"A powerful revolution generates a mighty counterrevolution."
Lenin.
The militarization of Peru has steadily grown since 1992. The number of people living under the state of emergency and military curfew has increased from 48.7% in 1991 to 58% in 1995, which implies the rapid growth of the repressive apparatus (Armed Forces, police and paramilitary.) This increase has occurred in direct relationship with the increase in the political and military actions of the People's War led by the Communist Party of Peru.
According to the Armed Forces' Investigative Institute for National Defense (Instituto de Investigationes para la Defensa Nacional - INIDEM), by March 1994 there were 5,786 paramilitary Self-Defense Committees (CDC), with 400,360 members nationwide. (See Table 1.)
The number of Army-run paramilitary groups includes those organized in the 1970's by the revisionist parties of the United Left (Patria Roja, ex-VR, PUM) in some areas of Northern Peru (Piura and Cajamarca) which have been absorbed into the army's rondos. About 60% of the total number of rondos are in Northern Peru, but these are poorly armed as compared to those of Ayacucho and Huancavelica (Central Peru), who make up only 16.5% of the ronderos nationwide but have 39% of the total guns provided by the army.
Today, there is no evidence of any organization of peasants opposing the People's War other than those controlled by the military. The reactionary armed forces organize the rondos in a compulsory manner, treating the ronderos like animals. Peasant women are exploited and raped by the soldiers, and are forced to work as slaves in the military garrisons, recalling the treatment received by the peasants during Spanish colonial times in the 16th Century (Urrutia, 1985.)
At the same time the People's War is advancing rapidly, seizing extensive areas, and the People's Committees are being multiplied all over the Region. The regime and its armed forces are responding with ever greater repression (see Table 2.). Massacres of people by the army and the proliferation of mass graves are visible, while the criminal regime and its master U.S. imperialism are still boasting that "there is a new military strategy based on human rights." The reality is that Fujimori's Peru continues to be at the world's top in the number of political prisoners disappeared by the armed forces (see Table 2). Military repression against the people is inherent to any strategy based on U.S. low intensity warfare guidance.
Three myths are being spread by the senderologists which have no basis at all:
1) that the paramilitary rondos have won the war against the PCP.
2) that some paramilitary rondas have organized themselves "independently" from the army (senderologists Degregori and Tapia, 1996,) and are still "independent", having their own goals!
3) that the widespread and indiscriminate repression by the armed forces against the civilian population is "authoritarian", not genocidal (a duplicate of Reagan's theory of the 80's.)
These myths exist only in the heads of reactionaries, imperialists and senderologists. The fact is that in Peru, as it was in Vietnam, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. the paramilitary is organized by and subordinate to the army, and their role is to be buffers that protect the skins of the military from the fire of the people.
The high cost and the problems caused by the paramilitary settlements have undermined the morale of the military. Because the rondas are powerless masses completely subjugated to the abuses of the armed forces, they have become the slaves of the landowners and the drug kings associated with the military. Even notorious criminals among the ronderos, such as commanders Lobo, Huayhuaco, El Chacal, or El Salvaje want to escape the military settlements and return to their communities. The contradiction between the rondas, especially the poor masses forced to join them, and the armed forces is important. There have already been mass escapes by ronderos who have joined the People's War, and many others have emigrated into the shantytowns in the urban areas. Those who went to the urban areas are being lured by the regime and the NGOs to return and rejoin the paramilitary settlements (re-population programs.) In sum, it is a war between revolution and counterrevolution.
Table 1
| Year | No. of Rondas | No. Paramilitary | No. weapons |
| 1993* | 4,205 | 235,465 | 16,196 |
| 1994** | 5,786 | 400,360 | 15,390 |
* Comando Conjunto de las Fuerzas Armadas.
** Instituto de Investigaciones para la Defensa Nacional.
Table 2.
Murders in Ayacucho perpetrated by the Peruvian Armed Forces, mostly killed under torture.
| Year | No. people murdered | Year | No. People murdered |
| 1982 | 164 | 1988 | 637 |
| 1983 | 1486 | 1989 | 707 |
| 1984 | 2651 | 1990 | 603 |
| 1985 | 602 | 1991 | 809 |
| 1986 | 556 | 1992 | 474 |
| 1987 | 524 | 1993 | 600* (estimated) |
Source: Desco-Comisedh.