María Elena Moyano

María Elena Moyano Delgado (29 November 1958 – February 15, 1992) was a Peruvian community organizer, feminist and Afro-Peruvian activist who was assassinated by the Maoist Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) terrorist group. Although only one of many atrocities committed during the most violent period of Peru's modern history, her death resulted in a public outcry.

Moyano was born in the Barranco district of Lima. Her activism began in her teens, as a member of the Movimiento de Jóvenes Pobladores, a youth movement in Villa El Salvador, a vast shantytown (pueblo joven) on the outskirts of the capital, largely populated by migrants from the rural parts of Peru.

In 1984, at age 25, she was elected president of the Federación Popular de Mujeres de Villa El Salvador (Fepomuves), a federation of women from Villa El Salvador. Under her leadership, the organization grew to encompass public kitchens, health committees, the Vaso de Leche program (which supplied children with milk), income-generating projects, and committees for basic education. In 1990, Moyano left her position in Fepomuves and shortly thereafter was elected deputy mayor of the municipality of Villa El Salvador.

Maria Elena Moyano also supported the Organization Vaso de Leche (Glass of Milk). Organization Vaso de Leche organized to deliver milk to Lima's poor neighborhoods so that children could have at least one cup of milk a day.

Maria Elena Moyano's mother laundered clothes for a living, and had seven children.Moyano grew up with her six siblings: Rodolfo, Raul, Carlos, Narda, Eduardo, and Martha. For many years Maria Elena wanted to be a secretary, but her mother encouraged her to study law. Moyano's husband, Gustavo encouraged her to apply to Garcilaso de la Vega University so she could study sociology. The movie "Courage" (1999) depicted her studying poverty in Peru, and her turn towards secularism and socialism. Moyano believed that soup kitchens were a form of expressing grievances.

Shining Path, founded by Abimael Guzman Reynoso, was trying to consolidate its hold on the poorer neighborhoods of Lima. They were suspicious of all social organizations in Peru.

Fear and terror often motivated women, particularly those who lived in poverty, to organize and participate in social and political activism. The war between Shining Path and the military left many women vulnerable since incidences of rape were reported against both groups. Cholas (the pejorative term for indigenous Peruvian females) were raped the most by men in the military, reported by Robin Kirk on a report she created for the Women's Rights Project of Human Rights Watch. Shining Path additionally intimidated those that worked in social organizations through death threats, and ultimately killed quite a few.

Guzman, the leader of Shining Path was captured in September 1992. This was during the government of Alberto Fujimori who suspended the Constitution, dissolved congress and created a tight bond with the military. Under Fujimori's rule, many were arrested and executed.

Shining Path considered Maria Elena a counter-revolutionary and a manipulator. She blamed the leftist movement in Peru for supporting Shining Path. Maria Elena went on to publicly confront Shining Path by calling them terrorists, and no longer revolutionaries. She also confronted the police, accusing them of violence and murders.

In a distributed pamphlet, Shining Path attacked Maria Elena accusing her of cheating, lying, and planting bombs. Maria Elena rebutted each attack by stating that she would never “destroy what [she] has built with [her] own hands.”

Moyano had been apart and helped found organizations before the attempted influence of Shining Path. Later she would use these organizations to help the resistance against Shining Path. She did not support Shining Path and did not support government actions stating, “we are living in a dirty war… women are being violated; community leaders are being detained; the entire town is being obliterated". Villa El Salvador, despite being a shantytown twenty years earlier was now a place of many organizations such as women's clubs. Moyano was one of the people who helped found FEPOMUVES in 1983 or The Popular Women's Federation of Villa El Salvador, comprisingseventy women's clubs. Each club represented what they called a residential group, comprising 384 families. There were many women's federations across the country as soon as a new shantytown appeared Moyano would send some of her representatives to organize another federation. Their objective included the evaluation of women's roles and opportunities for training and empowerment. They also decided to study the problems of their community and the reasons underlying their poverty   She was elected president of FEPOMUVES in 1984 at the age of 25 one of her first goals was supporting the Vaso de Leche (glass of milk) program.

Moyano admitted that Dr. Alfonso Barrantes Lingan, the mayor of Lima at the time, did not keep many promises but one of the few he did was the Vaso de Leche program. The Vaso de Leche is a program that provides a daily food ration (milk in any of its forms or another product), to a beneficiary population in a situation of poverty and extreme poverty. Moyano and the women's federation helped promote Vaso de Leche by working to make the program work. Moyano and the federation organized themselves into small Vaso de Leche groups. They only received raw milk and each woman needed to use their own kettles, sugar, and cloves to make the milk more palatable. In 1986 Moyano and the women of Villa El Salvador proposed that Vaso de Leche be an autonomous, managed by committee of women instead of Lima's city government. Moyano felt as if the women knew more about the program than any government official for her and the women were the ones to receive the milk, put it through a kettle, add sugar and cinnamon, and distribute it. On March 9, 1987, the Vaso de Leche program's directorship was officially transferred to the Women's Federation. Moyano organized the program in Villa El Salvador, or at the district level. Moyano also saw Vaso de Leche as opportunities for women to learn organizational and developmental skills while building self-esteem. She wanted women to feel empowered and capable despite the sexist attitude in Peru at the time. She also helped create a communal kitchen in Villa El Salvador in develop alternate solutions to alleviate problems of hunger, unemployment, and the misery [they had] been suffering. 

