Pablo Sandoval

This proposal aims to demonstrate the form adopted by a Maoist current of anthropology in Peru (between 1950 and 1980), which sought to represent the peasant populations as a revolutionary class, and which had an organic relationship with the Communist Party of Peru, “Sendero Luminoso” (Shining Path). The case study focuses on the anthropology community of the National University of San Cristobal de Huamanga (UNSCH), a study center located in the department of Ayacucho. This project contributes to a global and transnational history of anthropology, because through documentary analysis of academic archival materials and in-depth interviews with anthropologists from this university, it is argued that the relationship between Maoism and anthropology at the UNSCH, posed an unprecedented situation in the social sciences in the Andean and Latin American region. This case study contributes to a new way of understanding the relationship between science, ideology and politics in Peru, since the objective of the Shining Path was to carry out a popular peasant war against the Peruvian state, from the countryside to the city.