Peru’s central highlands incubated two revolutionary movements in the 1960s

Evidence

Located in the central highlands, it is the regional capital of an area of rich farmland and impoverished, mostly Quechua-speaking farmers, which in the 1960s gave birth to both the Sendero Luminoso and Túpac Amaru revolutionary movements. By the 1980s, the region had become a continuous battle zone in the war between government forces and the rebels. Tens of thousands were killed or disappeared, and hundreds of thousands fled the countryside and settled in new informal neighborhoods in Huancayo and other towns. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1971