn, have attempted to regain control of lost lands and to adopt outside influences to their needs, or at least to minimize their negative impact. In surveying these struggles, Rénique highlights two main themes: (1) the struggle over lands “between indigenous people and whites, between Indians and señores, between gamonales and campesinos, between members of indigenous communities and feudatarios” (p. 16), and (2) the indigenous uprisings that shook not only the indigenous highlands but Lima as well and that articulated Puno and the centers of national power in the process of creating the Peruvian nation. Indeed, Rénique argues that in this process, Peru has been “Punoized” as much as Puno has been Peruvianized.The study covers the period from the uprising of indigenous peoples and Juan Bustamante in the mid – nineteenth century down through the years of Sendero Luminoso and beyond. A little less than half the book chronicles the period from the 1860s through the 1950s; the remainder examines the tumultuous latter half of the twentieth century. The book does not take you deep into the communities and assumes (quite fairly, given that the primary intended audience must be interested and informed Peruvians and academics) a reasonable knowledge of Peruvian history and Andean community life. In fact, the book is not intended to give a broader picture, and Rénique makes it clear that it is instead primarily a study of Puno and Peruvian radicalism within the context of the larger national political debate. This debate, however, carries with it all-too-real consequences for real people. It is not just conducted in café society or in military academies but in the continuing confrontations over the impact of ideologies and political struggles that stem from the very real on-the-ground confrontations, violence, and deaths.Certainly, the most gripping part of the book comes from expectations, actions, and debates running from the reforms of Juan Velasco (1968 – 75) on down through the era of Sendero Luminoso and the struggle for hearts and minds, or at least followers, that ensues. While the government and almost all political parties have some role, Rénique focuses on the interactions of the peoples of Puno with APRA president Alan García (1985 – 90), the Partido Unificado Mariateguista (PUM), Sendero Luminoso, the church, and, of course, the military, noting that this “encounter with flesh-and-blood campesinos put to the test not only the correctness of political lines of thinking but also their moral texture and their human dimension” (p. 262).Through personal interviews by the author, police, military, and political-party records, and testimonies from campesinos and others, Rénique recounts the very difficult period from the 1980s to the present. The land takeovers, the intense political struggles on the ground, and ultimately the increasing violence of these years as told by the participants and recounted by the author bring the bravery, determination, and horror of the upheavals into sharp relief. The beatings, torture, and the coldness and frequency with which the word “ajusticiado [extralegal execution]” had to be employed made it all too clear that even more than land and power was at stake. The analysis of the struggle between PUM and Sendero Luminoso is particularly well developed. This part of the book is especially moving, and at times caused me to recall my spirited conversations with Alberto Flores Galindo, whom Rénique claims was the intellectual inspirer of PUM. It also brought to mind an early-morning encounter in Puno, when a nervous soldier threaten to put a bullet in me with his machine gun when I turned down the wrong street and unknowingly approached an electrical power station.While sections of the book are uneven, Renique does maintain his focus in tracing the threads of the struggles over land to political radicalism in Peru as well as Puno. The author concludes, unfortunately, that the strife and death of the last decade has solved little, if anything. One of the positive changes has been the ever-increasing role of women in public life. Rénique ends, however, by noting the ongoing nutritional problems that confront Puno society and noting that in “the districts of the old red zones [Sendero-controlled areas], meanwhile, poverty continues to be a resounding fact” (p. 394).
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