Despite the huge successes, the economic crisis and Shining Path had caught up with her. Alberto Fujimori, the president of Peru organized an economic shock program that's intention was to break the cycle of inflation by letting prices rise once and for all to reasonable levels, ending costly subsidies that for years were financed simply by printing currency, trimming the bloated government payroll, lowering tariff barriers to admit cheaper imports and allowing the value of the inti to fall to levels that will make Peruvian exports competitive, thus fueling a recovery. This caused crazy price rises-overnight, prices of bread and milk tripled. The cost of noodles and newspapers quadrupled, and the price of cooking gas increased 25-fold. Gasoline increased 30-fold and half a million workers were fired.

Shining Path took advantage of this. Moyano's programs had been hit hard by Fujishock but she made sure they were not destroyed. Vaso de Leche and communal kitchens still handed out food and milk, easing the shock on the poor. Moyano was not known by Shining Path at this time, and even if she was, she was not targeted yet. But winning the election for deputy mayor gave her a political position. The women of the women's federation along with Moyano organized neighborhood defense committees to defend themselves against Sendero. Moyano had caught Shining Path's (Sendero) attention. She ran all these programs which halted communist fervor, was deputy mayor, and was setting up defense committees. Shining Path labeled accused her of working for the government and of manipulating women. One day Shining Path “[planted] a bomb in a Vaso de Leche center” and blamed Moyano for it. Moyano took a public stand, no longer calling them revolutionaries but terrorists. She vowed that Shining Path “would not close communal kitchens” and called “upon women to dispel the fear provoked by Sendero”. She was successful and organized protests and peace marches against Shining Path. She had a voice in such a time where opposition was suppressed by Sendero. She kept giving out milk, kept marching and kept working despite Shining Path's death threats. She was ready to risk her life.

After actively confronting Shining Path, she began to contemplate her death. Since many women activists in Peru were assassinated, like Maria Antenati Hilario and Margarita Astride de la Cruz, she felt it could happen to her as well. Out of all of them, the most significant one was the death of Juana Lopez in August 1991. Maria Elena would begin to receive death threats only two weeks after the incident. The Shining Path began to tell her to leave her post, or she would die. Shining Path called for a call to arms against the capital on February 14, 1992, and on that same day, Moyano organized a women's march against terror. Shining Path's call to arms failed, although not because of Moyano and other community leader's protests. Still, Shining Path was frustrated with these community leaders. On February 15, 1992, Moyano was celebrating her son's birthday when she went outside to a parilla or a barbeque. There armed men and women surrounded Moyano and other people on the beach. Moyano knew they were there for her, and she was shot various time by a woman in front of her son Gustavo and her husband David Pineki (she married him in 1980). Her body was then dragged to the town square and blown up with dynamite. She was 33. It was because of her defiance to the Shining Path that Maria Elena Moyano was targeted for elimination.

Thousands of people attended her funeral. Later, in a plaza in the center of Villa El Salvador, a statue honoring Moyano was erected, and her autobiography was published.

The assassination of Moyano was one of the last major atrocities carried out by Shining Path. In September 1992, Guzmán was arrested and the leadership of the organization fell shortly thereafter. Subsequently, Shining Path was largely eradicated.

Moyano has been honored through a film after her death: Coraje (Courage). The film was written and directed by Alberto Durant.

In a country filled with violence, inequality and danger, Maria Elena Moyano proved to be a signal of hope when approximately 300,000 people accompanied her coffin.

• Shaw, Lisa and Stephanie Dennison. Pop Culture Latin America: Media, Arts and Lifestyle. ABC-CLIO, 2005. Print.
• Moyano, Maria E. The Autobiography of Maria Elena Moyano: The Life and Death of a Peruvian Activist. Trans. Patricia S. Taylo Edmisten. University Press of Florida, 2000. Print.
• Heilman, Jaymie Patricia. Before the Shining Path: Politics in Rural Ayacucho, 1895–1980. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2010. Print.
• Gorriti, Gustavo, and Robin Kirk. The Shining Path. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1999. Print.
• "Courage," (1999 film)
• Starn, Orin and La Serna, Miguel The Shining Path - Love, Madness, and Revolution in the Andes. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019