International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 75

International Journal on Criminology
cialist in Peru, and by the article by Burgoyne (2010), a member of the US Army,
who widens the scope of the analysis by situating it within the “War on Terror”
that has been in vogue since 2001. Starn (1993) gathers accounts from participants
directly involved in the rondas campesinas, providing a first-hand perspective of
this complex self-defense phenomenon, which was primarily carried out by peasants,
and which, broadly speaking, has not yet been integrated into counterinsurgency
doctrines. Degregori’s monograph (1999) on the rondas in the Ayacucho
region demonstrates the major role they played in the defeat of the SP in the south
central region of the Andes, even before Guzmán’s capture in 1992. 8
The Place of the Shining Path in Terrorism Studies
As we have seen, research into the SP over the last three decades has produced
a body of work of varying robustness. Nonetheless, it is rich in lessons
for any researcher attempting to approach terrorism by analyzing the
diversity of its manifestations.
It is interesting, then, to examine the place that the SP occupies in the field
(we hesitate to call it a discipline) of terrorism studies. 9 To do so, we offer a rapid
overview of three resources that should be indispensable for any specialized research
into terrorism: databases, bibliographies, and reference works (directories,
encyclopedias, and dictionaries).
Databases. We are not interested here in the history of these databases,
which came into existence around 1968, or in the range of topics they cover.
(They were initially limited to “international” terrorism, eventually becoming
more general.) But we cannot ignore the conditions of their production, and particularly
their dependence on open, primarily journalistic sources, or the fact that
they are funded by bodies linked, to varying degrees, to states and governments
(primarily the United States, Israel, and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom)
engaged in (often selective) combats against entities defined as “terrorist” on the
basis of criteria that, as we have seen, are often more polemical than scientific. 10
Given all of this, it is interesting to examine the SP’s place within some of the
most important databases that have offered empirical material for countless research
works published since the last third of the twentieth century. We make no
claim to be exhaustive, something that would go beyond the scope of the present
text, and we will limit ourselves to a few observations that will be enough to a
useful insight.
8 This important point lies at the center of an interpretative debate on the place of the rondas in the
SP’s defeat. An echo of this can be found in the fascinating account given by one of its leaders, Elena
Yparraguirre, recorded in prison by Zapata (2016).
9 For a rapid overview of the current state of terrorism studies, see Schuurman (2018).
10 For an initial overview of the range of available databases and their advantages and drawbacks, see
Schmid (2013, 294–340) and Bowie (2017).
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